City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Good evening. A regular city council meeting of the city of Cobbers Cove is now called to order. The time is 6 p.m. The date is July 21st, 2026. If you could please, please stand for the invocation by Mr. Ryan Havilah and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this evening, this day, the life that you've given us, Lord. I thank you for our city and our community, our residents and businesses, Lord, and I pray that your hand is upon this body, this governing body for the city, that you guide them, direct them, give them knowledge, wisdom, and discernment in all the directions and actions that they make and give, Lord. I pray that your hand is upon all of our residents. Keep them safe and well, our state and our country. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Now to our Texas State flag pledge. I pledge allegiance to the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. Thank you. You all may be seated. Madam Secretary, can you please do roll call?

Mayor Yancey, Christina Strophos? Here. Rita Hogan? Here. Howard Hawk? Here. John Hale? Here. Dale Chudway?

Here.

Vanya Hart? Here. Jack Smith?

Here.

Thank you. We are going to move on to announcements.

I am also here, Kathy, Christina.

Okay. Not sure if that was what that was, but I'm sure we're going to be getting that taken care of. We're going to go again with announcements.

None for me. None for me, ma'am.

None for me, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am. This week, Fox 44 is in town, and they are doing a series on Copper's Cove called Our Town. They started on Monday and began broadcasting different stories beginning yesterday. They will be doing it all week long, so you can go to their social media page for Fox 44 and be able to see and listen to the great stories they are doing on Copper's Cove. City Council places six and seven are now open for filing for the November election. Filing dates begin July 18th and will close August 17th. July 24th, which is this Thursday, the Governor's Small Business Summit is being hosted right here in Copper's Cove at the Civic Center. You can arrive beginning at eight o'clock. I do encourage everybody to register before arriving. There is a fee, and so you can take care of that before you arrive. Go to the city's webpage, the Chamber of Commerce, the Economic Development webpages, all links to that summit. This Saturday, July 25th, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., beginning at City Hall, is the end of Summer Trash Bash. Join us, come and help clean up the community, and enjoy some pancakes afterwards. On July 29th, which is following Wednesday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Civic Center is the third annual regional hiring event sponsored by the Economic Development Corporation. And July 30th is a Swim and Glow event out at the City Park pool. You can go to the City Parks and Recreation webpage and Facebook page to get more details on that. And then the following day, or following two days after that, August 1st, Saturday from 11.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m., is the Family Day at Ogletree Gap sponsored by the Parks and Recreation Department as well. And then August 7th through the 9th is Tax-Free Weekend. And we are helping push the word out for Stuff the Bus with the Copper Scope Independent School District. This will occur at the Walmart here in town. And lastly, on August 7th, is a dive-in movie event out at City Park Pool. Again, that's August 7th at sunset. The movie is Luca.

Thank you, Ryan. Councilman Hale, any announcements?

I have nothing, ma'am. Thank you. Nothing, ma'am. No announcements.

All right. That concludes that item. Let's move on to item E, Citizens Forum.

At this time, citizens will be allowed to speak for a length of time not to exceed five minutes per person on any item which is listed on the agenda and items not listed on the agenda. 30 minutes total has been allotted for this section. Pursuant to section 551.042 of the Texas Open Meetings Act, any deliberation or decision about the subject of inquiry which is not listed on the agenda shall be limited to a proposal to place the subject on the agenda for a subsequent meeting.

Thank you, Madam Secretary. Is there anyone here who wishes to speak during Citizens Forum?

My name's Daniel Hallbecker, 606 North 17th Street. Mayor Peralta, city council, city manager. I'm here to talk about the water rates. For six consecutive years, we've had water rate increases. But that really is not what I'm irritated about as much. as the water tier system, rate tier system y'all proposed or got going. It's all based on the impact that we have with the system, what y'all based them rates on. My problem is I did not hear nothing at the fee schedule last week about impact fees for development. It's easy for y'all to pass them impact fees to me and other citizens, but it seems to be a hard line for y'all with development. They have more impact on this city than the people out there trying to keep their grass alive during the summer months. What y'all have done is created with these water increases, we've got the highest water rates in the area. We also now have where our water revenues are our biggest revenue sources. They outdo the property taxes. And I took that off y'all's proposed budget. There's something wrong there. I just don't see why y'all cannot look at relieving us citizens from some of this burden of water rates. I know water projects have got to be done. They're always going to have to be done. You've got a water system. You've got sewer systems. There's always going to be improvements and repairs to them. That's just part of the game. But during last year, when y'all had that five-year plan, our public works director said it was ambitious. It was an ambitious plan. Why can we not put impact fees to lower some of the costs of the citizens on water usage? I hope you all take a look at that and see if you all can do something to kind of slow down these water rate increases. I know y'all are looking at trying to purchase more water. That's probably going to place us where we're going to have to have some more water rate increases because y'all are going to want to do these aquifers or whatever. Maybe these impact fees will help out on that instead of having it all on the citizens. Thank you for your time.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Thank you, sir. Is there anyone else that would like to speak during Citizens Forum?

Hello, Ray Payne, 604 North 17th Street. Mayor Pro Tem Hart, Mr. Haverlaw, council, thank you for allowing me to come up and speak. I just want to piggyback real quick on Mr. Hallbecker. The water rates are very high. I just was talking to my wife. I bought my house in 2003. My average water bill was $66 a month. It was $195 this last time, and it's just the two of us. It's been the two of us for 23 years. So it's unfortunate. I understand why it needs to be that much. It's an important infrastructure that we need to support. It's just we're feeling it. And that's going to go into my next point. I am pro-growth. I'm not anti-growth. I want building to be in Copper's Cove. I want people to move here. I want property tax revenue to come to Copper's Cove. It's an important thing for growth and an important thing to be able to fund the different things that we have here, especially street maintenance. We recently put a street maintenance fee on our water bills. That's part of why they are so high. And mine is $10 a month, and that's doable, I guess. Businesses have a higher rate depending on what type of business they are, and they're feeling it as well. Recently it was brought to my attention that WBW has come back for item H2 to try to present to the city to fund the road infrastructure in the Church Mountain subdivision. I am opposed to that particular request. If I misunderstood the data that I was able to have access to, I apologize. It looked like it was $1.3 million for road infrastructure. If I'm incorrect, I apologize. But that's money that if we spent on the road infrastructure over there that we are not spending on the road repairs that you all asked us, the citizens, to finance over the next couple of years, several years, maybe forever. so that we can have repaired roads here. That was something. You guys came to us and said, this has not been important to you guys for so long. It's at a point where we need to repair the roads. So unfortunately, we have to do this now. So here's $10 you're going to give us every month so that we can do that. It's not the right time for them to be asking for road infrastructure for us to pay for that. uh i i would love for that community to come in apparently in the plan that i saw that there's two different parks at either end of that subdivision i think that's a fantastic idea i think every subdivision should have parks inside them when they're brand new that's a great green space for new new homeowners uh with their speculation that new homeowners are going to come in and they're going to pay taxes and that's going to increase our revenue and that will pay for any type of road infrastructure costs that we are going to incur, being speculative that not 50 percent, not 40 percent, not 20 percent of those homes are going to be sold to retired military or disabled vets that are going to get 100 percent exemption on their taxes. And if the state is going to give us unfunded mandates where those people that qualify for those exemptions are going to buy those houses, then it's not any benefit to us to pay for the infrastructure for that place to go in, of the speculation that we're going to get that tax revenue from houses that are sold. On top of that, I have a close friend that is a realtor. In the MLS right now, there are thousands of homes that are brand new that are not selling. So that is not a good indicator that this speculation that WBW is making is going to pay off for us. You've got houses down 2657 that are sitting there, that are high end, that aren't selling, that they're having to pay the property taxes for the property owner or whatever. They're not selling those houses. We're not seeing any revenue from those, from new homeowners. You've got subdivisions going in down 190, down 116. And a lot of those houses, they look fantastic and they're really well made, but nobody's buying them. You've got rental properties that are staying vacant for a long time because people are living with their, uh, uh, family, extended family and different things like this. You've got houses for sale inside my neighborhood, three, four of them on the same street. That's not a good indication that paying for this infrastructure outside of town is a good investment. So to recap, I don't think it's a good time. I'm not against growth. I think it's a good idea. I just think right now is not the right time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Payne. Is there anyone else who would like to speak during Citizens Forum, please?

Good afternoon. Dana Wall, 3054 Colorado Drive. Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem, City Manager Ryan, and council members. This evening, I came to speak with you about my goat hikes that I do at Ogletree Gap Park. So if any of you, including those of you in the audience or listening, would like to come out to Ogletree Gap Park this Saturday, the meetup time is 0645. Step off is at 07. But you will get to go out and do a low impact hike with Goat Malone. Yes, Goat Malone. He loves Doritos, just so you know. I would love to see some of y'all out there. Some of the council members have already come out a few times throughout the last year. But this program was started so that way the community would come out and start talking to one another. A lot of what we go through in our daily lives, we constantly feel alone. Like nobody understands us. We're the only ones dealing with it. So the goat hikes were created to get people out there, get them talking, have conversations that you typically would not have. Have somebody hear you that already understands you without you having to explain you. Goat Malone is part of the cuteness, but there's a real meaning behind what I do out there on those trails. So I encourage you to please come out, meet goat Malone and experience what I call the fairytale trails. It is about a mile. If that we will be done in less than 30 minutes, but the conversations that will be had out there that day will last a lifetime. So thank you for your time. Thank you, ma'am.

Is there anyone else who wishes to speak during citizens forum?

Hello, ma'am or city manager, council members. My name is Lewis Hunter, 555 Summers Road. There's a lot of development going on behind my house.

Excuse me, sir. Could you maybe put up the mic? I'm a little closer so we can hear you. Is that better? That's much better. Thank you.

Once again, Lewis Hunter, 555 Summers Road. The other citizens kind of hit on a couple of things I wanted to ask about, but... One thing that I guess I'm a little selfish here, people on my road, we're just curious about what's actually being developed directly behind Summers Road. We looked at some of the schematics and they said high density residential. We saw the homes where the home placement was, but where we live, it was just blacked out like a shady gray and it just said high density residential. And I was just wondering, are there more houses going there, apartments, or duplexes? That was just my question. Thank you.

Yeah, Mr. Hunter, council can't dialogue with you during Citizens Forum. But you can see our staff back there. Mr. Lewis at the back, after the meeting, he can help answer your questions. All right.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, sir. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak during Citizens Forum? I'll do it.

Thank you. My name is Travis Whitus, 109 West 2nd Street in Georgetown. I represent WBW Development for the Church Mountain Development. I wanted to just quickly go over, you know, we've, we've talked a lot about the development agreement and various items about that. Uh, just wanted to go over one of the new items that I sent out last week. And these, this is a paper copy of the same thing. Uh, this first page is really just a summary of that fiscal analysis that I sent in. Uh, so the purpose of this really was to show the net benefit that church mountain has on the, or for coppers co and really specifically addressing or trying to analyze really how much of a fiscal impact this could have on the on the on the community so according to my model at least the annual net revenues are about two million dollars per year now that's not saying you know so he takes in two million dollars That's about, on the operating side, it would be about $200,000 a year. Debt service is about $420,000. Another $130,000 or so goes to the EDC. And then a lot of that really goes to the TERS. That was something that you all just recently passed. This property was included in that TERS. The way at least I understood it was that 50% of the total tax or the ad valorem tax rate goes to the TERS. So that's really where that $1.2 million comes from. So on the $210,000 side, that's really the operating. That does not account for the one-time city fees. That's like you turn in a building permit, you pay a fee, water tap fees, all that. That was calculated out separately in this fiscal analysis. So it would be about a $1.9 million over the life of the project, assuming we did 1,263 houses. Um, so really with the 1.2 million, what we're really asking for is for, you know, the net benefit of the subdivision to go to pay for the offsite improvements. Cause that's really, we really just can't make, uh, the offsite improvements also work on top of everything else that we're paying for, for the subdivision. And part of that analysis, it's kind of summarized in the bottom. There's much more detailed analysis. Uh, if you go to the first big sheet, it'll be the third, like, I guess you call that paragraph or whatever that is, uh, really analyzes that every. In the traffic impact analysis, we showed there's warrants at FM 116, at Summers and Lutheran, and at 1113 and Summers. At all points, or at the specific warrant, which was 70%, 80%, and 90% of development, the taxes that are generated and the returns would pay for 100%. So it would not be a burden to anybody in Copper's Cove The people out in Church Mountain, the future taxpayers out in Church Mountain, by that time would have paid for 100% of the off-site improvements, not even just our portion of the off-site improvements. And that's really most of what the analysis is. There's, there are a number of assumptions and stuff. We, I did this really honestly over the weekend, so haven't really had any much, much back and forth with the city staff, but hopefully we can, you know, work through this and through it. Thanks.

Thank you, sir. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak during citizens forum? All righty, since there is no one else to speak, we'll move on to item F, consent agenda.

All matters listed under this item are considered to be routine by the city council and will be enacted by one motion. There will not be separate discussion of these items. If discussion is desired, that item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. Item one, consideration and action on approval of city council workshop meeting minutes for July 7th, 2026. Lisa Wilson, city secretary. Item 2, consideration and action on approval of City Council regular meeting minutes for July 7th, 2026. Lisa Wilson, City Secretary. Item 3, consideration and action to authorize payment for eligible expenses related to the operations of the Cove House Emergency Homeless Shelter. Brian Hawkins, Executive Director of the Cove House Emergency Homeless Shelter. Item 4, consideration and action to authorize payment for eligible expenses to the Copper Scope Chamber of Commerce on FY25-26 activities and expenses associated with the Rabbit Fest. Beth Galick-Carney, President of the Copper Scope Chamber of Commerce.

Thank you, Madam Secretary. What would be the desire of the Council at this time?

Madam Mayor Pro Temp, I recommend approval of F-1 through F-4, the consent agenda items. Second.

Okay, I have a motion by Mr. Treadway and a second by Ms. Hogan. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Item G.

A governmental body shall allow each member of the public who desires to address the body regarding the item on an agenda for an open meeting of the body to address the body regarding the item at the meeting before or during the body's consideration of the item. Item one, public hearing in action to approve ordinance number 2026-18 for a conditional use permit by Christina and Joseph Tidinko to allow a short-term rental on property zone LR, low density residential district, for Coral County property ID 126386 consisting of a 0.17 acre parcel located at 208 Appaloosa Drive, Copper Scope, Texas. Bobbi Lewis, Development Services Director.

All righty, we'll go ahead and open up the public hearings at 6.23 p.m. for item G1.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, Council. The applicant actually is online as well. On June 22nd, 2026, the Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval to City Council to allow a short-term rental on property located at 208 Appaloosa Drive. The proposed use being a short-term rental on property zoned LR, Low Density Residential District, is required to obtain approval of a conditional use permit. Staff and the Planning Commission reviewed the request for a short-term rental and find that the proposed use is compatible with the existing single-family residential neighborhood, subject to the recommended conditions. With that, staff and the Planning Zoning Commission recommend approval of Ordinance Number 2026-18, subject to four conditions of approval.

Thank you, Bobby. Does the City Council have any questions or concerns for Bobby? Applicant, are they online? I mean, online on the phone? Applicant, if you can hear me, do you have any comments? Okay.

All righty, anybody else?

Hi, sorry. I was trying to figure out how to unmute myself. No comments. I thank you and I appreciate your time.

All right, well, thank you.

All righty, if we do not have any other questions for the applicant or their staff, Anyone else? We'll go ahead and we can close the public, is this taking action today? Okay, so I'll listen to any actions or questions from the council.

May I pro temp? Yes. I make a motion that we approve item G1 public hearing action to approve ordinance number 2026.18 for a conditional use permit by Christina and Joseph Tadino to allow a short-term rental on properties on LR, low density, a residential district for cop Coyote County property ID one, two, six, three, eight, six, consistent of 0.1, seven acres. Partial located at two zero eight Appaloosa drive conference, cold Texas, Bobby Lewis, development service director.

Second motion made by councilman Hawk. Second by Mr. Treadway. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. I will go ahead and close the public hearings and actions at 626 p.m. Okay. Moving on to action items H1.

Consideration and action regarding a request by the Copper Scope Historical Society for a waiver of water utility costs for the Allen House, a recorded Texas historical landmark, and leased to the Copper Scope Historical Society. Ryan Havilof, City Manager.

Thank you, Mrs. Wilson. Mayor Pro Tem and City Council, you approved a lease agreement with the Copper's Cove Historical Society and it was executed back in February of 2023. A few months after that, the Copper's Cove Historical Society requested a waiver of the water usage cost for Allen House, which is the property in which they are leasing. City Council agreed to waive that water cost until the anniversary of the lease agreement, which was February of 2026. And at that time when the Historical Society provided an annual report, City Council could then consider at their request waiving any additional water costs. The Historical Society provided that annual report in April of 2026. In June of 2026, the Historical Society asked me to be able to present to council again, requesting a waiver of the water utility costs. Received that request in writing in July. And so here we are today. with the request that the Historical Society has submitted. It is attached to the agenda item. There's also some additional information that is related to the base water rates and water consumption, which are just scenarios in which water could be used. In general, for the Historical Society and water use at The Allen House, it has been minimal water usage. So it has been very easily under $40 a month. And I do believe we have a representative, Mr. Payne here, who can provide his request directly to city council. So Mr. Payne.

Mayor Pro Tem, Mr. Habler on council. Thank you for letting me come up here and talk about the Allen House water exemption that we're asking for just for the water usage. We've recently started having events at the Allen House and getting a lot of attention to the Allen House and getting a lot of motivated people that wanna help restore it. And we're just asking for a little bit more time on the water. usage fee, if you guys would be gracious enough to do that for us and help us use money to do better things with the Allen House and the Historical Society, I would appreciate that. Okay.

City Council, do you have any comments, questions? Okay. I have, actually, I have some questions. Sure. Okay. So we did actually enter this in what was February of 2025. And so now the question is, of course, of continuing the waiver. Yes, ma'am. So I would say considering with coming forward today, it would start today. Am I correct in thinking that?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. So I just wanted to make sure that we have that understood and council members understand that it would be starting today. as of this date, and that was all I had. Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem, I do got one question. What does agreement, it'll just be for one year, continuing year?

Very good question. What does council think? Just one year or?

The lease is up in February 27, correct?

Yes, the anniversary of the lease is every February. The agreement also requires that they provide an annual report prior to the anniversary of that lease. And City Council's action last year was to provide a water waiver until the annual report is given in which then the Historical Society can, could, if they needed to, have this discussion again with City Council.

Thank you, Ryan. Does that?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Any other discussion? OK, I'll entertain a motion.

Madam mayor pro tem. I'd like to make a motion that we, uh, weigh the copper scope, historical societies, water bill at the Allen house, uh, through the term of this lease. And, and when we get a report in February, it can be looked at again, February of 27. Second.

I have a motion made by Mr. Smith, second by Councilman Treadway. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Nay.

All right. Let's go ahead and roll call, please.

Christina Strophos. Aye. Rita Hogan. Aye. Howard Hawk.

Aye.

John Hale.

Nay.

Dale Treadway.

Aye.

Vanya Hart. Aye. Jack Smith. Aye. 6-1.

All righty. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Moving on to action item H2.

Consideration and action on the previously authorized Church Mountain Development and Annexation Agreement between the City of Copper's Cove and WBW Single Development Group LLC Series 144 and WBW Investment Solutions LLC Series 011. for property known as Coral County Property IDs 156593, 154944, and 104649, consisting of 310.07 acres located along Lutheran Church Road and west of Summers Road in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction. Scott Osborne, Assistant City Manager of Public Services, Director of Public Works, and Bobby Lewis, Development Services Director.

Thank you, Lisa, Mayor Pro Tem, Council. I'll give the background to where we've been the last seven months. The current activities that Scott Osborne, Assistant City Manager, will give the staff recommendation. City staff has been working with the developer since 2020 and on the development agreement. These types of agreements are common for cities in Texas to ensure a proposed development meets the goals of the city council, provides a positive benefit to the community, and will not negatively impact existing communities or resources managed by the city. City staff and the developers have reached an impasse on provisions in the agreement requiring City Council consideration and direction. On November 18, 2025, City Council voted 5-2 to deny the agreement, primarily based on language that required the City to reimburse the developer 50% of the cost to transfer the water service rights from Kintner Water Supply Corporation to the City. following city council's denial the developers agreed to assume the obligation to pay all the costs necessary to secure the ccn transfer and agree to complete a traffic impact analysis needed to qualify as quantify the project's impacts on surrounding roadways and a commitment to share in proportion of costs another obligation was for the developer to construct a portion of a minor arterial within the project to align with the city's thoroughfare master plan. On December 2, 2025, City Council authorized city managers to execute a revised development and annexation agreement with the developers. Following City Council's authorization and approval, the developers did not sign the agreement. The developers hired Bradley Brimley of Avenue Consultants to develop a traffic impact analysis. On February 16, 2026, city staff received the traffic impact analysis for its initial review. Two days later, on February 18, 2026, city staff was informed by the developers that the developer's president was not willing to sign the development and annexation agreement that city council previously authorized. It was a developer's position that the internal roundabout future roadway dedications for a minor arterial and other concessions and commitments should be considered enough to be offset the developer's proportionate share of costs of any mitigation measures determined by the traffic impact analysis. Developers also advised that they no longer intend to build the minor arterial or 90-foot wide right-of-way running through the project but build a minor or major collector which is a 60-foot right-of-way instead and dedicate the remainder of the right-of-way to the city so they can expand the roadway in the future at its own cost. The city advised that the construction of a portion of the minor arterial to be a major component of the agreement. On March 3rd, 2026, staff determined that the TIA traffic impact analysis needs to provide recommendations for improvements to maintain a level service C. The development agreement states in section 4.03, the purpose of the TIA is to identify improvements that are necessary to mitigate the proportionate share of traffic impacts directly attributable to the development. The initial TIA indicated that the level of service diminished on external roadways but did not allow for what improvements or did not include what improvements needed to maintain the level of service that was existing throughout the development. City staff advised that their project schedule was needed for improvements and needed to provide to determine what mitigation measures were needed to build the medicated loss of service to those roadways. On May 7, 2026, the developer's TIA consultant provided city staff with the revised TIA. On May 22, 2026, staff provided comments to the developers. City staff reaffirmed the developers' intent on two critical topics. First, the developers did not agree to contribute to the cost of constructing mitigation measures as indicated in the TIA. Second, developers would not agree to construct a portion of the minor arterial, the 90-foot right-of-way, though the development had previously been advanced with that condition. A summary of staff's comments are as follows. The traffic impact analysis determined the project's impact utilizing only one land use clarification, which was single-family detached homes and a total density of 1,263 dwelling units. However, the developer's proposal contemplates different land uses, including duplexes, townhomes, and commercial development, which would lead to a higher trip count and corresponding impact to the existing street networks in the area. The percentage of development that requires an improvement should be based on the background level of service, not the level of development that can be completed before the intersection fails and improvements are necessary. The focus of the TIA is to determine what impacts the development has on the surrounding intersections and traffic. The impact is when the level of service is reduced, not when the intersection has reached the failing point. City staff would ask whether the option, or the opinion, excuse me, of probable costs were intended to show a fixed amounts as shown, or percentage of cost, whatever the construction occurred, as the TIA shows a schedule of when the improvements would be needed to mitigate failed level of service based on the project build out. On June 1st, 2026, Travis Whitus of Yogo Engineering and the developers provided his response to staff's comments. First, the 1,263 homes, detached homes, represent the current primary estimate of lot count for the development. The multifamily Commercial uses were not considered in the TIA. The 1,263 single-family attached homes are not intended to be the cap to the number of units permitted. Developers proposed 1,400 single-family homes as the equivalent to the highest anticipated traffic loading before a TIA revision is required. The developers did not agree. that the development must mitigate each intersection back to its background level of service. From where it started, that's what that is. The development agreement requires that the TIA to be performed is consistent with TxDOT standards and requires mitigation of the development's proportionate traffic impacts. It does not require the developer to preserve unused background capacity. These are comments from the development engineer, Mr. White, who's in the audience. Consistent with TxDOT standards, traffic engineering practices, the TIA uses a level of service D, which is lower than the standard of the city's level of service C. Level of service C really is defined as stable flows in traffic, whereas level D is defined as approaching unstable traffic flows. The developers did not agree that the city staff that certain additional costs should be added to the mitigation measures. Developers indicated that item costs were intended to be fixed at today's amounts and regardless of when the improvement were proposed to be constructed during the course of the project's build out, which could be in 10 years. On July 10th, 2026, Lee Ham, a city engineer who's in the audience, provided an estimate showing the total development impact costs of $1,307,000. These estimate costs are notably different than the developers. A key component to the right-of-way acquisition costs required for the external roundabout at Lutheran Church Road and Summers Road. If the construction of the roundabout requires purchasing three adjacent lots, the current Coryell County appraisal value is $600,000 for that acquisition. In addition, the city engineer provided an estimate of what it would cost to expand the roadway from a major collector, which is a 60-foot wide road, as proposed by the developer, to a major arterial, which is a 90-foot wide roadway, And the cost of doing the difference of that to the cost of the city would be $242,000. With that, I'll turn it over to Scott to provide the staff's recommendation.

Thank you, Bobby. Mayor Pro Tem, City Council, Mr. Havilah. I wanted to provide, obviously, there's a lot of information included in your packet. There's a lot of back and forth between city staff, city engineer, and the developer. So I wanted to summarize and kind of bring us back to where I believe we are as a city on this agreement and where we really started from this round and this negotiation. As you recall, these negotiations have been going on since 2020. City Council and the developer originally came to an agreement, we believe, back in December of 2025. That being said, as Bobby noted, going into early 2026, the developer approached city staff and really conveyed that their president was no longer interested in signing that agreement and they would like to move forward with the TIA to determine what are the impacts of this development on external right-of-ways and really what that proportionate share was. So with that, again, in that December 2025 agreement, really two things I want to focus on that it included, and Bobby mentioned this, so I apologize for my redundancy, but one was a commitment to build half of a minor arterial, as you see in the bottom right-hand portion of that, that connects their internal perpendicular major collector to Lutheran Church Road and ultimately is projected in that dash line to head south. to ultimately comply with the city's thoroughfare master plan. This thoroughfare master plan shows this really the start of a loop to make it back down to FM 1113, ultimately out to Big Divide and ultimately out to what will be I-14 for an outside loop around the city. And that's the purpose of this arterial. In the negotiations up until agreement in 25, this was a major concession, at least viewed by the city, that the developer was bringing to the table, because based on their impact within this development, it doesn't warrant the building of a minor arterial, but again, that was one of their concessions, as this is a negotiated process. that being said uh right now the focus is on the developer is advised they don't believe that's equitable that they build that minor arterial and they're proposing to step off that minor arterial back to a major collector as bobby stated which really means constructing a smaller road dedicating right away for ultimately the city to come in when needed to expand that major collector to a minor arterial standard at the city's cost. The other issue that we're focused on tonight is what was the requirement of that TIA. In the agreement, it was to complete a TIA, excuse me, As part of that TIA, it determined what their proportionate impact would be on external locations based on the traffic demand of this development. There were three key intersections that we were concerned about, one being Lutheran Church and Summers Road, one being Lutheran Church as it connects to FM 116, and one being Summers Road going down to FM 1113 where it's predicted that most of this traffic will flow after build out. So with that TIA in determining what that impact would be, they were also required to identify mitigation measures to offset that impact and also to pay their proportionate share of what that TIA determined. So now, flashing forward to today, following the quantification of the development's impact and its proportionate share of the cost of mitigation, the developer wants to renegotiate the deal and really shift these costs over to the city rather than bear them as originally agreed to by a city council. They also want to back off that minor arterial commitment down to a major collector. From city staff's perspective, these changes really degrade that original deal by approximately $950,000 in our opinion. This is based on Mr. Lee Ham's updated opinion and probable cost, which I believe you have in your packet, and also based on the developer's TIA proportionality percentages, which City staff does not necessarily agree to, but it's as good as indicator as we need right now for these discussion purposes, we believe. These costs, that 950, as Bobby also mentioned, do not include potential right-of-way acquisition because one of the mitigation measures is to actually construct a second roundabout at the intersection of Lutheran Church and Summers Road, which would require acquisition of right-of-way. If you're all familiar with that intersection, There's not much right-of-way there. There would be three properties that would be affected. Based on estimates, if we had to, we the city, had to acquire that right-of-way without agreement of the landowners, potentially the value would be about $600,000 for those properties. So that's another factor we need to be mindful of as the city. Based on this shift of obligations or the proposed shift on obligations, city staff cannot support these changes being made based on really the big picture consideration. To take this a step further, as council was provided by Mr. Whitus, WBW, you were provided and even denied a very complex analysis of what this development's financial impact would be to the city. I'd like to note that Right out the gate, neither myself nor Mr. Haverlaw nor Mr. Lewis have had adequate time to really dig into this analysis. However, after going through it, I don't necessarily believe it's whole. I know there's a lot of detail provided in there. I know it's pulling from a lot of different sources. However, I did not see, for example, an offset for the projected disabled veterans exemption in those calculations. That being said, I don't believe we need to really focus on what it says, but really the proposition behind this, as Mr. Wattis indicated earlier, that Based on the city establishing a TERS, which you recall city council recently agreed to stand up a TERS for various properties around the city, the revenue from that TERS could be used to offset this cost based on this analysis. That presumes that city council wants to utilize that revenue once gained, which quite frankly, it hasn't been, it hasn't materialized yet. It's projected to be, but city council will be appointing really just board members to this board to get that up and running at the next council meeting, I believe. It hasn't materialized yet, so kind of counting your chickens before they hatch on the funding, but also looking at the, assumption that city council would choose to use those revenues for these mitigation efforts rather than For example, expanding the dash line for the rest of that minor arterial to connect that within the development, potentially rebuilding Lutheran Church Road along the exterior to provide that additional capacity that will ultimately, from city staff's perspective, be needed to provide additional capacity because as most of you are aware CCISD owns a big parcel right out there. 1,400 homes is a lot of kids. There's gonna have to be another elementary school or something there. All of that traffic will come through this corridor and in 10 years they'll be looking at the city to do something with that road. just putting it out there, potentially that TERS revenue is used for those purposes, not this. That's city staff's perspective. Another potential, failure of that argument about using the TERS revenue. My understanding, Ryan, correct me if I'm wrong, you can only use TERS revenue within the boundaries of the TERS, is that correct? Not exactly.

Not exactly, okay. It depends on the plan. Okay. And since Scott drew me into this conversation.

Sorry, Ryan.

I'm gonna go ahead and proceed with a couple of statements. The document that was provided to you by Mr. Whitus is, as best I can tell, and I didn't go into a deep dive on it, is mathematically, it makes sense. Based on the assumptions though, and based on the conclusions, it definitely looks good. But as Mr. Osborne already pointed out, I think there's some assumptions that are missing or mischaracterized in the document that was provided. In regards to the TERS, I think it is a pretty bold and expected request of the developer to say that now that City Council has just passed it, can utilize that as a funding source. But Mayor Pro Tem and Council, you have an item later on in the agenda to appoint the initial board members. There's not even a final plan on the TURs yet. And there are much greater that need to be done in the city than trying to help fund some of the improvements that are development driven for a specific development that don't provide a benefit to the entire area of this neighborhood. And so it would, I'm gonna let Scott keep going.

Well, thank, thank you, Ryan. I appreciate you clarifying on, um, what TERS funds can be used for just to kind of pull this all together as Mr. Lewis stated. Developers current perspective and they've provided some costs out that is that basically based on the developments the amenities the Investment they are making within this development The developer feels that they are contributing enough to this development where the city where they're not in a place to accept additional burdens, including the ones that we've determined or they've determined through the TIA to really represent their proportional impact to three different intersections up on the north side of town. The north side of town has precious few means of ingress and egress to get there to and from. Without these mitigation efforts, and you see the TIA in there, in essence, you bring all three of those intersections down to a failed state. So the mitigation measures will be absolutely critical to be completed. The question is by who. Further, when you look at utilizing TERS revenue, the developer is proposing that city council utilize the benefits of some of its initiatives to cover the cost of this development. This is very similar in the TIA. The TIA capitalizes on a project we have in motion right now, and that's the extension of Ashley to FM 116. That makes this area function much more efficiently. However, with this build out, it'll absorb that efficiency. It'll bring it down to those levels that you see in that traffic impact analysis. So with that and with the understanding that not only is the developer bringing immense value to this area the city brings a lot to the table already in terms of water wastewater collection and treatment capacity early on in this process i did some rudimentary calculations that really showed water capacity wastewater treatment and collection capacity alone If you were to acquire the amount of capacity needed to serve this development, back then it was about $16 million worth of cost based on our experience and also our recent contribution to WCID to increase our treated water capacity. The city's bringing enough, in city staff's opinion. Shifting additional burden to the city here, following reaching an agreement in December of 25, city staff does not recommend that. However, ultimately it's up to city council to make that determination. With all of that being said, and I know that's a lot of information, a lot of information in your packet, we do have Mr. Travis Whitus, Ms. Tara Benson in the audience as representatives for WBW, if city council would like to hear their perspective. I also have Lee Hamm, our city engineer, if there are any questions on really the back and forth about that TIA, because I know that can get very detailed and overly complicated at points. So with that, Bobby and myself are here to address questions, or we'll go from there.

Thank you, Scott. That is a lot of information, but this is no stranger. This item isn't any stranger to the council. It's been brought to the dais before. So I'm going to allow city council to ask any questions that they may have. Also, for WLRB, basically, if they may have questions of you, if they do, please feel free to come to the mic, OK? Any questions for City Council?

Concerns? I already don't have any questions, just a few comments. This has been going on for approximately six years. If I'm wrong, please correct me. It took us two City Council meetings just to get the CCNs approved, to have the developer to pay for it, and not the city. Like I said, my background's infrastructure. And I believe in growth. Without growth, we can't bring in revenue in support of a lot of projects that we need. Roads, parks, new buildings, whatever the case may be. But you have to have proper growth. And without proper growth, like Bobby and Scott has stated, the city incurs the cost down the road. And I see this area out here eventually growing. And the infrastructure's gonna cost. And I'm just not talking water, wastewater. I'm also talking about the roads. I've driven out there to rush hours, school times, just to see for myself. I don't want all that congestion out there until it's properly planned. We had an agreement. They don't want an unhonored agreement. And that's their choice, and I understand that. But down the road, this is going to cost in the future for repairs and everything else that they're wanting money upfront to pay for some of these projects. The city pays for it. In the end, that means the taxpayer pays for it. And I'm just not comfortable with that.

Thank you, Councilman Treadway. Is there any other council member that wishes to speak? Any questions?

Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. Does the developer want to speak to us or clarify anything, if that's OK with you?

Yes, you may come to the mic addressing anything that has been spoken during this action item.

I guess first there was really two main points in the agenda item. I guess I can address both of those. The first one being the minor arterial thrush subdivision. I do not agree that we agreed to build the minor arterial. In the agreement, I think it is very clear, at least to me, that we did agree to dedicate the right-of-way for the minor arterial, and we have not backed off on that. We will dedicate the right-of-way for the minor arterial if this development agreement passes. But there is very specific detail in there about whether how we build the internal roundabout, how we build the major collector, the north-south major collector, the one that has a shared use path and all that. That was very well documented, super thorough in there. It was really only mentioned that we would dedicate the right of way for the minor arterial. Honestly, I think it's an assumption that we would build a minor arterial, but that's a very big cost that really our subdivision does not necessitate. And really the primary thing that we're What I'm asking for is really the TERS. That was a new thing that came through in the past. I'm honestly trying to figure out how to make the development work. Because really, if we're expected to pay for all the off-site improvements, we really can't make this subdivision work. And financially, it's not feasible for us to do it. So I hope that that maybe could be a consideration. We can work through this with staff with specific assumptions and all that, but really we wouldn't be able to bring this into the city. We wouldn't be able to develop it as contemplated because we have a very significant amount of other costs associated with this that we have to have a viable project. So, really like the numbers I have in the fiscal analysis that I presented, those really wouldn't happen because we couldn't make this development work. The other portion on the TIA and the off-site improvements. The president of our company did not sign the agreement. And it's really because he himself never agreed to that. It was negotiated in the development agreement. It takes two parties to come to an agreement. And really his primary concern was the offsite cost associated with building. His real concern was that we could not make this project work. So really the TERS proposal was, just one idea of a possible way that we can make this subdivision happen. I still think it is still a good thing for the city, just trying to come up with creative solutions to make that happen. Do you have any other questions?

Council, any questions? Okay.

I do have one. What's the other option if you don't get annexed?

we so we already own all of the property i guess the other option you know we are in kipner water supply corporation ccn the water line is not that far away we could do acre lots you know that would probably be one of the solutions we are also like we are still in city copper scopes who are ccn i guess we would have to figure out how to navigate that but we can still develop the property we would we would like you know we've been working with the city staff for you know since 2020 it's been six years that we've been working on this uh we think that that is the best passport for everyone to put this into the city and you know really have this be a a good development for the city. Uh, but we also, you know, we, we are a company, we need to have, we need to have a proper profitable subdivision.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else?

No.

Also, I would like to state for the record that I mispronounced your development.

It's WBW. So please excuse me.

Alrighty. I'll entertain a motion since there are no further questions or comments from the council.

Madam mayor, I make a motion to deny the developers current proposal for the church mountain development.

I hear a motion of denial by councilman Treadway second by councilman Hawk. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Nay.

Roll call please.

Christina Strophus. Aye. Rita Hogan. Aye. Howard Hawk.

Aye.

John Hale.

Aye.

Dale Treadway.

Aye.

Vanya Hart. Aye. Vic Jacksmith.

Nay.

Six to one.

The motion does carry. Moving on to action items H3.

Consideration and action on adopting resolution number 2026-20, authorizing the city manager to grant, excuse me, to submit a grant application to the Texas Water Development Board for the Water Supply and Infrastructure Grant Program and otherwise act on behalf of the city in all matters related to the application seeking the potential grant award. Scott Osborne, Assistant City Manager of Public Services, Director of Public Works.

Thank you, Mrs. Wilson. Mayor Pro Tem, City Council, Mr. Haberlaw, this is a lot less heavy than the last one, so I'll blaze through kind of what I'm looking at here. Back in the 89th State Legislative Session, House Bill 500 passed, which appropriated approximately $1.038 billion in funding for water supply and infrastructure projects. to be administered by the Texas Water Development Board through the WSIG program. A limited number of Texas communities, water districts, other districts may receive 100% or a no-match grant funding for qualifying projects. Applications for grant funding will only be considered for projects that address the creation of additional water supply capacity to provide for water loss mitigation or resolve existing TCEQ violations. You'll be happy to know we do not have any pending TCEQ violations, our system is squared away. However, we do, as fate would have it, we do have a couple projects that really fall under some of these other captions. One primary one falling under the water supply capacity, and we'll make an argument that it also falls under the provide for water loss mitigation category, is the second phase of our Killeen Cove replacement project that is currently at 60% design, should be in final design within the next several months. But that project, as City Council will recall, has been funded through certificates of obligation at the tune of about $12.9 million already. So that's our current funding source. What I would prefer to do if we're successful, and that's a big if here because every city and district in the state will be competing for these funds, I would like city council's authorization to move forward with an application in an attempt to get $13 million from the state of Texas so I could use or we could use that 13 million somewhere else within the city. So with that, there is a requirement that city council authorize a resolution which I've attached to the city council agenda item. There's a couple other documents that we attach that go with this application. We have staff with Strand Engineering Group to help us complete the application. They are well on their way to achieving that. City staff really completed the bulk of this, but there's some nuances of this grant program that we engaged their assistance to get a competitive application. Strand did advise that one of the things against the city is that we have an average median income, which is really kind of approaching the top end of the communities they're looking at. However, we're still within that range. It's a good project. It's almost fully designed. So I do believe we have a chance of this and it would be wonderful if that were awarded to the city. So with that, I'm looking for city council's authorization to authorize Ryan to submit this application, any other documents that may be required. So I'm here for any questions.

Thank you. Any questions? Okay, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

Madam Mayor, I make a motion to adopt Resolution 2026-20 authorizing city manager to submit a grant application to TWDB for the WSIG program. Otherwise, act on behalf of the city in all matters related to the application seeking the potential grant award.

Second. I have the motion made by Councilman Treadway, second by Councilmember Hogan. Any other questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to action items H four.

Consideration and action on approving resolution number 2026-21, appointing three city representatives to the board of directors of the tax increment reinvestment zone number two and appointing the chairman of the board. Brian Haverloff, city manager.

Thank you, Mrs. Wilson. Mayor Pro Tem, city council. Last meeting, you actually approved the ordinance establishing the tax increment reinvestment zone number two. I'll refer to it as TERS number two from now on. As part of that, passing of the ordinance, the next step is to appoint the first board members in order to continue the fully developed process of the TURs, which is to actually take the preliminary plan that was part of that ordinance and make it a final plan and begin moving through the process of having the TURs established and begin standing it up for use and function in our community. The city has three board members as part of that initial board and my recommendation is that city council appoint yourselves or EDC board members. You and the EDC board have been the most informed and educated on the TERS in order to get it moving forward, stand it up, and approve the final plan. So with that being said, of course, there's the seven of you and the mayor, and there are five EDC board members. So my recommendation is that you pick the three out of the eight, the three out of the 13 of you, and appoint as board members to the TERS board in order to get this process continuing to move forward. And I apologize, Mayor Pro Tem. There is a resolution that is attached. It specifically details the positions. You would need to name each person by position. They're installed on the board for a specific number of years based on their position number and appointing a chairperson for the board. And that's all covered in that resolution.

Thank you, Ryan. So does council understanding pretty much what's happening? We're going to do the three and then also do their placement and also a chair, correct?

Correct.

All righty. Does anybody have any, no comments, I can entertain some suggestions that you would like to bring forth? I have some.

Madam Mayor Pro Tem, I nominate Dale. Can we?

All righty.

Madam Mayor Pro Temp, I'd like to nominate Mrs. Brady Diaz from the EDC Board. I'd like to appoint her as chairman. I'd also like to nominate John Hale.

All right. So we have Dale Treadway, Brady Diaz, and also John Hale. All righty. So that is the, how are we going to, so we had... three different people, well we had two different people that did eat different names. So are we just gonna do it all as a group to pretty much agree to the motion or do we just do Rita first and then we do Dale?

I think you have to name out place is the only thing left. Okay. I mean a person to the place.

Mayor Pro Tem, if you follow the code of ordinance for appointment to boards and commissions, you take nominations. And so while you have three, the council could potentially nominate more than that. And then you take action for each nomination in the order in which that nomination was given. So Ms. Hogan has already nominated Mr. Treadway first. And so you could take that nomination and vote on it. city council could decide to make a motion to nominate, to appoint each of the three existing individuals to a specific position and chair and approve the resolution. There's any number of ways that you could do it. You could do it one at a time or you could try to throw all of them in together.

Okay, I was just wondering how we were gonna do this. Okay, so.

I'll just say finish the nominations if there's any more.

Correct. Okay. So right now what we have is as a city manager had said, Mrs. Hogan has nominated Dale Treadway. Although all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. Second motion was made by Mr. Treadway for Brady Dewald Diaz. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, and also Mr. Treadway has brought up for nominating John Hale as a member. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, now we're going to move on to the placement of these three. Well, actually, does anybody want to nominate more than three? Okay, we'll stick with the three. So we'll go ahead with, in the order, Ms. Hogan for Dale Treadway,

Place one.

Place one. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Mr. Treadway, also, what would you say for Brady DeWalt Diaz and also for Councilman Hale?

I have a Ms. Diaz, place two, and for Mr. John Hale, place three.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, and now we need to elect a chair. I will entertain a motion for the chair of those three.

Madam Mayor Pro Temp, I recommend that we nominate Mrs. Diaz for chair.

I support that. OK. We have Mr. Treadway nominating Brady Dwell Diaz for chair with a second by support by Mr. Hill. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All righty. Do we need to do a recap?

So yes, ma'am, because you need to make a motion to approve resolution 2026-21 appointing Mr. Chardway to place one, Ms. Diaz to place two, Mr. Hill to place three, and Ms. Diaz as the chairman.

Okay, do I hear a motion for what Mr. Cavallaro just brought to the dais?

Madam Mayor Pro Temp, I hope I don't mess this up. I recommend approval of resolution 2026, appointing three city representatives to the board of directors for the tax increment reinvestment zone number two and appointing a chair of the board. Place one, I guess myself. Place two, Mrs. Diaz. Place three, John Hill. And for chairman, Mrs. Diaz.

A second. All right. The motion made by Mr. Treadway, second by Mr. Hawk. Any other questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Motion carries. Thank you, Council. Moving on to the next item, which would be H five.

Consideration and action on adopting resolution number 2026-22, revising the City of Coppers Cove vision and mission statements. Ryan Havelas, City Manager.

Thank you, Mrs. Wilson. Mayor Pro Tem and City Council, you held a strategic planning session in November of 2025. At that time, you provided recommendations on updating the vision statement to be the premier city and a thriving community in Central Texas, and the mission statement to the City of Copper's Cove will provide exceptional public services, promote responsible growth, cultivate community partnerships, and enhance the quality of life for all residents. The attached resolution addresses and updates both the vision and mission statement, and staff's recommendation is approval of that resolution.

Thank you, Ryan. Council, any questions? Okay, I'm ready to hear a motion.

Madam Mayor Pro Temp. Yes. Recommend adopt Resolution 2026-22, update the vision and mission statement of the City of Copper's Cove.

I'll second.

Motion made by Council Member Trendway, second by Council Member Hogan. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. To item I, we have reports from staff, outside entities, advisories, committees, and boards.

Item one, assistant city manager's department updates. Eddie Wilson, assistant city manager, chief of police.

Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Ms. Mayor Pro Tem, council, and city manager. Normally, we're doing something new this year. Normally, we only pick on code compliance and make Brian get up here and provide you guys a report every year on everything that they're doing over there. I thought this year would be a good idea to also provide reports for the police department as well as animal control, just to help keep council and the community abreast on our reports from the 2025 year and the previous years. As we go through this, we're gonna start with code compliance. As we go through this, We tried to put everything on the slides that we thought you might have an interest in, but if there's a question that you have or something you want us to expand on, please stop us and just ask. So with that, I'm gonna let Deputy Chief Weier start with co-compliance.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, city manager, city council members. I think the last time I presented for code was in 23 or 24. So when I prepared this presentation, it's going to talk a little bit about the numbers, but it's also going to give you a little bit of insight as to what the responsibilities are for the code compliance department. First of all, the code compliance fits well with the police department. Both departments handle enforcement opportunities. They also handle education of the public. We work well with each other. We have officers that ride out with code members to get an idea of what they're doing. And then we have code officers that Communicate regularly with the patrol side to handle things because code works during the day Officers work at night. Sometimes we need contacts made the officers have the ability to do that. So the the I lost my word there. Having them together is actually a really big positive. A lot of cities generally have this through development services, or they fall under the fire department. But because it's an enforcement section of the city of Copperas Cove, it falls well with the police department. Is there others? And with that, I, as the deputy chief, oversee the administrative side of it. The code compliance also has a supervisor, Missy Albert, who's here with me as well. And then we have two code officers. We have one code officer and a second one officer trainee because they have to have a year of service before they can certify in code enforcement. But with that being said, we have... three people that are serving the entire city of 40,000 people, which is 18 square miles of jurisdiction. And there's an example I have later on in the presentation that kind of shows you what they're looking for by each one of the houses that they go by. And I'm hoping that gives you an example of how many things they've got to be observant of when they're handling code issues within the city. The enforcement, they maintain performance goal of addressing investigations complaints within 48 hours. That sounds like a long time, but when we're talking about three people handling complaints, they're serving 18 square miles, so they've gotta get around and address each one of those. It's actually a pretty decent turnaround time if you look at it statistically. The problem that we run into is Code violations are not something that, like a police officer, you don't handle that immediately. Based on our ordinance that we follow, we give them a warning, and the warning comes with a time period. And with that time period, it comes with a follow-up. And with that follow-up, it could lead to either an extension or it could lead to a citation. The problem with that is, and this is where council probably gets notified frequently, is I've called about this 20 times and nobody's come and done anything. Half the times when I see the responses from the code officers, I see we are aware of this complaint and we have an active investigation into it, which says that they were already handling it, but we're waiting for that period to go by. The one change we made two years ago was we shortened that process because in the past, we would give them a warning, then we would wait a certain period of time, then we would send them a letter, then we would wait a certain period of time, then we would take the enforcement action. Now, the minute that they're notified, 10 days later, we're taking an enforcement action, and in the statistics that I'm gonna show you here in a few minutes, you'll see what an effect that's had. And of course, the most common of the violations that we deal with is high grass and weeds. And when we look at these, I want everybody to understand that the highest enforcement action we can take is to give you a citation. And I can tell you this, the one thing people don't like being told to do is mow their grass. because everybody has their own perception of what's too tall and what's not. But we have it in the city ordinance that it's gotta be a certain number of inches. If it's beyond that, you're gonna be addressed. And what do you think the first thing that people say when we come to them and tell them to cut their grass? They walk out in their front yard and they point to five other houses and they say, well, what about them? And then it comes to the point to where we'll be questioned as to why city property is not maintained and city property has to be maintained on a schedule as well. So we only have so many manpower hours to dedicate towards certain things. So we're defending all this all the time. So as council members, it's really important for me to express this to you. So you understand when you hear these complaints from citizens, that we're not doing anything because we absolutely are we just can't do it in the amount of time that everybody would like so that's something that i want to keep in your minds throughout this presentation is we're working at it and you you're still going to get complaints and the problem is sometimes we'll enforce it and you'll get a complaint that we're enforcing it sometimes we'll you'll get a complaint that we're taking too long but we just fall victim to the system on that Annual case comparisons. This one is kind of deceptive and I want to talk about it because if you look at it in one direction it looks like hey we're doing great there's a reduction in these three areas. What I want you to see though is we were working this year with a shortage. We were down to two code officers for a portion of that year and that affected our ability to respond to complaints which affects us being able to enforce actions like that and the one thing I want to keep emphasizing is we have three officers that are responsible for handling all these complaints and then we have no administrative staff so one of those officers is stuck in the office to make sure that they're getting those calls when people are coming to complain and then We have one that acts as a supervisor, or who is the supervisor. Sorry, Missy, I didn't mean acts. But who is the supervisor who has administrative duties and has to handle budget and personnel issues. So that takes time away from that portion of the schedule as well.

Madam Mayor Pro Tem, I do got one question. Yes, sir. The percentages where they actually get a citation and actually go to court, approximately how many man hours you think the code enforcement officers actually spend in court time to, or do they spend any?

I'll let Missy address that. She knows that personally.

Okay. So we do attend court. We attend court on the first and third Tuesdays or Wednesdays of the month, depending on the docket. If we have any cases that are on the docket at that point in time, depends on whether or not we go, we come and speak to the prosecutor. We let him know if the violation is still there, if they abated the violation, what the case may be. And then it is in their hands at that point. But we do... Twice a month, we have to go to court, follow up with our cases. And then writing in those citations, it's not just a sit down and write the citation. We have to find identifiers. There's not always a driver's license listed in the water account. So we have to email to get identifiers. Start to finish for writing a ticket is about 15 to 20 minutes.

OK, thank you. I just want to make sure everybody understood there's more than just going around giving a citation, writing a ticket. There's the far end of it that you also have to complete. Thank you.

Yeah, to expand on that, the man hours for one specific offense is numerous because, like I said, a police officer goes out because there's an accident. The officer is there for 30 minutes to an hour collecting information on the accident report, and then they're done with that specific scene. A code officer responds to a violation, gets out there, does the warning, then has to schedule a follow-up. So 10 days later, they go back out there, they re-inspect the violation, then they go back and go to the office, identify the property owner, and then issue the citation. So there's a lot of time invested in one specific case for a code enforcement officer. Out of all of it, voluntary compliance is what we're looking for. You'll see that in the next slide or two that we wrote 180 something citations, but this slide is important to me because 94% of the cases that we develop are handled through voluntary compliance where we don't have to take those extra steps. But the problem with voluntary compliance is that it takes a lot of follow up. It's easy for me to go out and start throwing warnings on people's doors, but it's hard for me when I have to go back out and start citing the ones that didn't get it taken care of. So one way or the other, it's costing us man hours, regardless of whether we're citing them or they're complying voluntarily. The other side on the court portion of it is we'll do all this time preparing for it to go to court, and then the day before the people show up for court, they'll go out there, mow their grass, take a picture of it, and bring that with them to court saying it's done now. So I'm not saying that they're all dismissed, but I'm saying that it's kind of hard to charge somebody with an offense that no longer exists. So that's what we deal with on a regular basis. When I talked earlier, I talked about all the things a code officer looks at and this picture here is a good example of a lot of the things that they're looking at when they go by one of our houses within our community. So if you take that and multiply it by the number of houses we have that 40 something thousand people live in, you can understand that it's quite an undertaking. Sorry, I'm trying to find my note on that specific slide. and I know the writing's small on there, so I wrote it a little bigger for myself, but things like vehicles on the grass, inoperative vehicles, fences that are not in good repair, maintained pools that aren't mosquito dens, high grass and weeds, house numbers have to be visible, sidewalk obstructions, all those things are what they look at at each specific house as they go through a neighborhood. And like I said, I've got three people doing that. On the enforcement side, if you look at the citations, remember I said that we shorten that amount of time for the warning to the citation? You can see that that happened in 23 because the citations have increased and they stayed pretty level from that period forward. It shows that that has some effect and it's been a positive for us. But the one thing I want you to consider is on the statistics, it shows that our statistics dropped, but our citations stayed at a pretty even level. They're still actually two more than they were last year. But the number of cases that we took dropped. What that tells me is that the problems are still out there. It's just that we only had two staff members for half the year to address them, and we were still able to address 184 people through citations. The other thing that I wanted to point out to council that I didn't know if you were aware of or not, most jurisdictions have their own health department, which means that the county health department will go through and they will do all these inspections. Unfortunately for Copper's Cove, Coryell County does not have its own health department. They talked about it several years ago during the COVID era, but that since vanished and it doesn't exist. So we took on the responsibility of doing the health inspections. So on top of all the things that I've already discussed that code enforcement is responsible for, they also have to go through schools and businesses and do health inspections annually. anytime somebody applies for a permit. They're also responsible for going out when people do certificates of occupancy. So if you multiply all that together and look at what they're doing, it's a huge workload that we put on this staff. And I just wanna make sure that council's aware, because I really appreciate the work that they're doing. Some of the challenges that we face in code, the timelines, like I talked about with the warnings, we can't go out and write a ticket. We have to go out and give a warning. Then we have to go out, re-inspect it, and then we come back and if it's still a violation, then we issue a citation. And then if that does go to citation, then we have to at least prepare for court because we don't know whether it's gonna go through or not. staffing resources like I said we have three people and I think I've pretty much covered that portion locating property owners in a city where we have a lot of rental property is also very difficult LLC's are difficult to find owners from or specific members of that we can list on citations and they're actually getting really good about addressing that. We found other means to get to identify these people and it takes a little more time but we're able to make some progress in that. And then court cases being dismissed like I described about a citation, you can do all the work and the day before they mow the grass and it's all over. And that's pretty much all I had for code compliance, unless y'all have any questions for me.

Questions?

Or Missy.

Or Missy. Congratulations on your promotion, by the way. Thank you very much.

Madam Mayor Pro Tem, I don't have any questions, but I just want to let code compliance know what a great job they do.

Thank you. We appreciate everything you guys do for us. Thank you, council. Thank you, guys.

And if I may, I just wanna also add to the presentation. We're in a community that does have some socioeconomic challenges and that contributes to some of the eyesores that we see out there. There's also a psychology to code compliance enforcement. And I always equate it to when I talk to the team about it is all of you that have children, the challenge of getting them to take out the garbage or clean their room. Now imagine government knocking at your door and telling you to clean your room. It doesn't go well, especially when government has very little leverage to get you to do that. A citation isn't necessarily always enough. The psychology of it is the difference of opinion because what we think is unsightly, what the majority think is unsightly, the homeowners typically do not. They think it's acceptable. And it becomes a bit of a tug of war and the result is it sits there for a long time in that capacity. The co-compliance team cannot go get warrants to enter an occupied property to start taking your property away and taking it to the dump. that just is not gonna settle well with our city attorneys. So you're handcuffed in a lot of ways, no pun intended, in trying to get the enforcement accomplished.

Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. I just want to add, I've mentioned this before to council, But code compliance is not just an aesthetic department. They're not worried just about the aesthetics. Now that's the way it comes across because that's what gets the most hits, is somebody told me I had to mow my yard, and then it gets posted. And then they post other lawns and other areas that aren't mowed, just as DC Wire said, and that gets a lot of views. But what code compliance does really well that doesn't pay off immediately is economic development. When your community, appears nice, looks nice, when they're able to focus on commercial areas, that draws additional businesses. And if you have any questions about that, we do have an economic development executive director, Fred Welch, that's here, that understands that really well. And you can go to other communities that have a concentrated focus on code compliance, specifically in commercial areas, where you see the effect of it, but it's a long-term effect. It's not an immediate effect. So I wanted to bring that up because as we continue to talk about budget processes now and in the future, keep those things in mind when you hear the complaints. Why can't we have a nice business 190? Because the team that we have is small and can only do so much with a community of 42,000 residents. Thank you.

And with that, Ryan, I'll just add that with the passing of the ordinance a year or two ago, those charity bins that turn into dumping grounds have been cleaned up and the team is doing a very good job of trying to stay ahead of those as well. So there's a big difference in that area because we were able to get some leverage help on enforcing that violation. So next up is gonna be Deputy Chief Jeremy Albert. He also has our animal control supervisor Tamara Hall with us, so I'll turn it over to him.

Thank you, Chief. Madam Mayor Brotin, City Manager and City Council. Today we're gonna talk about the Animal Control Department. It's a small department, but we're maybe short in stature or short in numbers. We are mighty in heart. Uh, so our core mission, our core mission is to serve the citizens of copper scope and be professional and effective and efficient in, in our service. Um, and I can say that, that our staff at animal control, um, they probably love the animals more than they love human beings. And I think that that is exemplified in their daily work. They have to deal with sometimes the not so nice humans that go down there. And that can affect a day. But if you just have to deal with the not so nice dog, you recover from that pretty quick, right? So all animal control officers go through animal control officer training. That's animal control officer one and two. And then we have two of our staff members have actually been through the DLA, which is the City's Development and Leadership Academy. And ultimately we're trying to formulate our replacements as we bring new people in. We want them to be able to replace the people that are in those positions today. Um, and then really, like I said before, uh, as far as humane advocacy, um, the animal control officers, I mean, we, we are not a no kill shelter. Um, I'm sorry to tell everybody we do have to euthanize some animals. but that's a last resort. We try to get those animals out to a forever home, whether that be through a rescue organization or through adoption. We do not follow the ordinance of euthanize the animal after three days. There was a council person in years past that said just kind of take care of them after three days, but that is not the goal. Uh, we are under the police department, so I of course lead the department, but, um, we have a dedicated staff of one animal control supervisor and four positions. Currently we only have three occupied, uh, with animal control officers. We have one part-time kennel assistant, uh, but that's supplemented by hundreds of hours every month. by quality volunteers that really show up for the organization. You can go out to animal control at any given time and you'll probably see two to three, maybe even four volunteers who are really, you would think they work there. They're such a staple in that environment. All animal control officers are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just like police officers, but we have to call them, we have to call the one that's on call. They do manage a fair number of call-outs each week, but they get compensated a little bit, right? It's a little bit of an inconvenience, but their dedication really, really shows through those call-outs. Hi, we partnered with Austin Avenue Hospital Partnership and it was ultimately to bring low cost shot clinics, can't say that very fast, to the city of Copper's Cove for our people that just can't afford to get their animals vaccinated. So for like 20 bucks, you can go and get your animal vaccinated. And then we sell microchips while you're there. So it could be like a one stop shop. We've had 34 successful clinics up until this point. And every year we host two to three of them. Most of the time here lately they've been held over at the VFW. And then 1,879 city licenses have been issued at those events. So remember, we're not a no-kill shelter, but 675 dogs were handled, and we had a 51% reunification rate. So when those animals come into the shelter, we try to get them back to their home, right? Of course you guys pass the microchip ordinance and that's helping. We haven't been able to do any of the low cost microchip clinics yet because we have to adjust the fee schedule. Once we adjust the fee schedule and we'll be able to start putting those out, we'll do several of those throughout the year. And then 148 dogs were adopted out to new forever homes. And really that's our goal. We want to make families with more animals, right? And then 63 dogs were held on quarantine or for safekeeping. So we're hitting the mark, right? 50% of the dogs that are coming in, we're getting them home or we're getting them adopted. So that's a total of about 72%, 72, 73% are going to a home. I think that's pretty darn good. cats, not so much, uh, cats, uh, they, they form or they, they pose a unique problem. Um, kitten litters outnumber dog litters exponentially, especially with community cats. Um, and for the, I know we had a very long discussion about community cats and, and the animal shelter advisory committee next month, we'll have a meeting. where we'll discuss more about the community cats. But it's not going to look really good for animal control to trap a cat in an alleyway and take it down to the shelter, bring it over to a vet, get it trapped, or get it neutered or spayed, and then be seen releasing a cat right back into the environment in which it was caught. We are animal control officers, right? Our job is to make sure that the animals are not just freely running around the neighborhoods. So with cats, we only had a 42% adoption rate. Now, we have partnered with Pet Supplies Plus, and they help us to adopt a lot of those cats out. We do utilize humane fosters and rescues, and 48 cats have been placed into those. Or in 2025, 48 cats were placed into those. So of course, if you have a cat or you have a dog, you have to have it licensed. Uh, and you, now you have to have it microchipped. So, um, those are our avenues that we'll be exploring as the time comes on. Um, a lot of, a lot of people don't realize that animal control has to deal with the wildlife as well. Uh, it's not quite as much as, as what they deal with dogs, but, uh, They found 268 different wild animals or were called in. 185 of those were returned to nature, but unfortunately there's sometimes where they're injured or what have you and we have to euthanize those. If we can return them to nature, we can get them to a preserve or something of that nature to try to do. And animal control also cleans up the streets by going out there and picking up the dead animals. And I can say that that's a, a task that nobody wants to do, but everybody likes to see it, right? I hate driving down the road and seeing a dead animal in the road. I don't care if it's a domesticated animal or a wild animal. I hate seeing that. I hate for, especially around the schools, for the kids going to school, have to see that. But animal control goes out there, they pick all of those up. The police department generally will call them in, but then animal control will go out there and pick them up. So out of the 802 animals, we had 372, or 46%, were returned to owner, and those are both animal, both dogs and cats. And 347 of them were adopted to forever homes, so 43% there, and then 83 of them placed in humane rescues. Um, another avenue or another thing that, that keeps on coming up and, and Ms. Lisa has had, uh, untold number of, um, open record requests about it is what the breed ban is in copper's Cove. And there is no breed ban in copper's Cove. You can own any domesticated animal that you'd like as far as a dog or a cat, right? There's not a breed ban. the animal shelter will not adopt out a pit bull, rottweiler, or chow chow. Statistics have shown that if a pit bull, rottweiler, or chow chow attacks a human being, that the likelihood of death is through the roof compared to what it is for a chihuahua or a collie or any of those other smaller animals. And anecdotally, we can say that if we look through all of our cases within the department, we see that pit bulls cause the most attacks on human beings in our community. So our goal as far as the police department is concerned and as far as animal control is concerned, we do not wanna change that policy. But again, no brief ban. Calls for service seem to be going down over the last 10 years, or I'm sorry, over the last five years, six years. We are working on developing a 10-year average so we can see if that's actually what's happening or if that's a statistical anomaly. But some of that is because of proactive patrols. Our animal control officers, I tell them, we don't want to be animal control at the animal shelter. or the animal care facility. We want to be out there in the community doing things to make our community better. There's also fewer stray encounters, and that's ultimately because people are taking care of their animals. Responsible pen owners, we don't deal with their pets. It's the irresponsible ones that we deal with. And, and then if it's a responsible pet owner, generally speaking, and I can show you email after email, uh, within the last two weeks of people emailing animal control saying my dog got out and I don't know where it's at. Did you pick it up? This is a picture of my dog. This is what my dog looks like. It answers to this. Uh, so, you know, those are unfortunate circumstances that their dogs got out. Right. That's a responsible person who's actually seeking to find their animal. The other animals that we ended up holding for three, four, five days, those animals were not owned responsibly. So we issued citations. Pretty much that's our only avenue of recourse is to issue a citation to people. We are not in the business of just taking their animals. We can do some seizure warrants through the county attorney's office, and we have had to do those, but that's not our goal. Our goal is to not separate the families, right? We want them to be responsible pet owners. So out of those citations, uh, domestic pet at large is probably the largest, uh, violation that we deal with. So the citations are down a little bit right now and, uh, or in 2025, they were down and I suspect that they're probably gonna be down a little bit in 2026 as well. We had a new animal control officer. She has since left our organization and went on to other employment. And so we had a brand new person who we were trying to show the ropes to. She's not out there writing tickets. And now we're without that person and we're going to have a brand new person come in. We're going to have to show them the ropes as well. It's going to be a little bit of delay. Additionally, our animal control supervisor, Tamara Hall, is also the local rabies control authority. She has to make sure that we remain in compliance with all the rabies laws. We took 137 active bite reports last year. 117 formal incident reports, and there was only one positive case in all of Coryell County for rabies last year, and that was a raccoon. It was not in the city of Copper Scope, though. It was out in Coryell County. And we had six dangerous animal orders. Six dangerous animal orders, that's animals that attacked human beings, caused damage or injuries. And then 19 aggressive animal designations managed and that's ultimately where an animal attacks another domesticated animal. So a dog attacks another dog as they're walking on a leash or something of that nature. Any questions from the council?

Madam Mayor Pro Temp, I do got one question. I know y'all have a lot of volunteers that come down and help daily. Approximately how many you have a day, just out of curiosity?

So I'll let Tamara answer that, but this last slide shows 2,600 hours in 2025 for our volunteers.

So in answer to your question, the average number of volunteers that we have currently is for volunteers that are there from anywhere between seven o'clock in the morning, whenever some of us show up, up until three o'clock in the afternoons. So, and it, we just have them with a lot of the times they're after they help us with the cleaning and all they are walking the dogs. They've got some of the dogs out in the pools and everything like that. So they, they, they are, they're a huge source of help for us.

I tell them thank them for the hard work and appreciate what y'all do.

Thank you. Tamara, before you leave today, I have some kitten food out in the car.

Thank you. We are going through that so fast. It is insane.

We had more donations at Chick-fil-A, so I have some for you.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, with the fosters, so this year we've started a more in-depth foster program, and because of the life-saving measurements that they are taking, the kittens are healthier. We've had Just last, uh, last month, I believe it was, we had three different adoption events and 59 cats or kittens were adopted out. And that is a huge part to the friends of copper's cove 501 C three that they're taking care of, you know, everything with the fosters and making sure they have all the needs and that the kittens are thriving. That's good news.

Wonderful. I just would like to say, please note, everyone, they are accepting donations all the time. But right now, kittens.

Can kitten food, please.

Kitten food, please. Thank you so much.

Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. But wouldn't it be better if people came to adopt the animals?

We can do that too. Okay, great, great. Thank you. All right, moving on. Let's see, police department annual report. Okay.

It's not the full screen. All right, thank you, Gerald. All right, these first few slides, you guys already know the information on those slides, but I definitely wanted to include them for the community. I want to start with our population growth, I think, to really tell the story of staffing and a lot of the challenges we're also facing in the police department. And not just our police department, but this is an industry-wide issue that I'm sure all of you are already aware of. But again, start with the population. And this is the 2025 resolution number, not the 2026. We had a resolution that showed we had 40,638 residents in our community, which is about 11% increase from 2021 in that span of five years. We are currently the 93rd largest city in the state of Texas out of 2,000 plus municipalities. For UCR purposes, for uniform crime reporting purposes, the Department of Public Safety categorizes us as a mid-city. They categorize 57 total cities, with Cedar Hill being one, just under 50,000, all the way to 57, Paris, the city of Paris being just above 25,000. And currently, the city of Coppers Cove ranks 18th as a mid-sized city, according to DPS UCR. So by no means, I don't think it's fair to call Copperas Cove a small town anymore. I know it has that feel, but we're really not a small town. For staffing in 2025, for most of the year, we averaged a staffing number of about 48 sworn officers out of our 54 approved positions. We also had an average of about 10 out of our 13 approved communications positions. And we were able to hire six to keep it at 48. But when you hire them in 2025, they're typically not going to be ready to go until 2026. So we experienced those vacancies for a long period of time. We're only able to identify one communication officer. Last year was much tougher to find communications officers than it was police officers, and we're still seeing that trend this year. Professional staff, we had Toni Mascunas, who was great for us, finally decided to retire and go on and do better things, fun things, and we were able to get her replaced last year with a really, really good person. Our current vacancies reflect two openings, but also keep in mind, I have three in the police academy, I've got one in field training. So that puts us at about six vacancies, not on paper, but just in staffing. And in communications, I show two vacancies, but we have some in field training. We still have to hire those two. We still have a big hole, because when you're missing four on the patrol side, that's one thing, but when you're missing four on the telecommunications side, you're talking a larger percentage of staffing that's missing. We've been able to do some creative things to help keep that office staff, because it is a 24-7 office. with contract employees. So we've got the city of Gatesville, I believe. Do we have someone from Lampasas, I believe? City of Lampasas and also the Coryell County Sheriff's Office. We have seven full-time experienced communications officers who are coming in in their off days to help us out. And that is what's really helped us bridge that gap. People sometimes ask me because they want to get a comparison of, well, this measurement is typically used when a lot of departments are trying to justify more staffing in their police departments. I don't really like to use the per 1,000 number because every community is different. Some communities may have more people, but they can police it with less officers and vice versa. But since that is a measurement, it does give you an idea of what staffing pressures can develop as a result of having a lesser number of officers. Out of those same 57 mid-sized cities that I mentioned earlier, currently Copper's Cove ranks 45th in officers per 1,000, with Eagle Pass They've got a really healthy number with only 29,000 people, but they've got 84 officers to police it. Again, another culture, it's a different community. Their needs are different. They can probably justify needing that number of officers all the way to Fate PD, who has a population of 30,000 and is able to do it with 26, 25 officers. So that puts us at 45 with 1.3 officers for every 1,000 people in the city of Copper Scope. From the communications side, We took in just a little over 28,000 calls for service in 2025, and that is a almost 10,000 call increase from 2016, which reflects, with peaks and valleys, about 1,000 more calls per year in the past 10 years. Also, I don't have it listed here, but our average response time, a lot of people might be surprised by this, we do a really good job with the minimum number of staffing we typically have on a patrol shift. We're able to get to every call under eight minutes with an average of about seven minutes and 53 seconds. That's one great thing about living in a mid-sized city that has a small town feel. I know for one thing, just to get from where I live on one side of town to the shopping center, it's about a 12-minute drive when you time it. So for officers to get anywhere in the city, whether it's an emergency call or a non-emergency under eight minutes, says a lot. Just to give you some idea, larger cities, our neighboring city, the city of Killeen, for a non-emergency, it takes about 25 minutes, and for emergency calls, it can take anywhere from 11 to 12 minutes. When you go to the really big big metropolitan-sized cities that I don't care to live in. For example, Austin, it's about a 45-minute response time, Fort Worth is about 52 minutes, and then Dallas is about 115 minutes. And in these larger communities, they don't always show up. The communications officer will tell you, understand you got a bicycle stolen out of the front yard, just go online and fill out a report yourself, and we'll just add it to our numbers. We go for everything so if we call and someone asks for an officer regardless of what it is one is going to show up We handled over 54,000 incidents last year because in in In addition to the 28,000 calls for service that rang into the communication center officers also Self-initiated 26,000 calls on their own so Another 50% of that number is our officers being out there proactive, not just sitting back waiting for that phone to ring and dispatch for them to respond. That breaks down to about 1,800 calls for service per officer in the year of 2025 and about 5,400 calls that were handled by our communications officers. 5,400 per communications officer. And we also had 1,900 arrests made in 2025. Traffic stops, just under 14,000 traffic stops were made and just under 4,500 citations were issued. So if anyone thinks that we have speed traps and we're just in it to pad pockets and make money, if you get stopped by a Copper Scope police officer, you have about a one in three chance of getting a citation. So not great odds, but way better than 100%. Our officers do a great job of using discretion and issuing citations only when it's necessary. Crashes, 580 crashes. It's an increase of about 20 crashes from the previous year, but we're still 162 crashes below the peak of 2017. On a side note, a little fun fact, there were 73 accident-free days in 2025. Our CID, our investigative team, were assigned 577 cases and they were able to clear 172 of those and seven of them were done through Crimestoppers tips, which is great because that just demonstrates our community getting involved in helping us solve crime, which is great. The 172 versus the 577, I don't look at that as a great clearance number, but you also have to understand with the drastic increase in fraud that's happening online, they are impossible to solve. we very rarely get a clearance on one of those. So we have taken a more proactive approach on that and started programs where we're trying to get into, whether it's civic groups or just church groups, wherever people allow our detectives to show up, they come and talk about fraud and really work hard at avoiding becoming a victim of that. And it's also not something that, it used to be something that was an epidemic with our elderly community. It's not anymore. It's everybody. It's surprising to know some of the people in our community that are very intelligent, good business people that have been duped. So it can happen to anyone. This gives you an idea of the narcotics that were taken off the streets of Copper's Cove in 2025 with the support of our Organized Crime Unit. Our newly formed mental health unit, I say newly, but we're in about our third year of our grant with this, with our four mental health officers, and this number is consistent with everything they've been doing since the program started. They took on 600 mental health calls. I don't know how we hit 600 right on the nose, but we did, and out of those 600, they took 318 reports. It also included 251 follow-ups for those 318 reports. And again, I just want to remind everybody, we have a mental health unit, but it's not a full-time unit. They are a functioning patrol officer on a shift, but they will take priority calls for those suffering with mental health issues. The same thing with our fugitive apprehension team. It's made up of three or four guys, just depending on the time of the year, and they were able to serve 114 felony warrants, 103 misdemeanor, 99 municipal, and 29 warrants that were not from our county. And again, not a full-time unit. Their real job is patrol work, so they fit that in as they can, and they do a really good job of hunting these people down from the city. Our record section, I mentioned our newest employee in the record section. That's Christina Yen Baker there. She has a personality that definitely matches our team. She's doing a great job for us. She's a quick study on open records. I think Lisa would agree with that. But I have this slide up here to give council an idea of the volume of open records that come into the city that are for the police department. We occupy 71% of all open records that come into the city, and I would say a good number of that is someone asking for video. The next two slides cover part one and part two, crimes. Jeremy did a lot of hard work in getting these numbers together for our 2025 report, so I'm gonna let him talk about these next two slides for you.

So part one crimes are the major crimes. That's the crimes that you would see on CSI, right? Murders, homicides, robberies, aggravated assaults, those types of things. And then part two crimes are more of the misdemeanor level offenses. Most of the part one crimes, except larceny, is gonna be a felony level offense. All the part two crimes, or most of the part two crimes, are gonna be misdemeanor level offenses. Now neighbors has kind of changed that. So it's part a and part B crimes, but it still follows the same general guidelines. Um, if you look over on the right hand side, you see that there's a change from average. And ultimately what I did was I've compiled a 10 year average. I've taken that average number of offenses. I've taken the standard deviation away from that number and added it to that number to find the usual range. So generally speaking, over the last 10 years, we've had zero to three homicides, and last year in 2025, we had one homicide. So that change from the average is 23% lower than what the average actually was. That 10 year average was 1.3, so it's 23%. one is 23% lower than that 1.3. For sex offenses, that's the area that we've had to kind of correct some problems in our reporting. When we switched over to NIBRS, prior to NIBRS, we were in UCR and UCR, categorized sex offenses in two different categories. Once it switched over to NIBRS, it actually categorized it into one category. So you're gonna see some changes there. We've been correcting that over the last 10 years, and it's working. We're at a 17% increase, but year over year, we're at a decrease, what, 12 decrease. Robberies, we had some really heavy robbery years in that 10-year period, but it's kind of plateaued out now, so we're 75% down on that. And really, motor vehicle theft, I don't know if everybody remembers, but during 2025, if you owned a Hyundai or a Kia, you had a very high likelihood of your car getting stolen. Well, that happened at Copper's Cove, too. We had 41 stolen vehicles. So that's the two areas are sex offenses and motor vehicle theft where we actually had an increase over what our 10 year average is. We move over to the part two crimes. Again, most of these are misdemeanors. Now fraud and embezzlement, we haven't taken an embezzlement report in the last 10 years, but fraud and counterfeiting, those do fall into a felony level offense. However, most of the time the person or the suspect is not in the continental United States. So as a brand new patrol officer, I thought I'm going to solve all these fraud cases. So I called the FBI and they said, that person is in Nigeria. we are not doing anything to help you. And I was like, oh my goodness, I can't believe that. So if you look over in that right hand side, we did have a 35% increase in liquor law violations, and that's over that 10 year average. But year over year, again, it went down, went down by 10. Uh, we did have a marginal increase in drunkenness and that's going to be like public intoxication, things of that nature. Um, and that was a nine year over a year, but over the 10 year average is still going down. So I would say that our police department, our officers are taking a proactive stance in crime. We're out there proactively enforcing crime. I always tell patrol officers we can teach any monkey to just drive around and look at cars and look at houses as we're driving around the city. But it takes a true police officer to go out there and investigate things and find things out there. And ultimately, that's what we're trying to do.

This next slide, I'm not gonna go over each one of these bullet points, but I just wanted the council to have an understanding of the challenges of collecting crime data. And what you always see isn't always true. You see police chiefs and mayors of larger communities who have press conferences gloating about, you know, murder's down by this many percent, assaults are down by, our city is much safer. Well, I don't always believe it because there's a lot of bullet points here that demonstrate how crime numbers can be manipulated, and they're not always accurate. The big one, though, is community legitimacy. If you have a community that does not trust their police department, they aren't going to report crime. If they don't report crime, we don't count it. We have a great community that I think we have a great relationship with. They trust us to show up and handle it to the best that we can. We're not always gonna solve it, but we're gonna try our best. We have responded to those stolen bike calls and returned bicycles. It does happen sometimes. but we count each and every one of them. We don't try and manipulate attempted murders back to assault or those sort of things. We go with what the advice of our DAs give us and we count it as such. I like to think that our number is a pretty, it's not 100% correct because there are times that someone does get something stolen, their car might have been broken into, and they're like, I don't even care, they didn't take anything, or they just took a few dollars, I'm going to work. And we don't always get those numbers captured, but I think for the most part, they're pretty legitimate. So for mid-sized cities in part one, crimes that Jeremy discussed on the first slide he talked about, People wanna know, how do we rank in crime? Well, amongst big cities, we're in the top 50%, if you wanna break it down, we're right there close to the middle, at 33 in crime, if you're measuring part one crimes versus 1,000 people. We're at about 14.46, with Fulshire being one at 2.58, and then they must have, like, A nerf dome over the city or something. I don't know how they're able to accomplish that with Texarkana is at about 35.84 in the 56th position. So we're right about the midpoint. I don't love that number, but I also know that there are certain reasons why, as I said earlier, that there's crime data that isn't always accurate either. But I own it, and we're working hard to always elevate ourself on that crime prevention scale. But this slide I actually am a little bit proud of. Although we're 33rd in crime, when you talk about our ability to clear crime with our population, with the number of officers that we have to work with, out of all mid-cities, we ranked eighth in clearance, which I think is really impressive for our department. This is the list of accomplishments. Again, not going to go over each one of these, but just wanted the council to see all the things that we did in 2025. I will never accept an annual report that doesn't have at least this many bullet points on it. We'll never have a flat year. We're always going to have things that we accomplish. I don't care how shorthanded we are. I don't care how we're struggling in the staffing department. We're going to do things that are positive for this community. Our officers are bought in on doing the work up front, the proactive work up front, whether it's through community relations programs or just proactive policing to prevent that number from happening. It's easier to go out there and meet people in your neighborhoods and get to know everybody than it is to go back and have to do 20 burg reports at the end of your shift because you didn't do your job making sure that those homes were safe throughout the night. So that's the front end work. We'll never realize what that number actually is from helping us decrease crime, but we're certainly working hard to make sure that it happens. We like to meet and get to know people during the good times because we know the bad time is gonna come and it makes dealing with that situation We also have two pages worth of goals here. Again, not gonna go over those. You can see what those are. But many of these goals we've already accomplished. And hopefully in 2027, when I talk about our accomplishments, most of these boxes are checked. With that, I just want to mention that National Night Out is happening on October 3rd this year. It's going to be a special one. I think this is our 29th one, so we've been doing this a really long time, and my team has done a great job of growing it. I wish I could take the credit for National Night being what it is, but I get zero credit for that. They do everything. I'm just told to show up, and that's the easy part. This year, it's going to be a Major League Baseball theme because, as you've probably already heard, our fallen officer, Elijah, he was a big fan of baseball. So we want to honor him with that. This one is going to be dedicated to him. So I hope all of you, I hope the community all comes out and spends time with this and sees this. With that, I'll take any questions that you might have.

Council, thank you, Chief. Anybody have any questions? I just want to say thank you to Chief Wilson and our police department for all that you do for our community, protecting and serving our community. It also needs to be noted also about the requests that you actually take with certain organizations in the community, especially with ISD, where you show up upon their request. So not only do we have that to increase the community relationship and doing what you're doing, just want to make sure that's recognized as well, and thank you.

Well, thank you for saying that. And I also want to add that the missing department in public safety was the fire department in this presentation, but... I'm giving the, I'm giving the fire chief a break this year because he should at least have at least be here for the full year before he talks about that year. So I look forward to seeing him next year with an update. Thank y'all.

Thank you.

City managers report. Ryan Haverlaw, city manager.

Thank you, Mrs. Wilson. City Council, Mayor Pro Tem has instructed me to be brief. So with that being said, I'm gonna cover major items, not every single item that I had on my report, but if you have any questions, please let me know, and interrupt me, because I'm gonna keep talking until you interrupt me. So looking at capital projects, one of the really important ones that you need to be aware of is the street maintenance plan that is being prepared will be presented to city council on August 4th. With public works projects, I'm proud to say we have received the permit from TxDOT to proceed with the solid waste improvements needed on FM 116. Doesn't mean we're doing the construction yet, but we got the permit. with Parks and Recreation projects. We do have a big silt bag out at City Park because the dredging is complete of City Park Pond. and that pond now has an average depth of about five feet and that entire if you haven't seen it go out there check out that bag that is only only giving us about an average of five feet in that pond which means that should help you understand how shallow that pond was but even though it's shallow and even though it's existing five feet it's still dangerous to get in that pond because that silt allows you to sink in to it Moving on to city activities, we are beginning the Citizens Leadership Academy in August. We have a full academy roster. So thank you to city council members. I know several of you had a hand in getting people to apply. The strategic and marketing communication plan, we held a single town hall on July 14th with three different sessions as part of that town hall. We had a total of 88 total attendees, which are duplicate attendance if an individual attended three different sessions. So if we kind of exclude city council, because you've been in this process, city staff, EDC staff, chamber staff, we had about 30 residents and business owners attend that town hall and contribute in the development of that marketing communication plan. Parkland Dedication Ordinance. We haven't made the progress that council has demanded and I apologize. I will be working with staff to get one final meeting and one final report to city council on where we stand. Preview, I don't anticipate a unified recommendation. Impact fee study, you will have that presentation on August 4th to City Council. And then I do need to cover the grant statuses, because we've had quite a bit of action. Usually I tell Council we don't have much going on. Looking at the EDA, the Economic Development Corporation has received bids, so there is future action anticipated on awarding the bid. and authorizing the necessary funding to complete that project in the very, very near future. OLDCC was the planning grant that is closed out now, but Mr. Welch is moving forward with the concept of applying for another grant to assist with the design of the ACP and TIF, which is the Access Control Point and Truck Inspection Facility. The DSIP grant is the ramps on State Highway 9. We are awaiting OLDCC's approval of change order number four, which would provide a full overlay of all of State Highway 9. We're just waiting on their approval at this point. And we are well ahead of the grant timeline, so we're looking really good with that grant and that project. The DEAG grant, unfortunately, that project has slipped. Here's the problem is we have a contract with Dominion Energy to execute that grant project. Dominion had an initial contract with Tesla to provide the battery backup systems that were proposed in the grant. Tesla has backed out. So now we do not have a vendor to provide the supply or the installation of the energy resiliency project. With that being said, that means the grant timeline is at risk of not accomplishing the project. And so I am working with the governor's office, the Texas Military Preparedness Commission, to work through this process. But it is all dependent on Dominion Energy having a contract to actually execute the project. In the end, the risk is we have to turn down the grant funding and provide a report that we were not able to execute on that grant. As a region, we have done really well with grants through DAG, and we are moving forward with the next grant application through DAG. This one is just not turning out very well so far. And then the railroad crossing elimination grant, the RCE grant, uh, that one is proceeding well now that city council is selected and we have a con consultant on board. Uh, Mr. Lewis with our development services department is doing great at keeping that moving forward. Um, and that, that consultant is doing phenomenal in working with, uh, RCE and the federal rail administration representative to get that moving forward. I'll take any questions, Mayor Pro Tem on my report.

All right. Well, thank you, Ryan. Any other questions, comments for Mr. Havilah? OK, we can move on to item J, items for future agendas.

Nothing for me, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Nothing for me, ma'am.

I have nothing, ma'am. Nothing, ma'am. No items.

OK. I would like, for me, excused absence. If there's any support for me having excused absence for July 7. I support. Oh, my goodness. OK. OK. Seeing that there is no executive session for this evening, I call this meeting adjourned at 828 PM. Meeting adjourned.