City Council - Regular Meeting

[Music] Okay, you're on.

Oh, good afternoon. and welcome to the August 19th, 2025 1:30 p.m. City Council meeting. At this time, we will stand for pledge and prayer by Councilman Lawrence. I aliance 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. Father God, we gather once more for this council. Father Lord, we ask for wisdom and insight of how to direct what needs to be done for the city to make it a better place to live. Father Lord, we ask that you just bless uh all of the members of not only of the council but of all the city members. Father, uh all of our u emergency response people, our our sheriffs, our uh fire department, our police officers, Father, any anybody that puts themselves out there, Father, Lord, we ask that you bless them and keep them safe. And Lord, we ask that you give us wisdom and knowledge, Father, today and how to deal with the stuff today that needs to be dealt with in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Today's the day. And at this time, we'll have any questions or comments from any citizen that would like to speak. And I see none. So, we'll move on to the city manager monthly report.

So, uh we're getting close to the end of the fiscal year. Of course. So, one good way of knowing that is that uh you're going to take action on tax rate in a budget, which is a pretty good sign. We're getting close to a new uh new year. Uh but if you'll notice, we're still doing pretty well. The general fund revenue are still over expenditures. We're still tracking pretty positive. Uh you notice there's about a little over a million dollars in positive variation left for the uh last uh couple months of the year based on the revenue that's coming in. We are still projecting to finish a couple hundred thousand to the goods. So that's always positive. Uh same uh same same things true in water sewer fund. Our revenue is still tracking over our expenditures. Uh that's you know of course without the transfer accounted that we uh are transferring out but operationally we're looking pretty good and we're going to be in a positive there. We our revenues tracking higher than budgeted and our expenditures are continuing to track lower than budgeted. So that's a good sign. Uh sales tax has kind of flattened out the last little bit. We're just a little bit under our budget now. Uh we're hoping for kind of a big uh bigger increase or kind of little bit of rally in uh September for the last month, but I think we're going to be a couple percent less. Of course, we do have uh turnarounds starting at nutrient and at Philip 66 later uh in September, so we should have a good start to uh fiscal 26 on that. So, nothing necessarily to be too concerned about there. We're still well above the uh uh uh 5-year average. So, we're still trying to get over the 5-year average. Uh hotel motel occupancy is above the 5-year average and above our uh 5-year uh outlet, 5-year average, and that's going to probably continue into the first part of the year with the turnaround as well. So, those are all looking pretty good. As we talk about a couple of projects, of course, uh not a whole lot going on. Of course, the

Sil Chipill is actively ongoing right now. Started yesterday for our Silk Coat project for this year. So, they're out in Buuna Vista today doing the streets that are scheduled in Buunav Vista. They've already done Industrial Boulevard. Uh they will end up on East Wilson Street as part of that. And uh remember, this is just this is the chipsill portion. Once they get done, we'll be coming in with the microilling on a couple of the streets. and micro sealing will hit Roosevelt and West Wilson. Uh the chip seal on Wilson is just from Maine to Florida, but the microsurfacing will be from the clover leaf to Florida. And so that'll pick up some of the extra bleeding that happens there kind of by the post office. Contractor's going pretty good. You know, this is the third year that Missouri Petroleum's won the group sil coat bid and is doing it. So they go pretty quick and really not a whole lot of loose rock. uh been a lot better than that first year we did it. So I haven't uh no issues have been brought up to me at at this point. But uh we didn't get a whole lot of notice. Of course, in the last couple of weekly update emails, I kind of told you the weather slowed everything down and we might not have a lot of notice on that, but they are progressing. Of course, we're working out the final contracts on the well 13 replacement now. So once the council since the council awarded that project at the last uh meeting now it's just getting the paperwork in order and then getting a a notice to proceed sent out to the contractor city hall the projects here w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w wra kind of up. Got just a few things we're short two pieces of uh ceramic tile for one bathroom and about one box of LVT tile that should be here today or tomorrow. Uh so the painter will be back and they'll be cleaning up on Thursday hopefully have most of that done. The plumber's here today tying in the last bathroom. So, most of the chaos is gone. So, it's uh looking really close. I I know that the staff will be ready to get the bigger bathrooms open. I didn't realize how many of us were on the same uh bathroom schedule until we were down to two bathrooms. So, it's always a a little bit of an of

of an interesting workup, but depending on on um if you you better give yourself a little cushion. But, uh we should have those uh back in opening next week. So, I think everybody's excited for that. But that's uh really all the projects we got going on now. So, kind of go through some uh departments here. Uh OEM, of course, they've been working on uh putting together an after action report from all the tiffas responses that we've had. You know, we've had quite a few people going down for the flooding both in the the uh valley area and in the Kurville area. So Jason Whistler's band, Archie's band, Brandon's been, Terry Langwell's ban, Jason Pender's band. Uh, so they want to get together and kind of discuss things that they learned. Uh, I will say that all the feedback has been we're better off than we think we are and we're better off than a lot of people. Uh, but we do want to, you know, those are good learning experiences and we want to make sure that we put lessons learned. uh you will be taking action on a bid for uh disposal services in the future. So that's one of the things that came out of the wildfire is we're going to pre-bid disposal. Uh we if we don't have a disaster, we will never use the bid. But if we have a disaster, we have it pre-bid. It's complied with federal laws and we can immediately put it uh for reimbursement. So a lot of these places, if you don't have that disposal service pre- bid, you have to bid it out. There is no for for FEMA reimbursement there is no waiver for an emergency to go through the procurement process. So and as you know uh people don't want to wait

right three months is for ash and trash and like tree stuff or what what type of disposal we talking about here? it it will cover the gambit and so the it will be probably for rolloffs so that we'll they will come in and set rolloffs and we'll have a have that set and of course we're working on probably pre- permitting with the TCQ a disposal waste site and just what we've seen debris management is just always one of the big problems we've seen that with all the wildfires here they we saw that in Peritton with the tornado up there we've seen that in Kurville with the flooding that's just something that is always a problem. So, we're going to try to get ahead of it. So, when you see that come in front of you, I don't want you to think we're spending a whole lot of money on something that we didn't budget. It's just there just in case. And then it's pretty common. The hurricane areas do that a lot, but they've been, you know, after you go through it a couple times, you learn that lesson. So, we're trying to take some of that, but we're excited to kind of get some of that feedback from the disaster response and and get some things pre-planned. I know that we've already been working with Ded and Public Engagement to have some pre-built out uh disaster resource web pages, but they're just not published. So, they're not accessible, but then if a disaster happens, you can just publish them real quick and all that information is there. So,

they consider that hazardous waste when it's on fire. Yes, I figured it would. It's uh you missed all of the fun internal debates. I know that the because the TCQ wanted us to refer to it as Petraki and they didn't like the fact that we didn't want to call it Petrakibble because we didn't think anybody would know what the hell Petraki is.

And so that's generally one of my, you know, when I do roundts or or uh uh sessions with other cities and things like that, I say don't be afraid to you know your city and you know your people. You know, you need to communicate in the way that they'll understand it. Don't worry about what the state agency says. Yes, to some environmental engineer it might be Petraki, but to the rest of the people it's ash or burned wood. So, we're trying to make sure that we've got that stuff ready. Uh the radios uh have been installed in the new mobile command unit. It's actually left yesterday to go get its graphic installed. Right now, it's tentatively got a spot set up in September at the Panhandle Regional Emergency Management Conference to be displayed. So, we're going to hopefully get the show off and it'll be ready there and then we'll have it ready for Octo Boomtoberfest. Dedra and Whistler are also both teaching sessions at the prep conference. So, we're excited to have them involved. Uh we've also started work on the hazard mitigation grant, the next hazard mitigation grant that came available from the fire that hit uh kind of the Carbon Black area. So, that actually was an F fmag fire. So, we think we're going have about a $900,000 available for that. So, right now we're working on trying to get uh generators sized and priced for our critical sewer infrastructure uh so that we can maybe you know keep the sewer running even without power. So that's we're looking at the sewer plant and a couple of the main uh lift stations so that we don't have those issues. I always like the we're very lucky that we elevate a lot of water. We've kind of talked about that. We elevate somewhere around 11 million gallons. Uh our daily residential use is about 1.5 million gallons. So, you know, we've got days of water supply if we don't have power. But if you have water available and people are using the water, but your sewer plant isn't working, [Music]

you kind of create a big problem. So, we're going to start probably focusing on the sewer side because that's a lot bigger problem than the water production side. So, we're looking at those and getting some of those started. We also did have TDM star training here. the star is the state of Texas uh resource request form. So we got some of our uh administrative people to go through that so that in an emergency they can come in and help out. I know that like Nicole and I went through that and Mackenzie I think went through that with Nicole so that we could you know tie into some other people that aren't always necessarily emergency responders into some of those emergency roles. And then we also have some training coming up that we partnered with TDM on the G200 the U elected and appointed officials training that we have training for donations volunteer and debris management coming up as well. In dispatch they're getting ready for their upcoming TCIC audit and then they also did some presentations at the Stanette schools on 911 awareness and how to call and get emergencies. Uh fire marshall was at the back to school fair. So that all went well. They were giving out bicycle helmets as part of the project shield uh that we've been raising money for the last couple years. So, I know that that went really well. We also had a meeting with Pantex on coordinating some of their responses and getting more uh contacts and and coordination with Pantex. It has been working on replacing citywide camera systems, you know, so that uh was budgeted this year as part of our project. Several of our old cameras are on the government do not use list. So, uh, we've been replacing those mainly at the court has been replaced and they're working at the police department. Uh, also slowly working on getting our two-factor authentication put in place. So, that's accessing all of our systems will require two-factor authentication in the future. So, that's making sure that we got that second levels to protect the data and resources of of the city. And of course, they've been working with the mobile command unit as well, getting all those uh firewalls and switches and everything in place so that it'll

communicate with the rest of our system so we can have that uh fully operational. HR is uh we're starting to get ready for open enrollment now. Open enrollment for our health benefit plan will be November 4th and 5th. Uh our broker McGriff that's been helping us the last couple years, we have decided to go ahead and um bid out health insurance again. uh not necessarily because we're looking to change, but as you might recall when we bid it out last year, vendors have more aggressive pricing if it's out for competitive bid. So, making sure that they stay honest and keep the best price to us. We are going to open it up again this year. I think that's mainly just to make sure that we get an honest price. I don't necessarily expect us to change uh depending on what that that result is, but uh you might see some action on that uh depending on on how that goes. if uh UHC comes in as the as the uh as the winner again since it's not changing we're just extending the contract it won't require action but in case you see that some of that notice or or somehow that gets back to you we are planning on doing that of course you know health insurance is a big expense for us so we do want to make sure that we stay on top of that if you recall last two years ago when we did this we split everything up to where we've got a different vendor for supplemental insurance we got a different vendor for the HR HSA card and we've got a different vendor for So that way we can bid all those out separately without necessarily impacting at all. Prior it was all or nothing. So like going forward our H, HSA, the spending card vendor probably won't change. So we won't have a lot of those issues that we had when we had to change that. So we can change medical without impacting your card or without impacting your dental or we can change dental without impacting your card and without impacting your health. So hoping for a good benefit with that. We're also in the implementation phase of uh our new benefit management software that's going to be bene uh benefit first. So this is that open enrollment software that they use to pick their stuff and that we uh can use to keep track of everything. It also communicates with the vendors so

that people get added, right? We've had a solution, we went to a solution when we changed over to UHC, but it was the cheap basic solution and we knew that going forward and it has been causing some issues. Uh it'll send out a file and it will like remove coverage from somebody when it shouldn't and then we don't know what happens till like an employee goes to try to use it and then it says they don't have coverage anymore because they made a change and it resent the whole file and so uh we're a pretty complex city and we have a we have what I've learned in all of this is that our benefits are very generous and a lot more unique than a lot of other cities and so we needed a little more capabilities to make sure that we make that easy. We also are doing that with one employee now, two employees, you know, next year, but you know, with 199 authorized employees, you know, that's normally three or four HR position. So, we're definitely wanting to invest in that to keep our personnel count lower and I think that'll make things a lot easier. So, Michelle's definitely been busy with all of that. On the fire department, we've had a lot of uh development and training continue there like always. Jack Dowy's received his officer one certification from DCFP and uh firefighter Munger's complete his hazmat tech Brock Diamond and Jacob Hickmmont have uh both reached their four years of service and received their intermediate fire license and Brandon Sales has completed his instructor one. So we appreciate all their development on professionalism and making sure they continue to serve our community. They also helped with the fireworks out at the lake and the freedom on Maine. Uh they did the police versus firefighter water gun fight for the end of Park Wreck. That's always, you know, one of their funding things. Uh they also, if you were in attendance, which I know some of you were there, they did model purses for the women's conference, which

apparently was one of the highlights of the event. Uh Kobe Maderas in the uh fire mitigation department also now has his burn license. So we now have five certified burn managers uh when the city to help us complete all of that. And Kobe and uh Archie both taught a uh sawer course uh out at P66. They're also getting ready for the JA Ranch prescribed burn, which is one of those that we do yearly that helps uh get us some revenue to offset their cost. And then we did get uh assist Frank Phillips College who's now a testing center for the Texas Commission on Fire Protection so that we can do a lot more of our certification testing for the fire guys here in town. So that's always a good thing. In the police department and police services, uh animal services has uh been working on increasing their FEMA training and been taking a lot of those sort of things. We did get the new electrical pan uh got the electrical panel replaced in the building now. that was one of their capital projects for this year to give them a little more stability. Uh their second truck and box is now in service. So, so we've gotten all of their vehicle equipments replaced and all that's on back order. Uh they also helped on an investigation in the county which resulted in 23 dogs being impounded from uh outside the fridge area. So, we appreciate their assistance there and working together. and the police department actually got noticed that our last three Taho have a ship date and we'll probably be here before the end of the fiscal year. So, for the first time since 2021, we're going to have zero vehicles on order other than firet trucks and ambulances. So, all of our light duty stuff will be here and we'll be caught back up. Uh so that's I'm trying not to be

not wood. There's lots of wood up here. Uh but of course the police department also they participated in the Boots Versus Badges blood drive along with fire department and the motors unit did the big uh Boots Versus Badges opening over in Amarillo. Uh they were at Freedom of Main as well with the fireworks at the lake. Our SRO's have completed uh they've been to the TASRO conference. So, they're all geared up and of course now started for the school year. So, they've been educated and updated on all the nice changes that happened at the at uh the legislature this year. Uh police department also taught the craze which is the citizen response to active shooter course for the net and fridge ISDs for all of their teachers during their inservice training. So, they were ready for uh back to school. Uh we have been uh working with Borgistd to get that on their agenda now too. So that's been something we've been wanting to do here. Uh they also were at the back to school fair and then the motors unit participated in the iron horse shootout motorcycle competition in Amarello. So the team they won the second and third place in the partner competition and second in the team competition out of everybody was there. So definitely some kudos to the motors unit there. In public works, we did uh donate some traffic cones to Paul Belton so that they could use uh to kind of line up their bus scene and their unloading areas. Uh we helped the library fix their flag pole. Of course, the street department has been getting uh has been busy prepping for seal coating, which we talked about going on a little bit earlier today. I would like to say that uh we will stripe all these streets, but we'll do them after all the work's done so we can do all the striping. I know some of that's been brought up on on South Main, but keep in mind when all of this is done, we're going to have to stripe Roosevelt. Uh we're going to have to stripe uh Industrial uh uh Main Street, Wilson Street. So, there's a lot of striping to do. So, that makes a lot more sense with that truck just to do it all in once than it does to kind of piece mill it as it's ready. Uh with the

seal coating done, we expect Inter Mountain to probably be here within the next four weeks. I know that they're in Amarillo getting ready to start Amarello's project. So, they're in the area. So, I don't expect a whole lot of delay with that. I do expect it completed in this fiscal year. Uh, street department and public works team also helped support the second Saturday and main event that was here this year. They were at the back to school fair with their little gator helping keep up with trash and everything. I know that that's one of the one of the big needs and one of the big thanks that we always get from the United Way. I know that they really appreciate that. It's one of those things that not everybody sees, but it's one of those things that without it, the events just don't go as smoothly. So, we appreciate the parks and saw waste guys for helping, you know, make sure that everything stays clean and kept up with that. And now all of our summer hands are uh done for the summer because school's back in session. So, you might see some slowdown in how we keep up with a little bit of that, but we're going to try to keep some part-time, some regular. We got one of them in the parks department that's going to convert to a regular part-time to keep them going. So, we'll get some of that. We're trying to keep the code enforcement guys as long as we can, but there again, if they've got school, it starts being a little bit of an issue. Uh, with code enforcement, I did kind of want to touch on just a few things. I know that we get a lot of feedback with that, and I'm not 100% sure that everybody understands. It's really easy to see your little area, but you need to realize that we're responsible for the entirety of the city. And I think sometimes people don't understand how big and how much area that really is. So if you look in, you know, the performance measure monthly report that we give so far this year, we've already sent out a hund,021 weed letters. Our goal for this time of year was 342. So we've tripled what our goal was and what we did last year. So they are going out. Uh we've done another 125 we uh waste and debris

cases and we've filed 82 court cases. That 82 court cases is above our target of 37. So I mean they they are working. Uh it just might not realize that the alleys that we got so far this year, we've cleaned 893 blocks of alleys. So that's above our target of 784. They've disposed of 118 tons of debris from the alleys. That's a little bit lower than our target, but we've had to hauling debris has been taking a backseat to mitigating weeds and growth because it's just by normally by this time the rain has slowed down and allowed the growth to slow down, but we've been getting rain like once a week.

So, you go you mow it and then it goes right back to growing. So, there's no real time to catch up. But we are working on that. We have mowed 76 acres of private property. So that's property owned by somebody else that we've abaded. So that's 76 acres. We've mowed 81 miles of rideway. So a good chunk of that is state rideway that the state only mows twice a year. But this council and the community we know does not believe that twice a year is enough. So we mow all of that West Wilson rideway going out to Fridge along with all the other rideways. So that's 81 miles is a lot. We've applied 600 gallons of herbicide. So those those that that gets, you know, blended. So that's, you know, I think like 7500 gallons of blended herbicide. So we've gone we've bought 600 gallons. So, you know, if you go to the store and you get a gallon of herbicide, you know, we've gone through 600 of those.

Mhm. So, we are spraying for all of that. I just kind of wanted to put some numbers and some basis behind all of that. With all this rain and stuff, are we having to do any type of mosquito control? So, we are treating standing water when we get it. We lost our certified sprayer. So we are in the process of trying to get another person actually more than one reertified but that's that's taking a little bit of time. We have partnered with Pampid to allow us to kind of work under their license for some things. Of course treating standing water and you know we did put out there that we do have the the the the herbicide tablets available for free for citizens that want to come up here. Really that is the best way to limit the mosquito population is keep water off of your property. treat the standing water that you do have and do things that that don't collect standing water. And so I will say as bad as people might think it is, I got back from Missouri couple weeks ago and woo that uh brings a whole new light on uh

bitten on thick. I do as we go into utilities, I I want to kind of talk about some of that because we do get, you know, a little bit of some feedback on water leaks. The summer is the worst time for water leaks because as the ground warms, it actually shifts more when it warms than it does when it is is uh cold. So, this is the busy busy season. So, so far this year, we've done 36 mainline work orders, which our target was 24, and we've done 272 service line work orders, which is 126. So with two months left to go, you know, that's like one service line every single It's actually two every single working day. Keeping in mind that if it's not blowing out and not an emergency, we are not exempt from dig test requirements, meaning we have to call it in, have to wait for them to mark it, and then go out there and dig it. We're also a little bit short-handed in that department. And so even short-handed and even with those requirements, we've doubled the repairs of what is normal and what was planned for. So in total, water distribution has done 640 work orders in about 300 days. So that's right now that's a normally a sevenman crew. They're down to like five right now with another two hiring. So, uh,

the typical fix on that is it usually a dig and clamp or replace? So, it it depends on on what it is. Normally, the service lines were just replacing them because the what happens is just the service line leaks are generally small and they've just over time as the ground shifts the rocks because, you know, if anybody around here has ever tried to dig, you know, we're not in a bunch of sand and a bunch of nice soft clay. we're in, you know, very rocky dirt and so over time it just weakens those points until they get get a leak. And so depending on how much we dig, we do normally replace try to replace the service line and when we can we sleeve it so that

that's good right now. So this year we've done 272. We average about 150 a year, give or take, but there are 4,800 service lines in this town. And so there again, I know that it might look like that one's been leaking for a while, but it, you know, it could be in line and we had it might have to wait 3 days. And then sometimes if you've got a blowout on a main,

you've got to go address that. And when we've we've had a a two pretty big main blowouts, one at the nutrient plant, one out at the carbon black plants, you know, which those can take three to four days to to fix, and those are critical. uh you know they impact our industry's ability to make money and so those always get prioritized and when you're doing that you can't do any of the service lines and so the fact that they've done 272 when I know for a fact there's at least four weeks where they've had to do other things I think that number just looks pretty good. So we're working through them and we're getting to them. I I know that it might be frustrating because you think nothing's going on, but I can tell you they're not these these employees are not sitting around

doing nothing. It's just there again, there are 4,800 connections and a process. So, I just kind of wanted to talk a little bit about that with water distribution. They're still completing most of the work orders within one day once it's assigned and available to to be worked on. So, they're getting there. They might just have to wait just a little bit. Thank you for going through that um on both the code enforcement and the water. I know there's a lot of social media, you know, mis misinformation and I appreciate that you went through that.

Well, and it's, you know, and I get I get it. Everybody, you know, we're on we're in our own little world and like I said, a lot of times we we only go through what we see and we've got our same routine and you know, we've got to just make sure everybody opens their their view a little bit and understand that it's not just them, it's the entirety. And I'm not saying we're perfect in everything, but you know, when we see reports, I mean, social media is a good way. We do keep track of that and try to respond when we can. Uh, you know, it it's social media is kind of like the fisherman and how big the fish was, right?

Exactly. There the one thing we know is there was a fish. Yeah. And so there there is always truth in it. And so, you know, it is valuable information. We do try to respond to that. Absolutely. uh with our downtown convention. Of course, Nicole's been busy. She presented at the women's conference and helped support that. We've also been busy. We submitted our application to the Main Street program. So, we're pretty excited about that. We'll know about that later this year. Keep in mind that uh if we do get accepted into the Main Street program, one of the biggest things is a it it if we apply for downtown revitalization grants, it puts us in a different category. And so, we're only competing with main other main street cities, which is like 40 But when you're on the other side, you know, it's everybody. Everybody else. So, and not all those 80 are submitting applications each year. And so, we're excited about that. It does open up some other programs and educational opportunities for Nicole to be able to help out and re and uh educate our downtown merchants and other businesses looking in downtown. And so we've got some pretty cool things I think coming up with that as we work through that as we get the tiers will be meeting again probably pretty soon as we talk through those grants. And so we're going to start seeing some improvements uh down with that. Of course Nicole and Dedra both have been busy getting ready putting the final coordination in on Boomtoberfest. Talk a little bit more about that and public uh engagement. Uh McKenzie put in another bid uh to host the Texas Association of Venues annual conference in Borger. So,

we were just a few points off last year from getting it and they gave us some feedback. So, we're excited and hopeful maybe we'll get all the venue runners here to that have their convention here at Borger. Of course, every time we've had a convention or training come in, everybody's always positive feedback. So, we're

excited for that. And they also Nicole and Mackenzie help put together welcome bags for the class of 1965 who had their reunion back in town. And I'm sure they were ooed and awed for those that hadn't seen the dome as they came through. And we do like to give them some uh cool swag. We're also uh if you've got ideas, y'all can start thinking. You we'll be ordering uh centennial swag here pretty soon. So just keep in mind that's coming up. And public engagement. Uh since our last time we had to talk, our Coronado edition neighborhood cleanup got 2160 pounds of bulk waste off the uh out of the neighborhood. Uh the Thompson edition also had theirs at 2,700 lb. And then up next is uh North Hughes. U keep in mind that uh I know we've had some feedback uh like this last time somebody complained because the trailers weren't close enough to where they lived.

Sorry. Uh you know we do have bulk. You can call and get a trailer for free calling the transfer station and they will bring it to your house. And you know, I know we keep getting feedback that, well, I didn't know. Well, I I don't know what more we can do. They're in the newsletter that we mail on utility bills. They're on the website. They're on social media. They're on our app. Uh they're posted at the on the wall of the glass of utility billing when you come in if you pay your water bill. So, I mean, I remind Dedra and Nicole a lot here lately that remember, communication requires both sending and receiving. So, it's not always our fault. You have to be willing to receive the communication. And if you're not willing to receive it or looking, you still have part of that fault.

So, we can't go knock on everybody's door. And besides, if we knocked on their door, they would probably not answer and accuse us of trespassing and wanting to know why we're on their property. And we did say we are getting ready for a Boomtoberfest. That's the second second weekend in uh October. So, if you haven't noticed, Tony Laroo is our celebrity judge this year, and we'll be doing a little bit of performance. We've got the Spotify playlist out there for the 15 bands that are uh that we've selected to compete. Uh had a lot of good turnout, a lot of lot of high quality. So, our after last year, the bands that were here had a had a really good time and have spread the word, and so this year, we got some some better. So, I'm excited to see how that expands. We did complete this year's dumpster art competition. Those dumpsters have been painted and if uh you've been to the Meert shopping center you can see those those have been placed there which I think definitely with the new parking lot and everything having the painted dumpsters uh definitely improve that.

They on the where they're right behind uh Borger Pharmacy and at the building up. Yeah. Uh we also had our moonlight meditation at the park. We're get at the swimming pool. We had our second one coming up. It's already sold out. Uh you will notice that the youth center is trying to get out there and do a few things with the swimming pool. We do have weekend hours still even after summer started. So, we talked about the new pool giving us a little more flexibility uh because we do keep water. This pool is designed to keep water in it all year long. And of course, it'll get winterized at some point and won't be swimmable, but it does give us a little bit of opportunity to do some some things uh while it's still hot. So, it's you know, it's likely to still be in the 90s and 100 well into September. So depending on how the usage goes and what the feedback is, we'll keep evaluating with that. Uh they're starting on Wednesdays now to do a toddler uh hour in the mornings for just they'll keep the big pool closed and all the pools off so that you can have some toddlers and then again that just kind of springboards off the

lap a lap they did some lap hours. Yeah. For people that would just want to come and swim. So we are trying to uh try some new things and I know some of that was the feedback that we saw on Facebook over over some of that with with spending that much money and part of that we didn't have a choice because it was that or no pool but it has given us a lot more opportunities to give more options. Again I I know that you know entertainment events is one of our strategic pillars. Uh the feedback all the time is we didn't know about things. Again I don't know h how you don't know. I mean, you've got to be willing to to see there there things are out there and there's definitely things going on. Uh Dedra also did a session at the women's conference. Uh we've completed our second Saturday of summer series with the car cruises and all of that. Uh that uh tend to pick up a little better. Uh we have officially earned our tourism friendly certification and technically we've earned our music friendly certification. the uh they will be presenting that digitally remotely to us during our first meeting in October. So, we're excited about that. Uh they are finishing up on the Centennial Stories, trying to work on getting the Centennial book put together. So, if you have a Centennial story or something that you want to get, they're still opening to those. We're kind of I think uh we pitched an idea and I think we'll reach out to the community at some point. I think we might try to do a some sort of community uh time capsule. The one that I saw that I thought was really good is they had people write letters about what they hoped their city would be like in 50 or 100 years. And so I kind of thought something like that might be

that's cool interesting. So we're working on some of those. Keep in mind that the Centennial Committee, if anybody wants to feedback or join that, that's the third month fourth Monday of every month. Will those books be for sale? Yeah. Okay. I I imagine once we get them done, the city will we'll buy them and then we'll probably give we'll have different, you know, where you can buy them or we give them to certain things. That'll kind of be a decision at a at a later time. We'll see how much they cost. And uh that we've also started working with BISD and some of their new administration on trying to coordinate another shattered dreams type program. again, you know, that's the alcohol awareness, drunk driving, texting, just now they include texting while driving and all that stuff. So, that's exciting. Uh, with the school year starting, Dedra's getting back in on getting ready to see the next uh youth advisory council. And then we have also started a website refresh. We do that every three years. So, it's time for a little kind of refresh on the website. Mostly just graphic, but that gives us an opportunity to update some things and get newer technology in on the website. and they've started planning for the Tall Tales tour for this year over the uh kind of Halloween area. So, if y'all are interested in that, you know, those tickets always go pretty fast, but this year they're adding the courthouse uh to the tour, especially the fourth floor and the old jail

and some of the uh tunnels. I'm not going to ruin them. Oh, I was I was chided that I was not overly excited or overly impressed with some of the underground t the tunnel under Sixth Street,

but I'm I will keep my mouth shut there and not uh they're scary hotel is scary. But uh that's what I have for this month and the city's activities last month. Any questions I can answer?

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, Garrett. appreciate it. Uh I did kind of want to just add a few things too. I know some of the new stories we've got out there. I'd like to kind of give an update on on 828 and the sports complex. I would remind some of this I think seems to have been ruffled by the fact that our link to the 828 uh website came off the homepage. We've got an area down there that is like current events on the homepage and we removed it to make way for the budget and tax rate information. Uh, you know, that was not necessarily us trying to be secretive. It was us thinking that maybe people might be more interested in what their tax rate and the budget for next year is going to be.

Uh, the A28 page is still up there. It's still got all of that information up there. It's under business and then economic development and you can click on it. Uh, you know, we had previously put out and all the questions I'm seeing now are still the same ones. We've got these uh frequently asked questions with answers. Why Borger? How is the city addressing concerns about this project being a scam? Will this project make our taxes go up? Why are there so many questions? And why don't we know what the incentives are? Can our infrastructure handle this development? Will 828 get the land after the EDC improves the infrastructure and then sell it for profit and never build the facility? If they want everybody to stay on site, what is the benefit to local businesses? What is the benefit to our community? Why is 828 shifting focus from Mississippi to Borger? These answers are already out there. I'm not going to go through them. We've answered a lot. That information is still out there. It is still progressing. Uh the council, you know, we took action to approve a uh grant application on BEEDC's behalf for the uh some infrastructure improvements. And through all of this, I have warned you that this next phase would take a lot of time because at this point, I would remind people that this is a private development. This is not this is not a city project. This we're not we're not pick telling them what to build, how to build it. We're making sure that they follow our our codes and yes, there's an agreement to help develop it and likely incentive in the in the future, but that's no different than any other economic development project we do with anybody. So, this is not the city's project. There is not going to be debt issued. We have not spent any more money than what has already been spent. There will be no more money spent directly to them until they issue a building permit and turn uh dirt. Uh but keep in mind the part we're doing now these are we're at platting which requires storm water drainage studies. This requires street layouts, elevations, utility extensions, traffic studies, all that takes time. So we started all of this as an idea to get

the public in early and we are listening to that feedback and making sure that we address things as we go. But it's not uncommon for this process to take, you know, up to two or three years. Uh the swimming pool project we just talked about, you know, we first talked about that what almost four years ago,

four years ago, and that was the renovation of an existing facility, the dome project, uh seven uh Yucka Estates, just the platting and study for that was 18 months before we even could sign an incentive agreement with the developer to do it. Uh I will add on Yucka Estates, we have issued our first two permits and they've laid out the footings for that. So, we're getting ready to see home constructions going up. And so, I just kind of wanted to just address that a little bit. There was a new there's been two news article stories about one was pretty good. One wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was phrased a little wonky that I think kind of raised some debate more so than what it needed to be. Uh, but you know, we've kept the council in place. It's still going. It's it's, you know, but it's in their hands right now. they've got to get back something to us to make it developable. They've got to get documents back to us to issue a permit. We're at that point to where they've received our uh design standards and our planning requirements. And like I said, that just I I don't it takes time and that's why I think if you recall in some of their early discussions, they were looking at a three to five year buildout because they knew it was going to take time to do some of that. Uh I would look what it's taken Kids Inc. how long just to get the money.

Yeah. To start doing that. And now they're just reszoning. They don't even have a plat yet. They're just now getting to resoning. And that started well before this project was announced. So nothing there's nothing hinky. All right. There's nothing unusual about any of this. And you know, like I said, our budgets haven't changed. We've still supported the EDC supported a multitude of projects this year. Outside of that, you've got Doy's Donuts that got money. You've got Steve Customs by Steve that got money. Payton Machine Disco and Steve Oolas got job training to help them get uh uh interns. So, there's a lot of stuff still going on and a lot of stuff we can't talk about. So, but I just kind of wanted to clarify some of that uh for the council and some of that information that's been out there.

Thank you, Garrett. And uh so, if there's nothing else on that, we will um we'll go move on to the consent agenda items 6 through 10. and um if there's any questions or anything comments on those and if not I will entertain a motion.

I make a motion to accept consent agendas items 6 through 10 as written. Second. All in favor and they pass. And then moving on to item 11. receive a presentation, conduct a public hearing, and then consider and take appropriate action to introduce on first reading ordinance 0-010-25 adopting a combined tax rate of60807 per $100 valuation for fiscal year 2026. Mr. Spradlin,

so I start off this presentation every year kind of reminding everybody about our financial transparency. You know, that's borx.gov gov or border tx.gov/budget. There is a lot of information out there. Our tax rate revenue, our expenses, uh it's all out there. We're we're not hiding anything. Again, you know, communication is a two-way street and we can't, you know, spoon feed it, but we can't make it available. And I and we make a ton of it available. So, when we look at our tax rate for this coming year, of course, first part of that is our certified property values. So you'll see for 2025 the freeze adjusted certified property tax value is 510,646,850. That's up from 476 million the year before which was down from 496 and 23. That drop in 23 to 24 was the homestead tax exemption that the council passed. So last year we did 20% homestead exemption uh for those that live in border. And so then this year we'll back up a little bit with that. I know that everybody always gets freaked out when they see their appraised value, their new appraisal coming in and oh my god my that's just going to tax us more. Remember that's only half of the equation.

The other half of the equation is the tax rate. And so if you look at our tax rate chart, it's almost the complete opposite of the appraised value chart because over the last seven years, the council's given us instructions and we followed through to make sure that we're not passing on a lot of this cost through the tax rate. So in 2020, the city's combined tax rate was86349. The proposed tax rate for fiscal 26 is 606. So that's 26 cents give or take that the tax rate has been lowered in the last seven years. In each one of those years, we've adopted at or below the no new revenue rate. So we have not generated revenue. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in in a couple of slides. But so when everybody worries about, you know, we're doing all this stuff just to raise their taxes, remember your property tax bill is not just the city. It's the city, the county, the school district, the college district, and the hospital district. We're just one piece of that. So, what this chart shows you is that we've been doing our part to try to mitigate those property increases. Now, we're lucky because we have a multitude of other revenue sources to help offset that sum. Not all taxing entities are that lucky. The school district has no other revenue source because other than what the state gives them. So when you look at this year with our certified freeze adjusted value of 510. So last year's was $480 and then we have a tiers increment. So that the the increase in the tiers is $12 million. So we get to take that off. So that comes off too which is how we cover the payment into the tiers which then helps support our programs for downtown revitalization and tiers redevelopment. So, you know, when we talk about that, that comes our value without that would be 522, which would have then lowered the no new revenue rate even more than what it was. Does that kind of make

sense? Uh, so our current rate is 6566. Can I ask you a question? And I think I know this, but I'm I'm pretty sure you went over well, we went over it a million times, but the certified freeze adjusted rate that is with the homestead is that's with the homestead. So, this So, we added the homestead. We previously did a senior's tax freeze. So when you turn 65, your city taxes do not go up. So if you're over 65 and you have a homestead, it your city taxes do not go up because we do the senior freeze. Then there's the disabled and and and military veteran freeze. So pretty much now with a 20% homestead and all those freezes, there is not a single tax reduction option that we can add. So we offer all the freezes and we offer the full homestead tax exemption. So now the only thing we can do is can control the rate. So there's as of as the way the law is written now, there's no other freeze or something we can ask. We do the disabled and handicap, we do the senior, we do and of course the military vet is is dictated by state.

Yeah. And so overall, if you're over 65, your taxes don't change anyway. Uh our voter approval rate is 881836. So that's the rate that we can adopt before requiring required to have an election. So if we had an emergency or the council had unne unforeseen needs that they wanted to fund, we could go up to just 2881836. So the rate we're proposing is the certified Noo-Noo revenue rate of606807 which is you know 28 cents below what we could go up if we needed to. uh that breaks down to an M rate of 4634 and an INS rate of.1434. And so overall that's a decrease of 0049838. So what this looks like and and the you'll notice that the public notice is is is kind of a little wonky. It looks like we've got this big increase because that's we we did a we did a homestead exemption which which in one year but we don't have comparative years yet and so that's why you see this this big average deduction and the last year's home value was $78.99. So the first top of this chart is what the comparison would be if we hadn't have done a homestead exemption. And so you'll see that everything went down. The tax rate is down 7.6%. The average home value uh is up 2.5%. The average tax is down 5.3%. And then the total levy is down just 0.1 because we did adopt the no new revenue. So there's a little bit of fluctuation of that. Last year our uh total levy was 3,101. This year 3,98,000.

But what you see and what goes out in the public notice is last year's average home value of $78.99. But last year when we did this, it was 85. This year, last year's value was $78.99 because they applied that 20% homestead exemption to it. And so it looks like the average value went up 22.4% because they took out that 20% homestead exemption. And so that's why I wanted to kind of because the average tax with that is 13 point is an increase of 13.62%. But that's that's a little more accurate to compare the the the top because the top is no homestead average. The bottom is homestead. So it's kind of skews that previous year. This year there was only $3,534 of new property on the tax roll. So, what this actually looks like in the money that the city has. So, this year we're expecting in the general fund for maintenance and operation to have $2,422,31. That is down from 2020 when we had $2.99 coming in M property tax. So, we've given up $500,000 in property tax revenue in the last six years, just from what we were collecting to what we are collecting now. So, as you can see, we are not taking more tax money. We are taking less tax money.

Can you go back to that f uh one right before that? The the no be the next one. I'm sorry. Further what? Um I can't The one that said how much new value? Uh

yeah, that's uh down here at the bottom. Yes. Okay. So, is that that is that how does the tiers work into I mean is the tiers is that that's not just necessarily new value. It's if there's increment, right? But I mean it's it's also in like if there's improvement in the tiers area, that property value also goes into the tiers,

right? The new property is actual new construction. Okay? because that doesn't go into your no new revenue rate calculation because you are allowed to collect revenue on new property. Okay? So you can adopt a no new revenue and have more money coming in. That's more often seen in high developing cities. So like Canyon I think added like a couple million dollars in new homes and new properties. So they get they get to collect the additional revenue on that because that increases need for services and things like that. So that doesn't go into your no new revenue rate. Last year we this was about $3 million because I think the tractor supply hit the tax role last year

and some of those things. This year we haven't had anything big happen. Next year I expect this number to be bigger because Yucka Estates is starting to develop. Uh we're working on the development out behind tractor uh out behind tractor supply that we'll see if it hits next year or the year after depending on on on how that works. But that's

you know you're not penalized for growing but like for us that's why there's we had such little that's why the the revenue actually went down a little bit. That makes sense. I don't remember us discussing that. I was just normally we haven't had enough of an improvement for it to be really seeing because where that like I said if if I had uh actually on the tax so like if if we had this chart but it was going up even though we were adopting the no new revenue rate you'd be wait why is that going up

okay I see what and like I said tax revenue can go up on new revenue so even if you keep the no new revenue rate you're allowed to to take new revenue for taxes generated on new property okay thanks but because that I also kind of want to talk a little bit about foregone revenue. And so this is the revenue that the city could have earned if they had adopted up to the no- new revenue rate, which is what we could have done without voter approval. So in 2021, we could have generated another $467,000 in property tax revenue. In 22, we could have generated another $938,000. In 23, another $1.1 million. in 24784,000 additional dollars and in last year we could have done another $892,000. So we are being staff and the council at council's direction are being very mindful of that tax rate and that impact. You can see that that we could have easily I'm not saying that y'all would have passed it

or that the public would have been happy with it, but you can see that we could have gone up significantly if something happened. The other thing is is I know as as the rate kind of gets lower sometimes we worry about you know what do we do in a case of emergency. This is also shows you kind of how much we could raise if something happened and we needed to raise a little bit more money in a hurry because something drastically changed. That's what I have for the tax rate. Any questions before the public hearing? C can you just kind of go over for the public about the debt uh the

the INS rate? Yeah. And like how we for how we see that, you know, we want to keep that at a certain like what the council adopted earlier this year in our debt management policy is a target of of of 19 cents. And so what we talk about is is when we talk about property tax, especially like property tax this year, I think is about 13% of general fund revenue. Uh you saw it's $2.4 4 million. The general fund's budget is $21 million. So $2.4 million is not a whole lot of that. So a bit a raise in the property tax doesn't generate just a whole lot of money, but it can provide more impact by offsetting debt payment to get us more debt uh projects uh that are investing in our community rather than offsetting operations with it. And so we've got a little bit of flexibility in there. And as the council has kind of been aware of, we're going to start looking at some of those projects that we're what we try to do is we do what they call a debt ladder, which is this as one pays off, you issue another one. And you try to work it up and and our goal is is to work on debt issuances every 5 years. And so every 5 years, you issue one when one pays off. Uh we're not quite there. We need one more issuance to get into that cycle. Uh but there are some things that generally are are thought better to put on the debt because if it's on the tax rate, the people are paying for it as they use it. So we talk a lot about that like with a fire truck.

So if we buy a firet truck with cash, that means the people that lived in Borger today bought that. But that fire truck has a 20-year life and it's going to serve people that live in Borger over 20 years. So if it's on the debt rate, people people pay that every year. So, as people come and go, different people pay for it. I'm not saying you necessarily like that thinking, but that's some of the thinking that that goes into that. Uh, I know that that that there are people that believe that you shouldn't have debt at all. We're never going to be able to have enough money to do a lot of the big projects in cash or you delay it so much that it raises the price. And so, it's not necessarily about being debtree, it's about managing your debt. you know we don't want unlimited amount of debt we want to manage it and that's what that target of that INS rate is so that we can manage and and and deal with that that tax that uh debt ratio the rating agencies standard andors and moodies they actually you get dinged if you don't have debt because they look at it that if you don't have debt you are deferring maintenance and investment and if you are deferring investment and maintenance, you are only increasing your cost and increasing problems down the road. So, you actually get dinged for not doing that. Which is why in our last S&P rating, if you noticed, I think I sent you one of the the comments that they said because our credit rating was actually upgraded. And in that upgrade, it says, "We are aware of a planning upcoming debt issuance and we expect this to have negligible impact on the city's creditworthiness or financials because they know that you have to invest back into your community. you can't not improve things and that's uh we'll have a slide next week you know next week we'll go through the budget but that investment even in like vehicles that's kind of sometimes one of the the big things I hear and I'll talk about this again next week but you know we

we're driving newer vehicles and sometimes people complain about that but because of that we've reduced our maintenance line items by almost $300,000 a year that's 30% we're saving in maintenance and that's $300,000 every single year. That's part of what has allowed us to reduce that tax rate. So, you think that we're wasting money, but we are being smart in that investment and returning it back to the citizens.

That's like on the investment we did here for the city hall renovation and the pool renovation. By doing that all at one time, we took out debt for that. Yeah. For doing that, we saved oodles of money and plus we have it now instead of five years from now. Right. when we did when we actually did the analysis, you know, we we had planned on phasing in some improvements to city hall, but you know, prices go up each year and then the contractors have to mobilize each year and then we making interest on the loan money for that little bit of time that it's sitting there while we're spending it down. It ended up being about $40,000 cheaper to go ahead and issue the debt, do the project all at once with one mobilization at the same time we were doing the youth center project than it would have been if we had just paid for it with cash over time. And our credit rating is is, you know, double A minus is a is a, you know, it's not that AAA. We're not big enough to probably ever have a AAA credit rating, but double A is it's up there. And because of that, most of our tax supported debt is under 4% interest rate. Even even the the the tax note that we took out for this project was issued at 4%. When the average uh at the time we did that, the average mortgage rate was over eight. So that that investment and that that debt policy and continuing to reinvest helps keep that rate down to where it is less expensive for us to continue investing in our stuff. If you stop that and it goes up, then when you do need to do something, it is even more expensive.

And I think that's what I wanted, you know, them to know is that we do there is a debt plan that we I mean we don't we don't just say, "Oh, we want something we're just going to file debt." We have we have a plan that one has to come off. I mean there is a absolutely a plan. We're not just going to say, "Oh, we want this and we're just going to do it." You know,

right? And that's, you know, part of what you'll be looking at next week in in the budget is also the CIP, which is our 5-year capital plan. You know, we try to put as much in there as that we can think of. It's a living document, but there are a lot of things in there that are unfunded. And I know sometimes we get feedback, oh, like, you know, oh, we're getting ready to tear up Main Street. No. Yes, it's in there because we know we need to do something with it, but it is not funded. Uh, you know, I've been joking a lot lately. Besides, I need I need a little more meat on my rear end after all the chewing it got over 10th Street before I do another major uh street project. But but we need to know, you know, how can we plan for what we need to do if we don't know what we need to do?

And so that's what all of that that is. And just like we do in everything else, you know, it and we did win award for planning. We did a state like we were the community of the year in 2023 from the Texas Association of Planning.

Thank you. Um so if there's nothing else, I guess we will conduct a public hearing and I'll open that up if anyone has anything they'd like to say about the tax rate. And if not, then I'll close the public hearing and we'll do a record vote. Um, first I'll entertain a motion.

I move to introduce on first reading Artness 0-01- excuse me 01 0-25 adopting a combined tax rate of 0.6807 6 06807 per $100 valuation for fiscal year 2026. And I further announce that final action on the tax rate will be taken on September the 2nd, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.

I second that. And I and I'll um we'll do a record vote. All in favor? Sorry, I got off track there. And it is approved unanimously. And then we'll move on to item 12. Receive the fiscal year 2026 proposed operating budget. schedule a public hearing for September 2nd, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. and then consider and take appropriate action to introduce on first reading ordinance 0-011-25 adopting the fiscal year 2025 operating budget. Mr. Bradlin,

so I don't have a whole lot uh to say about this because we, like I said, we will have a a presentation just kind of like what we did today on the tax rate on the budget next week when we do the uh presentation. I did kind of want to point out some final wording in the ordinance. You know, we talked about uh uh the different the the new wording for what is the difference between legally adopted and how we're going to handle some of those other funds for uh the how it impacts the audit.

And so, just to kind of I did want to kind of point out that change and I I think the way I finally got it worded makes a lot more sense. And so we are legally adopting funds one the general fund fund two water sewer fund fund six economic development fund fund 45 INS fund fund 46 the venue project fund and fund 52 the capital construction fund. Then we are the following funds are included in the budget as approved financial plans for the same fiscal year but are not considered legally adopted budgets under chapter 102 of the Texas local government code. Fund three the tourism fund. Fund 9, the Park Special Project Fund. Fund 25, the opioid grant fund. Fund 31, the Fire Training Fund. Fund 40, the Court Security Fund. Fund 50, the Court Technology Fund. Fund 51, the Water Sewer Capital Construction Fund. Fund 53, the Tax Increment Finance Fund. And fund 65, the Capital Equipment Fund. These funds shall remain subject to the city's established policies, internal budgetary controls, and oversight practice. So they are in the budget like we talked about presented the same way but there is that wording change if we legally adopt them when it comes to the audit we have to have a budget comparison of adopted to final and then you've got to remain within 10%. So in a lot of those those minor funds that's not that's for the GFOA standard. Uh previously it didn't matter because we weren't trying to get the best practices. Now that we're trying to get the best practices it does matter. So all this does is it removes a budget comparison from the audit book which takes more time for the auditor to do for that second group. You still have to approve the budget. You still have to approve expenditures. You still get the budget reports and everything is still in the budget. There's no real transparency. We just don't get dinged on some of those funds if like uh capital construction project carried over from one year to another. And so that's been where we've been dinged where it's been hard to keep up with a lot of our capital construction is like like 10th Street. We thought we were

going to spend $4 million, but it got delayed because of the gas company. So we only spent $2 million this year and now we spent $2 million in that year, but we only budgeted $1 million because it crossed. And then we if we don't go back and amend the budget in time, then the GFOA gets us. But nothing's changing with how we operate. It's just going to change how it's presented. Does that answer everybody's questions on that? I know that may

have any anything on that? Like I said, I think when you see it and and in and how that's worded, it makes a lot more sense that, you know, I'm not we're not trying to bypass council authority or any other control. We're just trying to make the audit a little easier. Other than that, that's all I have on the budget for this meeting. Like I said, we will have a big public presentation like we do every year uh at next meeting.

Okay. If there's nothing, then I'll entertain a motion. I move to receive the fiscal year 2026 proposed operating budget, direct the city secretary to schedule a public hearing for September the 2nd, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. and to introduce ordinance 0-011-25 adopting the fiscal year 2026 operating budget.

Second. And all in favor? And it it passes. Item 13, consider and take appropriate action to introduce on first reading ordinance 0-012-25 amending the city of Borger's fee schedule for the fiscal 2026 budget year. Mr. Spradlin.

So again, this will be part of the presentation next week. Uh but to keep us on time, we have to introduce that there are only three fee changes this year. Uh it's really only two because one's all the solid waste fees are going up by 50 cents with our contract with Pampa like we've done every year because you we have to dispose of it somewhere and then the rate study incre uh we're following the 2022 rate study which is another increase in the sewer base rate from $21 to 2325 a month. Uh that is the last recommended increase from the fees uh uh fee anal the water study analysis. And if you recall in in year one of that we reduced the water rate

and so to make sure that it wasn't that the sewer didn't hit you all at once. We reduced the water rate in year one and then have slowly been raising the sewer rate. So overall the the impact is somewhat negligible the year there. But this is the last uh recommend recommended. The plan goes through 2027. So next year we plan on no increases,

okay, to utility rates. Of course, the solid waste will probably have to, you know, be adjusted with with Pampa, but I did just kind of want to throw that out there. But right now, this year, that's just solid waste is like six fees, but it's still just 50 cents a month. it's the tipping fees and the you know so it's really only kind of that one one change but I'll entertain any other questions on that but we will point that out again next week

or next meeting anyone have anything if not then I'll entertain a motion I move to introduce on first reading or o-012-25 amending the city of borga code of ordinance chapter 1 general provision article 1-06 Seven B schedule.

A second. All in favor? And it passes. And item 14, consider and take appropriate action on an interlocal agreement between the city of Borger and the Borger Independent School District for water system operations.

So uh Oh, Mr. Sproutland, sorry. Yep. Nope, that's fine. So, as you recall, like uh two years ago, BISD consolidated data with Spring Creek. Uh the way state law is is that if you serve uh more than so many connections or more than so many people, you're are considered a public water system. Uh so, since the Spring Creek School serves more than 35 people, it's always been considered a public a water system. uh they have one well. It's almost like a residential well with a little chlorinator on it and servicing the school. Uh but because it is a public water system, they have to be it has to be operated by a licensed operator. And so I'm not 100% sure what happened when it transferred from Spring Creek to BISD. Uh but whatever was handling that kind of went by its wayside. So BISD has been getting a lot of notices from uh TCQ on their compliance. So the new superintendent reached out to me about working on an interlocal agreement for us to operate it. It's not a whole lot to we we were already doing the back bacteria the testing for bacteria in the water uh anyway and we have been for a long time. So this is just making sure that like so with this our people will go out there and just keep an eye on it you know do a daily check and then Chris will help uh support the paper. It should not take a lot of time. Like I said, it's one well and a little chlorinator. Of course, we'll have to change out the the chlorine for them and the chlorinator when it's required, but the they're uh the way that the interlocal is agreement. I'm we're going to not charge them anything to do it except the actual cost associated. So, like I'm not going to charge them for personnel time unless it generates overtime or any expendable. So, like if we do if we buy the chlorine to put in there, we will charge them for the chlorine, but they'll probably buy it and we'll just go get it. Uh, you know, if we've got any out-of- pocket expenses, like if we have to buy parts to repair something, we'll bill them for the parts. We're not going to eat that, but we're not going to uh charge them for budgeted time. Like I

said, it's a little bit of a drive. I mean, you just got timing going out there, but it's closer than any of our other wells that we're operating. So, we'll probably just put it on. Uh Harry's the whalefield guy. You know, he can go out there and check it just like he does all of our other wells. It's not a big deal. And uh I do think it's always good to help out

absolutely other agencies and other taxing entities when we can. And we definitely have a little bit of experience in that a lot more than probably a superintendent or a teacher. Uh the school board has already approved it uh for that. But if you other than that, if you have any other questions, I'll be glad to answer them.

And if there's none, then I'll entertain a motion. I move to approve the interlocal agreement between the city of Borger and the Border Independent School District for the operation of the Spring Creek Water Supply System. Second. All in favor? And it passes. And item 15, consider an R-015-25 approving an interlocal agreement between the city of Borger and the Panhandle Regional Planning Commission for grant administration for the Huber Park playground project.

You don't have to read all that. Okay, Mr. Splin. Uh, so this is just kind of some house uh cleaning. This is for the grant that we already got. Uh, PRPC went through some personnel change back when we applied for this grant. the employee that uh applied for us left between when they applied and when it got awarded for so for whatever reason we never got this interlocal agreement approved for the administration. PRPC has done the administration for it. We've paid them for it. We just needed to get the authorization for the interlocal. So all this is is is a little housekeeping uh on that grant. If you recall it was a you know we spent it was a $400,000 project and the grant paid for 200,000 of that. So, it still looks like definitely looks like the kids enjoyed it this summer. It's definitely an improvement out there.

And that the um the sand what? Oh, the pour in place safety surface. Oh my gosh, that is that's amazing. I hope we do that at every one of them that we do. I that's my goal. That stuff is not cheap, but it is way easier on maintenance and it's it's way better. So, you know, that stuff is in Buuna Vista Park where we put the new play equipment and it's in Keeler Park where we put the new play equipment, too. sink.

It's also better on kids knees and stuff like that. Better than sand. Just saying. No, I there's there's a reason it's expensive. A little bit of balance in there. But there again, it it's way, you know, we have to put sand in the areas where we have sand, you have to refill the sand every year pretty much. Even the rubber chips you get blown out and there's some maintenance. So that that stuff it there a little bit of maintenance, but not not much,

right? But it is of that $400,000 project. the uh porn place was. Of course, there's a lot of it. Yeah. In that play area, but it's normally it's the same the playground equipments that come in they come in thirds. A third of it's the equipment, a third of it's the pour in place, and a third of it is the installation.

Yeah. Well, it's it's a it was a good it was a good thing. So, but I'll um I'll entertain a motion. I move to approve resolution R-015-25 authorizing the city manager to execute an interlocking agreement with the panhandle region planning commission for grant administration service related to the Hero Park playground area.

Second and all in favor and it passes. And then item 16, consider and take appropriate action to authorize the bid for replacement skate park equipment to America American Ramp Company in the amount of 150,83.99 utilizing Sourcewell Cooperative Purchase Contract number 11242- ARC. Mr. Sprdlin,

so you know, we've been working on on this for a little bit. Of course, we had some public comment on this. Uh, I don't want you to necessarily think this is in response to the public comment. Uh, it's not not in response to the public comment, but we had been working on this. Martin had been working on this for quite a while. So, I mean, we knew something needed to be done and was coming up. Uh, after doing some checking with the budget, you know, we do have some surplus in this current budget year that after a little bit of discussion with the council, the council was uh, open to the idea of using that. This report here, I just wanted to show you I've gone through and done the budget adjustments. And this just shows you where I've put the money to show you that the money is available in that parks recre uh parks, capital equipment, other equipment line item without changing the total expenditures of the budget or the total revenue of the budget. So, this will replace it. If if you notice, I did find uh the invoice where we we did actually buy this from the church

back in 2007. And so it's uh definitely seen some good use. It is not serviceable really anymore. The parks people have done a good job at trying to keep it up. Uh what is what is bid in front of you is an all metal surface with a a coating coated riding surface. So it's metal framed and still brand with a riding surface coated. So, it's got a 20 year 20-year manufacturer's warranty. So, they'll manufacture the riding surface and the structural integrity of it for 20 years. Uh, it is fastener free. So, you know, no screws. I know a lot of the complaints that we've been getting on the current one are the loose screws and all that coming out. This is all welded together. So it it will be a much better product than what is there and should get us by for

they will on place or in place they come and install it. I'm not for sure. I think it depends on the piece. Some of it will have to be uh put together on site. Uh there is some a layout of what the what the design set up to be because some of that won't transport. Uh but it should be minimal. Most of it will fit on a

surface. So, it's a it's steel, but then they coat it with just like a a like an acrylic like a like an like like an acrylic type paint that Okay. So, it's not going to be chipping off and it shouldn't. We've got the 20-year warranty if it is. Okay. My deal is this the graffiti uh that they say if graffiti is sprayed on there would it be easy to get it off or it should be be because the coating like the the there'll be less surface because it won't be some of it's not all enclosed so you don't just have flat enclosures and then that coating surface that is supposed to deter paint from sticking because it is a it is a coating not paint.

So, we we'll see. But worst case scenario, it is it will be a lot easier to paint than that uh wood. Yeah. The plywood. Yeah. The that other material that is there because it is just metal. So, even if you do have to paint, you know, get a spray gun, paint over it, and you don't have you don't have it showing through like you do on the the wood stuff, it doesn't absorb the paint. So, the paint will cover it. Now, will there be any type of digital uh cameras out there if anybody would happen to spray paint anything like that or

We can look at that. We have the we we have the ability to do some of that stuff and we're trying to figure out where to do that. I know that we've been looking at buying also a portable one of those security camera trailers that you can like haul around that's got the little blue light so that we can just like, you know, haul it to problematic areas and discourage things. But those things have been a little expensive. So, we're still looking at things like that.

I was thinking about some of the other stuff we've incurred in the past. Well, and you you know, you you said it didn't really come from public comment so much. It was worked on before, but the public comment I thought was really good and and I'm hoping what I hope that the public will do and these ones that are using is they will monitor it themselves and they will shut down some of the stuff, some of the abuse of um abuse of the equipment. I mean, maybe they can speak up and and ask, you know, we're not going to we can't keep having good stuff if people will not take care of them. And and so hopefully, I mean, you know, we talked about um it takes a v. It takes a village. I mean, it takes

the citizens even at Hubert Park to speak up when they see something. I mean, you know, we when when someone is tearing something up and then, you know, speak up because if we don't speak up, then we can't just keep replacing and replacing and replacing, it's not going to work. And so, I'm hoping that that some of the people that are excited about the skate park and I know there is kids that are excited about it and I I'm excited for them. I was very impressed with the boy that came. I'm I'm really and I did reach out to him and told him that this was going on and that you know I hope he understands what positive what a positive voice can accomplish and I I hope everyone understands that what a positive voice can accomplish and I'm trying not to preach but I'm serious about it. I mean people we have got to start monitoring what is happening in the community instead of uh expecting the city and the police department and all of that to be monitoring it. It is citizens ability to have things in the city. We can replace we can do I mean we can have so much in this city if it will get taken care of. And I just, you know, I just hope that this this kid and these the kids that are using it that they will stop some of that.

Proactive is so much better than reactive. Absolutely. Well, that it goes back to what I say all the time is everything we do is in partnership with the community. It has to be a partnership and you can't expect us to do everything and we can't expect them to do everything. And that's, you know, if somebody sees somebody doing something, take a picture.

Absolutely. You can file a complaint. We can help you file a complaint. A cop can't do anything unless they see it in progress. Exactly. But if you have evidence, we can help you work a case. We can take the complaint to municipal court. Yeah. And this I don't necessarily want to say it's not from necessarily public comment because this is definitely driven from public comment, but more than just one because we had seen the comments on Facebook and we do monitor the community engagement and the community response and do try to base our reactions to what the community wants. And that's kind of like what I talked about earlier that you know there is always a fish.

Yeah. And so this definitely and I mean everything that we are doing as a council I mean it came from the community. We did a comprehensive plan. I mean we did it was not just a council um what we wanted to see. It was exactly what the citizens asked us to see. They want entertainment. They want housing. They want everything. And and I mean so you know we do take the citizen and they need I feel like citizens need to take that and run with it and be excited for what we have and take care of it.

Well then I would point out to in parks is a lot of times one of our hardest things because you know everybody wants their park or what we do isn't what they wanted and so I just kind of want to remind you everything that we have done in parks over the last couple years. I mean, we, you know, Huber Park just got all that replaced. Keeler Park got new play equipment with safety service. Buuna Vista Park got new play equipment with with uh splash pad. Uh we've got new bleachers going into Dagnas how we just added some more new LED out of Agnes how updated LED lights updating those. They got their equipment got um repaired and I I want to thank y'all for that. It look it was looks good.

We've got new climbers at Koffield. We've got climbers in Yuckah Park. We've got climbers at Agnes How. Uh we've got more climbers probably coming in a couple of years. I mean, we are trying to do a multitude of investments. We just redid the swimming pool. You know, now you've got new skate park stuff coming. I mean, we are making those improvements. It just, you know, it takes time. We don't have unlimited money and we are constantly judging the desires of a diverse group.

Absolutely. Agreed. This contract is for the equipment, right? And installation. Okay. Do we have to do any kind of concrete work or anything? What's out there? It's they have designed it around the concrete work that is existing. Okay. Are we going to buy the little shade thing because it does not part of the

shade thing is already up there. Oh, is it? Okay. Did we have we got our new shade fabric yet? It got destroyed in the wind. The structure is there, but we have POS issued for the shade fabric for the skate park and shade fabric for the dog park. I know that uh I've seen some comments about that and it's not that we're not taking care of things and it's not I mean I've got to you know we've got to get it. I can't I'm not a very good seamstress. But we do have the shade structure and we it just needs the fabric which is on order.

Okay. If if is there any other questions or anything and it and if there's not then I'll entertain a motion. I move to authorize the purchase of replacement skate park equipment from the American Ramp company for the amount of 150,83.99 utilizing Sourcewell Cooperative Purchase Contract number 112420- ARC.

Second. All in favor? And it passes. And item 17, consider and take appropriate action to adjurnn. I'll make a motion we adjourn. Second. And all in favor? And we're journ. Thank you all for for coming.