City Council - Regular Meeting

for all this group of people that care so much about what happened. And we ask that you let us be able to do the best job that we're capable of with your guidance. And we'll just be careful to give the praises. In the mighty precious name of your son, Jesus, we claim it all. Amen and amen. Amen. Pledge.

of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice

Okay, thank you so much for joining us today.

At this time, we're up to recognition of the visitors.

And quite naturally, I left my glasses in the car, but we'll do the best we can. Public comments from the audience. At this time, members of the public will be allowed to speak on city-related matters only. No personnel matters or matters under litigation will be allowed. The length of time may not exceed three minutes. City Council shall not speak under this item. In accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, the Council may not deliberate... take action on matters except as properly posted in accordance with the law with that being said are there any we have any okay at this time we don't have any from the public so they take us to item number one approval minutes for the regular session May 18 2026

mayor and council i'd like to bring to y'all's um i'm trying to pull this up where i can also show on the tv here in a minute but i'd like to bring it up it'll prompt our attention that in um under item number eight council member simon was stated and it was not simon it was actually council member during As it was, Briar Street was in Council Member Durin's precinct, so we would ask that if a motion is made to approve these minutes, that it be done with that correction in mind.

I move we approve the minutes with those corrections.

Motion? I second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. I can tell. Okay.

Motion carries. Okay. The minutes are approved. Okay. It brings us to the report, city administrative report.

Mayor and council, I wanted to take just a minute since this is a little bit of a shorter meeting than normal. And I do realize we have some guests here for some other items, so hopefully they'll benefit from this as well. Over the past few years, since I've been city manager, it kind of comes in waves. As there's increased talking or discussion about things, people become a little frustrated. We talk and talk a little bit about it and address those issues, and then they subside. But depending on the different... times and places that we're dealing with in our water system we have there's times when we have several good months depending on lake turnover depending on the we purchased lake water if everything is going smoothly with them usually it's going fairly smoothly with us and I'll explain how things kind of can defer from that and tonight I want to spend my time not looking for people to place blame on, but to just present factual current state of affairs. As you realize, we have, or you may not have realized, or you're questioning, I have a little bit of show and tell up here. I have some pipes, and I actually, I keep a little section of pipe in my office. I keep a little section of my pipe in office because it comes up regularly. And I talk to people as they're talking about water issues. I believe somebody picked that. So I went out there today. I said, hey. couple of your repairs that y'all just did the day or the day before, give me some of those pipes. I pulled some pipes out. These are pipes that, these are smaller pipes, not the big pipes that I couldn't bring in here, but to give you some understanding of where we're at. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit. As you see on the screen, Here's my messages for tonight. Discolored water does not automatically mean unsafe water. TCEQ provides us with regulatory guidance. Our actions that we take on a daily basis, we have certified and licensed people that are trained to deal with old water systems such as ours. And their goal is to best balance everything that they've inherited and they've been given and try to fix it with the tools that we give them with. There's always ways to do things better. There's always newer technologies. Those are the things that we always try to improve on. to improve our situation if there's a new type of chemical, if there's a new type of testing equipment. We always seek that within our budgetary means. But usually that's probably the biggest limiting factor is budgetary means. If not, we could throw money at it and it would all go away. We'd replace all of our water lines. Water quality is monitored daily. Every day we have people go out Flush systems, we have specific areas where they do testing. They do lead testing, they do water testing, they do chlorine and residual testing for chlorine. And then we have those samples that are sent off to the labs. We get regular lab samples. We pay tens of thousands of dollars for third party labs as required by law. Public health and safe drinking water is our top priority. I want to talk just a little bit, and I thought about bringing a couple of our licensed operators in, but truthfully they talk over my head when you're talking about water chemistry, and that's not what I want to do tonight. So I'm going to break it down as I understand it, as best explained by me and what I've been dealing with in the last 10 years. About five to six years ago, we went from something called a free chlorine. We treated our water with a free chlorine to a monochloramine. It's a different type of treatment process that stays in the water longer. It binds to the water particles longer, and the residuals, the disinfectants levels of our water, stay higher longer. As you know, our city, we have a lot of... sprawling area so where it comes when we treat it here at college hill which is across from hilltop on north fourth by the time it reaches all the way to the school district or by the time it reaches to uh nottingham woods or meadow woods at the very end it travels through many many miles worth of pipe as water travels and the longer it stays in the pipe those residuals those disinfectant levels the chlorine drops out of the water it drops out of the water and it's no longer disaffected. So that's why we prioritize heavy flushing and we always test it to ensure that we always have chlorine in the water and it's always treated. That requires something, it creates a byproduct. If you're not careful, it creates nitrification. Monochloramine disinfectants create nitrification. We have adopted, under TCEQ's guidance, we've adopted a nitrification action plan. That requires us a couple times a year to go in and convert back to free chlorine. It's called a chlorine burn or a chlorine conversion to shock. Basically, sometimes you go out, it's on a smaller scale, but when your pool starts to turn colors and you do a shock treatment to it. It's disinfecting in there. What it does though, as it's cleaning that system and removing all the nitrification, you'll get cloudiness. That stuff that's going through our system.

We put out notices 30 days in advance before it's done.

If and when it's not presenting a health, but sometimes it's just poor-looking water. It's not water that you just want to pour a glass of water and drink it. But it's not going to cause harm to you. It's not going to cause harm to you. It's treated water. two separate types of chlorination in there and it's even more so treated than normal. So it's definitely not going to have bacteria in it. But it's removing sedimentation within the pipes. It's cleaning those pipes out. when we transition from lake water to groundwater. And I'm telling you this, council, because I'm hoping that y'all can be agents of the city as we're out there, as there's frustrated people. There's no one more frustrated than the staff that's out there that's doing everything they can. And then you're dealing with either cloudiness or you're dealing with rust-colored water. They take it personal. And they want to fix it right away. It's not something where, you know, there's people just behind the scenes, well, let's just go ahead and let's do this today. They're responding as quickly as possible to correct those items. But when we're transitioning, for instance, this last week, we transitioned from lake water. The lake called us and said, we're going to have to go down for a little bit. We need y'all to turn y'all's wells on. They treat their water and they do lab sampling as well. When their samples do not pass, they call us and say, we can't sell you water right now. We're going to have to flush our system or we're going to have to do some things within their treatment process. So what do we do? We turn on well water. When we convert from well water to lake water back and forth, As soon as we turn the faucet on up here and we turn on the well water into our system, there's still lake water from surface water out in our system. As it combines lake water and well water, it's two different types of treatment process. It's two different types of water compositions. the pH balance in the water is different. So the treatment process for well water and lake water is completely different. But as it combines out there in the system until that system is flushed out, and as you can imagine, we have lots of water mains throughout our system. So it takes a day, two days, three days sometimes to completely flush our system out. then the lake calls us and says, hey, we're good again. We're good to go back. So we have to convert back. And those treatment processes change once again. When those treatment processes change, they also create, especially, and I'm showing you these here tonight, Not to really gross you out, but to really show you this is what we're dealing with. These are the pipes, and these are the small pipes. We have pipes of many sizes, but a lot of our pipes are still in the grounds from the late 1800s, early 1900s. Those that have been declared as being dangerous, such as lead piping, we remove those. Whenever we get into a situation of lead, we're doing something called a lead service line inventory. We completed that a couple years ago. Now our goal is anywhere we come into contact with lead, you're not allowed to repair lead. You have to remove it completely from the ground until there's no more lead in the ground. Back to whatever joints until you get back to PVC or we can change it back to safe. So we're not dealing with that. But we still have, and as you can tell, if these pipes are 100 years old, they were a really good investment. These pipes have been in the ground for 100 years. They lasted and we took advantage of that. As long as it's good, why change it? Why reinvent the wheel? Why do you want to put new pipes in the ground? These are fine. Until they're not. And until they're all not fine. All across the city. If you notice the one over here, this is what we're dealing with a lot. So as the corrosion happens in the pipes and we have something, we have a fluctuation in pressures. If there's a leak on one side of town and the pressures drop, as we repair that and flush the system and regain pressures, there's a pressure surcharge across the city. And the fire service is called Water Hammer. there will be two different levels of water pressures. And when you're going around, if this pressure over here is at 20 psi and this one's coming in at 80, When they meet, they cause a water hammer, and they'll blow out the line. They'll split out half-inch steel pipe. That water hammer will completely cause a balloon in the system. These right here, we have these all the time, though, where these little joints and systems, they corrode, they fall through, and they hold until they don't, until there's a little bit of a pressure change and they pop a leak. So when we're over here fixing this, we cause another pressure change. And so as you can see, these are what we deal with on a daily basis, this balancing act of keeping water service. Rust, skel, and sedimentation. The waters that we use are either well water or lake water. Lake water has organics that are treated, filtered, and brought to us. So it's a different treatment process. Well water has its own, lots of minerals in it, lots of mineral deposits. piping that has metal content rusts so there's rust deposits so as these pressures change it loosens it loosens those those rust deposits and skills will fall off the pipe and when the pressure is charged back up it's in the system then and so that's why uh we deal with a lot of the the complaints that you're that y'all might hear um today We do two of these chlorine conversions a year. TCQ came in. Looking through our system, that's what they recommended, that we do a couple chlorine conversions. We do daily monitoring. We do third-party lab analysis. And like I mentioned earlier, every day we go out and pull residuals, which are we pull samples out and we test them for how much chlorine content, how much ammonia is in the water, and all the disinfectant levels. I spoke about this. Lake water is low minerals but high organics. There's fish in that lake. It has to be filtered and treated for that. There's decomposing organics such as seaweed and growth weeds in the lake. That has to be treated. When it comes to the water in the wells, we don't have work in it, but we have high mineral contents. We have iron, manganese, different pH levels. We have sulfur in our waters that we have to burn off and treat that specifically. Sometimes when you smell that water, there's one well that we have down that's about 1300 feet down in the ground, one of our wells. It goes through a layer of sulfur. There's a bedrock of sulfur veins in our bedrock. When that water comes up through it, it brings in a sulfur gas. We burn that off. The sulfur gas is aerated. The water is thrown up and misted to where all the gas is removed. from the water but you it's left with sometimes you'll have like a an egg smell like a rotten egg smell or just a it's just not a pleasant smell especially when it that water is heated up in a in a water you know in that water heater and you're taking a shower you can smell that The treatment between the two treated waters is what causes a lot of the discolored water. I have something else here. The city of Crockett is the fifth oldest city in Texas and it's a source of pride. We talk about it all the time that we have all the history in Crockett. This is one of the histories that comes with our city that we're not so proud of and we're not so happy about is the amount of infrastructure that we're dealing with that has not been replaced. And I'm not talking about the last 50 years. A lot of this infrastructure is from early 1900s. We're pulling hydrants and replacing them that have hydrant stamps of the 1889, 19, 1900, 1910. We have these old hydrants with these water systems that are tied into it. I understand the frustration that we're dealing with it now, but I'm just trying to ask the public to not be frustrated at those that are out there working, trying to fix the problem now, and the council now that's investing millions and millions of dollars into our water systems now. It's frustrating that we waited until now, and we did not replace these systematically, and we kicked this can down the road until where deferred maintenance has caught up with us. We have 455,000 feet of water lines in our ground. That's 86 miles worth of water lines throughout our city. We distribute approximately 1 million gallons of water every day to the public. However, we only sell about half a million to the public. Half a million is lost. Half a million is lost in small trickle leaks everywhere. The big ones that we see on the surface, we run and fix those as quick as we can. But the small leaks that we don't see that just seep into the ground, those we don't know about, those we're not fixing. We only sell about half. We actually only sell half of what we pump out daily. That aging infrastructure is a lot of the reason that we're dealing with the problems that we have today. I put up here on the screens and in front of you some of these pipes. This is rust. These are deposits on this calcification. It's calcification. It's calcium. It's mineral deposits. I'm not going to put that in my mouth, but it's not something that's going to kill you. These are organics. This is not poison. It's just not slightly. It's not something that you want to see in a glass of water or when you're taking a shower in the bottom of your tub. I get that. I live that. But these are the pipes. They were installed when we installed these. These are horse carriage rings that were installed in the sidewalks around town. This is from the same era. The horse carriages are gone, and the horses, and the dirt streets are gone, but we're still using the same infrastructure that was installed at the same time that these were installed, when people rode horses into town and went to the Dukes and Ayers store. So that's the same era that we're dealing with, and all of these have come to a reckoning for us to deal with now. horse rings and hinges um hitching post hinges they're gone but the pipes are still in the ground because they're easy to be forgotten it's easy to overlook them and you know when you're walking down the sidewalk and you see those wow those still in there let's remove those let's pour a new concrete sidewalk right over top of these old lines and that's what we're seeing as well so these are the pipes this is 1910 this is a 1910 pipe This is rust. As long as the pressure is made consistent and solid, if anything, this serves as additional filtration as that water flows through that pipe and more organics bind to the size of these pipes. But when that pressure changes, that's when you get rusty colored water. The water might look orange, it might look yellow, depending on your flavor of the day. Here's what I want to talk about to council. And this is going from frustration to a little bit of hope. And this is where we've at. The last few years, council has invested heavily into our city. It's come with some pushback. It's repaid by water rates. It's repaid by property taxes. So We hear people say, we're in debt. That's a bad thing. I think that any dollars that we can borrow today to get infrastructure fixed now, when we're losing 50% of our water already, and every year that we wait to make these heavy investments, The cost of replacing these water lines will jump by 10% every year, materials, contractor costs. Every year, our dollar devaluates itself by inflation. Why would we not, whatever our maximum borrowing capacity is today, and I say this from an investment side, the more money that I can borrow at a 0% interest rate, 0%, so I'm getting dollar for dollar investment into replacing these lines when they'll never be cheaper. These lines will never be cheaper than what it costs today to fix them. Next year will be only more. And the following only more. We would be We would show a lot of lack of intelligence to pass up any opportunity to bring those dollars in today and pay for them at tomorrow's devaluated and inflated dollars rate. In 20 years when we repay that debt, when that dollar is only worth 80 cents, that's savings right there alone. And so this last year alone, we invested $3 million. We put in 12,000 feet of new water lines. A lot of these old water lines that we pulled out, these 8-inch water lines, as we're pulling them out of the ground, they're collapsing. We replaced them all with 12,000 feet of new water lines. A couple years before that, we put $4 million into storage tanks and our elevator water tanks that are beside Walmart. We pulled those down, sandblasted them, and repainted all of those. We're already looking at one of our water tanks that need to be pulled down again and re-coated. Every time we think we're good and we think we can forget about it, we can't. Maintenance has to be a top priority. This next year, we have over $8 million in additional grant funds. These are all grant funds. These are grant funds that we brought in. Next year, we brought in over $8 million worth of grant funds to replace at least three miles plus a new well into our city. Projects that we funded are $4.7 million. Those came as grant matches. In order to get the $8 million I mentioned earlier, we had to show in-kind money, and not all of it was free. So some of them we had to get at low percent interest rates or zero percent interest rates. Any time that we can get that kind of a deal, I think we would be really misplaced and not take advantage of those. Here's another talking point. I told you we have 83 miles worth of water lines. Using the rate of replacement that we did for the water lines from last year, that would cost us at least $100 million, but probably the target goal is about $120 million for us to replace these all at once. $120 million. Basic math, if I'm only borrowing $100 million, we have 2,500 customers, and I put that on a 40-year note, we're looking at about $83 a month that it's going to cost every citizen for the next 40 years to replace our water lines. That's what we're up against. So that's why we need to prioritize every grant that we can apply for, every dollar that we can get, especially if we can just match it maybe dollar for dollar or a couple dollars with our one dollar. Anytime we can maximize our borrowing or maximize our grant revenues with matches, that's what we need to do first. And one day, whether it be this council in this seat or it be somebody that replaces y'all, somebody's going to have to come up with an answer.

I do have a question. I had one time before, and I think we talked about the ARPA money, the ARPA funds. So how much, I mean, what was the amount of ARPA funds that were granted to the city?

It was 1.4 million, I believe, right at 1.4 million. It was less than a million and a half, I believe.

And so you say... About $120 million to fix all of the 83 miles of water lines.

John, I got a question.

Go ahead.

We fixed 12,000 feet last year, right? What's the total number? Do you have a total number of what we've replaced in, say, the last five years, seven years maybe?

I did a report for Texas Water Development Board last year, and we've replaced right at five miles, right at five miles in the last, I believe the report was for three or four years. We've replaced, when we go in and replace a water line, what we're doing, anytime we have the opportunity to, instead of, like if that line right there, if there's just a hole in the side, instead of putting a clamp around it, which what has been done for many, many years, you just put a clamp around that one hole. we'll go back and replace it to the next section or to the next hydrant. We'll replace sections at a time, especially if we're there two or three times within a recent period of time. We'll replace several sections of it as time allows. And so we collect that information and that data and that does add up, that does add up. Some of the reasoning for picking certain streets that we've done, for instance the ones last year, is because we had additional funds that were ready to be paid for putting a new street on top of it. So we used half of those funds to replace the infrastructure underneath and half of it to put new asphalt on top. before we put that asphalt in. And then we also selected streets that had bigger water lines that were conduits in between neighborhoods and such that had a lot of water pressure. And we found streets that just had more leaks than others. And we selected those streets as part of the selection process.

So then my follow-up would be that the stuff that you're replacing it with, what's the life of that?

We usually replace that with C900. All of our water mains, we're replacing those with C900 pipe. That's known as a 100-year pipe. It's a thick-walled PVC pipe. Very, very strong and durable slip connections so that as ground moves, we're not breaking and having issues with that pipe. So it's known as about a 100-year pipe. It's obviously, it came out, I believe, in the 1980s. So we haven't gotten there yet to know that it's going to last 100 years, but yes, sir.

Okay.

This right here lasted 100 years, but it also collects deposits, which PVC does not.

Yeah. I just wanted to make sure that the stuff that we replaced 10 years ago, we wouldn't have to go back and replace it again and again.

One of the other notes that I want to, and I'll wrap this up, and I thank Council for taking just a little bit of time with me, but I wanted to help empower Council with more information that will help in frustrated situations. A lot of what we're dealing with, as you know, we have a lot of Victorian-era homes. We have a lot of older homes throughout town, many of them up to even 100 years old. If their plumbing was put in in the 1980s, it's probably done with copper, and it's already at the end of its lifespan. Copper is now producing pinholes. Why? Because one of abrasion, water abrasion, tends to wear down. Water will carve itself through the Grand Canyon. It carves rocks, so it's carving that pipe and making those walls thinner and thinner as time goes on. As the pHs fluctuate in our water system, alkaline water and acidic water, those will start corroding and eating little pinholes in the copper pipes. Anything before copper is going to be galvanized. These smaller pipes that you see over here, galvanized or even cast iron itself. This is a big source that are inside homes and are a big source of the rusty orange color or red water. We're having a lot of customers that are calling us concerned, complaining about their water. We go out there and we open that hydrant, flush it, and the water in the main is flowing clear. But when we go inside that house,

That's my problem.

Rust deposits have fallen and gotten in there and corroded it, especially near the water heaters. If you take those supply lines off the wall, I just had to replace one in my house, take the supply lines off the wall, you couldn't fit a coffee straw, like a stir straw, in the center of that pipe. It was completely corroded in. And that's, you know, water pressure complaints, water pressure complaints, and rust-colored water or orange water, We got a complaint the other day and it was one of our city staff's neighbors. And she went to her house and her water was flowing clear, the neighbor was flowing rust colored. And so a lot of it is just trying to work with these customers and that's what, we don't want to defer the blame, you know, because a lot of times it is our water maintenance out there and we'll flush it. We'll flush it rapidly. We won't, if it's in that area, And I have something to show you real quick, if you can give me just one more minute. If there's rust, if there was a pressure fluctuation in our system somewhere, our system is nothing but a network of connections. So wherever there is the biggest draw at that given time, that's where the water flows towards in our system. So if any of our industrial areas in town or there's a huge water leak, let's say, where the water pressure drops and water is flowing, water will flow from one area of town to another area of town and back and forth. That's why we're asking. We understand the need to fill the need of frustration and put things on Facebook. That doesn't fix it. The faster that you can call us and let us get out there, we have around the clock, 24-7 personnel, our public works office, phone number is transferred to a cell phone you will always get somebody that can respond out there the faster we can get there and open up a hydrant while that rust that that discolored water is in this area let us flush it out before it moves on or somebody else some unsuspecting grandma is washing her clothes and that rust color water is sucked into her home Let's get it out of the system. And that's why I'm asking y'all to please educate those around you and as the conversations and opportunities come up to talk about those.

John, I want to ask you a question. Go ahead. So I understand trying to lower the temperature, the frustration level of the community. I understand that. But I know that what I want to know is, is how we're gonna resolve the issue. My understanding is that previous council have been talking about replacing our mains for a while. So that's what I'd like to know is, I mean, as far as the infrastructure, the agent infrastructure, the project, how are we gonna resolve What measures are we going to use to resolve this? Because, I mean, I don't want to. And then, not just that, I did speak with the, I think, fire department one time before when I did my little tour, and we did talk about how that rust and that sediment cells in those pipes, and if they have a fire, how it obstructs. the pressure that puts that fire out to the home. So we've got to discuss this as a council to come up with a resolution and you put forth an effort to bring things to the table so we can discuss together. But I know that that's what they're looking for. I'm looking for that because I get that same thing out of my faucet as well.

Our state legislature is prioritizing to a certain degree water infrastructure. They're prioritizing. In fact, in the last constitutional amendment, I believe it was last year, Everybody voted on a constitutional amendment, and I believe it passed 80% or greater, maybe 90%, for a billion dollars to be allocated out of the legislature by constitutional amendment. So the legislatures every year, they don't get the chance to say, okay, guys, here's the pot of money. Let's divvy it up. Here's our state budget. By a constitutional amendment, $1 billion is automatically put in a pot, and they can't talk about that unless it comes back up for another vote to remove that funding. So every year, $1 billion, and these projects are also divvied out into grants with zero match. We've applied for that already. Our next big project that we're trying to put our packet together for is for North 4th. We've replaced South 4th from the jail, basically at Anson Jones. We've replaced that all the way to the loop. The rest of North 4th needs to be replaced. Texthaw's not even touching the street until we replace that water line. So that's the next source of funding that we're trying to put in. But like I mentioned, I can't remember the billions of dollars. I want to say it's around $300 billion. There's an estimate. There's about $300 billion worth of immediate water infrastructure needs in our state right now. If every city put all of their – if we're saying ours is $100 million, $120 million, every city puts that price tag together, that $1 billion is a drop in the bucket. And so – go ahead.

So I was asking about the ARPA funds. So you state, will you tell us again how many funds, what amount of funds we have from the off fund? The American Rescue Plan. Right.

Like I said, that was around $1.5 million, and council has allocated those fundings. I believe there's a – and I wanted to bring that back to council. We have some remaining needs from council's priorities on that, and so we needed to allocate the remaining ARPA funds. But there's somewhere around the $200,000 left in the ARPA fund. but council purchase police vehicles out of council purchase repairs to roofs and city infrastructure put a new roof you know on the i believe the the library and the city there's a lot of that the council already prioritized those funds for right so with that issue with with that being said just kind of

we look at things like that, like water, I think we probably have an issue at that time as well. I mean, I think that, you know, it's too late now.

Well, you're talking about prior councils that had priorities at that time. If we have buildings with roofs that are leaking water, that's also a priority. So every council... Instead of getting frustrated at prior councils for deferred maintenance to this date, my only answer is, council, we need to aggressively seek out every source of funding that we can on a reasonable basis that we can provide matches to, that we can afford in loans. Whatever it is that we can afford, I don't know how... There's no other pots of money. There's no other pots of money out there. I want to leave you all with this. Our city staff, they live, work, and raise their families as well in the city of Crockett. They drink that same water. They take showers in that same water. So to come across as an us versus them situation, is really, really frustrating. And we're missing the mark. Our city staff are heavily invested. They're raising their babies on that same water. They want to see clean water as well. And they fill it. When you call them and say, hey, I've got this water problem over here, they fill it. Because they've done their best to address that. And they will come immediately out there. We will come out there, flush the system, find the source of the problem, and try to address it. That's the message I want to get across. to the public and to council. We pay, we sell our water. This bottle of water from the grocery store, you buy it for $1 to $2 for this 500 milliliters. $2. We sell water for $63. That's what we sell our water for. That's our water rate. That's how we're trying to make enough money to pay our bills and to keep water flowing. I'm committed to Crockett water. I ask for Crockett water when I go to a restaurant. I'll kind of make it a point. It's kind of a funny, but people kind of pay attention when they ask, what do you want to drink? Water, sweet, tea, whatever. I'll say, I want Crockett water. I know what goes in this water. I know what we're doing. I go out to the plants and see how these guys are treating it. And, you know, if it's rusty, I'll chunk it out and I'll pour me another one until it flows clear. The other thing that we're committing to the public, if you're dealing with a rusty water problem and it took... It took about 30 minutes to, we go out there, we open that hydrant, flush it clean, and we clear up the lines in that area, and you go into your water faucet and you have to flush it for 30 minutes, we'll comp your bill on that. We're not going to charge you for water that you had to put on the ground until the flow cleared. So that's our commitment to y'all. We're not, you know, going to charge water that you had to pour on the ground.

I'll just say realistically, even in our city, even with the best of flow, if you live in a house like a lot of the older houses here, those are my pipes. Every time I dig one up out of the yard, it looks like that, and I'm amazed at that. And right now I'm waiting to, because I have an older house. It looks good on the outside, but I'm fixing to have all my pipes redone because they have corroded. And so I do know that even when you flush it, it's good for a minute, but when it comes through your pipes, you're picking it back up if you live in some of the older houses. and we do have a lot of them in here. But I do see that, you know, as he's mentioned earlier, when the council's in, they do have the recommendation. They see what they see at the time is the most need. Right now we are in a most needed position, and we just need to look for sources. Money is tight. Nobody has to tell you that. You can look in your own checkbook and see how tight it is. But prioritizing it, And this is a good starting point because we did need to see it overall. And we did need to look at these pipes to see that they're real and nobody's making it up. And they're coming to your house one way or the other. But the thing that we really needed to hear is it's safe. That's important to me. Can you drink it and not die? You know, I'm trying to get through. The older you get, the more cautious you get. I want some real, do I need to boil it like the old people said? I need to boil this water. Y'all remember when they used to boil the water before they let you drink it? I don't know if it helped, but it sure made them happy, made me happy, I don't know. But the reality of it is we all, we will need, as a council, look for a source of income. And then the difference in what we get now over the next two or three years, if you can get a low interest rate, that's all you're looking for. I mean, not all, you would like it to be free, but there's nothing free now. And so we're looking for the most bang for our bucks. And I think John is in a position to kind of bring that because he has a larger overview, not that he's smart. I'll say that. But he's not the smartest in the world, but he is smart enough to know what works for our community. That's why we elect him as city manager. So I think that at this point, I appreciate him bringing it. People do say, oh, my water is all different colors, rainbows, I don't know. But we do know why it is. And if you just look at your own pipes close to your house, if you don't believe it, you won't have to dig very deeply to see because they didn't dig them that deeply for some reason. You just got to kick around and you kick one over. So we think we're at a good point at this point. The money that we had, it went well for what needed to be done. And we do, because last, at the time that other money came through, everybody was concerned about the street. I can't get down my street. Then they couldn't get to the street because they couldn't get to what's underneath. And no point in putting the street down and turning it back up the next day. So we did accomplish the purpose of not only getting a good street, but we got the street and we got the infrastructure taken care of. And so now we're on to the other part of the infrastructure. And that's a lot of miles, 83. It was 83 miles. That's a lot of miles. That's around and around the city and out to the lake to make sure we get it. So it is going to be a tedious and hopefully not slow. But we do know that in the meantime, the water is safe. Everybody will be, I know Councilwoman will be looking for sources. She'll be checking out when she hears things. And I know all the council will be looking for. And that's what we are. We're here to work for the good of the people. And because we're part of those people, we're going to benefit for me too, because we want everybody to be healthy. And that's where we are. And we do appreciate the summary. And I think it gave us an idea of where we are, where we need to work at. We need to go hunting. You hear a grant, you need to refer it back. You don't have to understand it, you just have to hear of it, and we'll work out the details and see if there's some funding. Because you hear it all the time, funding here, funding there, but we don't always digest it. But now we're into really trying to hear it and operate off of it and respond to it. So thanks for that review. We needed to know why we have beautiful colored water.

Yes, sir. So what's the central starting point in this city for replacing these pipes?

Depends on the source of funding. A lot of funding comes with specific scopes or criteria. Some of them, a lot of them that we qualify for, for instance, we just got a CDBG program that we applied for and we're in the second phase of application for water lines and it has to be in a low to moderate income area. So we're not able to replace For instance, we had a couple areas like some hot spots like along North Fork. Hey, let's replace a section of that. It didn't qualify. It has to be in an area with low-income housing because the grant specifics required that. We didn't qualify for it. Otherwise, so it just depends on your source of funding Are we borrowing for it? Are we doing it to try to complete like say a textile project to put new streets in? If then we're going to find textile streets that need to be replaced and replace the water lines underneath that And ultimately it comes back to whatever council approved whatever lines council approves to replace That's where we're going to

So, John, I'm quite sure that we have water lines in Precinct 3, which is the underserved community. So how do we go about applying for a grant for that location, that area? We are.

For instance, the last one, like I just said, the one, the last CDBG project, it's actually, we had it engineered right at six years ago. All the preliminary engineering is done, and we had this grant opportunity. It was a CBG program for three quarters of a million dollars. We used a pre-engineered project and applied that money towards it. And it's over there. For instance, that one is in Precinct 3.

OK. So we received that grant?

No, we're in the phases of receiving that grant. We've gotten preliminary approval. OK. We qualify for it, and we're well into the priority scoring. So it needs to be completed, and that's what we're in the process. You'll actually be hearing more about that probably in the next meeting or two.

Okay. With that being said, it's not going to interfere with the streets that we're going to get done. So we don't need to put the streets down and then dig it back up?

We're doing our best to prioritize them in that manner. Water lines first, water streets second. Okay. That's why we actually picked the one over there on Durrett, which is in Precinct 3, is because TxDOT is waiting on us to replace that water line before they come in and put the new street in.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council, for your patience.

Okay, we appreciate it. And that brings us to item number three. Public hearing on request from Lissandra Simon for a specific use permit, excuse me, for a manufactured home to be placed on property currently having an address of 609 South Cottonwood, which is identified by the Houston County Appraisal District as HCAD, as Partier 13631, and being a zero point two five eight acres partial located between west vale avenue and paint painter avenue legal description being lot number two block thirteen depot at addition to the city of crockett council oh i'm sorry that's right it's a public hearing

Council and public, this is your opportunity to speak. If you are a member of the public and you've received a legal notice, we send out legal notices to everyone within 300 feet of this property in question. If you wish to speak for or against a mobile home being placed on this property, this is your opportunity. I will make a note for the record. All legal notices, the legal notice in the newspaper and the application, all of it refers to this address as being 605 South Cottonwood. This was a clerical error when we typed this in. One of the property owners actually lives at 609, and 609 was put down instead of 605. And I did ask for legal advice if that could be... If this could be used as long as it's corrected in the minutes.

So is everything else correct? Parcel number, acreage, everything else?

The parcel number, the acreage, the identifying factors of that parcel are all 605. The address is written as 609. The legal notice is, if anyone showed up here because you received a legal notice, you received 605. This agenda item is the only thing that says 609.

I think it's a type of platform.

Okay, thank you. So this is the members of the public to speak for or against. Yes, that's fine. Yes, sir. Just identify yourself, please.

I want to be too long-winded, but I can't get long-winded. I just feel like I haven't reached to find my children. are there any other if no one has any

We will officially close if no one else has anything. Okay. Consider it's closed. Let's go to the next item on it then. Number five. Am I on number four? Number four. I'm on number four. Y'all, this glasses thing is killing me. Consider an approved request from Lissandra Simon for a specific use permit for a manufactured home to be placed on property currently having an address of 609 South Cottonwood. 605? It's 609 as she's reading it. As it reads, and it's been corrected to? 605. 605.

Mayor and Council, this is the application. This also went to our Planning and Zoning Commission, where there was another public hearing allowed as well. This will be bringing in a brand new 2026 manufactured home. There were no one speaking against this manufactured home being brought in, and it was voted on by our Planning and Zoning to recommend the approval and bring it to you. If a motion is made, I would request that it be made with the clarification of 605. 605.

I make a motion that we approve the request for LaSondra Simon for a specific use permit for a manufactured home to be placed on the property currently having the address of 605 South Cottonwood.

second that motion okay it's been moved and second all in favor motion carries okay that brings us to item number five public hearing on request from franco or perez rodriguez for a specific use permit for a manufacturer home to be placed on property currently having an address of 325 Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard which is identified by the Houston County Appraisal District as a parcel number 1195 and is located north of Johnson Avenue and south of West Goliad Avenue we're open now if you would like to have someone like to speak you're free to have words

If you're within 300 feet or you're affected by this property, now you can speak for or against the placement of this property. Mr. Rodriguez is here, but he does not speak English. He does have family members here. They can both come to the podium if they need to.

Thank you. Okay, are there any

you read that there you read that later okay if nothing else we officially close the hearing and it brings us to item number six consider an approved request from Franco Perez Rodriguez for a specific use permit for a manufacturer home to be placed on property currently having an address of 325 Martin Luther King jr boulevard

Council members, I move that we approve the request for Mr. Franco Perez Rodriguez for a specific use permit for a manufactured home to be placed on the property currently having an address of 325 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Seconded.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Motion carries. Thank you, sir. Congratulations. That's it. We got one more item. There's no new business at this time. Can we get a motion to adjourn?

I'll make a motion we adjourn.

I'll second that. Moved and seconded. We're out of here. Thank you so much.

Thank you.