City Council - Special Meeting

It's default.

Thank you.

Good evening. Special workshop council meeting for the city of Copper's Cove, Texas held June 25th, 2026. It's called over at 5 p.m. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

Mayor Yancey.

Here.

Christina Strophos. Here. Rita Hogan. Howard Hawk.

Here.

John Hale.

Here.

Dale Treadway.

Here.

Vanya Hart. Jack Smith.

Here. All right. Quorum is present. Item C, announcements. Announcements.

None for me, Mr. Mayor.

Not for me, Mr. Mayor.

Okay.

Only one mayor. July 4th at 11 a.m., the Copper Scope Historical Society is holding a 4th of July celebration at Allen House. Okay.

John?

I have nothing, sir. Thank you. Nothing, Mr. Mayor. No announcements. All right. We move to Item D, Workshop Items.

Item one, presentation, discussion, and possible direction on the City Manager's Physical Year 2026-2027 Proposed Budget and Plan of Municipal Services. Presentations from non-city agencies. Ariana Beckman, Director of Budget.

Thank you, Lisa. Good afternoon, Council, Mayor, City Manager, those in attendance, those watching or listening online. Today's presentation, we will be reviewing non-city agency requests that have been submitted, that have been submitted their requests for funding as part of the budget process for the fiscal year 26-27. So before we look at those requests, I would like to briefly explain the two funding sources that are available and the requirements associated with each one. Each funding source has a specific purpose and can only be used for certain types of activities. General fund requests must provide a public benefit to Copperas Cove community. Hotel occupancy tax, or HOT, funds are generated from taxes collected on hotel stays, and these funds are restricted by state law and also the city's code of ordinance, and they can only be used for activities that promote tourism, support the hotel industry, or enhance the arts and cultural opportunities. Again, for general fund requests, the primary eligibility requirement is that the organization's program or services provide a public benefit to the Copperas Cove community. This slide here shows the list of organizations that are requesting general fund support and the amount being requested. Please note that the amount included in the proposed 26-27 budget is $95,000. Out of that amount, $85,000 is for Hill Country Transit District or the HOP. Also, I want to note that general fund, as it was proposed to city council, has a deficit of approximately $70,000, $71,000. And if the city council decides to increase the amount that is included in the budget, then that deficit will increase as well. So the first agency listed on this slide is Boys and Girls Club. They are requesting $10,000 to provide for their utilities. Children's Advocacy Center of Central Texas is requesting $14,584 for their operations. Cove House Emergency Homeless Shelter It's requesting $50,000 to support their operations. Hill Country Community Action Association for their senior meal program is requesting $22,000. Hill Country Transit District or the HOP is requesting $85,000 for the micro transit. And the last agency listed here is the noon exchange club. They are requesting $5,000 for their feast of sharing event. So the total amount being requested is $186,584. which compared to what's been included in the budget, there's a shortfall or a deficit of $91,584. So with that being said, we're going to invite each of these agencies to present their funding request. And the first agency to present is Boys and Girls Club, and we have Ms. Crystal Westing here to present.

Good afternoon, council, mayor, city manager. Thank you for the opportunity to present today. My name is Crystal. I am the branch director at the Copper's Cove Boys and Girls Club. Every day we serve youth who need us the most. A safe place after school, during the summer program. We have supportive and caring relationships from our mentors that we have there every day. We are guided and given opportunities for success for our members. These are the amount of members we serve. We serve 200 youth, 43 military-connected youth, 126 of them qualify for free and reduced lunch, and 83 are single-parent households. Sorry. Each day we provide programs for our youth that are built around our four priority outcomes, academic success, good character and citizenship and healthy lifestyles, and our new one, mental health. We are asking for the 10,000 to help with our utilities. Annually it costs us 20,000 for our utilities. Monthly it's 25,000. It will support those utilities. Why it matters, it will keep our programs affordable, supports the youth and family, and allows our investments into the programs. Um, we, we, sorry. Uh, we host community events. Um, we partner with local event, uh, local businesses and we support working families here in the community. And I want to thank you guys for your continued support throughout the years.

Counseling questions for crystal crystal, uh, on your first slide, it said 200 kids. That's how many you serve? Yes, sir. Yeah. Who we serve. Uh, how does that compare to previous years?

So previous years, it fluctuates each year. It has gone up and it has gone down. But right now we're starting to grow since COVID. So we're starting to gain those numbers again. And now that we're in the summer program, we have gained an additional probably about 80 more kids starting now since I've submitted this presentation.

And you still have bus routes that actually go and pick up kids from the different schools?

Yes, sir. We pick up from all the elementary schools.

Okay. All right. Anybody else? Thank you, Crystal. Thank you.

Ms. Deborah Longley will present Children's Advocacy Center of Central Texas presentation.

Good evening, my name is Debra Longley. I'm the executive director of the Children's Advocacy Center of Central Texas. Our mission is to provide and promote hope, healing, and justice for the abused children of Central Texas. We serve Coryell, Bell and Milam County. And our vision is that every child grow and develop in a healthy environment free from abuse. So what exactly does all that mean? We work with law enforcement, child protective services, and provide support for the investigative side of a child abuse case. We provide forensic interviews, we assist in case coordination, we work with and we provide case review meetings where we gather all our multidisciplinary team partners in the room to discuss each individual child's case. We have a fantastic working relationship with Copper's Clove Police Department and the Coryell County Sheriff's Department. We provide family advocacy. So as you can imagine, navigating this process of child abuse can be overwhelming and just difficult to manage not knowing what happens as far as the investigation goes, what's going to happen with my child's health, and our family advocates talk with the families and work them through this process. We also, and to me, one of our most important resources is that we provide mental health services. So after we come alongside and work with the police departments, Child Protective Services, we come alongside the family and help with their healing process. We provide trauma-focused therapies to help both the child and the non-offending caregiver. So this, in fiscal year 2025, we conducted, we served 1,580 children, 10,000, went through 10,180 services. We conducted 747, forensic interviews, and with partnership with McLean's Children's Hospital, we conducted 265 medical exams. We provided just slightly over 2,600 advocacy services. We conducted 3,156 mental health sessions. We coordinated with law enforcement, child protective services, and with other of our MDT partners, 2,690 services, and our intake coordinator reviewed and sifted through 7,900 intakes. Now, you might be wondering how an intake review, what does that look like? Well, we have criteria. The children that come through our center for a forensic interview must be three to 17. We provide mental health services for families with children as young as zero. And we provide family advocacy for children as young as zero. And again, medical coordination, all the same. But we provide these services. Mostly our cases that come through are sexual abuse cases. And the other criteria is severe physical abuse and witness to a crime. But what's that look like for the city of Copper's Cove? We conducted 69 forensic interviews, 27 medical exams, 439 family advocacy services, 498 mental health sessions, and 195 case coordination. And your funds will help us reduce barriers to access to services such as our mental health services by allowing us to have rent in locations closer to the city of Copper's Cove. And it will also allow us to do simple things like keep the lights on at our location and to provide these necessary trainings for our team. So then fiscal year 26, how we enhance services for Copper's Cove is we now have a therapy one day at the Goodwill office located on Stan Schluter, so that helps reduce barriers for your families. We've provided additional training for law enforcement and family protective services, and we increase services to military families. I'm really proud to say that we are the first children's advocacy center in the country. There are 900, almost 1,000 of us around the country, and we are the first one to open up a location on a military installation. So we provide specialized services to our military families, forensic interviews, mental health services, family advocacy services, and continued case coordination. So some of those residents may live in Copper's Cove also, but right there on Fort Hood, in partnership with the Office of the Special Trial Counsel, we have a satellite location. We hope to increase mental health services closer to Copper's Cove in this next upcoming fiscal year. We're also one of, there's 70 CACs, maybe 71 opening up this next fiscal year, and we're one of the few selected to offer problematic sexual behavior therapy and adolescents, which means, surprisingly, many of you may not realize how many of the alleged perpetrators are adolescents. So we would be able to come in, support those children and their families, get them mental health services to help them not repeat this crime later on in the future. When a child goes through this mental health services, the recidivism rate is down to less than 3%. So we would be protecting future children and future families. And so I'm really proud to say that we're going to be one of the few centers in the state of Texas that offers this. and we're gonna build partnerships and continue to build better partnerships with Copper's Cove ISD. We are using our small staff of now 17 to help build those resources out here closer to Cove so that your families are well taken care of. So what I'm asking is for 35 cents per person of your population. So that would be a total request of $14,584. Copper's Cove Police Department had to open up and have their own forensic interviewing team. You can estimate that cost would be about $1,000 per case, which would be a total for the city of approximately $141,000. So we are, by providing us this $14,000, it's an added cost savings to help continue to have our services provided here. Again, 498 mental health sessions. Our sessions are free to families, and that's a savings of $74,000 to the families in the community. For a total taxpayer savings of $2,000, We provide all our services to no cost. We work closely with the law enforcement, as I mentioned, Child Protective Services, the DA's office, mental health services within our office, and with the medical team at McLean's Children's Hospital. We also work with Darnell Hospital too. So if you have any questions for me, I think this is my last slide, yep. I'm available to take any questions you have.

Council questions. So this is your first time. This is my first time. Yes. Presenting here to city of coppers. It is you, sir. Bell Coriel and Milam County. Now, do you collect, uh, funds from each of those counties?

I collect, so Milam County's, their county commissioners last fiscal, this fiscal year, excuse me, supported us at $30,000. I don't expect it to be high, at high this next year. But then we request money from the city of Killeen, and we've received money from Killeen. We request money from the city of Belton and from the city of Temple. Okay. So I'm trying to add money to increase our services by requesting money each year from new city entities.

Jay? Where does the rest of the funding come from?

We are funded through, so we're part of the network. I mentioned 70 CACs. The Children's Advocacy Centers of Texas work with the state of Texas to get us funding through the Health and Human Services Commission. So we have a portion of our funding come from that. We have a portion of our funding come from the Victims of Crime Act Fund, which is a federal fund. Then we have money from corporations, fundraising activities, which I'll send y'all an invitation to our next one in September, okay? And other donors around the community that generously provide us funding. Our budget for this upcoming fiscal year, which I'm about all ready, I'm in the same budget process as you are right now, is gonna be about $1.5 million.

Do you have something you wanted to say, Eddie? Sure.

It's a great presentation, by the way, city manager, mayor, and council. I just want to bring up one more important, what's very important to us as a police department. When I first started off as a patrol officer, we didn't have an organization like this. So when we had a child victim who was traumatized through either a sexual assault or an assault, the responding officer would immediately interview that child. And then the detective that takes the case would interview that child. And then if there was enough for prosecution, then they would be interviewed by the prosecutor. They'd be interviewed by the defense attorney. And there is always the potential of them having to take the stand and testify in front of a jury or a judge. With this organization, those children are now only interviewed one time, and that's it. And that interview is recorded. Whatever we get from that interview, we can get from that recording. So it's been a tremendous tool for us. And that interview occurs with someone who's highly qualified and trained versus, even in our world, we don't have the level of expertise that they have when they take over these scenes for us. So they're a tremendous tool for us in our police department.

Thank you, Eddie.

And I can tell you, you have some very outstanding detectives who do incredible work for the children in this community. Oh, the community as a whole, but I'm talking specifically from where I stand as a Children's Advocacy Center Executive Director.

Okay, thank you. Anybody else? All right, thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Next organization presenting is Cove House Emergency Homeless Shelter, and Mr. Brian Hawkins will present the funding request.

Thank you.

The down button, thank you very much.

Good evening, Council, Mayor, and Mr. City Manager. Thank you for allowing me to be here tonight to share with you. Our slides did not translate through your system very well, because that did have an E on it at one point. What have we been up to? Well, in the last few months, we've been up to what we've been up to for the last three decades, which is taking care of people in our city and helping them promote to permanent housing. We currently are housing five families which are comprised of five single parents and a total of 16 kids. We're housing six individual females and three individual males and our fourth male bed will be filled by the end of next week. We've been working with our community. We partner with several local community partners to maintain our site and our facilities. We have volunteers come out that help us with yard work, updating our deck, cleaning units when people move out of them. We utilize donations that come from other organizations to help take care of our families and our individuals there on site, and also to take care of our office and our property. We work very hard to empower our neighbors. We support our local first responders. It's time for us to do another set of those patches, but we did patches for our PD and for our fire department that basically just says Covouse Cares for our CCPD and our CCFD. But it is time to do another round of those because we've hired a lot of officers and firefighters and EMTs since then. We support them. I will tell you a little story about a response time from our PD. Apparently, when you're changing the batteries in the panic buttons, you're supposed to notify the alarm company that you might accidentally hit a button. And so when the PD showed up about two minutes later, they asked me what the emergency was, I was like, I don't know. They said, well, your panic button went off. And I was like, okay, now I do know because I was changing the batteries. But they showed up very quickly as they always have for us and do great things to take care of us. When we have individuals on site that need medical attention, our fire department is there as quickly as anybody could possibly be there to take care of people. We have a lot of people that donate clothing and food from our communities. We support communities and schools. It is part of our agreement with the food bank in Austin. We provide food for student families through communities and schools. That is in our county in the Copper Scope ISD as well as the Killeen ISD. And we support a total of about 40 families through that program with necessary food for them to feed their children and their families. We have donated several tons of food food, dog food, cat food, kitty litter, and those kinds of things to our local animal shelter. I know that it has a new name now and I'm just don't know what they've changed it to. It's not an animal shelter anymore. Something more Animal control facility, there we go. But we occasionally have opportunities to get large quantities of those items, which we obviously do not need at the shelter because we do not support animals or stray cats. But we know people who do, so we take those down to them. We also support the CCISD athletics, their agriculture department, and their 18 plus SPED department. We get a lot of donations for babies. We do not have a need for all of them at the time they come in, and so we support the Hope Pregnancy Center as well as the Garden of Hope and the local soup kitchen. These are just some of our testimonies. If you come to our banquet, which will be the first weekend in November, the last several years we've gotten testimonies from our current and former residents where you can find out a lot more about what we do and the direct impact it makes on people's lives. And these are also available on our website. Where are we going? We have two projects that we're gonna be working on as we move forward. The number one challenge that we have in moving people to permanent housing is the cost of housing. We have several people currently at the shelter who could afford their own place, but they do not make enough money to qualify for it. so one of our next steps is going to be to acquire properties that we can make available to them and not only a reasonable rate for rent but we're going to lower the income requirements because that's the primary barrier for most of them a pretty general rule in this area is they want you to make three times what the rent is going to be to qualify to rent a home Most of our residents do not have cars or car payments and insurance and all those things that go with that. So they can afford a place, but they do not make the income to qualify for it. So one of the things that we'll be doing is trying to acquire properties so that we can make that available. We're also gonna be working on some housing for homeless veterans. We've applied for some grants to the Texas Veterans Commission. We did not receive those this year, but it will not keep us from pressing forward to do that. You may have heard, because it has been posted publicly through the Texas Veterans Commission, that we did receive a grant for repairs for lower-income veterans. It won't directly impact currently homeless people, but it might impact somebody that is at the risk of homelessness because of their condition of their home or their accessibility to it if they happen to be handicapped. So those funds will go towards those kinds of repairs. We're actually going through a final review, which is why we haven't publicly announced it other than what I'm doing right here, because The request we made, what they allocated for us was a lower amount, so we've had to submit a budget that matches the lower amount and not the originally requested amount. We expect to have a confirmation of that approval in the next two to four weeks, and then we will start the process of helping those people one September when that funding becomes active. And that's part of the Housing for Texas Heroes. I forgot that slide was in there. So we continue to do our fundraisers. We do a Firm Foundation 5K, which we just finished, and it was very successful. We've got another one coming up very soon in September. Well, actually, it's going to be the end of August this year. And then our Cope House Classic, which will be the second Saturday in August. Some of you have taken the opportunity to ride in that. We appreciate that, and we'll give you that opportunity again this year. We also do a Dallas Cowboy ticket raffle. Now, that will be predicated by whether or not we get those tickets from Advent this year. Advent, some of you may know, has changed all of their senior level staff. And so we're not sure what they're going to do with those tickets and if those will be available to us this year or not. And then November 7th, we will do our annual banquet. This is a list of our community partners and people that we work with, that we receive funding from, and that we also provide services with and to. That is the end of my presentation. As always, I will thank you for whatever funds are available. We will be good stewards of those funds, and we appreciate the work and effort that it takes for y'all to get this square peg in the round hole every year. Is there any questions for me?

Yes, sir. I see a lot of homeless people in our city that are camping out or taking up residence in front of businesses.

Okay.

Do they come to get support from you?

Some of them do and some of them don't. One of our challenges is space. I mean, we have one bed available right now and it will be full next Tuesday. So until we have the funding to build more space or I can provide housing for the people who could afford housing to move out and then we can backfill that space, that's gonna be an ongoing challenge. Now some of those people have asked for help and either we were full or they received help and then They did not do the things they needed to to stay in the program. Some of them do not want our help because we have a very rigid program and we have a lot of requirements. We do not apologize for the fact that it is a milestone-based program and there are a lot of expectations. And we get a lot of phone calls for shelter that when we go over the expectations, we get hung up on a lot. Beyond what to do about that, I don't have a great answer. I know that, I mean, one option is always just to go down there and arrest them for trespassing, but that may solve one problem, but it creates another one. So we'd like to be able to do more. Some of that is because we're full. Some of it is because they violated rules and are not able to be there at the time. But the greater part of it is because they've chosen not to receive the services.

Brian is tell me about your physical plant. What have y'all done recently and what are you planning to do?

Okay. So the, we built two buildings over the last three years. The last one we opened in the prior December. They have been full. I mean, some of you were there at the ribbon cutting and we were moving the first family in 10 minutes after we did the ribbon cutting.

Wow.

So what we have spent this year doing is acclimating to the increase in our insurance cost because of the number of people that we now house. Our insurance went up over 100%. So we had to compensate for that. But what we want to do next is to start acquiring additional properties. We're not sure what that looks like. Now, one of the things that will help us is if we acquire properties that we're going to use as rental properties, we'll only have to insure the shell. We won't be housing them as homeless population, which is the highest risk population that you can house insurance-wise. So those two steps, one side of that is finding housing or building something if we can, tiny homes. We've looked at container homes, several different options. We're actually working on a site plan for a piece of property we own to put eight container units on it. And we have not submitted that to the building department yet because the engineers are working on it. So that'll probably be the first thing that we attempt to do. And then we'll also continue to work with the TVC to try to come up with funding for homeless veterans. That will also require purchasing or otherwise acquiring additional housing. Now one of the things that may help us that we are still waiting for, the announcement won't come out until September, is we have applied for a per diem grant through the Veterans Administration, which basically plays a daily per diem for housing homeless veterans. That would be something that would actually provide quite a bit of funding to provide housing for that population. But that's what we're planning on doing. We wanna get more property so we can house more people.

Anybody else?

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

Our next funding request will be presented by Ms. Jamie Hunt.

Hi, good evening, my name is Jamie Hunt. I'm the Director of Programs at Hill Country Community Action, and I'm here to present our Copper's Cove Senior Meals Program. First of all, we wanna say a heartfelt thank you to you all for all the hard work in getting our brand new senior center operating. It is beautiful, wonderful, safe, modern space for all of our seniors to congregate, and they absolutely love it. So again, we cannot thank you enough for that space. What we provide, we provide nutritious congregate and home delivered meals five days a week who we serve, the frail elderly adults and persons with disabilities. We operate out of the Copper's Cove Senior Center obviously and volunteer home delivery throughout the city within a two mile radius beyond the city limits. 17% of Copper's Cove residents are age 60 or older. For many participants, our meals are their primary source of daily nutrition. Beyond food, each delivery is a lifeline, a wellness check, a friendly face, and the assurance that their community cares for them. Our aim is to improve the living environment for senior citizens by providing meals that they might not otherwise have, bringing warmth, nourishment, and dignity directly to those who need it most. We do have a suggested contribution of $3 per meal, but services are never denied due to the inability to contribute. This year we are requesting a total of $22,000 from the city of Copper's Cove. Our base request of $10,000 continues our trusted meal services. The additional $12,000 directly addresses the new operational costs that come with operating our wonderful new senior center. This is our revenue budgeted for this year at $164,000, as well as our expense budget, also totaling $164,000, with over half of that going toward food costs directly. Our average meal cost at Copper's Cove Senior Center currently is $10.65, and the investment of the $10,000 towards meals would cover 2,232 meals. Thank you so much for allowing me to come this evening. We appreciate your continued support, and is there any questions for me?

Council, any questions for Jamie?

Thank you.

Thank you. The hop request will be presented by Tony Austin.

Good evening, mayor, city council, city manager. Let me just say I appreciate being able to come in here and do this presentation. It will be short. I know the mayor would prefer that way. Let me start with, oh, the font didn't work very well. Let me just start with this is our services, our current service area. So if you see the outline that the outline in there is your city limits and the shadow area is basically where the service area of our micro transit is. We have done one full year of micro transit in the city of Copper's Cove throughout our whole system. But I just want to show you that. And along with the lower map showing our commuter line, which is that blue line, it goes across all those different cities. So we do cover five major cities in our regional area. And that's that commuter bus that shares that ride to connect all the cities together. So let me start with basically this slide. It highlights the overall performance of the Copper Scope Transit Services throughout 2025. During the reporting period, our system completed 55,193 trips, demonstrating the continued demand and the important role transit plays in connecting residents to jobs, services, and the community. Customer experience remains strong, focused with a 96% satisfaction rate, showing that riders responding positively to the reliability and the quality of service provided. We also saw a strong adaptation to the technology with 69% of the microtransit trips booked through the mobile app, improving the convenience and making it easier for residents to access transportation. Operationally, trips average about 11 minutes in duration and are traveling approximately three miles. reflecting the efficiency of service delivered within the coverage area. Overall, these results show the Corpus Code Transit Program providing a reliable, customer-focused transportation option while meeting the mobility needs of the community. This slide highlights that a HOP Transit Services is an essential and frequently used transportation option for Copperas Cove. Nearly three-quarters of the riders use the service at least weekly, and about a quarter of it use it daily. The service supports residents of all ages, with a slight majority of the riders ages 45 and older, and common destinations include the grocery stores, shopping centers, housing complex, and the regional mobility hub, demonstrating the HOP's role in connecting people to everyday necessities, healthcare, and community services. A highlight of the broader community impact to the HOP, it is a role as an essential piece of public infrastructure to Copper's Cove. Transit is not only about providing rides, it's about connecting residents to the services, opportunities, and resources they rely on every day. Our ridership data shows the trips are primarily supported critical needs including shopping and errands, medical appointments, and work and commuting. These numbers demonstrate how important reliable transportation is for access to health care, employment, education, and essential services. This is especially important as Copper's Cove continues to grow including an upcoming new VA clinic which will increase the need for the convenience and dependable transportation options for veterans, residents, employees to access health care. The HOPP ensures that transportation is not a barrier to receiving care and connects to these community resources, excuse me. By supporting the access to healthcare jobs and daily needs, the HOP directly contributes to Copperas Cove workforce, economy, and quality of life. Continuing investment into transit is an investment in people, accessibility, and a long-term growth of a resilience to our community. So the Hill Country Transit District is requesting 85,000. This is the same amount that we have requested between 2024 and 2026. And we will continue to operate in the current funding structure while maintaining existing service levels. But in 2028, there is a proposition that we may have to increase this budget request. And with that, I say thank you, and if you have any questions.

Council, any questions for Tony? Dale?

Mr. Mayor, I just got a comment. I want to thank y'all a lot. Y'all have come a long way in the last couple of years, especially the way it's set up now. I've seen it different places in Cove, especially on Fort Hood. And I do appreciate keeping it at the $85,000 lease for this year and maintaining the same service. And I do understand what's coming. So thank you. TODD BANDUCCI- Thank you.

TODD BANDUCCI- Anybody else? Thank you, Tony. TODD BANDUCCI- Thank you.

The last funding request for general fund is for Feast of Sharing Event by Newton Exchange Club and Mr. Brian Hawkins will present that.

Good evening again, council, mayor, and city manager. We are here to make our annual request for the Feast of Sharing. We had another great event last year. Many of you were there in attendance. We fed a little over 650 people, which is about all of the people we can feed in that timeframe. But we've successfully done that every year. We do keep it a full community event. Last year, if you were there, you got to hear our choir ensemble sing. We also have our ROTC group come out and post the colors as we get started with that opportunity there. So we want to do that again. It's a great event. What we see happen every year is dozens of people that live in the city that don't know each other end up having a meal together and just getting to know their neighbors a little better. So we have the opportunity to provide a meal for a lot of people that might not get a Thanksgiving meal, but I think the more important thing that happens is we develop a community engagement opportunity for people that otherwise would never sit down and talk to each other. And a lot of people, they will sit down and have dinner with somebody that they've maybe lived a few blocks from or on the other side of town from for decades and just had an opportunity to meet them. So we believe it's a continued great opportunity for our city. It is truly a community event and we will once again, now we're not sure this year if it'll be the band or the choir ensemble that will be there. We're still waiting to hear back from them for that. The ROTC will be there to post the colors, at least as far as I know tonight. And so we're asking for what will amount to half of what the cost will be. Uh, but based on the increased costs for the meal, uh, we estimate it this year to be a total of $10,000. And so this request is for 5,000. Obviously, if it ends up being 8,200, then the final request will be for 4,100. So ultimately our, our final request be for half of the cost of the event and we'll fund the other half.

All right.

Any questions?

Council, questions? Everybody's pretty quiet. Thank you, Brian.

All right, thank you.

Okay, that concludes the funding request for general fund. general fund. Now this is the hardest part that you as a council will decide on the allocation. Again, just to highlight, there are $95,000 included in the proposed budget. Out of that amount, 85,000, it's for the Hill Country Transit District for the micro transit. And I also want to highlight the general fund as it was presented, Council has a deficit of 771,000. So if Council does decide to increase the $95,000 amount, that deficit will increase as well. So at this time, Mayor... Well, we're looking for some recommendations.

Council, you have some recommendations? Anybody?

Mr. Mayor, this is my recommendation. And this is hard to say, because all these are great organizations. But if we're going to ask citizens to tighten up their checkbooks and their wallets and their purses and their budget, we need to be doing the same thing. I know prices of everything's going up, and that's including for us what we have to pay the state for certain things. So this is my recommendation. I'd like to provide $85,000 to HOP. I know HOP provides a lot of service for the elderly, the handicapped, the veterans, and the young and old that doesn't have driver's license. And $2,000 for each other organization, and that'll put us up to $95,000. Again, this is a hard decision, but this is my recommendation. Thank you.

I'm sorry, the $2,000 was for which agency?

For the other agencies.

Other.

Anybody else? Mr. Mayor? Yes.

These are all great organizations, and we've always helped fund the Boys and Girls Club with a similar amount. We definitely don't want to cut meals on wheels for the seniors and they also feed them at the senior center now. I'm okay with using fund balance for the difference and funding them all at the amount they're requesting. And I think they've already worked down their budget as much as they could before they turned it into us. All right.

Anyone else? Mr. Mayor, I'd like to echo what Councilman Jack said, use fund balance, because they are all great organizations, and we need to support as much as we can.

Mayor.

Yes.

Mr. Smith, are you recommending that all requests be fully funded? Is that your recommendation?

Yes, sir. OK, thank you. That is fine. And same with you now. Yes, sir. Yes, Mr. Mayor. Anybody else? John? I see all this stuff fizzling in your head. OK. So right now, we want to go ahead and use general fund balance for the deficit. Is that correct? I see two, three, four. OK, so we do have consensus on that. I think it'll become clear once we get our certified values in place. We know exactly what kind of numbers we're dealing with. But from a working standpoint, I think this probably makes the most sense at this point in time.

OK.

All right. Where are we now?

All right, we're ready to move into the Hodge Fund requests. All right, we'll next move into a request for hotel occupancy tax or HUD funding. These funds are governed by Chapter 351 of the Texas Tax Code and also the City's Code of Ordinance, Chapter 18.5. In order to be eligible, the activity must directly promote tourism and also the hotel industry. The city's code of ordinance also establishes allocation requirements, one being that at least 15% must be allocated to the civic center maintenance and operations. Again, in order to be eligible for HUD funding request must first directly promote tourism and hotel stays fall within one of the eligible categories established in chapter 351 category and comply with the percentage requirements outlined in the city's code of ordinance. This slide here shows us some of those eligible categories with others being included in the Texas Tax Code 351-101. Here we see an overview of the HUD fund financial position for fiscal year 26-27. Projected revenues are approximately $209,000 with $190,000 available for allocation resulting in an ending fund balance of $408,743. The slide here summarizes the request for HUD funding. The first line item that you see is the admin cost reimbursement in the amount of $4,532. This will reimburse the general fund for the services provided in managing this fund. The next request is for the Civic Center maintenance and operation in the amount of $28,628. Again, the city's code of ordinances requires that at least 15% of the available balance be allocated for that purpose. So this amount reflects that minimum amount required. The Texas Lodging Association request is for $2,215 for the city's annual membership, which provides training, legislative updates, and resources related to tourism. The remaining requests are from organizations requiring these type of fundings. So we have an available balance of $190,850, total requests totaling $230,550, and a remaining balance of a deficit of $39,700. So, Mayor, I don't know if you next want to hear from these agencies requesting funding or you all want to allocate the amount being requested and that difference. You can use fund balance to cover the difference because these funds, again, are restricted for the specific purposes and cannot be used for anything else.

Okay. Everybody, what's your pleasure? You wanna hear presentations? You say no. No. Jack? No. Okay, all right.

Mayor.

Go ahead.

So is the consensus of council, do you have a funding recommendation?

That was the next question.

OK, very good.

What's your pleasure? On the funding, you've got a total of $230,000 requested, deficit $39,700 to be taken out of fund balance. I have a clarifying question.

The first page hotel occupancy tax fund, we currently have $408,000 in that fund, correctly? Correct?

Well, the beginning fund balance, the beginning fund balance are projected for the next fiscal year. We start with $389,143, and then we project revenues of $209,650, expenditures of $190,850, and that will leave us with an ending fund balance of $408,743. But yes, that difference will come out of that amount.

Where does the available funds to allocate come from? Oh, that's what's in our budget.

The 190?

No, the 190. The deficit. Is that what you're talking about? No, we have an ending fund balance proposed of $408,000. But we have available funds to allocate. Where did that number come from?

You're asking about the 190,000? Yes. So those are what we project that we will collect from all the hotels. The difference between 209 and 190, it's the interest revenue that is not specifically allocated. Does that make sense?

Yes. OK.

Anybody else concerned in recommendations?

Not everybody speak at once.

Go ahead. Take your turn. He asked my question.

OK. I saw none from Dale. Yes, sir.

OK. All right. Thank you.

The time is 5.58. We're going to take a short 10-minute break and then restart the meeting at 6.10. All right, the time is 6.10. We are out of recess. We go continue the workshop at item D2.

Discussion and direction on the fee schedule changes. Arianna Beckman, Director of Budget.

Thank you, Lisa. Again, as part of the budget process for fiscal year 26, 27, we'll review the fee schedule, and we'll provide our recommendations as far as changes to the fees for providing services to the residents. The recommended changes, are included in the agenda item, and all the changes are highlighted in yellow with a proposed change and also the associated financial impact. I'm gonna do a general review on the changes, but if you have any specific questions, the departments are here to answer those specific questions. We begin with the Animal Control Department. They are proposing that We changed the microchip fee, reduced that fee from $20 to $10 to better align with the cost of providing those services. Fire Department is recommending three changes within their department. The first change is that we are proposing language changes related to non-emergency lift assist responses. The change will define when those fees will be assessed for those repeated emergency lift assist calls. OK.

If you have questions, ask Ariana, and then we can get the different departments to answer the questions if we need to.

Second change within the fire department is that the department is proposing an increase to the licensed facility inspection fee for larger facilities with 50 or more occupants. The fee would increase from $100 to $150 to better reflect the time and resources required to conduct these inspections. And the last change is that we're proposing to add a new annual permit fee of $50. $50 for mobile food vehicles and trailers. This fee would support the inspection and permitting activities associated with those operations. Building and development, the proposed changes within this department are based on the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, and are designed to align fees with inflation And the current cost of providing these services, most of these adjustments are approximately 3%. And there are a lot of changes here. Again, if you have any specific questions, we'll have the department answer those. Any questions for the building?

Mr. Mayor, back to the annual permit for a mobile food vehicle or trailer. I don't have all the details. I didn't look it up today, but the state Department of Health was going to start doing inspections for food trucks, and then they were gonna allow them to operate in any county. How will that affect this?

Chief Mathijs can address that directly.

OK, Doug Matthews, Fire Department. The way that it's breaking up, there's two different types of inspections. The state one, what they're looking at doing, is truly related to the health inspection, like any restaurant would have to go to. What we do on the fire department side is, and we've just been going out there to do it, is our fire marshal goes out and inspects these food vendors, the trailers, because a lot of them have to have extinguishing systems within their vent hoods and the fire protection systems that are built into these. Most of them are operating off of propane tanks and things like that. So there's a lot of other fire dangers that go with that that are outside of the realm of the health department. And our inspector goes out there and he's spending anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes by the time, with the inspections and the administrative part of documenting it all. so we're just trying to recoup the cost of his time that is part of that and that is outside of the way the state is doing with the health department, just to be clear on that, if somebody in Copper's Cove here has a food truck and they have their state license, what that does is they can go to Killeen, they can go to Austin, they can go to Round Rock, they can go to any other cities under that one health permit. But if that Vendor wants to go to another city. They still have to follow under all their fire codes as far as because it is you know The the fire code so that's where they would have to get the permit so if somebody came from Round Rock or Austin wanted to bring a food truck into town That's fine. They have the health department their permit, but they would still need to be Followed the guidelines for the fire safety and our fire codes that we have adopted.

OK, thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I have a question. Does this also include the pop-up tents, like during the festivals where some people cook and serve the food out of the tents?

No, these are just the food truck vendors. Thank you.

Anybody else?

Our next set of changes is within Parks and Recreation. There are actually several changes here. The proposed changes eliminate the half-day tournament fee structure and increase rates for tournament Tournament rental fees. Staff is also proposing adjustments to vendor fees and the removal of certain discounts and incentives, including the registration bliss discount and the volunteer tackle football coach incentive. Any questions on Pikes?

Anybody? Okay. Okay.

Okay, there we go. Development services similar to the building department, the proposed changes here are based on the consumer price index and are intended to align again with inflation and the cost of providing these services. Again, most of these adjustments are approximately 3% increases. The library is proposing the removal of annual $10 non-resident library user fees for Killeen and for Hood residents and also current CCISD students and staff. Under the new proposed fee schedule, these users would be eligible for library services at no charge.

Mayor. Yes. On that, City Council has actually taken action to specifically authorize that. It was just never specifically added to the fee schedule, but it has been part of our procedures since City Council took action to not charge those customers at the library. In addition to that, just a few lines above that item in development services is a new fee, and it's called the annexation legal agreement slash map exhibit slash public hearing slash public notice publications fee. With the requirement that the state puts on the city to provide a number of publications for annexations, there is a cost. and the developers that are proposing or asking for annexation into the city that they pay all their costs. This was an item that they haven't paid in the past and that they do need to begin paying because it's a direct cost for their annexation request.

The next department proposing changes to their fees is code and health compliance. Within code and health compliance, staff is proposing several fee changes, including adjustments to annual health inspection fees, permit-related fees, and the administrative fee for mailing documents. Again, these changes are in order to better align fees for the cost of providing services and processing requests. And there is a new fee here, the permit restatement fee in the amount of $200. Any questions on code and health before we move into public works?

Mr. Jack?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. The annual health inspection fee, that's going up quite a bit, two and a half times what it was. OK, thank you.

Missy Albert with co-compliance, um, council mayor, Mr. Ryan, these fees we've gone through and looked at bell county, Williamson county and, uh, Travis county on what their health inspections are costing. And they start minimum of like two 60 and go up from there. They base theirs off of the number of employees are in each business. So one through five is this set amount. And then. five through whatever, so it goes up on the number of employees you have. Here in this city, that's not something we wanted to do, so we figured a flat fee across the board would be easier in the long run.

Okay, and what is the permit reinstatement fee? That's a new fee.

That is a new fee. That is for when we have establishments that get closed down for health violations, rats, anything that causes an imminent health danger to the public. That is when we shut them down. This would be that re-inspect fee to go back out to do their inspection to get them open back up again. It's happening more and more frequently here.

Okay, thank you.

Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, music.

The rest of the changes apply to water, sewer, drainage, and solid waste, and all those are recommendations of the utility rate study. The proposed rates included here are within those recommendations, and also those have been incorporated into the proposed budget that was presented to Council. And if you have any specific questions on those rates, we have staff here to address those questions or concerns.

Mayor. Yes. Mayor and Council, of course utility rates are a big part of our fee schedule. And it impacts every single individual within the city. We have prepared a utility rate study. We have now been in that study and updating it for about four years now. Over that four years, city council has received numerous presentations, very lengthy discussions on what those rates are. This year, we did not take the additional effort and cost to specifically update the utility rate study because over the past four years, it's pretty well aligned and follows what the study says year after year. And so instead of incurring that additional cost, this year and in our discussions with city council from last year, we have not provided a detailed update of that utility rate study in the calculations because it has aligned well over the last several years. With that being said, city council has asked a number of times, well, not a number of times, several council members have asked me what is the impact of all the rate changes on a typical or estimated utility bill. And so very quickly today, and thank you to our public works team, specifically our assistant director out there, Cynthia Taylor, who helped and has done a lot in understanding what that utility rate study does, how it operates and functions. She's prepared the document that was placed before you. Overall, for a typical user of about 5,000 gallons of water usage, which includes numerous charges, and I'll go through those real quick, drainage, street maintenance utility, solid waste, water, and wastewater, and then, of course, there's a sales tax that is required to be on these solid waste charges. services as required by the state, that typical bill would change from $159.03 to $172.99, which typically equates to just under a $14 per month change. With that rate change, City Council, we have presented and included in that utility rate study all of the current operational cost as well as the current capital projects and future capital projects in order to maintain and keep our utility systems in compliance with state regulatory requirements and also expand it for the growing community. So with that being said, we wanted to make sure that you have that information. And if you had any specific questions or comments about that, we can talk through that. I do know that there have been some questions of me specifically asking me, well, what if we don't change the utility rates this year? Or we change the utility rates, not being consistent with the utility rate study. Council you have every ability to do that You can make the decision not to change utility rates you can make the decision to not change utility rates consistent with that utility rate study and What is the impact of that? the impact of one changing those rates are is to fund the existing operations as well as those large capital projects and and A lot of the fee schedule changes are driven by those capital projects that have not been done for years and years and years. So if we don't change the utility rates or we change it not consistent, lower than what the utility rate study says, we would have to go back and analyze and determine what is the operational impact and capital project impact and then we will have to come back to you as council and ask you what, priorities we need to remove out of the proposed budget as well as the capital projects. So with all that being said, I don't have that detailed information because it really gets into the mechanics of how the study is prepared and what projects are driving that study. But if city council wanted to have that discussion, we would have to re-engage our utility study consultant because of the detailed complexity of that study and bring them back for discussion with council and with staff prior to that.

Mr. Mayor, I just have a few comments. I was gonna give a whole story how water gets from Lake Belton to here, okay? And I'll be the first to tell you, I don't wanna pay these fees. But my background's water and I understand the necessities. Just think for a minute. Look what's going on down south in Texas. And they had years to plan. They did not plan. There's a city northeast of here that's had years to plan. They did not plan. The state's been bailing them out on everything. I'd say about 70 years ago, the people in Texas, our political leaders, elected leaders, appointed leaders, and citizens got together and spent a ton of political capital and money. That was back in 1940. They've gotten us where we're at now, 70-some years later. Now it's our turn that we take care. Most of us in this room won't see the benefits or reap from it, but they'll take care of our kids and our grandkids. If we don't do something now and keep kicking this can down the road, it's gonna hurt communities. We're out now looking for sources of water. You know, trying to figure out how to put water into aquifers and save it. We're getting close there. But that's not going to be cheap. So if you want water, it takes money to maintain it. The state raises their fees. TCEQ's got their permits and license. And that's not including wastewater. That's just my thought, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. Anybody else? You have to keep in mind that you have the ability to turn on your faucet and get clean water. And if you don't use any water that month, to think that you shouldn't have to pay for water does not take into account what all it takes to get it from Lake Belton to here. get it ready, get it treated. And so it's easy for you to turn on your water and water is there. And that is one of the greatest things that we have as a civilized society over many other countries. And as far as Texas is concerned, we're a growing area. The one thing The one thing that is limiting to us is water. Water is the new Texas gold. It's a precious commodity. And any time we have the ability to be able to, take care of the water needs for our community, for our children, our grandchildren, and the next generation beyond that, somebody did that for you. And I would hope that you would understand that that comes at a cost. And the cost today is the cheapest cost it's gonna be. Because keep kicking the can down the road just going to make it cost that much more. And not only more, but exponentially more over the period of time that we basically delay whatever it is that we need to do. We're seeing some of that right now in the fact that a couple of decades ago, we didn't do what needed to be done from an infrastructure standpoint. And now we're trying to catch up. And we're getting pretty close to catching up. But it's still out there for us that we need to take care of these needs so that we have what's necessary for our proper orderly growth in the future. It's as simple as that. Anybody else? Okay.

All right, that concludes our fee schedule review, and we'll take any recommendations from the council.

Any recommendations?

Jack? Excuse me. I'm okay with all the revised fee schedule. And I understand that it is going to affect everybody by about $14 a month on average. And we need our system to be operating properly. And all of the improvements that we've been making over the last few years and all the rules put on us by TCEQ and the state, we have to take care of that and fund our department, fund the water and sewer and the trash department.

I concur, Mr. Mayor.

I concur.

OK. All right.

Let's see here. Anything, Brian?

Mayor, just one last thing, because I know that we got a lot of people in the audience who are definitely here for the utility rate study. Wanted to provide some very specific dates for everyone's awareness. Citizens Forum, which is in the city council's regular meeting, is a place to come and share your thoughts with city council. And Citizen Forum will be held on July 7th at their regular meeting at 6 p.m. July 21st. at the regular meeting, August 4th at the regular meeting, August 18th at the regular meeting, all at 6 p.m. There's also a specific public hearing on July 30th at 5.30 p.m. which can receive public comment as well. And all of our council members, their email addresses are listed and posted on the city's website and you can communicate directly with those council members in that method as well. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. All right. The time is 635. So with that, we stand adjourned.