City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning. I'd like to call this meeting to order. This morning our invocation will be given by Pastor James Miller with Bridge of Life Church.

Shall we bow in prayer? God of grace, peace, love, and unity, we assemble ourselves in this place today asking for the embodiment of your character in all that we do. May every word be tailored with love and respect. May the unity of peace of this community be upon all speakers and all who gather in this place. We pray for the mayor, councilman, city staff, and the citizens and residents of Corpus Christi, Texas. May your love continue to abide with us for the betterment of this community. It is in your name we pray.

Amen. Thank you, Pastor James. And this morning, our Pledge of Allegiance will be, to the flag of the United States and to the Texas state flag, will be led by Connor Skrobarchik. He is a sixth grader at St. Patrick's Elementary School. He's an A Honor Roll student, Sergeant of Arms on Student Council, and of course, Boy Scout Troop 162 and an Arrow Light recipient. And probably most importantly... He is Mr. Ryan Skrobarchik's son, who is our intergovernmental director.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Please join me in honoring the Texas flag. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.

Connor, thank you, and good luck in your studies, Connor.

Go Shamrocks. Go Shamrocks.

Ms. Huerta, would you please call the roll?

Mayor Paulette Guajardo. Present. Council members Roland Barrera. Here. Sylvia Campos. Here. Eric Antu. Here. Gil Hernandez. Here. Kaylin Paxson. Here. Everett Roy. Here. Mark Scott. Here. Carolyn Vaughn. Here. City Manager Peter Zanoni. Present. City Attorney Miles Risley. Here. Mayor and Council, a quorum of the Council and the required charter officers are present to conduct the meeting. Thank you, Ms. Huerta.

Next, we'll go to item E, and that is our city manager's comments and update on city operations. We have one item, Mr. Zanoni.

Yes, good morning, Mayor and Mayor and members of the council and the community. We do have a great update this morning on our water supply. You know, we have been maintaining a dashboard that shows supply and demand. And given the recent rains, not even including this past weekend, but the month of June's rains over the past couple of two, three weeks, As we reported this morning, we have an update on the date for the level one water emergency. The rains have moved it nine months into 2027. So September of 2027 is that date, which is clap worthy for sure. Yeah.

So I have to intervene because I know you were in a meeting, but I had to, I thought This has to be a typo. I thought maybe Peter messed up here. And then I called you. So anyway, this is such good news. This is such a good thing.

It's great for our region and our community. And we still are bringing on those additional water supply projects along with the rain. So Nick is going to walk us through the dashboard to include the assumptions that we use as a few new assumptions in this dashboard. Most notably, some maintenance and work on the Mary Roads pipelines. We'll take it down and schedule the two. But even with transporting less water, that September 2027 is the new date. So great news for the region, for the community, and for all of our customers. And I'll turn it over to Nick.

Thank you, Peter. Nick Winkleman, Chief Operating Officer, Corpus Christi Water. And before I start the presentation, just some quick update. So our combined reservoir capacity is currently at 15%. That was as of this morning. Lake Corpus Christi is 31.3%. Choke Canyon Reservoir is 8.7%. Maybe if they can move to the next slide for me, the mouse isn't working. Okay, so as the city manager stated, we've recently had some beneficial rains located within our watershed. So I wanted to provide this graph that was prepared by our consultant. This is our western reservoir storage. And again, this is the combined Choke Canyon Reservoir and Lake Corpus Christi. You can certainly see the blue line is the reservoir capacity. You can certainly see that decline, which we've all been tracking for the last five years. Obviously, in May and June timeframe, there's that significant bump to increase to where we're at today. which is approximately 15% reservoir storage. There is a chart on the right that gives you a little bit of historic information. So the last time our western reservoirs were at 50% capacity was in March of 2022. 40% was in July of 23. 30% March of 24. and 20% was December of 2025. All that being said, this is not a point in time where we are to let up or to get comfortable. We must continue to execute our plan to diversify the water supply. If we could go to the next slide, please.

Salud.

So working with our consultant, we've updated the dashboard. First, I want to go through some of the inputs and assumptions. So the inflows or all of those inflows that were captured on or before June 18th were realized. They're recognized in this model. Therefore, any of the beneficial rain that we've received over this past weekend are not included in this model. The projected stream inflows for the rest of the year are a total of 10,438 acre feet. That is very low. It certainly would be considered a conservative worst case scenario. However, it is a scenario that we have seen both in 25 and 24. The model assumes that the Nueces groundwater program continues to operate as per the established protocols and the Ben and Banks permit. It does assume positive water demand offsets as a result of the wastewater effluent reuse program. Those offsets will begin in December of 2026 with amounts increasing through calendar year 2027. In the model, the LNRA curtailment from Lake Texana is now projected to be 20% in May of 2027. That's a significant factor that is due to the beneficial rains that they've seen in Lake Texana. That estimate was provided by LNRA and is also extremely conservative. The other thing taken into account in this dashboard update is demand reductions associated with Alice, Mathis, and Beeville. Each of those three municipalities have water supply projects of their own. They're working very hard to bring those supply projects online, and we've adjusted the water demand due to those new projects later this calendar year. And then additionally, we know there are still upgrades required at the Bloomington and Woodsboro pump stations. Those upgrades include the installation of spare pumping equipment. So we have the spare pumping equipment. However, we're not able to install it because it would require lowering the pump schedule of the Mary Rose pipeline. Besides the spare pumping equipment, we have additional electrical upgrades, specifically variable frequency drives, and then other valving upgrades as well. So included in the model is operating the Mary Roads Pipeline at Schedule 4. I'm sorry, at Schedule 3 for four weeks. And Schedule 3 is 55 million gallons a day. That will allow for the upgrades to take place at the Woodsboro pump station. And then we will operate at schedule 2 for 3 weeks and that will accommodate the upgrades at the Bloomington pump station. The next slide is a water supply dashboard. Again the top curve of the dashboard is our anticipated water demand. You can see pink dots on that demand curve. That is to signify where we are projecting an offset of demand. That's a result of our wastewater reuse project or also a result of other projects from Alice Mathis of Beeville where they are bringing on new supplies themselves. The bottom blue line, that's the western reservoir capacity. It's a straight line at the very bottom. You can see the bump or the uptick in that line in the May-June timeframe. This is something that's been very different from the previous dashboards because that line has been relatively flat. The additional bars on the line account for our new supplies. So at the bottom, you have the brownish bars. It's our Nueces County Groundwater Program. The light blue bars in the center, that is all of the eastern supply from Lake Texana and the Colorado River through the Mary Roads Pipeline. And then the dark blue bars at the top, that's the supply that we're providing through the western reservoirs. If you notice in November and December of this year, the dark blue lines are a little bit larger and that is because that's the time period where we would be taking the Mary roads pipeline down to a, uh, lower capacity or different pumping operating schedule. As, as you, as you know, the level one water emergency is defined as the date that we are projected to be six months away from supply not meeting demand. As the chart shows, that new date is now September of 2027. Previously, it was December of 2026. Now one thing I'd like to say is that we will continue to, you know, our goal is to update this approximately every 30 days. So at each one of those updates, we take into account the inflows into our reservoirs. We take into account updates from LNRA regarding the status at Lake Texana. And we take into account the production of our wells and our new water sources. One thing that could potentially improve the next time you know over the next course the next couple of months is possibly enhanced projections on the water reuse program. We know our partners are moving very quickly to accelerate those projects and hopefully in the next couple of months we'll be able to improve those those projections to happen earlier than later in the year. I would also like to point out that the significant drivers of this are, of course, we have steady production from the Mary Roads Pipeline. We're very fortunate to have not been curtailed from Lake Texana or asked to cut back from the Colorado River, which is managed by the Lower Colorado River Authority. Additionally, we continue to see the benefits of our Nueces County Well Program, That program started last year. In fact, the first well went online in April of 2026. So we're fortunate for that program as it continues to help our situation. And again, to review, the estimated date for level one water emergency, and that's when we're projected to be six months away from supply not meeting demand, has been updated to September 2027. And with that, I'll stand by for any questions.

Councilman Cantu. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Nick, great news. Great suit, by the way. So I've got a question. Choke Canyon Reservoir, three months ago, was at 8.0%. Today is at 8.7, which doesn't seem very much. But can you explain to the public that that reservoir is like five times bigger than Lake Corpus Christi? And if I'm correct, what's inside of Choke Canyon is more or less the same amount of water we have in Lake Corpus Christi?

Yes. Councilman. So the, the storage capacity of choke Canyon reservoir is approximately three times larger than Lake Corpus Christi. Okay. Currently Lake Corpus Christi is holding more water than choke Canyon reservoir. So that's not, it's not a great one. Say that one more time. So the amount of water stored currently at Lake Corpus Christi is more than the amount of water currently stored at choke Canyon reservoir. And that's not a good place to be in. And you noticed that, and you hinted on it, the combined reservoir capacity still is only 15%. So when your largest reservoir continues to suffer, your percentages are still going to be very low. And if we're going to see significant change in those reservoir percentages, we really need more inflow in the Cho Canyon Reservoir.

Got it. And there's still water coming in right from the rains?

There is, yeah. So this dashboard update did not include the... The beneficial rains we received over the weekend, the hydrology, that modeling was done previously. It was done Thursday and Friday, and then we worked on the model over the weekend to verify all the inputs were correct. So it does not include that at all. And that's one reason why it's very important to continue to update this model about every 30 days.

Okay. I think we're in good shape right now, you know. There's a saying on Facebook, we're kicking the can down the road or down the street, whatever the case is, and that's not going to be the case for this council. We're going to continue to find water and water projects, and we're going to continue with desal, but safe and in a better location. And so I just want to thank you and your team for all the hard work you guys are doing. Keep it up, and there's going to be great days coming ahead of us for sure. Thank you.

Councilwoman Campos.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, I also want to thank you for that wonderful report. And God bless these rains. And I also wanted to just add one other thing, if you could add to the website. I think I already, well, I sent you a text of a constituent asking, and I agree with this constituent, stating, you know, the news always wants to report how bad things are, but not so much how things are actually getting better. And one of those things that they constantly report on is how low our reservoirs are. So right now, I mean, at least let's put it front and center that Lake Corpus Christi is at 30%. 31.3. 31.3 so whenever you go to the website to the Corpus Christi water dashboard that's not the first thing you see I would like to see that and I know I'm not the only one that would like to see that but to have at least from Lake Texana since we get our water from Lake Texana where they're at and where Lake Corpus Christi and Cho Canyon can we do that can you add that at the very front

We can look into that. I would just submit, Councilwoman, that combined capacity is critical.

Yes.

And this is not a point in time where we should get comfortable.

No, it's not, but we do need to be factual and we do need to be able to educate the people because just like we do with the opposite, we tend to really hit hard on how low things are, but when things are getting better, we need to report the same. So I'm just saying let's just be up front.

Yeah, Councilman, we'll look at that. We could have three bar charts.

And then you can have the combined level, yes. Okay.

And we do thank the local media. I think all three have reported as headline stories this morning, the progression here in nine months. So we thank Chris Six and the caller and KIII.

Okay. Well, I missed that today.

No problem.

But I've been watching the news. I'm like, hey, I noticed that they're not reporting, you know, our watershed now.

Right.

So I apologize.

No worries. Yep.

I see one of the news media out here. So thank you. Thank you for that.

And I've got your notes.

Okay. Thank you, Nick. Councilman Scott.

Thanks, Nick. Hey, we're going to take the Mary Roads pipeline down for a while. We're still going to get our full allotment by the end of the year.

Yeah. Councilman, thank you for asking that. So, uh, how it's even with taking the Mary roads pipeline down to schedule three for four weeks and schedule two for additional three weeks, we will still utilize all of our contractual amount with Lake Texana. all of our water right with lower Colorado, and then we will also use still a portion of the Formosa water.

Oh, good.

So by doing that, we're still taking advantage of the Formosa water as well.

Awesome. Thank you. So did we change how we calculated the... stream flow for the rest of the year into the western lakes. Now you're saying we're going to get 10,438 acre feet

You know, we didn't change it from what was previously in the dashboard. My intent was to show that it's still conservatively minimal with the goal of if we get more than that, we're in better shape. And you can change that.

When do they do this again next month?

We'll do it about every 30 days, and then we'll correspond it with the council meeting. Got it.

Thank you. So... So, hey, can you put the demand slide back up, please, sir? So I thought that our demand, I thought that we had reduced our demand from the 135 to a lower amount in the last 12 months. Is that not true? Because like in July, you have it at basically 135, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So that's our peak demand. And of course, because we're not in... because we are not in level one water emergency, there's no curtailment. So we're, we're still showing that peak demand. However, we're, we're still offset by, um, by the wastewater reuse program. And those are those pink dots.

Sure. Sure.

That's where we've showed it decreased a little bit.

I thought that we were at one 35 back when everybody was watering yards. I thought we were one 35. I don't pick a number three years ago. And I thought that, It'd be interesting. Let me ask it this way. Could you just provide me or us what 2025 looked like, right? The months, the demand and the months for 2025.

The actuals for 2025. We will do that.

Somehow I thought that we had lowered demand, which if we really have lowered demand from 135 to, say, 120 in these summer months, it stretches that, you know, it stretches that level one emergency date further out. And I've certainly been wrong many times already today. So is anybody helping us look at Choke Canyon and why? I get the rain. I get that. But I think there's a lot of concern that for whatever reason, there are other impacts that are affecting the ability of Choke to fill up, other impoundments. Are there concerns about other people putting their straw in the river or no?

I... I would say there's always concerns about people putting, drawing from the river that may not be approved to do so. One thing that I can say is our staff at the Choque Canyon Reservoir, they do get out and try and monitor the situation the best they can. A lot of that is not policed by the city of Corpus Christi or Corpus Christi Water, so all we can do is if we notice, make some observations, and then report it to the state agencies.

Okay. I just was wondering if our friends at the NRA were engaged or if that was a big enough concern that we've reached out to them because, right, they're the river authority.

Esteban's here.

Well, for the record, Estevan Ramos, Assistant Director of Water Supply Management. That's a very good question. We get all the time concerning water rights and water use along our rivers and streams. It is governed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. In our specific area, there is what they call a water master in that division of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. They're responsible for the surface water rights and enforcement. Within this area above Cho Canyon, you run into the Edwards Aquifer and the recharge zone, and a lot of the flows that have come in have been trickling into the Edwards. And so you have to have these large flood events that then fill the Edwards at the same time, moving down across the Frio and the San Miguel, then into... Lake Cobras, excuse me, Cho Canyon, and then eventually Lake Cobras Christie. I work with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the watermaster, to keep up with any enforcement actions and questions I'm going to be meeting with them at their... meeting in July. So I'll bring these concerns and these questions to the group. Cool man. Who's the water master city of San Antonio?

No kidding. Not that we don't trust them. We just, you know, we want to make sure not taking our water. Who is the water master?

The water master is a program. Uh, the water master for our area is Angie Sanders. She's been there for approximately off the top of my head, three to four years. And she works for the text commission on environmental quality. Got it.

Okay. Thank you, sir. Two, two, two more comments. Question, how does Texas, how does Texana calculate their inflows? I mean, that's interesting to me that they're saying we're going to get to 20% again in whatever it is, a year.

Yeah, so how the Lavaca Navidad River Authority handle that, they look at the elevations of their conservation pool within Texas. and then those projections are based on zero inflows going forward. So that's ultra, ultra conservative, but they are the managing agency and we're using the information they provide.

And if it rains in July or August or September, we would make those adjustments because it'd be rain that we didn't expect. Because I think it's really odd that they project zero inflows when that that lake system i don't think has ever had zero inflows so i just want my take on all this is is that this is great news i still think we look i tell people i look at the lake and say i just don't trust you anymore i don't think i'm going to trust you ever again fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me i think we should create an operating system that allows us to meet our demand without using the lake system. And we use the lake system when it's full to take down merry roads or to reduce our other options, groundwater or desalination. My sense is we should develop an operating system that simply says we can supply our demand without using the Western Lakes. So that's where I'm at. Thanks.

Councilwoman Vaughn.

Well, I would thank you, Mr. Sinoni, for the rain, but you had nothing to do with it. It was the good Lord, so we're blessed. And that was a really good report. And I'm with Sylvia. We need to make sure that we focus on the positive because this is a good report we've not had in a very, very long time. I have a couple of questions for you. Alice Mathis in Beeville, how much did that reduction, how much was that?

So what we did is later this fall, and I think we modeled it in September timeframe, typically the three of them combined would take about seven to seven and a half million gallons a day. And in the September timeframe, we reduced that by about two and a half million gallons a day. Now we'll have more feedback from them. You know, all of their projects are in different stages and they're ramping up. Sure. So for the next update, we'll confirm those numbers with them.

The other thing I want to talk to you about, the western and the eastern fields. How many days are you pumping out there?

So because of the significant rains we've had in June, and the flow, the amount of inflow below the Wesley Seal Dam and ahead of the Saltwater Barrier Dam, the river elevation has been very high, and then it's been overflowing the barrier dam. Therefore, we've only run the wells nine days for the month of June.

Only nine days.

Nine days this month.

I hope everyone hears that. Only nine days. I don't think our people out from that area are here, but only nine days because I think everyone's under the assumption you are doing it every day.

No, it wouldn't make sense to operate them if water's going over the barrier. No, it wouldn't. That's correct.

So how many MGDs are you getting from each one, the eastern and the western?

So the eastern well field would continue to operate at 4.5 MGD, and that's per the bed and banks.

Yeah.

And then the western well field, it was about 13 to 14 MGD before June.

Okay. Ed Rochelle, how many acres is that?

Ed Rochelle is approximately 2,500 acres.

Okay. And on that 2,500 acres, how many wells are you planning on doing?

So on the Ed Rochelle property, we've got, there'll be an additional 15 wells is what we're proposing, but we're not necessarily going to drill all those wells.

Okay.

The intention for the, those additional walls on Ed Rochelle property is to spread the production across a larger property area. So across the Western well field, the 250 acres also known as the Sutherland ranch, and then across Ed Rochelle. We have an existing production permit, and we are not looking to increase that at all. We're just looking to drill more wells to spread that production evenly across the entire properties.

Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Councilman Hernandez.

Nick, on your reuse, why are you accounting for it as demand reduction as opposed to a raw water source?

It's a matter of how the dashboard is put together. So we'll use Valero as an example. So we've signed a contract for them to purchase up to 8 million gallons a day of reuse. Last month, they used about 8.5 million gallons a day. So essentially, once all of that comes online, their demand decreases from 8.5 million gallons a day to 0.5 million gallons a day, once all the reuse is online.

No, I understand that, but in this chart, you use it differently than other water supply sources. Instead of having like a pink part of the bar, you just simply reduce the demand. It doesn't look like there's an additional supply.

Would you consider the wastewater reuse a supply? I understand what you're saying, Councilman. It's when we initially put the dashboard together, that was the consensus of the group, including the consultants. And one of the reasons was because initially as the reuse projects come up to speed, right? So in December, we'll have about one to one and a half MGD of reuse. So that line would be so small, you wouldn't be able to see it, the bar and otherwise. So we decided to depict it better with the pink dots as a demand offset.

Councilman, we can try that version to show it as a supply line.

Well, I'm talking about future looks. It looks so the graph doesn't look like we have less supplies.

Yeah, we can try it as a supply. I saw another graph that one of our rating agencies did. One of the modelers did it for the rating agencies where it shows it as a supply. So we have that. So we'll work with Nick and the modelers to try that. We may switch to that.

Maybe present it differently.

Yeah, just show it as a supply. Okay. So, I mean, especially out in future supply, Right. In the future timeframe. Ultimately, it's going to be 16 million gallons, so it's a lot of volume. Right. It may look better as a supply.

What I want to make sure we see is the additional supplies coming on. I mean, I was never a fan of this particular one, of this particular graph, because it's very hard to get numbers from it, and you have multiple things happening. But, you know, if we're going to do it, we want to make sure that we're attributing supply to supply. Also, I see that you added the Evangeline well water supply as a green one, but have not added it to the graph as of yet. And I know we're still in discussions with Evangeline Laguna and all the relative parties, so we'll just hold off on that. But as soon as that comes on in play, we should start adding that as well. What I want to make sure we get across with this discussion is that I think Thankfully the rains have put us in a position to where we'll be able to get more water online next year from these additional sources that we've we've made the effort to do in a kind of a barn burning fashion But we'll we should be able to avoid curtailment as soon as some of these projects come online Which I want to make sure we get that across I mean this is assumption this graph assumes that no additional water sources going into our reservoirs or in Lake Texana, right?

Right, so once we get confirmation of additional supplies, they would be added to the graph.

No, what I'm saying is that this assumes, and this is worst case scenario, that not another drop of rain falls in any of the watersheds.

No, it does have minimal assumptions for Chill Canyon and Lake- And what are those minimal assumptions? It's 10,438 acre feet for the rest of the year, which essentially is the new worst case. It's what we've seen in 2024 and then saw again in 2025.

So you're using the rainfall from 2025 in both Lake Texana and then Lake Corpus Christi and Cho Canyon.

So the Lake Texana, the information we're getting directly from Lavaca Navidad River Authority, and their projections do not include additional inflow. That's the difference.

This goes to what Councilman Scott had said, is that we're making an assumption here that there's going to be very minimal rain or no rain at all in the case of Lake Texana. I mean, that's kind of a false assumption.

Well, we're utilizing the information that they are providing us. We're not critiquing the way they evaluate their watershed.

Okay. So I'll make this statement then. This is worst-case scenario. This is not necessarily reality. This is worst-case scenario, and we were going to prepare for worst-case scenario. But the actual reality is probably there's going to be more water available to us based on just historical rainfall totals, even for 2024 and 2025.

Yeah, which is why we want to update it every 30 days.

Okay, so with that in mind, I believe that we'll have enough water to get us through until we get some of these additional water sources online so we can avoid curtailment. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Councilman.

Councilman Campos.

Yes, I just wanted to, even with all these projects coming online and what have you, it still is not going to get us out of our drought restrictions, is it? I hate to throw a wrench in our good news, but is that correct? Even though we are going to be doing the wastewater reuse, hopefully for next year, I think I think up to 12, if I'm not mistaken, right?

16.

Okay, 16. Even with all that, we still are not going to be able to go back and review and say, you know, lift some of these restrictions? I mean, is that?

So what we've committed to doing is once these new water supply projects are actually fully online and operating, we would go back and look at the drought levels and the restriction levels to take a look at the full water supply. Currently, as you know, it's based on the Western reservoirs, which is the biggest volume of water. So I would say it's absolutely correct right now. But as these new projects come online, we're committed to reviewing those trigger stages.

Right. But that's why we're doing this, so that we can have diversity, so that we do not have to rely on the reservoirs.

Yeah, Councilwoman's hard to interrupt, but we're already working with our consultant, Carollo, to begin that analysis. So we're not going to wait until everything's on. So we've tasked Carollo, who helps us with this model.

Yes.

Councilwoman Paxson and I have talked about this in a one-on-one meeting. So because we have new and additional sources now, just relying on the volume of the western reservoirs, it's not up to date anymore. So we're seeing how do we bring all these sources and what is the trigger stages for these stage one, two, and three. But I did have Nick do some rough analysis. So what we see today is September of 27. If we, and this is an if, we're not saying we're doing it, if we allowed watering one time a week, It would move the emergency to when, Nick? It would move it close to six months. Six months. So if we start, you know, if we start, so we're not saying to do it, but we're looking at it now.

Well, that's a good example, but I could give you another example. If industry were to cut back 1%. Yeah. 1%. Right. You know?

Yeah.

So that could be the other way of balancing that. It's not always has to go back to residents.

The key message though, without, uh, without, uh, discussing the nuances of it is that we're working on that because we realize in the council does, and I think the community does now we have more discretion and sources of water and the reliance just on how the water is in the Western reservoir. It's not a good barometer anymore. So we'll be updating that. We'll be here to counsel in the coming months with some new policy for discussion at a minimum.

And I do applaud, you know, Valero and Flint Hills for, you know, doing the contract with the wastewater reuse. But I'm also hoping that Gulf Coast Growth Ventures comes up with their own plan, just like they did, you know, these two companies. So, again, hopefully industry will do their part.

Thank you, Councilwoman. It's 12-12. Thank you, Nick. Today's update was very encouraging, and I appreciate the work the staff has done refining these forecasts. I think our biggest takeaway is that while the recent rains have bought us some time, we have to stay focused. on our long-term water supply. This is a huge, huge milestone, but we have to continue to be very, and I appreciate that y'all are being conservative in what you're putting, and I think initially it was the opposite, and we were projecting more rain than was going to happen, and that was proven over the last, probably six, eight months. So thank you for being very conservative, and I agree with you. You don't put one thing on there until we're actually, we are receiving the water, and it's an actual project that is moving water forward. So thank you for that. We're gonna move on, Nick, to public comment. It's 12.15, so I wanna take a moment to address the rules of decorum. The council chambers is a place of public business, a forum for civic discussion, decision making, and service to the people of Corpus Christi. We're here to do the people's work and we'd like to proceed in that good spirit. If you would like to speak on a specific agenda item during its discussion, you do not need to sign up beforehand. I will ask for public comment when the council considers the item. At that time, you may come up to the podium and speak. I will ask now the city attorney, Miles Risley, to review the council meeting rules of decorum. These rules will be displayed on the television screens above for your reference. Mr. Risley.

All citizens must be courteous, polite, and respectful of one another, including the city council and city staff. The mayor and council members shall be referred to by title and or title surname. All remarks must be addressed to the mayor and city council and not to the council members as individuals. Citizens are only permitted to speak on city related subject matter speaking on any any non city related matter is prohibited Loud boisterous profane or obscene language or behavior is not allowed citizens must refrain from any disturbing noise demonstration or other act disrupting to the City Council business Thank You mr. Risley

So in-person comments are limited to three minutes. For or WebEx video speakers, Corpus Christi residents receive up to three minutes, and non-residents up to one minute. A visible timer positioned near the city secretary's desk will help managing that allotted time. If you have a petition or relevant information that you'd like us to have, please present it to the city secretary prior to speaking. So with that, we have 25 speakers today, and we're going to start with Bart Bartleson. Brad, I'm sorry. I read Bart. His last name is Bartleson. Brad Bartleson.

I don't have any copies today.

You know, evaporation control would show you value our water. That's 51 MGD. Easy thing to do. Brad Bartelsen, Corpus Christi, errant modeling of the inner harbor flows, inadequate far field modeling, and TCEQ's failure to protect our bays smells of bad things. A dead leg inner harbor flow is dominated by Nueces power plant at 335 MGD, yet TCEQ CC model portrayed the title 1.5 MGD as directing the flow from the turning basin to Corpus Christi. TCEQ stated in the permit that the applicant did extensive modeling, extensively misleading. And this proves it right here. This is a flow diagram just validating that same point. The flow emanates into Oasis Bay from the power plant discharge, it makes a circuit around North Beach and then comes back into Inner Harbor the core mix model has the flow going the opposite way It's invalid and the permit should be revoked On the far field model That was recently completed it did not get to salinity excursions that are seen in the data and And the reason was I went through the studies and found that these excursions happen because of the effect of the saltwater marsh. They bordered that off. This is some data of years past and recent indicating that same effect. But you see that yellow dash line they walled off. So that has no impact. But that area is the cause of those high salinity excursion. And my question was when we do the inner harbor Do we make that worse and how much so we don't know that you don't see any numbers here above 40 on the previous assault going up in the mid 40s even as high as 80. They also decided not to consider intake as well as diversion even though that 2018 study indicated that that was a problem. I didn't see this till recently the greatest density of larvae and eggs is near shore so when you're sucking that in you're killing 100 percent of the larvae and eggs and those are located right next to shore that hasn't been brought up in TCEQ didn't do their job. They indicated we should have done dissolved oxygen monitoring and we decided not to do that either. Dr. James Tolan did this work. referring to that as a glimmer of hope and indicated that we should do it right. I want to switch to something that John Weber and I worked on and presented multiple times last fall. Well, I guess that's it, folks. Read on.

Thank you, Mr. Bartleson. Stephen Klepper.

Steve Klepper, District 2. The topic today is the importance, I'd like to encourage the council to ensure that the city's audit committee helps an effective internal audit function in an independent sort of way. Now, for a way of background, for those that don't know, in 2010, the city charter was changed on a voter mandate to establish basically a GAO, government accountability type office, with an office reporting directly to the city manager to provide some independence and objectivity. I was one of the voters that voted for that. My interest also is because I was a city auditor of Austin, Texas for five or six years, performance audit manager for Dallas, certified internal auditor, and all of that. It's been a struggle in this city, as some of you have been paying attention to this know, to maintain a continuous, effective audit function. As of a few weeks ago, we're on our fifth city auditor, even though he's interim at this time. And it's a very difficult job speaking truth to power. I've been watching. I was unable to go to the last audit committee because I was out of town. But I watched the video. And watching that meeting is a case study of how not to run and manage an internal audit function. In fact, if I were still in the business, I'd be writing some case studies and papers on it. And I think the voters would be very disappointed, the voters that wanted that independence and objective audit function. So the audit committee consists of four people, four members of the city council. And there's a chair. The rules and the guidelines of the game are established in chapter 12 and a half that established the rules and game plan for the city auditor. I passed out a copy because it was clear to me that some of the audit committee had never read it, either not read it, didn't care about it, all that sort of thing. And I highlighted in yellow those portions that I think that were ignored. One of them was the importance of providing the internal auditor full access to records, personnel, and all of that. Another item explicitly in there is that the auditor can change and modify a scope during the course of the audit if things come to pass as defined. The meeting was very contentious, politely contentious, but contentious. What was being discussed, the contentious part, was the ongoing audit of human resources onboarding and recruiting process. The HR department was trying to narrow the scope to a very discrete function when the city code provides the ability of the auditor to expand that scope. So I encourage you to follow the ordinance. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Klemper. Sean Flanagan.

Sean Flanagan, District 2. Listen, I wasn't going to talk about this, but I've been pretty sanguine last year about the water situation. I figured with the help of God, in spite of the disunity and the false mistakes we've made from hither and yon, we eventually muddle our way through this, and it looks like we have some objective good news, so drive on, folks. I'm up here talking today that we, at the beginning of June, you all signed a petition that declared June Responsible Fatherhood Month, and I think that's excellent, and as the petition stated, If you examine the biggest social disorders we have in our society, be it crime, poverty, dropout rate, incarceration rate, there's almost a direct correlation between fatherless families. If you don't have responsible fatherhood, you get bad results. And so I sent a letter to y'all and I sent a letter to Mr. Zanone, or an email, to Mr. Zanoni and the library director requesting the libraries put up a responsible fatherhood display where they put up books and videos, movies that, you know, basically demonstrate the strictures of what a responsible father does because that's about the chief's bang for the buck you're going to get to work on these major social problems. I got a response back from the library director, very nice, and she said, well, one or two of our libraries got a fatherhood display. And so, you know, thank you. And so basically I'm just asking, and I sent an email back to her, that they do take the time, that each one of the public libraries take the time to put up a display for a responsible father, and especially in the month of June. And that's the essence of my request, if it's possible. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Flanagan. Mr. Coleman's foregoing his speaking time. Jessica Villarreal? Jessica Villarreal? Susie Luna-Saldana? Oh, Jessica, I'm sorry. She's here. Forgive me.

Jessica, but the idea of district two, I'm just going to read, uh, there's so much to choose from really, uh, comment that a gentleman wrote on Facebook that is says a lot. I'm going to start with Corpus Christi. Couldn't get what it wanted from the evangelic aquifer in San Patricio County. So it appears to be turning its attention to pumping harder from the well fields it's already controlled in Nueces County. Now, she had pointed out that or asked the question if they were pumping daily, it was answered that it was no. There's graphs that show otherwise. We share the same Gulf Coast aqua filler system, ground groundwater doesn't recognize county boundaries, fence lines, or political jurisdictions. What happens in Oasis County can impact groundwater using San Patricio County as well. The city seeking approval for an expansion of its well, Western wellfield, adding wells 21 to 35 and incorporating them into large municipal groundwater production systems capable of producing tens of thousands and acreage feet of groundwater each year. Now the numbers that other people are stating, again, are not the same that is proven on other facts. This is why it's very important that our communities speak up and say no to these pro these proposals, uh, well fields before irreversible impacts occur. And I believe that the impacts are already starting to occur. You guys just don't go out and speak to the people that are actually dealing with those issues. Because rural families, ranchers, farmers, livestock owners, and small communities depend on these same aquafiller large-scale groundwater extraction can affect water levels. Water quality and long-term health of reassurance resource, I'm sorry, we all depend on. What makes this even more frustrating is that our surface water supplies are improving. The lakes are recovering from recent falls, yet instead of slowing down, They're reassuring they push for more groundwater production. It continues. This is about being anti-growth and I tie Corpus Christi. It's about responsible water management, transparency, something we cannot get from some people, and protecting a shared resource before problems occur, not after. The question isn't whether Corpus Christi needs water. The question is whether rural groundwater users will be ahead before more wells are added and more water is pumped from the aquafiller beneath all of us. Water is slowly becoming the next oil. These companies are using our aquafillers as its own personal cash machine, and we're figuring out the people that are digging their hands in the money pot.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ms. Villarreal. Susilina Saldana.

Susilina Saldana, District 2. I come before you today because I'm more than just a little bit upset, especially what's happened with our city attorney and his fiasco on creating mediation. I don't care if he notified each and every one of you. The man is conflicted. He is an attorney. He should have known better. His whole... group was recused and you had to hire an independent attorney that's costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, whatever it's costing us, it's too much. And then we have something like this happen. I think you need to take a good, close look at it and take the appropriate action. And while I'm talking about that, I'm also talking about all of you that sit on that podium. Because if you sit on that podium, you have a certain responsibility to the community. We come here to give you our opinion. You might not like it. You might not want it, but it is our opinion and the opinion of the people that bring us to you. People that stop us at the grocery store, people that stop us everywhere and bring us forward. When you get on a show and start blasting community people that come forward with concerns and issues and then you go talk to your friends about it and you have it on radio, I can very well say play the video It will be done. But it is important that you have the decorum not to do that. You sit in very strong positions. And therefore, I expect to have respect and that decorum be given to we, the people that speak. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Saldana. Sandy Fernandez? I'm going to wait. Jesus Mondragon? Jesus Mondragon. Oh, there you go.

Hello, my name is Jesus Mondragon. I'm here from Corpus Christi, Texas. I'm here to talk about the fields that... Greenwood, this is Parkland City Girls Fast Pitch. I've been dealing with this for about two and a half years, calling around, trying to see what are they going to do with the fields. I was told two weeks ago that they were now going to be rented out. I feel they shouldn't be rented out. I feel they should be leased out like every other field they have here in town. There's no Fast Pitch Girls, Fast Pitch Leagues on the west side, only in the south side. Everybody's having to go all the way to also go play. Okay? And At the same time, they need to start looking at whoever's running them fields, how much they're charging to go in for tournaments and stuff, because I feel that whatever money's coming in, they should put them back into fields, and they're not doing that. I've done Pop Warner here. I've done Girls Fast Pitch League at Greenwood and Adult Fast Pitch League. I mean, Adult Slow Pitch League. So I would like to see what's going to be done within fields, and so the council will consider... leasing the fields instead of renting the fields. We're trying to run a non-profit organization for the girls, but yet there's no way you're going to make money if you're going to be renting the fields at a high price.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Montagon. Mr. Zanoni, so where are we on these fields? I know we're transitioning our fields.

Right, I don't have the answer here, Mayor, but Robert Dodd's probably listening, so we'll get with the gentleman.

Okay, Mr. Mondragon.

Yeah.

Mr. Dodd, our Parks and Rec Director, he will come in and speak with you on that, because we don't know the status exactly, but we are working towards, and it's very important what you're talking about. So he'll come down, I'm sure, here momentarily.

We'll get him to come talk to him.

Thank you. And then, Peter, maybe you can let us know. Sure. Let the Council know afterwards. Councilman Kentu.

Hey, Peter, I've been having meetings with different people who rent out the fields for nonprofit use and this and that, and there's one group of people, I'm not going to say their name, but they're making anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 on a weekend charging $500 a team. And we need to look into that because they shouldn't be using these fields to make profit like that. You know, we need to open these fields up for the people, the kids, you know, and, you know, we're giving them these fields, brand new fields for 15 bucks an hour, and they're profiting thousands of dollars in the backs of the taxpayers. So we need to really look into that. And there's not too many people are doing it. Just one group of people are doing that. And it's just. It bothers a lot of people, and I don't think it's right. And we have fields out there that we can't even fix up because there's no money. But these people are making all this money, you know, and it just doesn't seem right. They could go and build their own field if they want to make money like that, you know? Thank you. We'll look into it. Thank you.

Well, Peter, you all are looking into that.

Yeah, we'll look into this one case in particular. I think you need to give us a... So we've changed the business model where the city manages the fields and we lease them out. We'll look at this case that the councilman's talking about.

What specific field is that? I mean, this has been a thing for a long time because of that. I discovered it about two months ago, so I know the amount of money they're making off of this. Right. It's $30,000 in a weekend easy, but what fields specifically here?

We're going to talk to the councilman.

Councilman, what fields are you talking about? Oh, you're just saying in general. The field.

Yeah, we'll work with the council.

Okay, well, I just want to put it on the record that, and Robert's right there, we actually, we started, if I remember correctly, the memo, this is super important to me, the memo was we are transitioning from other people that, quote, run the fields, and then they go sublease them out and hold these tournaments that are, Yeah, go ahead and come down. They put on these tournaments, the ones you're describing, and I thought I'd like to know, just refresh us then, Robert, Mr. Dodd, where we are on that, because I know we have transitioned maybe, I don't know how many, but you can tell us.

We have transitioned, and we're in our last phase now. We want to go to strictly rental, no leases. Previously, Leagues had their fields. In lieu of rent, they took care of the fields. But we're taking care of all the maintenance on most of the fields now, three-quarters of them with phase three coming, which we would take all of our fields. And everything is a rental now, and it opens it up to the public. We want to work with the little leagues. We want to work with the leagues to keep them, obviously keep the fields available to them, but it's strictly on a rental basis.

Yeah, and a good, yeah. Yeah, hold on just a second.

Okay.

Well, it's not, but the Councilman made a comment, and I wanted to clarify that this is actually being taken care of, and so it was just a question. Councilman, go ahead.

Real quick, I just feel that If people are making tens of thousands of dollars on the weekends, we should only do it to nonprofits. The nonprofits are out there doing the work, taking care of these kids, and I just don't see how a person is making thousands of dollars a weekend on the backs of us. It just doesn't make sense to me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Scott Barasa?

Good afternoon, Council. Scott Barraza, Nueces County. I want to congratulate Miles on his retirement. It's the best birthday present I've had. Maybe we can get to some proper and ethical record request. You see, I requested the hydrology report. I believe Nick's going to help me with it. Thank you, Ms. Paxson. It was first told it was going to be a draft. My next request on it, I was told 40 hours and $723.50 for it. It would take... When I brought it to attention, Miles focused on the $15 an hour, not the 40 hours for the week to do it. So I requested clarification on those costs. Then I got the reply back to that yesterday. It was going to be attorney-client privilege for him to tell me why it's going to take 40 hours to fulfill this request, which is ridiculous. I don't know what's in this report. You don't want me to find out. I'm assuming perhaps maybe the study was good for three years since this groundwater was supposed to be a temporary bridge to desal, not permanent and not expanded to the volumes it is. And so perhaps that's why you don't want to release it. I don't know. 15 new wells. You got 20 already. That's a 75% increase. Peter, you promised us no new wells. 15 new wells. That's a lot on there. If the pump volume isn't going to increase, is this an admission that your well spacing is bad and that what you have now is going to lead to damages to neighboring wells? Is that part of why these reports aren't being shared and you want to hold on to it so bad? Just to bring it to everyone's attention, I am going to contest these permits per the rules of the ASR district. I hope you will release them. There's no permits out there on the ERF right now. However, the water memo today talks about test wells being drilled currently. So we have wells being drilled without permits. No enforcement by the ASR. Conveniently, it's run by CCW staff, so we understand. In contesting these permits, everyone contesting will be showing just a soluble interest. I know, Miles, you know what it means. You liked our Facebook post talking about it from our page. You don't have to go back and unlike it. It's okay. We understand. No one's judging you on it. Just would like some better record request and looking into these whales. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Barrasa. Councilwoman. Thank you.

Peter, I think I had forwarded some information. If we can get with him on those information requests, the meeting's upcoming. I want to make sure that anything that has the Corpus Christi organization in it, is adequately working with the communities that are looking for information.

Right, correct, Councilwoman. Nick's already talking to him today, and we're trying to schedule a meeting before this Friday.

Before the meeting?

Correct, yeah. I've asked to meet with him personally, so Nick's setting that up.

Thank you, Peter.

You're welcome.

Good afternoon. And Margaret Afratila, 3606 Tripoli Drive, District 3. It's so nice to see all of you. I'm here today to a very big concern about what's going on in this community regarding the crimes. I live in Corpus Christi in this address for 45 years. I have a successful business for 43 years and I was very happy where I am. I raised two successful children. My son is a doctor here in Corpus Christi helping saving life. My daughter is in New York. managing a big financing firm, so I think that I was in a very good neighborhood. Unfortunately, in 2019, I had to go to Dallas back and forth, having taken care of my business here, and my grandson, which had a brain injury, and I needed to save his life. I did all the effort, but unfortunately, last year, God took him in a better place. I was preparing the house in Corpus Christi to bring him over here, But in March the 3rd, 2026, I had a phone call and a video from Crossroads Three Neighbors, and they told me that there's a big U-Haul that's taking stuff out from my house. I said, I'm not there. They said, I don't know. They have three, four people taking that. I made the police report. I brought it to the detective, and they They were having excuses. They didn't have the license plate. They didn't have the face of the people. And like one week later, it's happening worse than that. The door, the front door was open and somebody was walking with a lot of bags from there. The house was distressed. If you see here in the video, you can see what they did from my house, my sanctuary, my place where I raised the children. They took our passport. They took all our IDs. And I don't see that anybody else but somebody that knows very well what's going on. I came back and I put 14 cameras and videos and also the lights. And what I saw first, welcome to my camera, was the next door neighbor, he put like 20 feet tall panels there and start to cast into the camera and take the holes. One day he did that and two days later his son did that. And thank you so much for code enforcement coming yesterday and told him that's illegal to do that. And then every day they come and pass by the camera and cussing and saying all kinds of bad things. These people, they had the keys in the back of my backyard and they stole the AC. They destroyed the house. This is the panel. And I couldn't live in my house. I have to come here and stay in a hotel. While my son was doing surgery in the hospital, Officer Elizabeth, which I really want to give praise and thanks to her, she called him and said, it's a disaster. He said, my mom is going to have a heart attack to see that. Here is saving lives here in Corpus Christi. And this is an organized crime. Because the way how they're doing, it's just unbelievable. And I wanted to see if the police department can talk to me and talk more about that. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Rutila. Okay, we're going to address that. Thank you. Mr. Falwell?

Good afternoon. Gil, thanks for helping me out in the hallway the other day talking about the union process with the Corpus Christi PD, I appreciate that. And I didn't know that the city manager, I mean the city manager was over the city attorney. With that said, I did some investigating finally. I don't get a lot of time to look at y'all's charter. Sorry, I'm busy. But under the Texas Government Chapter Code 143, the police chief has the authority to fire, terminate, discipline, right? He can put somebody on suspension for 15 days. And then your union agreement, there's an agreement between CCPD, in the police officers association the chief of police has the authority to terminate he has the authority to discipline etc now officers are entitled to due process just like us except for again if i went and punched a woman in her house i'd be sitting in jail and if i couldn't afford to bond out i'd sit there until it was over right this officer i'm assuming is still sitting at home being paid eating donuts and i haven't seen anybody talk about it so i'm assuming he's still there okay so the agreement specifically is for the assistant chief and the chief not for officers right so that we have a fault there that officer should not be sitting there getting unpaid leave that's just for the elites not for the bottom feeders like he is is he still sitting there we can talk about a baseball field but not somebody beating a woman right okay temporary suspension that's up to 30 days this happened over 30 days ago is he still sitting there eating donuts that's your union agreement You can pick your head up, Mr. Weasley, if you'd like to talk to me about it. No? Just ready for retirement to get out of here? So the agreement does not prevent the cop from being arrested. The agreement does not prevent him from being prosecuted. Now, if we beat a woman or allegedly beat a woman, it's guilty until proven innocent, and we sit in jail. Cop goes and does it, and he gets to sit at home playing Xbox, eating donuts. Your chief of police allows that, so that tells you the entire company, the entire department is corrupt if your chief of police can allow a woman to be beat. And if you watch the video, there's another officer in there that's a female that allows it and does nothing. I'd like to be put on the agenda to talk about it if y'all let me. I know you won't, but I would love to. In short, from your union agreement... He can be placed on administrative leave, not criminally charged. He can be criminally charged and arrested, which should have fucking happened, fired without criminally charged, or both fired and criminally charged. Mr. Weasley, I thank you for leaving, too. It's a birthday present for me, too. With that said, any citizen out there that he violated your constitutional rights, which he did, and he knew better, so he lost qualified immunity, you have two years from the time that he violated your rights at this podium to sue. Make sure you sue the city. and make sure you sue him personally so he doesn't get away with it. So there should be two lawsuits, right? No qualified immunity for him. Sue his ass even if he leaves. Thank you.

Okay. Daniel Pena?

Yeah, Councilman Bond. Can we get an update on that?

Mike Markle, Police Chief. How you doing? Number one, Mr. Folliwell, I appreciate your passion. Is he still here?

He's back there.

Yeah, no problem. I appreciate your passion. I find it no less egregious than you do. Just so you know that. Now, there are nuances. I have to allow due process. It's frustrating. No more for you than me. Understand that. He's not at home. He's not been at home sitting home eating donuts one day. He's at work. He's stuck in an office where I put him. I parked him until I get done with this process. Just so you know that. That's a fallacy. But, no, I take it serious. I have no problem letting go of problem employees. You know that. I'd much rather carry a vacancy than a bad employee. I've been in this chief's position for 11 years. I've filed charges on officers. I've put them in jail, put them in prison when need be. And I'll tell you that I've explored every avenue that he's suggested. Mayor, mayor.

Excuse me extensive discussions of items that are not on the City Council agenda Being a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

I want to finish talking about this And you can get mad if you want miles. I appreciate that. This is a this is a big item The whole world has seen it. We're being talked about on social media. I am no less offended than you are, and I will take care of this. I assure you. But I have to, there are a lot of checklists. There's a lot of process that is part of our history, and I have to do the same thing I've done for others. But it will be resolved. I assure you, Mr. Farrell. Okay? If you want to talk about it, I'm always open. You can come to the station. You can talk on the phone, whatever you'd like to do. Yep.

All right. Thank you, Chief Markle. Dan, up in there.

How you doing? It's been a while. Hi, I'm Daniel Pena, District 1. I'm here to talk about the contract between City Order 26-0735 that's on the agenda. I would say I've came with y'all with proof. I've came with emails. I've came with pictures. I sit here and I've been away and haven't been able to do Zooms because it doesn't allow me to do them. I sit here and watch and y'all sit here and say y'all need information to make a decision. Y'all need information. I brought you the truth. I brought you documents. I brought you everything. I'll be damned if I'm going to allow you all to get a contract with the state to do state permits for you. They don't do their job. The health inspectors don't do their job now. They didn't enforce the rules then. What makes you think that after they do that, they're going to enforce them after they get this contract? I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that contract from happening, especially with all the documentation and proof I have. I've already done illegal fire ordinances, illegal city ordinances. I brought your documentations. I provided all of you with all this information, from the rural commissions to the health, the state department, the state health department, the state health department of services. I brought all that stuff to you. Got pushed under the rug. Y'all told me, hey, we're going to get somebody to contact you. You can swan left all you want because I've got you too. So you sit there swept under the rug and say you're going to have people call me, contact me. Two weeks later, nothing's happened. You tell that to a lot of people, I guarantee you that doesn't happen. I sent a video specifically to Mr. Cantu. Two days later, he gets sent to the comptroller. Next day, two days later, they shut off all my bank accounts, here it is, specifically to that video. And you're the only person I sent it to. That's how the work came from. So considering that, I'm going to tell you right now that I understand that I've already been talking to a lawyer for harassment. I've already been talking to your lawyer about y'all's contract and the state people. So just so you know where I stand and where I stand for about another 120 other food trucks. I'm sorry I'm a little upset. I'm a little stuttering here. But just so y'all know that I sit here and watch y'all YouTubes and all and decisions and things that y'all comment on are very upsetting. We put y'all on the podium. We vote y'all in. to stand for us, for our citizens, to hear us, no matter all the choices y'all have for water, no matter everything that we do, and y'all sit here and y'all make mockery of our city. I love my city to death, and I can't stand the choices that y'all are making. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pena. Mr. Zanoni, are we not in communication with Mr. Pena from?

We are, Mayor, yeah, and we've sent two memos to council to explain the situation. We can send another one if you like. Okay. Okay, we'll send you a third one.

Thank you. Jared Suarez.

Jers what is district 2. I simply want to ask questions and hope that these questions will be answered on your social media. Can any member of Council tell the citizens today exactly how many gallons of water are currently committed to industrial customers. How many gallons are committed to residents and what percentage of our future water supply plan depends on projects that do not yet exist. Is a primary driver of our water crisis drought? Or is it that the city approved industrial growth commitments before securing sufficient long-term water supplies? If the latter, who made those decisions and why? What's the city contingency plan if one or more groundwater projects fail to produce our anticipated yield? If the Inner Harbor desal ends up being built when the filters fail, because they will, Who will be responsible to pay to fix it? Industry who is the main user or taxpayers who do not benefit from it? Let's talk transparency. When looking at the city budget spreadsheet, why aren't the dates in numerical order? Why are some columns hidden? I think the public needs to know, without doing an FOIA, what exactly council members are spending with our tax dollars. I have given you an example in those papers you were handed to show what can be user-friendly. It should be published on the city's website and updated weekly. Such categories ought to be date, where, what, cost, who, and what funds from what department. Last week we had major flooding and the rainwater wasn't being drained in a timely manner. I pay a stormwater fee of $18.06 a month. Assuming every household pays the same, according to a 2024 statistic, there was a total of 121,883 households here. That is 2.2 million a month and 26.4 million a year. Where exactly is that money going to? You cannot tell me that it isn't enough money to do the work. If I may be so bold, I'm making two motions. First, that we extend public comment time to four minutes. Secondly, that we approve a public chart of the council's expenses on the website. Who will second my motions? God bless, pray your daily rosary, and go to Latin Mass at the corner of Caroline and Gullahar. Thank you.

Thank you. Amanda Guerra?

Amanda get a district 5. I told myself I wasn't going to do this, but here I am again deja vu, but it's wrong for me to just sit back there and do nothing when what's going to be done is wrong. You see, I was ripped it in 2023 and I brought you all the numbers. I brought you all the receipts, but nothing was done and the department was still shut down. So many things that I stated here in these chambers came true. It's almost as if I was a free consultant to y'all. The municipal director was fired, as I had stated. The head clerk was rifted, and poor Constance Sanchez. After doing the dirty work, she was asked to take a demotion so that someone else from the buddy-buddy system could be brought in. She settled for an NDA, and good for her, but sorry for the taxpayers. Two weeks within her new job at Nueces County, she uncovered $2 million that were unaccounted for. The city lost a great financial auditor. But sometimes that's what happens when you choose to sue someone else's dirty work. You then become disposable. I would like to ask this council to invite any department that is being affected by a RIF to come to the meeting while they are discussing the budget cuts while they are on the clock and ask them what's really going on in their department. Ask them for their opinion. Perhaps they have ideas that can save money. I'm here on item agenda 34, but I know a lot of people are not going to be here for that, and I think it's important for a lot of citizens to know. The citizens are the ones that always... lose out because, um, the services are cut back. Um, In the fiscal prior years, the library staff was cut back, hours were shortened, brush pickup was cut back to twice a year, and the claim is that the parking duties will be sent to code enforcement, and they can't even keep up with what they currently have, and it appears as if they are losing four positions as well. There's always two sides to a story, the truth and the one that's made up. Heather jumped ship, but it didn't take long for someone to fill those shoes. The parking department was established in 2012 to relieve CCPD from some of these calls to allow them to respond to more important calls. And I don't think they're going to have time to go back to enforcing parking. And here for the record, I'm here burning my own time. Deja vu whistleblower.

Thank you, Ms. Guetta. Mark Munster.

Mark Minster, Corpus Christi. In the context of everything that's gone on today and the way this meeting is run is why I'm here talking about tax abatements and it's just an example of huge amounts of money that the city is missing out on and just irresponsible and bad policy. So this was Bootstrap Energy. This is an article from 2023 about how much revenue they're going to do and how big they're going to be. The city council was presented that their IDA agreement was going to be $100 million to $31 million over this period of the IDA, so around $3 to $10 million a year. and do the pilot payments. And they ended up only paying around $2,000 after it was talked about before that it was gonna be 10 million to three million a year. And the reason I bring that up and I think that's so ridiculous and I'm here talking about it today is because In the city's industrial district agreements, the total we get is around $30 million. You're not going to be able to see the numbers, but on the very far right is the payments that the city receives. The highest ones are like $5 million. Those are like from Valero, from some of the biggest corporations. They're only paying around $5 million. And when this came to the city, they're saying that this was going to be around $10 million or $3 million a year, very significant. And it ended up only being around $2,600. And these IDAs y'all voted to make these 15-year agreements. They get these rates and these tax abatements that set the amount of taxes they pay depending on how much their asset is evaluated, their business assets. And it's just an example of just corporate tax breaks and just things... offered to these users of water, because some of the context that I haven't gotten to that someone brought up, they were using 127,500 gallons of water a day. A resident only uses 166 gallons a day. They were using 3.8 million gallons of water a month, and they had these industrial disagreements, and... Yeah, it's just ridiculous. I do tax work. I have a master's in accounting. I've been doing federal tax work for more than five years. And I just know what tax credits are available to regular people. And it is just completely, it's just not fair at all. When you see an actual example of how these industrial districts agreements are catered and used to entice industry, it's why the Inner Harbor desalination plant is an example of and catering to their needs. Here's water to come build here, to come have economic growth here. Here's these tax debatements. But is it actually equitable that the city spends all their time and resources on this when there could be another option? It's not that... These industries that need these abatements, that use all these resources, there's other things that you could do. You're not in a box. And residents should have more of a say. Residents don't have a say if we give these agreements. And we deserve a city council that works for the people.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Melinda De Los Santos.

Good afternoon, Melinda De Los Santos, District 2. Everhart Road was just recently done, and I went to a morning meeting, and this was on June 3rd, And between Bernie, I think it was Bernie Road and SPID, it was just like flooded. It went down to one lane and made me late for my meeting. So we need to check into that because just before SPID to Bernie Road, I mean Staples to Bernie Road, it was fine. From Bernie Road to SPID, it was flooded. I took pictures. I should have brought them. And then right after SPID, it was great. So if someone didn't do something right there, you might want to look into that. Regarding the city ordinance on the prohibition of the pollution of the municipal separate storm sewer system, I see a lot of people, especially these big companies, going and blowing grass clippings into the middle of the street and in my neighborhoods, and I stopped this one guy, I took a picture of him, and he said, no, that's not the ordinance in Corpus Christi. And it is. And he said, no, that's only in Portland. I said, no, it's not. And then he followed me and asked if I got a good picture. And I said, I did, but I didn't bring it. I didn't want to put them. But still, I think we need to enforce that because a lot of these big companies are doing that. They're just going and blowing the clippings into the middle of the street. OK, so we need to hold someone accountable to that. Okay, then I noticed a display of Pride Month at the La Rotonda Library. I know Sean Flanagan's up here talking. But on 6-4-2025, the White House officially declared that June will no longer be recognized as Pride Month. The U.S. Department of Education published a new report declaring that June will now be recognized as Title IX Month, in honor of the 53rd anniversary of Title IX of the educational amendments, 1972 being signed into law. June will now be dedicated to commemorating women and celebrating their struggle for an achievement of equal educational opportunity. So if they're going to have this, I would just like to also have, you know, a Title IX display and the fact that Corpus Christi did Fatherhood Month for June, also a display for that, okay? I mean, they want to have that too, but I'm just asking. Last thing, social media. Corpus Christi is in the spotlight and it does not reflect well on our community or council when council members are called out with false statements after a 15 hour meeting. I am not going to stand here and highlight the statements I know to be false. I'm just asking each of you to please realize you are representing Corpus Christi. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Del Santos. Sandra Meyer.

Hello, Sandra Meyer in District 4. Today I want to make sure that everybody is aware that I do not play political games. I try to come up here and give the best advice I can or viewpoint. In some ways, I feel like... Maybe I'm the person that's telling you that your zipper's not zipped or there's something by your mouth, but just from a council type position. For this council person over here, the hug was extremely valuable. Thank you. So I am trying to help with the conflict of interest type things. As a public citizen, I felt like I see a conflict of interest. Enron and Arthur Anderson had a conflict of interest. But for years, they were allowed to get by with what they did. That said, I wish that y'all would Just recuse yourself, give it to the ethics committee, let the ethics committee take care of this thing with the mayor. No disrespect to the mayor or to Mr. David, but as a citizen, I'm tired of the Homewood Suites thing. I'm just tired of it. We've got OBG contract that I'm personally very concerned about. We are among five cities that has got public stuff that's made the news of problems with not getting financials. I mean, it's... They can lawyer up, but they can't do financial statements. Then I'm also very concerned with the CC Aquifer and Storage Recovery Conservation District. They've been complaining about a conflict of interest. Water going forward in the future is huge. We're making history. If, and I've not analyzed enough, but if we truly, we want to make sure that everybody's represented. We can't have both city and city, and so We've got issues. Please, let's just move on. And please know I'm trying to help y'all. Like I said, y'all are my family. If you're a little kid playing in the road, I'm going to try to pull you back in. That was the whole purpose of my doing the ethics complaint is to try to help. and get us on the right path because we've got at least six or seven more months that y'all are on. Oh, and one more thing is Mr. Klepper did bring up an issue that came up in the audit committee last time. I personally recommend that the human resource audit thing be outsourced. I think there's too much negative feelings on both sides to overcome that. I think there's Legitimate reasons why the audit was requested and it sounds like there's legitimate reasons why human resources is like so they're just button heads so That's a time that it is good to outsource.

Thank you Thank You miss Meyer Jim

Mayor, members of the council, thank you for letting me speak this afternoon. My name is Jim Klein. I live in District 2 here in Corpus Christi. I'm speaking today as the president of the Coastal Bend Sierra Club group. I prepared a statement. I'm going to try to email this to you as well this week, but I thought I would mention it to you today as well. Bear with me for just a couple of minutes. Dear Mayor Guajardo and members of the Corpus Christi City Council, I wish to address the concern I have regarding the administration of municipal government in Corpus Christi. The June 2nd city council meeting began at 11.30 a.m. and concluded at 2.20 a.m. the following morning. And unfortunately, these kinds of long meetings have become quite typical. I'm concerned that such long meetings are detrimental to city administration because the meeting length wears down council members. This natural fatigue could tempt council members to make perfunctory votes rather than giving due consideration to the extensive list of issues before the council. I have no evidence that this has happened, I wish to prevent this to ensure that Council best serves the interests of the people of Corpus Christi. I suggest you as Council consider splitting Council meetings over two days. The Houston City Council for more than a decade has conducted split meetings, typically meeting Monday evenings after 5 p.m. until roughly 10 or 11 p.m., and then recessing and reconvening the following day. This meeting schedule could serve Corpus Christi well also as it would shorten the length of the meeting portions, It also would allow Council to schedule a public comment section at the meeting during the evening portion, Monday evening that is, when more of the public has an opportunity to participate, but before the scheduled meeting agenda items are considered by the Council. I appreciate the extensive service you are providing to Corpus Christi and offer this suggestion as a means to enhance your work on behalf of the public. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Klein. Rachel Cabello.

Good afternoon. Rachel Caballero, D1. First, thank you, God, for the rain and Miles' resignation. I'd like to suggest a committee for the hiring or reviewing, interviewing of the finalists of community members, especially community members that have had problems with the public information request being fulfilled properly. You all are hearing that this, this is a community, you all are hearing that this council is disruptive, they can't collaborate, and they can't make decisions. That is a lie. There are four people here that refuse to collaborate, that's why there still hasn't been a retreat to date. What we have here is a council majority that is voting in favor of their community. We have the majority vote for the first time in three decades. Again, I think the five that vote in favor of us, our community, and And here is the issue with the water. The jig is up on the water usage. We as a community, we know that we are the minority user. We know that the more we conserve, the more industry takes. We know that for some reason, the city manager is refusing to curtail industry, which would be the easiest thing to do outside of nickel and diming our community. Hopefully the community knows that is suing the city of Corpus Christi for raising their water rates for the first time in a very long time. What I know that the community does not know is that the city has paid in excess of $519,000 in that lawsuit to defend itself for raising industries rates. $519,000 we've paid to defend ourselves for raising water rates. But this is considered by some of you, four of you, as good community partners. Good community partners. So for all the ones that are choosing the experimental Inner Harbor plants over people, we know you all are going to choose data centers over us too. And we will stop you. The people will win. See you in November.

Robin Cox.

Hi, I'm Robin Cox, District 3. Someone sent this to me the other morning. I think it couldn't be more true. It's from Deuteronomy. It says, warns that turning away to serve other gods will result in the Lord shutting up the heavens so there is no rain. Then it went on, they sent me Chronicles 6-2. The passage mirrors Solomon's temple's dedication prayer, noting that drought occurs when the people sin, which can only be reversed by when they pray and confess. Well, it looks like we're turning the tide on exposing some evil, and God said, let it rain, let it rain. And it's been raining for days, so I think we can all thank God for that. But I can't come up to council without thinking this every time I come, and it's beside the rain. And I'm not going to name names because I know we're not supposed to, but I can't help but look at one council member who has continuously bragged about telling, I know we're beating this horse to death, a general... to sit down. And I say this as I'm cleaning up my parents' house and I'm going through my grandmother's things, who was a USO girl, my uncles who willingly served World War II at the age of 17. And for the person up here on council who said that, for the ones who have served, thank you. But the person who said that, I invite you to go to the Vietnam Memorial and see the men and women there who have lost someone who still go and pay homage. I invite you to find my uncle's name on the wall who served four terms in Vietnam only to come back and die of Agent Orange. I invite you to go to Walter Reed and see the men and women who give up their lives and are suffering now. I also want you to turn to the council members that serve with you, that gave up portions of their life to serve on command ships, as they didn't get to go to college right away. Maybe some did. My son went right away. But they gave up their time to serve this country. I still am shocked at the way you talked to a general. I don't even know if you know what it takes to be a general or how many there are. But these men and women, and men and women, serve. My brother said when he went off to, my uncle actually said when he went off to Vietnam, one of the things he noticed the most is he served with all nationalities, all religions, all races, and they united as one. So take note from these men and women. Thank you.

Okay, Ms. Worth, I think that's all of our in-person public comment. We have a few more on video and phone.

Yes, ma'am, we do. The first is Sean Merritt. Mr. Merritt? So you're muted, it looks like.

No, I'm unmuted. Can you hear me?

Yes, now we can.

Okay. Can you start my time over then? Thank you. Well, I know you all know who I am. The mayor does. She said my name on the radio last week. For those of you who don't. I'm Eric Corpus Christi, citizen. I'm coming to you live from D5, baby, and this is Channel 361 News. The stories are real, the receipts are ugly, and the taxpayer credit card, well, that thing went on safari. First up, city expenditures April, travel spending has now become a forensic exercise. Slides one to four, please. The April 2026 travel report shows 94.4K in travel spending. April 17th alone shows 197 transactions totaling 83.4K. Every April 17th entry was coded 547010 travel. Vendor, City of Corpus Christi, Wells Fargo, Picard, In-N-In, 2026D, payment number 30641. Coincidentally, this is the same day the mayor and Councilman Barrera went to Washington, D.C., To figure out which department incurred the expense, citizens had to open hidden Excel columns, pull funded department codes, cross-reference those codes against 2026 adopted budget, and tug accountant strings just to understand where the city travel money went. Why is the city's transparency system structured in such a way? Public spending records should be readable, like the public campaign contributions here from the mayor in 2023 where the Koch brothers donated to her. Slide five. See that right there, number two. How do you like that, Democrats? Second story. Peter Zanoni of CPS Energy. Peter's version was that CPS would only work with the city. Four people from that meeting confirmed something different. CPS would give Corpus Christi first rights to the water, but CPS would work with the project operator. They did not want to work with the city of Corpus Christi directly. And we've been waiting for a text back confirming Peter's side of the story, and our phone lines are still open. And finally... Mayor updates three and four tried to argue the public record like a shoplifter on camera telling the judge he was never in the store. In update three, the mayor claimed the rules were changed in the middle of the process. The record says June 2nd was a pre-trial hearing. Pre means before. Calling that a mid-process rule change is like claiming the World Series was rigged because you didn't like who sang the national anthem. Then came the due process. The mayor framed the proceeding like process and opportunity were stolen with a ski mask and a getaway car. June 8th and 9th pretrial dates were later canceled. According to the city secretary notice, we reviewed from Chris Six. Her counsel did not object. There it is, slide six. Good job. Update 4 claims she recently learned of mediation and was not notified. A May 22nd email from Miles to Paulette discussed mediation requests and said the city expected mediation June 4th. That receipt came with a sender, date, and the exact subject she later claimed wandered into her life like a lost puppy. Seven and eight, please. And speaking of Miles, we here at Channel 361 News would like to wish Miles the best as his new post as Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Slide nine, please. The next one, the better one. Yeah, there we go. Look at that, Miles. Proud of you, buddy. That's your Channel 361 news. We give you the Goddard truth, no matter how bad it hurts.

Thank you, Mr. Merritt. Next is Heriberto Perez. Mr. Perez, are you online? How about Alberto Sertuche? Mr. Zertucha? Okay, how about Jared Gracia? Oh, you're in person, okay.

Is Jared there?

He hasn't responded, but he's online. Let me double check, Mayor. Mr. Gracia, are you online?

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Can you hear me? Okay, cool.

Okay, hold on, Mr. Gracia. Just give us one more moment, please.

All right.

I could have let him go. All right.

All right.

All right. My name is Albert Sartucci, District 3, veteran owned of Hard Life Spade and Tackle and Team Hard Life YouTube. We're extremely happy to see our city council members following through with the charter to remove the mayor, who's been shown numerous times to be incompetent and a habitual liar, which has cost us taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Plus, soon it will be billions if this Inner Harbor decel scam goes through. We are always looking for transparency and that has been hidden from us by the mayor and her friends on city council, city manager and city attorney. We are getting daily updates on the mayor's removal process in her words rather than putting out the truth. She refuses to admit her wrongs and the wrong that we the taxpayers continue to face. Time to stop the corruption and we the people have woken up and more and more waking up and showing up. One, These are questions that I have posted up many, many times, and now I've given you hard copies besides the emails. Who is going to pay to fix the bays when this experimental plant destroys it? Because no updates from the FAR-FIL model have been given to the marine biologists, or we haven't gotten their findings yet, and we knew that it was going to take them a few weeks because they said that during the city council meeting. How much are these industries going to sue us? Because it's an example. They're already suing us right now that they don't like the rates. How much are these industries going to sue Corpus Christi when that inner harbor plant shuts down that is supposed to be giving them the water as promised? No updates on that. Or will our residents have to curtail again to give those industries to offset those lawsuits? How much will our water bills increase because the city has spent $1 billion on water supplies and now they want to add another billion on top with this Inner Harbor desal scam again? No update on that. How much will our property taxes be increased to offset this cost? No update there. How much electricity will it draw and how much is it going to cost to build an energy plant for it to run so the city doesn't have rolling blackouts? No update on that either. How much is it going to cost us for these hazardous byproducts to be trucked, moved, driver's fuel permits, and most of all, the fines that the city loves to incur? No updates on that either. Because we're talking $3 billion to $30 billion in the next 30 years, easy, that we're going to have to fund for this plant. Remember, it's experimental. It doesn't have to work. If it pollutes, it was experimental. If it fails, it was experimental. Who pays for the experimental plant? Us, the taxpayers. This is our plan A. This is our home. Corpus Christi is the body of Christ by name. Proof is happening right now with the amount of current industries in the area. Our city should be in an economical booming. However, we are truly suffering. Our schools, our streets, libraries are much more suffering.

Thank you, Mr. Sedutuche. Mr. Gracia?

Yeah.

Okay, we're ready now, sir. Go ahead, please.

Oh, Jared Gracia, me too. I just want to say that that picture of Miles Bisley was funny. I mean, come on. I had a good laugh at it. It was great. Retaining. I also want to say that the, thank God for the water. It rained, which we all need, right? But don't squander the opportunity that we have here to fix some problems. I mean, you know, we don't, we really got, we got some good rain, right? We pushed back some stuff, but just make smart decisions, smart choices. How can we go? About this fixing this water problem smarter and better. Thank you now that thank God that God just gave us some rain and push back. Push back some hard decisions. Also, I want to say that. Oh. Doesn't go this.

I forgot.

Anyways, yeah, don't spoil the opportunity that we got here. Y'all have a good day. Appreciate you.

Thank you, Mr. Gracia. Mayor, that concludes the public comment period.

Okay. Thank you, Rebecca. We're going to move on to boarding committee appointments. We have the Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority.

Yes, ma'am. So there are five vacancies with terms ending on June 30th of 2028, and they represent the following categories, four city and one city transportation disadvantaged. David Berlanga, Gabby Canales, Jeremy Coleman, Ilo Salazar, and Susie Luna Saldana are seeking reappointment, and their attendance rates are in your packet.

Okay. Ms. Woodford, can we go ahead and go through them individually?

Yes, ma'am. So now, Mayor, we can open the floor for nominations for the seat currently held by David Berlanga.

Okay, we'll go ahead and open those nominations. Matt Garcia.

Hold on one second. Wait, hold on one second. We're having a little technical difficulty. Is this for one seat? Yes, it's for the one seat. No, the Mayor asked for individual.

So are we... If they're already on, do we need to re-nominate or is it assumed?

Yes, ma'am. So we're gonna nominate for his seat. You would need to nominate Mr. Berlanga if you're interested in having him serve. Okay, right. So we're just opening, we're seeking nominations right now and we'll vote on it shortly.

Right, just for Berlanga's seat. So we have...

Okay, and then we have Matthew Garcia. Okay, any other nominations?

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Did you?

The mayor asked for individual, so do you?

My point was not a slate, not putting it through as a slate. If we want to nominate five, or is it five?

Yes, there's five positions.

Then we can do, um, so do them one at a time.

So the first, the first person who's up is Mr. Berlanga. So it would be opening the floor for nominations for the seat currently held by Mr. Berlanga. And then we would continue for each person. Okay. If that's, if I understood you, right, we're going to do them one at a time. So we'll do David Berlanga first, Canales, Coleman, Salazar, and then Saldana.

Okay. So we're doing each seat. Right. The other way would be as a slate.

Right.

I mean, as just reappointment of all of them. Is that correct?

Is that what the council wants to do?

No, I'm asking you, what are the options?

So the options would be we can vote on them as a slate. There's agreement from the council on the five positions that are available. If the council wants two or three of those people, they can vote on two or three of them, and then we can do the balance. Or we can vote on them individually right at the start, which is what I understood was the request.

Right, so individually would give each...

Right, and each person, so Mr. Belonga is nominated, and then we would just continue. No, ma'am. Yes. Right, so we have the person up there, Mr. Belonga.

Well, what other way is there if we're going to do them? That's what I'm asking her. What other way is there if we're going to do them?

The way we do it, so our process is normally to, we consider the reappointments, right, as a slate.

But we're not. So what are the other options?

So now we're going to open nominations to do them individually. We would first take Mr. Berlanga's slot. And Mr. Berlanga can be included in that in addition to whoever else you would like. So if there are no other nominations for Mr. Berlanga, then we would close nominations and vote. Okay, so. I'm going to be supporting Mr. Berlanga. Okay, so that's your only nomination. All right. Councilman, hold on. Okay, Mr. Scott.

So, yeah, it's going to be confusing. I'd be okay with it. putting all the names up, everybody gets five votes, and whoever gets the votes is the RTA commissioner. That would be simple to me to have a big spreadsheet and have all the names. There could be 10 names, right? I don't know, 15 names. But everybody gets five votes, and you have our names at the top, and you can count up how many.

That's the way we normally do it.

Do it. But I for one would like Matt Garcia on the RTA. So, I mean, I don't know how, you know.

So what is it?

My sense is it's less complicated.

What is the will of the council? So if you want to use our original process, we can do that. In the event of a tie, we would just have to say, yeah, which position is open. So is there consensus from the council to... What he was saying, to do five. Okay, so is that the consensus of the council?

Yes. Yes, if that's simple enough, then that's fine. That's what I was looking for.

Okay, very good.

all right so we do have a slate it's mr can i ask rebecca a question yes sir so what is a charter or the rules if we're going to appoint somebody to any kind of board say the rta board and say i'm just using david belonga as a example david belonga is not representing the city is there anything we can do as a council to bring that back to replace them with someone else

This would be the opportunity, sir.

I understand, but say in six months from now, he's not working for the city. He's working for his own interests. Is there any way that this council could... get someone else and replace them?

I would need to check on the rules for that particular board. It's not a city board, so it could be governed by other, um, other laws.

And especially all the boards across, because we're having an issue. I feel we're having issues with people that, um, get appointed and they're not representing the city.

Okay. Well, that's, that's not, not in the agenda now, but we can, um, I can provide information on that too.

I would like information about that, please. Thank you. Okay.

Councilman Hernandez.

Yes, Rebecca, I was a little confused by this. Did we just do the one where we all nominate?

Yes, that's fine, sir.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you for, now that we have some clarity. We're each going to choose five names. Yes, ma'am. So I'm going to go ahead and start with Councilman Cantum.

Belonga, Gabby Canales, Eloy, Salazar, Susie, Luna Sedania, And Susie supports Sullivan.

Nominations.

Nominations.

I'd like to add Orlando Sims. I'd like to add Jeremy Coleman.

They're already on okay, no additional nominees Okay I am going to nominate matt garcia is he under what name okay okay then i don't um i don't have additional ones either Any others? Councilwoman?

Okay, so everybody's on. All right. Okay, so which end would you like to start with? Ms. Vaughn or Mr. Ms. Vaughn? Councilwoman Vaughn.

Okay.

Please stop. Please don't snap.

Ma'am, it's transparent because it's available on the... Ma'am, it's up there, but I understand what you're saying.

Go ahead, Councilman. Councilman, I'm sorry, what were the last two? She's got them all? Okay, Councilwoman Campos.

Belanga, Gabby Canales, Eloy Salazar, Susie Albania, and Almonte.

Okay, I'm going to go with Gabby Canales, Matt Garcia, Coleman.

Where's my other one?

It's on a second.

Susie Saldana, what is that for? So I have, oh goodness. I have Matt, I have Gabby, I have what, Jeremy? Susie Saldana and Susie Sullivan.

I'm going with the current five.

So, Norma, that's Berlanga, Canales, Coleman, Salazar, and Saldana.

Berlanga?

I'm sorry? Berlanga? Canales? Salazar? Saldana?

Sullivan?

Is that fine?

I'll do Garcia. Coleman.

Abby. Eloy. Susie Sagnaia. Susie S-

Okay, so the result would be Mr. Berlanga is reappointed, Ms. Canales is reappointed to transportation disadvantage, Mr. Salazar reappointed, Ms. Saldana reappointed, and Ms. Sullivan is appointed to replace Mr. Coleman. Okay, thank you, Mayor and Council.

Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you. We're going to pass the, yes.

Ms. Huerta, with what Mr. Cantu brought up that you're going to look into, I also want you to look into on these boards, if anyone has a record of any kind with the police, I want us to look at that and have that incorporated, make a vote on that if it's incorporated, that you cannot serve if you have a record.

That you cannot serve if you have a record. Thank you. Okay. Okay.

Okay, consent agenda items 3 through 29. We'll pull the items and then we'll come back After lunch to discuss do we have any requests from the council to pull items through any items 3 through 29? item 11 Item 21 item 13 item 23 Item number 9. 24. Okay, and I'm going to pull 22. So we've got 11, 21, 13, 23, 9, 24, and 22. Is there any requests from the public to make public comment on any items three through 29? This is the time where we would hear public comment on any items on the consent agenda three through 29. And the ones I just listed are obviously gonna be pulled, but this is the time to make public comment on any of these. Okay, there's nothing pulled. So I will go ahead and entertain a motion to approve consent agenda with the exception of items 11, 21, 13, 23, 9, 24, and 22. I'll make a motion. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say no. The motion carries. So at this time... The council is going to go into executive session on items 36 and 37 per Texas government code sections 551.071 and 551.072. We will return. Okay, we're going to go ahead and reconvene our meeting. We are on section L, consent agenda items. We had pulled, we passed the consent agenda, but we had pulled some items. I'm quickly gonna go to item number 20 out of order here, but item 22, I had pulled that one just to abstain. So I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

I move for approval.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Item 22, I had pulled it to abstain. I just pulled it to abstain for no other reason other than that. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say no. The motion carries. So the, let's see, next item pulled, item number 11. And item number 11 is a motion authorizing the purchase of, I'm sorry, oh, nine. I'm sorry, you're right. Let's go to nine first. Motion authorizing execution of a three-year supply agreement with Environmental Corp., And this is for the purchase of 55-gallon rain barrels. And who pulled? Councilman Gumbels. Hang on a second. Go ahead.

Okay. Well, I wanted to pull this for a good reason. Because... we are selling out. We have our residents using our rain barrels and buying even more and so that's a great thing and that we're looking ahead and getting into a contract so that we can have more barrels to sell. The only thing that I just wanted to say is I still believe that we can do a better process as far as being able to smooth the process, I guess, is Because right now, you can't put it on your water bill. You can't purchase the rain barrel and then just go and pick it up, correct? You have to come in person, get the receipt, go to the Hygieia facility, area and go pick it up. And I'm still hoping and challenging you all to come up with a better solution so that it does make it easier for people to get these rain barrels. I think we, you know, had some ideas. I also thought that if it would be possible for solid waste to also get involved because they have trucks and I know that whenever, you know, the trash cans, the trash bins need to be replaced, they take them to the residents. So, you know, I just figured if they just put a couple of rain barrels in there too and they say I purchased one and then they can deliver one. Is that a possibility?

Yeah, hi, Councilwoman. Nick Winkleman, Chief Operating Officer of Corpus Christi Water. So you're correct on the process. So the process, the customer has to come to City Hall, and they pay at Central Cashiering. We don't handle any money or any cash at CCW. And then they take the receipt over to the complex just off of Holly Road, and then staff pulls the rain barrel and loads it for them. In regards to smoothing out that process, it touches a number of different things, including our finance department. We've talked with them. I don't have any solutions for you, but you've challenged us, and we're working on that, absolutely.

So you're saying that they can't put the rain barrel on their bill? They can't? You know, that way they would.

Yeah, we're looking. I didn't say we can. Okay. That's one of the other items we're looking into.

Because that would be the other thing, right? It would be placed on their bill and then, you know, let's hope maybe the solid waste department could help out since they have the trucks. Or maybe you all do too. I don't know. but could from time to, you know, deliver some of these rain barrels. Because I know I have a little car. It's hard. It was hard for me to shove that rain barrel into my little car. And there's some people that don't have trucks or don't have bigger vehicles to pick up that rain barrel. But I just wanted to say, again, thank you for doing this. I applaud you, I applaud all the residents. I mean, we've had so much rain that, you know, we could have like, I could have filled up, I don't know, four or five rain barrels. So anyway, so very grateful. It's a great program and I hope more people take advantage. So with that, I move for approval. Second.

Councilman Scott.

I'll just be quick. So there's a process, right, that we don't oversell these? Correct. I bought one, went to pick it up, there were none left, so I guess we oversold.

We've had some hiccups in the past, and a lot of it has to do with, you know, recently there's a higher demand. So we've worked to iron that process out, absolutely.

Awesome. And you did get more in, and it filled up. One little rain, those things are prolific. Okay, Meneo, thank you.

Okay, please submit your vote. Okay, the motion carries. Next item pulled was item number 11, and this is a motion authorizing the purchase of 60 replacement sets of firefighter protective clothing. Who pulled this item? Councilman Cantu, your question or comment? I just want to... Oh, you want to...

The reason I pulled it was I just wanted to make sure what happens with the old equipment is not given away or anything like that. And you answered my question in the back, so I'm good with it. I just wanted to make sure about the equipment because what I told you before.

Yes, sir. So Brandon Wade, Fire Chief, just a quick explanation. When that gear does expire, we give it to our Fire Academy. They're able to use that gear instead of messing up brand new gear while they're doing training that does not require the new gear for going into live fire. And then any other gear that we're not using for cadets, we'll often donate that to Del Mar. They can use it for their high school program for them to do the same type of thing. So we try to get the maximum use out of the old gear with it here locally. Yes, sir. Thank you. Absolutely.

Hey, I got one. Yes. Councilman, so the gear's purchased every seven years. So what it said in the thing.

We purchase gear every year because every year we have gear that goes out of the 10-year standard that we're allowed to use it for. So we use the gear as frontline gear as long as it stays good and passes testing for seven years. And then for the last three years, we put it into our what is called like our loaner program. And then we use that so when our firefighters go into fires or get it soiled, they have to go and get it washed and we can pull that loaner gear off. So we try to use gear for the last three years in the loaner gear program.

Okay, well, I just said every seven years you do it. So how many fires did we have last year or this year? Just an estimate.

I don't need a... 300-plus structure fires.

You had that many?

And 1,000-plus fires total. Like, then you're talking about brush fires, trash fires, car fires. But structure fires, over 300.

Okay, I'm just curious. Yes. Motion to approve. Second.

Please submit your vote. Okay, the motion carries. Next item pulled was item number 13. This is a resolution authorizing the purchase of 45 replacement and 22 additional light and heavy-duty vehicles, machinery, and equipment by various departments. That would be me.

Councilwoman Vaughn. So, I sent an email and asked some questions. I never got an email back because y'all were probably busy on Friday. I think it was Friday. So I ask, how old are the vehicles that you're replacing? How many miles on there? Is there some criteria before you go? Because this is a huge purchase.

Councilwoman Juan Rivera, Director of Asset Management. We did respond to the email. We responded on Monday.

I didn't look today, so okay.

Yeah, so we did respond, and we do have a list that we're able to share with you, and we can share with the whole council. Okay. We send it over to you. But each, the criteria for this is we have... specific things that we have to make sure that we follow. First, service life, which is the years that that equipment is supposed to be in service safely. You also have to consider that although we do great maintenance on this equipment, there are times where the equipment gets out of that service life, reach either 18 years. We have multiple vehicles here that have reached the 18-year mark. We're 10 years past that service time. life cycle and we go ahead and replace them the key is this and i'll go ahead and read off what i have written down parts availability for older vehicles is a problem we can maintain vehicles past its 10-year mark but then it gets to the point where these vehicles are either waiting on parts or they're down for much longer time which leads over to the department's inefficiency in providing their services to the city. Then you also have the outdated and inefficient equipment our operations increase and they need new equipment for the up temple that we currently have. We also have to consider the safety concerns. Yes, can we maintain these longer? Absolutely. But then you have to consider the hydraulic systems and the pins and everything that can lead to a safety mishap with the employees. So we have to consider that also. And last but not least. just making sure that once it's past the service life, we have data that our mechanics maintain to let us know this vehicle is past the service life, it has been in the shop multiple times, the amount of money we spent on fixing the equipment is this much, and we have that data. And that's how we, every year, sit down with departments Once a piece of equipment reaches the service life, we sit down and say, hey, this piece of equipment needs to be replaced. And that comes to the normal budget cycle, and that's how you see the budget initiatives from departments either to replace or add additional equipment.

So what's the average mileage?

The average mileage, so the whole breakdown out of these 67 vehicles, you have some that have exceeded mileage by a lot, and you have some that have not exceeded mileage. But you have to take into consideration that those that have not exceeded mileage have been in the fleet for a very, very long time. And the examples, and you also have to also... Consider that mileage is for gas vehicles, vehicles that are operated in and around town. But you also have to consider that we measure time for those excavators diesel equipment that usually provide services while they're stationary. Those are measured completely different.

They're by hours, correct?

They are by hours. Yes, councilwoman.

Okay, so is there an average hour, I'm asking?

So I don't have the average hour or the average mileage. I have a breakdown of every single vehicle's mileage and every single piece of equipment's hours. I have that breakdown, which I send over to you.

Okay, so do these vehicles that you have, are those take-home vehicles? I'm assuming some departments take home, some don't.

I am not aware of department's take-home criteria. Mostly we don't do take-home vehicles.

That's good because that puts more mileage.

Right, yeah, and safety as well. So they're generally locked up at our yards, especially without new fencing.

Okay, thanks.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Did we have a... Okay, we have a motion and a second. Please submit your vote. So we did do public comment at the beginning of consent. We asked for public comment. I asked for public comment between items three, in this case three through 28, I believe. And at that time, everyone, and I think I, let me try to explain that. Well, we can. Right, so again, we asked for public comment at the beginning and for all the items on the consent agenda, and that's when we need the public comment.

I think we asked them before we pulled them.

Yeah. All righty. Did we? Yeah. We submitted our vote. No, we can't. Oh. There it goes. You have that? Okay. Please submit your vote. Okay, the motion carries. The next item pulled is item number 21. That is a resolution authorizing an interlocal agreement with the Department of State Health Services for the Corpus Christi-Nueces County Public Health District to perform mobile food vendor inspections. And who pulled this item? Who? Councilman Cantu.

What item number was this, 21 you said?

21.

Can you run this by us one more time, please, on this? Is this what we talked about? It's not a price change anything like that, right?

No, no. That was Senate Bill 1008. This is in response to House Bill 2844 that goes into effect July 1, 2026 and pertains specifically to mobile food trucks, mobile food vending.

Got it. Because the gentleman that came earlier, he was complaining about... Never mind, I thought it was something else. Okay. Thank you.

Councilwoman Paxson.

Thank you. If I'm to understand this correctly, this was triggered by House Bill 2844, where the state effectively created a new legislation, so food trucks were getting basically permits to operate anywhere throughout the state. Correct. So this is in addition to what we've decided to do locally. Correct. And this authorization is the city entering into an agreement where the county manages the state's mandate? Yes, partly.

So if I may, the House Bill 2844, which is what this is, has completely shifted the mobile food truck inspections and licensing from local jurisdictions onto the state. State does not have resources or infrastructure to do statewide mobile food truck inspections or licensing. So what they are doing is turning around and contracting with the local jurisdictions like us to do these services on their behalf. And then we are getting paid the fees for our services. So tell me, we're in...

When we updated our fee schedules. We didn't do away with our local permitting and inspection fees. We made some modifications to match what was some legislation that was new in effect at that time yes, so now this is adding an additional layer correct.

And that was a Senate bill that pertain to. not just mobile food trucks, but also to restaurants, brick and mortar facilities as well. And we knew this was coming. We didn't know how this is going to take shape. And this has now gone into effect. It will go into effect July 1, 2026. and will only pertain to mobile food trucks.

So in exchange for this new layer of permitting and fees is the city going to drop hours.

We cannot no we can no longer come July 1 2026. We can no longer do any permit or licensing for mobile food trucks within our jurisdictions. That responsibility has been completely shifted onto the state.

So what we're doing is we are not, in effect, signing a contract that's going to double charge. We're swapping. Correct.

Yeah, we're going to drop ours, to use your question. We won't perform them for the city anymore. We're going to perform them for the state.

Correct. So what I...

There'll just be one inspection.

What I think this morning, what we saw was one local vendor who... I think potentially felt like they were getting hit with now twice the red tape. But I understand permitting and inspections is necessary. So is there a way that we can be, and thank you for the information you sent by email, but is there a way that we can be super, super, super clear this is going away because this is moving in? We certainly can do that. You know what I'm saying? So that we're clarifying. We're not double hitting anybody with fees.

And this perception is very prevalent. It's systemic. We are trying our best to dispel this and clarify this misperception. And the issue is the fees are now astronomically higher than what local jurisdictions would have charged. And we have nothing to do with the fees anymore. So we will absolutely make it clear.

So the reality is our hands are tied on this because it's state, but if there's an issue with it, then the correct chain of command is to go to the state. To the state. But for our portion, that's what I want to speak to. It's just so that we can clearly communicate what this means in practice here. Absolutely, we certainly can do that. Thank you.

Councilman Hernandez.

Okay, I know that we're doing the contract to do the inspection for the state for food trucks. Are we going to be issuing a state permit? So we're going to be receiving those permits from the state and issuing them?

No. So the way it works is the mobile food truck vendor in our jurisdiction is to directly go to the state website and do the application process. Once they complete the application process, state will then turn around and let us know you need to go inspect Mobile Food Truck ABC, and they assign those assignments to us. We inspect, and all we are required to do is enter our inspection reports back into a state system, which is a completely different system, and then the state will then determine whether they should issue a permit or not, and if they are issuing the permit, they will contact the food vendors directly, and the permit gets sent to them directly. So all we are doing is doing the inspection on behalf of the state because we had the feet on the ground here.

Okay, because I kind of see it like the state vehicle inspection where you had local people just do the inspection and then it gets uploaded into the state system. Something along those lines? I don't know if you remember that or not, or if you had to do that?

Yeah, and some jurisdictions are refusing to do it, so those jurisdictions, maybe state's going to send their folks down, but I can tell you state doesn't have the resources and infrastructure to do this statewide.

Okay. So we had somebody come in here very irate. Can you speak to that as how this is an issue for him with us doing the inspections? Because I'm not really sure how.

So if I remember recall correctly, I think he is under the impression that we are going to be charging, just like Councilman Paxson just said, we will be charging our mobile truck food vending permit fee, which is $258,000. And then on top of that, he has to do the state as well, which is not correct. We have no longer, come July 1, 2026, we no longer will be doing anything with regards to mobile food truck permits or licenses.

Okay, so the contract from the state pays us how much?

It pays $106,000 and some change.

Is that on a per food truck contract?

license or I mean so it's at the beginning of this you know I think couple of months ago they had asked us to give them a breakdown on the mobile food truck trucks we have in our jurisdictions and based on that number they've come up with this fee for service and so all it says is that the contract is it's a one-year contract goes from July give me a minute It's a one year from effective July 1, 2026. And it should not exceed $106,517 for the initial term. And there is an option to renew this contract for four additional years.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilman Paxson. Thank you.

So based on the three parameters set by the state, they have it classified in type 1, 2, and 3 for mobile food vendors, and then descriptions on what they define that. The application fee for a type 1 is $309, a pre-licensing inspection fee non-applicable. Type 2 application fee is $618, a pre-licensing inspection fee $400. Type three, application fee $876, pre-licensing inspection fee $500. So this is, I think, a lot more than what we were charging locally. So my understanding is the fiscal impact listed in our packet is our local portion of this fee, is that correct?

The fiscal impact is, yes, our local. So we were getting a revenue of close to 69,000 and some change. was our annual revenue that we were getting based off these mobile food truck lending inspections, mobile food truck licensing and permit inspections, yes.

But this is saying that we're gonna receive 250 per inspection for type one, 350 for type two, 400 for type three, which isn't the total listed here. There's a difference in those amounts. So we don't collect 100% of this No, we don't. What jurisdictions take a part of it?

So let me understand the question. So what state is saying is if you have a Type 1 mobile food truck and you're inspecting that, you will be paid. State will pay the local jurisdictions a fee of $250 for the services. If it's Type 2, they pay $350. If it's Type 3, they pay $400. Okay.

But that's like a rebate. Correct. So the food truck pays those totals to the process, and then we would remit that to the state, and the state would reimburse us these portions. We don't do any cash handling.

The food trucks are going to directly pay the state the amount. And then we get the rebate. We get the fee for the services that we perform on behalf of the state.

I'm curious... If we were to be able to overlay this basically to what our current fee schedule is I understand that we can't make you know legislation that conflicts with or breaks state law I get that but this is a huge fee for each of these food truck types. I'm wondering there's got to be some way you know First of all, I'm frustrated that we didn't see this coming down the line until it's here. We didn't have time to advocate at the state. We didn't have time to go have discussions with legislators. We didn't have any of that. This is one week away. So I'm frustrated about that.

We did do some lobbying.

That wasn't in here.

What's that?

It wasn't in here.

Yeah, right.

The food truck vendors were the lobby for this. It was their legislation.

Yeah. This isn't the same one we passed at the beginning of the year. That they lobbied for. Yeah.

That was Senate Bill 1008, which the Restaurant Association lobbied for. Right. Correct. This particular one, I believe, was started with a good intent by... one of the legislators.

Miles, if you have information that a food truck or, because my understanding is the Texas Restaurant Association that lobbied on the other one. Is it separate? It okay, so we didn't get to go have a voice in the in the crafting of this nor did we get to send an association to lobby so now it's here it's going to hit our local vendors.

Yeah, we'll have to check with Ryan what he may have he may have been up there and put in a card or what or submitted comment, I'm not sure. You know, doctor, I don't know if you're here.

I don't have that information.

Yeah, we don't know for sure.

I just feel a little frustrated because we took so much time and you really were great at hearing the feedback and going back to the drawing board because our fees were not even this high when we asked to go back to the drawing board. And the fees are a surprise to us too.

I myself was not aware of this. This has been recently posted by the state. The intent of the bill, House bill, was good. So mobile vendors can have one permit statewide instead of having permits in every jurisdiction they want to go when they do business. The intent was good. But the fees, I think it's a complete surprise for everyone. It is high.

We need to go and figure out what we can do locally. I don't know what room we have, but something... because this is not what we identified as good for our local vendors. You know what I'm saying?

And it's the same sentiment across the state among the mobile food truck vendors. I can tell you that much.

Well, it's difficult to support this when there's not an answer that protects our constituents. That's where I'm sitting. I understand this is a state mandate, but without any other option of how can we protect them or at least stick a hand out to try to work with them, I have a hard time passing something like this right now.

But regardless of what the decision here is today, we certainly cannot Permit or do any sort of licensing for mobile food trucks come July 1 2026 we have I understand that's I understand But there's we need a follow-up.

We've got to come put sit down at the drawing board and figure out something we can do Yeah, we'll get Ryan's probably Ryan's krabachek is probably listening.

So we'll talk to some of our delegation members Like today or tomorrow including Denise Villalobos chairman hunter Senator that you know, you know all our delegation to at least begin to have that conversation that this may be a problem for us.

Okay.

Thank you. They need to know. The state needs to know.

Okay. I will entertain a motion to approve. Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Please submit your vote. Okay, the motion carries. Next item pulled is item number 23. Item number 23 is a motion to award a construction contract to Victory Building Team for the boat haul-out office retail facility. And who pulled this one? Councilman Hernandez.

Okay. This has less to do with the actual construction as to how it's being funded. This is being funded through the seawall fund, which we still have portions of the seawall that haven't been repaired, specifically that space between the museum and where the port lies. And we're using, this is continuing using money for the seawall on projects that are nice to have, but are not needs. You know, we did this with, you know, the water garden. We did this with most of the improvements at the marina. And I understand that the way that legislation was written back then is anything within 50 yards of the seawall is considered part of the seawall. But I don't think that was really the intent to do this. So I can't support this when we still have things on the seawall that aren't repaired. So...

Jeff Edmonds, Director of Engineering Services. I'm going to take a stab at part of that. So this is the old Type A seawall tax that's now been replaced with the new tax. And this would probably not be an eligible use with the new tax, but with the old tax, that was Type A. It was enabled under the Development Corporation Act of 1979. And the flood protection aspect of this is probably less in line with the enabling legislation than what we're proposing to use this for. the main focus of that legislation was creating jobs and economic development. And so there was a lot of language in that brochure where they tied that original seawall project they did back in the 2000s to economic development and to attracting tourism and conventions and events and things like that. They mentioned like boating events and things of that nature. So I would argue that it is an allowed use and Bond Council has ruled, they came up with that ruling because the brochure and ballot language was a little unclear and they kind of said anything on or within a, not crossing a road from the seawall. So they, the Bond Council said things like the art museum would be a eligible use, the water garden was an eligible use. And even though the art center, was an eligible use.

No, I'm fully aware. I know the wide berth that the legislation or the language.

That was actually a bond council.

I understand it. We've argued it to the nth degree. But, you know, this is funding that is dedicated to this specific area only. The new Type B funding is for flood mitigation and, what is it, resiliency?

Coastal resiliency.

Coastal resiliency. USES TO IT AND WE ACTUALLY NARROWED THAT LANGUAGE DOWN SO IT COULDN'T BE USED FOR SUPERFOLIOUS STUFF. THAT'S WHY I'M SAYING IT'S BEEN SHIFTED BUT IT'S NOT JUST FOR THE SEA WALL ANYMORE. IT'S FOR THE ENTIRE CITY THAT HAS FLOOD MITIGATION ISSUES. SO I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE UTILIZE THE FUNDING WE HAVE FOR THE SEA WALL AS IT'S STATED. Like I said, I'm fully aware that it has a wide definition, but I just think, you know, as a citizen that, you know, looks at it when it says the seawall fund and we're using for everything but the seawall, it's disingenuous. So thank you.

Councilman Bond.

I've talked to you about this. First off, I don't have anything against Victory Building. I talked to you. You said they're doing a great job. That's good. Very few change orders. That's good. My question is this. I'm concerned because not only on this, but on so many of them, we have very few bids. Are we making it so hard for the bids? What is the problem?

Well, you had an item on the agenda today where we had 12 bidders. Yeah, that was unusual. It depends on the type of work. Okay. I think some of the more complex projects would get fewer bids. Yeah. But these are all published, and it's nationally available. We use a service called CivCast where... All of our bids are published. This particular project, there were over 100 people that downloaded plans. I didn't check the number, but probably about typically about a half dozen organizations that are republishers download those and republish them. There were 32 people that download those plans indicating interest as a general contractor. But We got two bids.

And so maybe it's because it's so much more complex, this building, for the police than maybe some of the other projects are. Is that what you're telling me? I'm just trying to figure out.

I think it depends on market conditions to a certain extent and things that are more specialty. I think there are fewer people that are interested in that. So, I mean, what we're seeing right now, like on the road projects, pipeline projects, just general civil, we're getting a lot more bids on those type of projects.

Gotcha. Thanks. Councilman Roy?

Thank you. That was a good explanation. I think I understand where Councilmember Hernandez is coming from because it was confusing in the past, and I'm glad that we've changed that so that we won't. But I also know that this particular project has been going on for a while, and I don't like using the word grandfathered, but it's kind of grandfathered in. One of the things that I... this project, and it's interesting because I've done a lot of homework on this too, is that when you look at what this project does locally, I mean, for example, in District 4, the majority of the boat users and the people that use this, you would think, are they coming from outside of the city? Do they come internationally? Where are they coming from? But a lot of the people that just live and maintain boats within District 4 and District 1 and our districts, this is really a primary use and a service that the city provides in terms of picking those boats up and taking them out. And I just think that that's a good thing because at first, you know, because of the proximity of other facilities and other things, one might think that it's going to be used for that. But really, the the ideal in terms of having this long term asset that is going to be able to serve the people of Corpus Christi. And that's kind of what I wanted everybody. that's listening to understand, it's gonna be a really great asset. And so I'm excited about this. I know that the Marina's done a lot of work. I know that, and I hope that, I think if I have any question, this particular building as far as the length of time that it's projected to be a viable asset is how long? I mean, what's the timeframe that this thing should last?

Jonathan Atwood, Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation. You know, I think most buildings down there, along with our docks and other things, we're planning for a minimum of 50 years. And I can tell you the previous structure, we toured it the other day. I think the initial part of that structure was actually built sometime in the 50s. And then it's been reiterated over the years. I think 1970 was one of the last times a piece of that structure was put together. And so, you know, we were... it's been there for a while in that salt air environment. I think this structure with the new code and standards is going to be even stronger and should last even longer.

Yeah, no. So I'm, I'm excited about it. I think, um, you guys are doing a great job, continue to do it. But I, again, I think it's just an important asset for our community. So thank you.

Councilman Scott, Jonathan, thank you for the tour Friday. That was interesting. I, you know, I've driven by that facility all, you know, my adult life and had really no idea what goes on. And, how much goes on in there. So I want to tell you, I did find it interesting, the crumbling steel on some of the beams. So thank you for that. What I got out of that was it is needed. What I learned is that every good marina has a facility like this. In fact, I thought that was interesting, the Japonica, which takes people on tours all the time, evidently lost power and ended up with a shipwreck. And they had to tow it. But because we had the tow out, I mean, the haul out facility, they towed it, whatever, 200 yards, as opposed to trying to figure out a way to get it to Aransas Pass or Rockport. So that to me was an example of why it's needed. I do believe some of that goes back to the 50s. I will tell you my last thought is two thoughts is one, I'm happy that we're getting you all out of the boaters facility, because I think that's not what that building was intended for. You know, that was built years ago to try to service, uh, the boaters and, uh, liver boards. Uh, and now you guys are scrambling around in there. And so to get you out into this new facility, I think makes that first building more productive. So, And the last thought is I appreciate the retail addition. I don't know whose idea that was, but I think we've all been at Cheryl Park before during the summer wondering where we're going to get our next bottle of water. And I think you're going to find that facility well used for people that just need something cold after, you know, an hour or so ceremony at Cheryl Park. I appreciate the work. I do share with Council Member Hernandez, I do think that that section of the seawall around past the art museum into the port facility needs to be a focus of this body in the near future. So, you know, that's a separate subject. I just wanted, he brought it up. Anyhow, thank you for the tour. Thank you for the project.

Council Member Paxson. That was one of my questions was with this procurement, do we have an action plan or... The reason it's tied to this is because if a yes to this is a no to that, as far as repairing that section of the seawall.

Yeah, Jeff, we'll talk about that. We're going to come back to council in the next couple of weeks with an interlocal agreement with the Port of Corpus Christi, who's doing work there as well.

We're looking at giving them the financial resources and letting them manage that project.

Yeah, we have that project funded, and instead of us doing our work with the contractor and the port doing their work with the contractor, the port's going to manage the entire zone, and that's going to be a good interlocal agreement that'll come to this council in the next couple of weeks. So that's fully funded. To Hernandez's point, the money's there. We've just been working over the last couple of months with the port to see how do we do this, and so we're going to come together and they'll manage it for us.

So thank you for that. Thank you that I think it's important with this I noticed in I think in our budget the entire marina fund between revenues and expenses is like 76,000 Deficit roughly do we have a forecast because one of the things they put in there was that this facility could actually increase services, rentals, uh, revenue for that fund. And this is a big procurement. So it's going to, it's going to ride for a while until it's paid off. But what is, what does it look like for an annual increase by having this asset?

So we currently have, um, a leasee or someone that leases space out of this facility. They've been there for quite a while. Um, they are intending to come back. So we will put them back and increase, um, the amount that they pay every month for that space. We also have the retail space that we'll set an amount for. We'll look for someone to occupy that space, so there will be an additional source of revenue there, as well as the renovated boatyard. I think that we could increase fees at some point. We'll have a completely renovated yard there. We'll work with some of the contractors that work in that space for some increased revenue for the marina as well. Overall, the marina as a whole has been under construction for four and a half, five years now. The docks were completed in April. The boardwalk was completed very shortly after that. We've got a boat facility going up and then this facility. And so what I think you'll start to see is the revenues increase across the board for the marina moving forward now that these projects have been moving forward, completed, and eventually we'll complete all of them.

Okay, so 10 and a half million, that's a big one. But I understand that it's a marine facility, and as much as that's a big procurement, I think that it's a valuable project. So thank you for clarifying that. I was just curious if we had done any actual forecasts on the increased revenue. You said, yes, things are going to be increasing, but I'm imagining we did put that pen to paper.

I put the pen to paper a couple of times over the last few years. I will say it's taken a while to get this project to this point, and so I will probably sharpen that pencil and go back and run some of those numbers now with current market values and things like that for retail space and attendance in a facility like that.

It seems to be a pretty quick turnaround for construction. What budget would we anticipate seeing that?

I wouldn't expect on 27. It's most likely going to be 28. Okay.

But we could potentially get some preliminary figures as what you guys were estimating? Yes. I'd appreciate being able to see that.

Okay.

And then my last question is more just of a question. It's not on the technical side. It's that logo.

You don't like it?

It doesn't match the city at all. Can we do anything about that? I can speak with communications that logo was changed 2019 a lot of people like it you know I think it's been a value for the marina but I understand what you're saying when I see it I'm not saying that it's bad but I would have no idea where I am if it didn't you know it doesn't say corpus it doesn't have our elements in it so that's my okay thank you I'll check on that councilwoman Vaughn the logo says sailboat it's a sailboat

I'm just curious, is this the last building down there that's got to be done?

This is the last one scheduled with the funding that we currently have allocated.

So there are other buildings, are you telling me that?

There are no buildings in the near future, but like everything along the coast, it's always degrading with the salt air environment. The last two boater facilities were built in 2004.

Okay.

I think they still have plenty of life left in them. Okay. But everything down there is falling apart.

But is that all that's left down there? Okay, that's my question, thank you. Councilman Roy.

one additional thing that I, we were talking about revenue. I just want to, again, the public to understand that, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you actually provide the service, cause you've got the part of this is housing the equipment in the, in the machinery to be able to pull those boats out, you get, the city gets paid for that. That's not a free service. Correct. And that is probably one of the biggest things that you provide, um, whether it's an emergency or non-emergency service, um,

with your operation is being able to pull those out and uh... you get paid for it so that should hopefully that would help us in terms of capturing that revenue yes so thank you councilman hernandez to piggyback on what councilman paxton had said you said you're going to do pencil to paper on fees do you expect this to break even or to pay for itself with those fees or is this going to operate at a loss no it it

currently pays for itself as far as the yard. I think in, no, I mean, over time, the facility will pay for itself with the fees that we collect. I need to rerun the numbers to be able to tell you exactly how long it would take to do that.

So how much time, how much time?

That's what I would need to put pencil to paper.

So you didn't provide it on this. I have not, I didn't see it. So, so we're doing a leap of faith here on whether or not we'll recover our funding.

I know that it will recover. It has been operating for many, many years now in positive, and I see that moving forward. That will continue to go that direction. So I did not put those numbers in this. This is a cash purchase, basically.

So I can blame you if we have a storm and the downtown gets destroyed because we didn't do anything with the seawall? I can give you a call and say, hey, this is your fault?

My goal is this facility will be standing and be the first one back up and running. Thank you.

Jonathan, would you tell us, in your opinion, what do you see happening if we didn't move forward with this particular project that has been in the plan for quite some time?

Yeah, so if we didn't move forward, at some point I would probably have to start shutting this facility down because the building is getting to a point where we're not going to be able to operate out of it very much longer. I can tell you the large bay door that we move our travel lift in has had many issues. We have pieced and patched it together to keep it going, and that piece of equipment alone is about $450,000, and it would be left in the elements for a long period of time, and so It's also where we operate all of our maintenance repairs for the marina out of right for this critical.

It's critical Who can answer how much have we invested in the seawall?

Roughly going back how far

Go back the last eight years, ten years.

Well, so back in the 2000s, they invested somewhere in the neighborhood of $45 million, and that was what this sales tax was originally intended to fund. And then with the additional revenue that we've received from that sales tax is how we funded these companies. these other projects.

45 million. And that gave us, was that a 50 year, uh, repair, so to speak?

They thought at the time that they did it, it would put 50 years of life. Now it is, it was way better at the conclusion of that project than it was even original construction. And it was originally built in the forties. So they got 60 years out of that original construction. So getting 50, it's not hard for me to, say that it should get 50. And we put a couple of million dollars into it addressing just distress that we had, cracking, joint failures, things like that. So that was about, I want to say, three years ago we completed that.

Right. Okay. Thank you. Jonathan, if you'll come back. Well, let me just go through a couple of points I just want our public to know. The existing facility dates back to 1950. The marina office operated from a temporary building for about 20 years and has been. The demand increase after 119 additional slips have been incorporated into our marina. Existing retail space, well, we don't have retail space right now. Yeah, we don't have that. Existing facility has limited, of course, amenities and infrastructure. Okay, and those are all very important items, in my opinion, when you're looking at such a big ticket item, and it is a specialty. How long has the city discussed replacing this facility? Like, how many years has this project been in planning and design, if you will?

This was started even before I came on board. I know in 2015 is when they moved into the boater facility, and a large discussion was had about creating a standalone marina office. I think over time, this location kind of bubbled to the surface as a good location to rebuild the existing structure for the boatyard, add a marina office, and then additional amenities along the seawall. So 10-ish plus years at this point. Right.

Okay. Good. So this is a big deal for you.

All right.

Well, good. Well, I certainly support fair processes and competitive bidding, which we did, and, of course, long-term investment in city assets, and that's what this is today. That's what it represents, in my opinion. So thank you for the work you've done on it. Move to approve.

Second.

All right. Please submit your vote. The item carries.

Mayor, I'm sorry to interrupt.

And I want to thank Mr. Hamilton for being here. He is the construction contractor. Thank you, sir.

Mayor, I'm sorry to interrupt. On item 21, Ms. Paxson's vote did not record properly, so I just wanted to ask her what was your vote, please. It was no. Okay, so for the record, she voted no.

So what was the total?

For item 21, it was the Department of State Health Services contract.

And I'm sorry, what was the vote, 6-2?

It's now it's 3. It's 6-3.

6-3, okay.

Yes, Ganthu, Vaughn, and then Ms. Paxson voted no.

Uh, and, um, on that move, uh, since that was raised again, so Ryan Skrobacek is going to email the council. Uh, he did lobby against this bill and when he was in Austin and he'll give you more detail. So we were there, we did have presence and we objected to the bill, but it passed anyway in Austin. So keep an eye out for Ryan. Yeah. He's sending you all an email.

Thank you. If he can send it to the whole council.

He's going to send it to the entire council.

Thank you. The last item pulled was item number 24, and that is a motion awarding a construction contract to South Texas Building Partners of Corpus Christi for the arena rehab and improvements at Hilliard Center. Who pulled this item? Councilman Cantu. Your question or comment?

What kind of work are we doing over there at the center?

This is on the second floor where we renovated the terrace. This is renovating all the suites and all the restrooms out there, basically the remainder of the second floor.

My only concern on this is that we want people to go downtown to the center for events or whatever the case is. You know, like this weekend, we're having a big convention, all that good stuff. We want to invite the people to Corpus Christi to our center. However, I notice going over there, it's a bumpy road. And I think we need to really fix those streets down there, especially in the front area, so we could represent Corpus Christi. Because the first thing they see when they go to that event center is a terrible street. And I just feel like we need to figure something else, figure something out to fix that problem because, I mean, we're going to be inviting people across state, you know. What street? Yeah, I think it's Chaparral, right?

Yeah, Chaparral, you're talking about?

That's pretty bad.

Okay, we'll have Ernie take a look at it.

Just a thought, you know.

You know, it's a good thought.

Okay, thank you. I move for approval.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Please submit your vote. Okay, the motion carries. We'll skip to, or not skip, but we'll go to Section K next. That's our public hearings, items 30 through 33. Item number 30 is zoning case number ZN9048, Ruvana Investments, LLC, District 1.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. Tonight before you, we have ZN9048, Ruvana Investments, LLC. This property is in District 1 with a request to rezone the subject property from RS6, Single Family 6 District, to the RSTF 2 Family District. The subject property is currently vacant and plotted after a fire. The property is .16 acres located along State Highway 286, David Street Frontage with Francis Street, a local residential roadway. The subject property is within a 1938 residential subdivision. The properties nearby appear to have been built between the years of 1938 and 1955, and history indicates that the property operated as a multifamily for at least three decades, a duplex with an accessory dwelling unit with separate driveways leading to the separate structures.

I'll take a motion to approve. Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. I'm going to open public hearing. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make comment on item number 30? Okay, there being no one, we'll close public hearing.

Councilman her new Hernandez Okay, I Would not do this in my district To change it from our six to two family housing in the middle of a neighborhood. I understand that this is a Poor neighborhood and that has been operating this for like this long time But I do not I wouldn't do this in my district. I won't do it in somebody else's So I'll be voting. No.

Thank you Okay, please submit your vote Okay, the motion carries. Item number 31, zoning case number ZN8600, Paul and Pamela Wondoloski, District 4.

Good afternoon, Mayors. Mayor, Council, again. So this property is located in District 4. It's at 526 Caribbean Drive and consists of 0.21 acres of land. The request of the subject property is to change the zoning from a CN1 neighborhood commercial district to a CN1 with a special permit. The purpose of the request is to allow for a wireless telecommunications tower not to exceed 110 feet in height. The property is a part of the Flower Bluff Area Development Plan that was adopted on June 22, 2021. The existing land use for the property to the north is low-density residential and is zoned RS6 single-family. The existing land use for the properties to the east and west are commercial and zone CN1 neighborhood commercial. And the existing land use for the property to the south is public, semi-public, and zone RM1 multifamily. Ten notices were mailed outside of the 200-foot buffer of the property. Five notices were mailed outside of the 200-foot buffer. Zero notices were received in opposition, and zero notices were received in favor of the rezoning. In a one mile radius, there appears to be three cell towers. The red areas represent the coverage by wireless telecommunication towers, while the blue represents uncovered areas. The proposed tower will shrink a gap in coverage in that area. The proposed rezoning is consistent with the Flower Bluff ADP and is consistent with the future and land use designation of commercial. The applicant's request is compatible with the existing zoning and suitable for the use to be permitted by the special permit. The tower is deemed as necessary. The sleek, space-efficient monopole tower with a co-location capacity for additional two carriers will have limited visual impact on the surrounding area. And in evaluating the applicant's request, staff determined that the zoning map amendment will not have a negative impact upon the surrounding neighborhood. And as such, staff and Planning Commission recommend approval to rezone to CN1 special permit.

Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you.