City Council - Regular Meeting

little bit when people we can debate and not fall out and so there will be some challenges but just remember we're here to do what's best for everyone thank you and with that we're recognizing any visitors that are here that would like thank you for being here do we have any public comments No public comments. The approval of the minutes.

Mayor, all the minutes from the last meeting. We'll have questions for you after the meeting.

I move that we approve the regular session from June 15, 2026.

I second.

Okay. Any questions? Yes, ma'am. On the last meeting that we had, I'm asking that we review the last meeting because I believe Mr. Dern had made a motion to call the question. And as I recall, looking back at my review, there was no second. And I believe when you call upon a question, there must be a second. So I would ask you to review that. It's stating that Mr. Ivey made the motion, he seconded it, but we just need to review that and see if there was a second.

If you have any questions like that to bring it to our attention ahead of time, we send it out quite early in advance so we can make corrections or be prepared to bring additional information back to council if we prepared the minutes wrong. We can address that. At this point, you're talking about something that we don't have time to go and look back. I mean, it's up to council right now to decide if Mr. Dennis knows that he made a second to the... Well, we have the video.

We have the recording.

We don't have the time to review it now.

We can review it, and you can bring it back to us later.

but that means that if that's the case we'll look at the correction because you can make a correction at any time correct yes ma'am okay so what we have on the floor now we have a motion and a second and ready for the vote all in favor Motion carries. I'll oppose. Okay. Oppose. I'm sorry. Thank you. Okay. So that brings us to the business, the fiscal year 2027 budget workshop.

Good morning, mayor and council, department heads, everyone here. This is the first budget workshop of the year for fiscal year 2027. This process starts during the spring as new rates and new numbers come forward from from all of our contract services and things that go on. They they usually send us notice. Over the last few months of different rate increases or changes to service. So we slowly build that together insurance numbers workers call numbers and tax rates and fight and taxes for employees and things of that nature. What I have the initial draft and we finished it up this weekend and I have a copy of it in front of you all we're going to add that it's separated by revenues and expenditures.

The first 4 people being.

The city's revenues and the last 13 sheets, I believe are the city's expenditures broken down by department. And so we have tabs in your binders to separate revenues and expenditures as we move forward even today. If I'll be making notes and changes research. And as updates are made to that worksheet, that's called basically, you have a proposed line item all the way to the closer to the right before you get to your. Here, let me just open it. So I'm talking about looking at it. You have your actuals for 2024 actuals for 2025 what we budgeted last year. I don't have actual because we're still in the middle of that fiscal year. And then we have proposed. For 2027, we have a difference. to show this proposed numbers over current budgeted numbers. So if there's increases and decreases, you can track those. And then there's a three-year average. And then I have a note section. So if you want to jot some notes down in there, you can. And so as we go through this budget workshop, as well as subsequent weeks and we make updates, I'll prepare the updated versions and you can swap it out from what you currently have in your budget books. There's no one way to do this, one right way to do it. It's just like when you build your budget and you set your tax rate. By law, you're required, when we get to this in August, our goal is to have Council's prepared a budget that they're ready to vote on and be prepared to vote on a tax rate in August. And so they both will be at the same meeting, but they come in separate votes. So our goal is to build a budget that council agrees with to be able to adopt a tax rate that will fund that budget. Because if you vote for the budget but don't vote for the tax rate, we don't have a budget you know so they both go hand in hand um then the same in the same manner i have numbers before you um this morning but we don't have any of these uh capital requests or requests to increase any uh expenditures. So if you know if as we talk about certain items those numbers are not built in this budget. Our current employee costs current budgeted costs. We do have a few notes in there and I made some notes as we go down. So, if a department, we were able to realize some savings in 1 item, electricity rates are going down or gasoline costs or things of that nature. If there's any savings, then you'll see where. Some of those were pulled out of those departments to be able to fund other departments and then sometimes it was moved within that department. For instance, like street department and I'll explain that in a minute. We moved some cost from employee cost and we put that in maintenance repair to streets. So we increased that line item instead of pulling all of those savings out of that department. So we'll go through that. But just for reference sake the budget that you have in front of you is a draft budget We still have some outstanding numbers that are not in yet in both revenues and expenditures Some that we're still expecting and we're waiting on numbers for put you know proposed numbers for this next year But this is like the information that as we have it now Then we move forward into what I would like to do at this time is to go into our capital request. These are the capital request will be either increases to year over year expenses. And normally those are increased. Those increases are labor costs. So we're talking about any kind of a cold or anything that will be year over year. So we'll have to find the money in revenue this year be able to support a fish this coming year and the following years one-time expenses one-time expenses to cap like capital requests hey i want to buy one vehicle or i want to buy a new pump that's a one-time expense not year over year then we will spend that we will as council approves it we will spend that at cost out of either fund balance or revenues that we do have that we're able to realize um you know hey We'll approve that, but we're going to have to reduce this number over here to pay for it, and it'll be a one-time capital request approval. So I know that right now as we go into our capital requests, as I have it and you have it in your revenue worksheets, the very first sheet up at the top, I have a running tally on the revenue at the very, very top on the right. As our draft budget has been put together the initial draft budget. We have a revenue. We have a surplus basically of 71,000. Those can be applied towards any of these requests. And we have utilities is right now is pretty flat. I don't have a lot of revenues to approve for any. Projects as it comes to our water and sewer. And that the water and sewer is the utility. Utility portion. on the rest of every every other department falls under general our general fund the taxes that are built into this budget is as of this year we've received estimates from our appraisal district The estimates are for our values have increased by about 3 million. So 423 a million valuation to a little over 425 million valuation. So in comparison to years prior, this is probably one of the flatter years when they adopted that initial increase in the 2020 era. a lot of those were pushed out over a five-year increase so if they reappraise the house or something in you know five years ago they weren't all able to be hit they weren't able to hit the books all that same year so they spread them over they had they were required to spread them over five years so a lot of those re-assessments have played out now and now we're back stabilized um we don't have a lot of revenue coming from you know new new property values So that that 77,000 dollar difference that you see there, that's what's allowed by the state and that's the voter approval rate. So, this is based on the voter approval rate. Anything over this triggers the opportunity for the public to put a petition together. To push it back to the voter approval rate to bring it back down. And anything less than that is less than the voter approval rate. And this is based on estimates. So as the certified values come in, we will have the exact certified values built into that. At this time, depending on how council wishes to proceed, we're going to be a little flexible if council wants to talk about an item and things we can stop at any point during this. But this is usually the best time where we talk about our capital requests. The needs for departments over and above. this current year's budgeted you know revenues and expenditures that we have is that okay with y'all yes yes okay you might turn the air conditioner down I don't want to. I don't want to.

It could be, though, just what we're doing.

Okay, so I do apologize. This TV is not coming when we turned it on this morning. It has lines all the way through it. Like the leds went out on us.

I don't know. Yeah, maybe. I don't know.

Um, So here's here's the needs for our public works. Our public works department or how do you know what you're going to know is who wants to go for a month. Y'all want to do that are wrong and told. That's a good idea too. Jason is on the truck today.

My capital request is for $10,000 to purchase a new hose. This hose that I need to replace, I'm trying to get it out of the game. Every year we get it tested annually, and some of the hose we got, as long as it lasts, it's still good. But this last year in the hose test, I'm going to and the hose test. So I like to keep it, you know, where we got some reserve on our hose. So when we go fight a fire, when we get back, we gotta wash the hose and just gotta dry it for about a day and a half. So I like that little surplus to the side so we can put the dry hose that's coming back in the truck. And the price of the hose has went up dramatically in the last 10 years. Just like the five inch that we laid from the pattern to the fire truck, those used to be about $800 for a 100 foot section. Now they're out at $1,500 a section. And we got 10 sections on the free trucks. And I like to have a little surplus and that way we can keep it rotated down and the truck is ready to go. So my cap request is for $20,000 so we can purchase 10 sections of 50 foot. Mm hmm.

And how many houses did you say you currently have?

Right now, we got a surplus. All the trucks got put in the trunk. We keep a little surplus to the side so when we go by fire, we got to come back and clean all of it and let it dry, air dry.

over the last couple of years, our post-testing, we'll have a section, a two-section diet, and some reliefs and codes.

So I'm just trying to keep that surplus so we can come back and clean it when it's dry and our trucks are ready to go. So you say, I'm just asking you, just for my knowledge, So how many, what's the surplus? You have surplus, you have some now?

We have some now, but that hose, our hose test is coming up in August and I've received some of those down now also. So we're going to probably be short. probably at least four or five sections of different sizes. So that's why I'm just trying to get ahead of the game so we don't fall over. I've been really begging for money for years. I got to have it. Now's the time to build it up so we can rotate it out. Right. Okay. Anything you put a fire on, they put a big cost behind it. Right.

Only thing, I don't have a problem with it or anything like that. The only thing I'm just asking, because I've been looking at all of the budgets from all of the departments, and what I'm not seeing, and this doesn't just say for you, but what I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing the... those inventory I don't see your expenses of itemize this business of what your access is spending the money on so but I'm at the point where if you have this in your budget in your budget, I don't have an issue with it, but I'm asking that if y'all would supply, the department would supply me with your spending because that way I can go back and see what your actual need is for your department. So what you're spending your budgeted money on, receipts, things such as that. Okay.

we've added it to you and it's in front of you now we also have the budget with the line items the problem is you never know if we keep everything in tip-top shape but you never know when something's going to break or anything like that that's the word the biggest thing is i see that we need to catch back up yes before we get way behind yes sir

I mean, I understand. I'm just saying that I don't see, just looking over all of the departments, I'm not seeing where we're having, where we're getting an itemized list of things that you're spending, you know, your money's on. So we can see. So I'll give a Yes, sir. Yes, sir. But I'm just making you aware and making John aware about you here.

So, Chief, we have hoses right now on each truck to keep them in service, correct?

Yeah. Yeah. I understand. That's what we're doing in that area, right?

okay so um count even counting our our newest truck we have it in service as far as yes so yes so so that's what i yeah that's that's what i was thinking um like moving forward for each you know for each truck to have that hose to you know be be back up be supply because and i you know i know just going out on a fire or anything or having you know the public run over the hose and grass fires the hoses getting burnt out or anything or us ourselves running over the hose. So, yeah, I do understand the need.

Yeah.

And you said the hose, they were coming up for inspection. Do you know the date exactly?

Yeah, just let us know. Great. Great.

Yeah, John, as a matter of fact, I mean, I'm at a point where if y'all have it in y'all's budget at this time.

It's not in our budget right now.

All the capital requests that we're asking for today, y'all have, so like a couple weeks ago when I gave you the activity reports, that shows what we've spent to date. Each month, each department, it shows a breakdown of all expenditures in that report we give. The 1 that I gave you today shows in y'all's revenues and expenditures. It shows his department and there's no line item for purchasing hose. So, if y'all were to approve it, then we would add it to his budget. That's why we're asking for it today. you know in the form of a capital request because it's not in the budget we don't have money for like five hoses and we're asking for 20. there's there's not really money in the budget for purchasing new hose because that's hose will last five to ten years so it's not it's always about money in the in this in his budget i mean the money in the city budget overall

I mean, what I'm saying is that whatever you budgeted for, if you have the funds in that budget.

Okay, okay. Yes, sir. I understand that. Yes, sir. Well, that's what I'm asking.

your budget to actually purchase right now yeah yeah and right now i i mean i'm just looking and reviewing everything that i see i really don't see um the monies in the budget right now there's i mean so That's that's why I'm okay with it. But we had the monies to actually purchase that out of the city. But I can see that moving forward.

So chief, how many fires can you go to before you get caught in a band or getting a bond?

We get to structure fires, which we had, uh, pretty limited. Uh, Like when we go by the fire, there's two lines that have to be dropped. That's 400 feet of hose that we drop on our back when we've got to, because we've got the fire driver going in, you've got to have a hole in the head. So 400 foot, just on the base of the house fire, we're dropping about anywhere from five to six sections of five inch on the ground going from the hydrant to the truck. And just like that big fire out there on the roof, we have all our hoses off the truck. Yes, sir. No, no, I'm tracking.

So you get a couple structure fires. You could be in a bond. You get one like you had out there on the South Loop. You're in the same bond. So let me ask you a question. I understand where the budget's tight. I mean, we're trying to pinch. And I understand having a surplus, but I mean, my thing is is i mean fires happen very quick i applaud y'all that's not something i'm not going to be a fireman thank you for doing what you do but i mean you know we got to have we got to have hoses you got to have water to put on the fire so my question would be is if and i understand this is for a surplus and and you know 20 000 is a lot of money if we if we if we cut them to five and five and then three on your five inch would that keep you where you're at

With that with that being said she from is there like a out of the supply and attack is there one of those that you're more detrimental to.

So you can you come back with us estimating. Of course so chief are any of your hoses defective. As soon as they're defected, we get rid of them. We call this life-saving stuff. If anything goes wrong with this life-saving stuff, if that third party comes and says, hey, this is bad news, we get rid of it because in the city, the firefighter did either kill. So as soon as anything's defected, we take it out of service. With all our equipment, anything that's defected, we got to take care of this life-saving stuff.

So if we got you 5, 2 1⁄2, and 5, 1 3⁄4, how much money are we looking at?

Do you know off the top of your head? Right about $8,900.

$8,900? $8,900. $8,900? Yes, sir.

When you say 5, what did you say, Mr. Deere?

5, for under number 1, 5 foot, the inch and 3 quarters, 5 of those and 5 of the 2 1⁄2, because... I've seen enough movies. I'm sure them firemen want that water that them hoses to be on top of them when they're inside those structure fires. Yeah, absolutely.

Mhm. And you said, what would be the cost approximately?

So you're probably, I mean, the conclusion is that basically that you can do what you needed to do if you had the two, I mean, five of those two.

That's how to put us in good shape. You know, after that next test thing, you put more pills, I'll just have to come back and ask, hey, we've had some more pills, and what do you say, and rotate it.

It's always better to get on a rotation schedule than try to replace everything at the same time. So right now we're projecting about $9,000. $8,000 to $9,000.

So you can bring it, but you can get us the exact cost? Yeah, I can call back and see if we can get the exact cost on top.

Okay. So you need more?

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, I guess we'll. Gerald, you said you want to go? Let's see here. So. Under public works, I'll present Gerald's also here. If y'all have questions, I have the capital outlay in front of me. And I probably need to call on during this process.

Is that where you have another street?

Yes, ma'am. Under streets. And so. going up. The new trucks have gone up. We have seen some better. It used to be that used trucks were almost as expensive as the same prices. New trucks, but in the last few years, the used market has improved. And we haven't done it in quite a while, but I would recommend that potentially as we replace vehicles, buying new trucks is just, I don't feel like it's Normally you would buy it because of the warranty and the additional benefits. a plane work truck. And so we were looking at a couple of our trucks. Um, and I haven't. If you go to the street, um, street department, if you go there, one of our trucks that I'd like to replace, it's a 2002 with 201,000 miles. And I'd like to replace that with a crew cab truck. There's currently a truck in the streets department that would continue being able to service the parks department. The street department really needs a four-door crew cab. To where we're not taking multiple trucks to the job site, we could do better.

We do have an extended cab right now that we're running four or five guys deep inside one of the extended cabs.

and so it's pretty tight you know we all have full-grown men trying to fit in that extended cab so so we looked at the we you know we looked at the market and there's definitely some good vehicles out there in the 30 35 000 range we could reach out to cutshaw and several people and ask them as good trade-ins come in for trucks that are just you know two or three four years old with low mileage i would think that that would do you know do really well

So at this point, it looks like that we're purchasing the truck just to get back and forth to the job site?

Yes, to work with. To pull equipment, to pull trailers and to move our men because we can't do jobs without getting our men to the job site. So how many vehicles do we already have currently? Amongst all, we have vehicles across all departments, but this vehicle here that's currently being used, it's not running. We're putting a lot of maintenance and repair and expenses in it.

Even in terms of transportation, when you sit one half there and then you bring the other half there, and getting the job done, you have a lot of downtime. I think just from playing and just being on site, if you can get everybody there, you'll cut out a lot of downtime. Because sometimes you drive by and say, what are you doing? Waiting for the rest of the stuff, waiting for the other equipment. But you almost need somebody to move so that you can get an instruction at one time and follow through. I just know that if you're making multiple trips just to get people in, you probably don't have time.

vehicles that we're talking about shipping to another department is really not equipped for what we've been doing, what we've been using for. It's a half ton Ford with a V6 engine, and we're asking that truck to pull trailers, which is kind of hard. We've been getting out of it for a while, and now, you know, the older the truck gets, the more stress you put on the truck, and that's why that truck's not going to be supported. So along with that, and if anybody ever seen my street group lady, they all full grown men. And it's hard, well, I can't get people in the backseat because they can't get in the backseat. So therefore we had to take two vehicles to the job site. the one that's too light will be heavy enough that we can use it for other things like pull out a little asphalt trailer, have all our signs on it. So it's going to be a truck that's going to be equipped to do the job and it's going to cut one out of service that we want to use as much. That's really not equipped to do the job.

My question is, so far as your inventory on vehicles, what is your, so I don't have any of them. Two vehicles. Two trucks. Two vehicles. Okay. And none of them can.

I have one single cab and then I have a extended cab home.

Okay. Okay. And none of them can actually hold the. So moving forward, we need we need we need to focus on work work camps.

Crew camps and I'm sorry crew camps. If it wants one truck, we'll get him one truck. But if it wants two trucks to get out, of course we're going to use two trucks. But in most cases, we can get out there and get one truck.

But now, we can't. We have to carry two trucks. So I'm just trying to weigh this because I don't work in the street because I'm tired. So as far as getting from point A to point B and taking your crew to the job site, so is it necessary? definitely necessary that you need a crew cab truck that you're asking for to get, because you, how many employees you have? Four employees. So, but is there a problem with taking two trucks instead of one? How far is your, what I'm asking is, where do we have as far as job sites? We, our distance or locations where our job sites is right here in the city. So, we don't have a lot of

distance to go to where we can't bring two trucks versus crew versus crew and uh utilities as well um we're looking at we're looking at um the uh transportation of that as well so you're looking at trailers what is the longest trailer that we have the longest yes sir

Next question is what is the tonnage or weight that we're usually carrying on the equipment? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You can make two trips.

but you lose time. Because when you do it, you lose an hourly weight. So you're not only affecting what you're doing with the job, you're talking, they gonna shoot the breeze till the other one come. And then you really can't get together till you tell the crew how to move smoothly. And everybody comes at the same time. They get out, they're given their designated job. You're cutting hours out of work, of course.

If you make two trips, you're going to lose power.

You're not going to do it in detail. If you can't pull the heavy stuff with a trailer, how are you getting it there now?

Either we'll borrow something from another department or we do have a three-quarter ton seal cap pickup that sometimes we have to use to do that.

So you're, I mean, you're having, I mean, you're having to put another department out of their truck while you're using it to do whatever you need every now and then. And so a three quarter ton truck, I mean, it would get your crew there. I mean, if you got a Ford, a super duty, there's nothing that you're not gonna be able to haul. Are we asking, are you, I mean, are you wanting a gas or diesel? you take whatever okay I'm just hey this is Santa Claus wish list tell me what you want you know what I'm saying okay and I'm guessing and I'm guessing you use these two I mean not only streets but like you haul mowers and stuff too is that is that part of the same group

Yeah. And what are you? What are you? What are you pulling your goose? How many trucks do you have?

And thank you for clarifying that for me, because that was going to be my next question about the gooseneck trailer, because I figured, like on that truck, I figured, yeah, you're not going to have a gooseneck on that. And you're going to be bumper pulling everything. And that's transmission term right there.

This is the one that we would be replacing. Yeah.

So, well, not just that, though. We have two trucks. And the one you're driving, so could we not put a gooseneck hitch in the back of the truck that you're driving?

Is it a V6 as well? All right.

So we already have an item.

We're not asking for gooseneck trucks or heavy-duty trucks. We're asking for a crew cab to replace this little half-ton.

And that's just to get you from point A to point B and the whole crew to go together. And you only have four people in the group, and you can't take... Two vehicles?

Just in case one have to leave and go to another project? Please understand. We're okay. We can bring four or five vehicles. That's not the question. The question is, we have a 2002 truck with 201,000 miles that we're trying to get out of our fleet. That's continually broken down and it does not run and we will. That's 1 in the parks department. By buying this in the streets department, we can bring 1 of those older trucks that we currently use in the streets department. Give it to our parts department, so they have a running vehicle. We're not asking. In the best case scenario, we would ask for a brand new truck for the parks department. We'd buy a brand new truck for them to pick up trash cans and empty stuff and haul their mowers around. But we're trying to find the best. We're buying a used truck for the streets department so we can give one of their old used trucks to the parks department so we can continue running. And so we're not asking for three quarter tons or diesels or goosenecks because we do have those equipment, you know, the trucks. We would like probably one more, but we're doing with what we have that we're not asking for.

So how many vehicles does the parks department have? So we're going to give them one of theirs.

So we can get rid of this one.

$200,000. Yes, ma'am.

We have two guys with two trucks, and they work two parks, two separate parks, and they work the downtown square. Two guys with their vehicles picking up trash, emptying trash cans around the whole square, sweeping, blowing, picking up broken limbs. doing all the things that they do. They have two guys with two trucks. One of them is driving in 2002 with 200,000 miles plus. And that's what we're trying to get rid of.

That's the one that's broken down all the time.

It's continually broken down. We're having to let him team up with somebody else, which we're not using our manpower correctly. We're giving them another truck with another department that should be using their own truck and that kind of thing.

So the parts department only had two trucks as well?

Are y'all good?

This is going to be a pretty lengthy workshop.

I wanted to present these needs, and if there's, I guess we better just regroup. If there's additional request or information like this, then I can research those and send them back to council. If you can get those responses back to council, otherwise we're going to be well past noon.

Was this going to be more or less like an introductory meeting?

Well, introductory and basically some categorizing from council saying, Like Council just talked about, if y'all want to, you know, if we can get through the adjustments really quickly, like with the fire department. Hey, right now, let's look at about half of the hose that you requested. Okay, that's enough that that decision is close to being done. Other than just some last minute numbers, a Council based on y'all's decision, that $8,000 is $8,600.

We're not solving everything.

That decision is done. Moving forward with this, some of these questions, like I'm presenting the needs to council right now. After we're done. What y'all might consider a number one priority, I might say, you know what? Run that beater for that 200,000 mile truck another year because this one supersedes that need. I'm trying to present the needs to you quickly so we can get through this meeting. And then the ones that council says, look, let's look at one of those vehicles that you asked for. Let's look at this and this. Then I'll come back with some solid numbers and how it impacts the budget, if that's OK.

That's the goal is to recycle that truck and get this oldest truck out of the system.

As we come back, I'm not asking for a yes or no answer necessarily right now. That makes sense. If that's okay. That's fine. Okay. I think that's why I was .

Are we trying to make it solid now? No, that's why . The next truck, the oldest truck that we have in the fleet is another 2002 Ford and it has 253,000 miles. This is a mechanic shops truck.

It's different. Luckily, it's in the mechanic shop, so we're putting money in it, and that truck has really outspent its useful life. I would think so. We have some transmission problems. We have problems with that truck. What I would like to do is purchase another used truck, a single cab, long bed truck for them that we can put one of the Tommy Gates on, and we can use that for the mechanic's truck. And so in the neighborhood of $30,000, $35,000, I did request for $35,000. These right here would not be needs that we would go out and purchase immediately. I would put plugs in with local dealerships as they get really good trade-ins and we can really get a good price. Then we'll be ready to move on. So that's the truck for the mechanic shop. The next...

Right now, I mean just right now me speaking, I'm not just looking at the budget like I was needing an itemized expense for each department. You haven't? No. I gave you an activity report. No, it's all in one. No, it's per department. Yeah, it's per department. but it does not give me an itemized expense report for what that department is spending. Nor does it give me what they're spending it on.

So the mechanic shop has how many trucks?

One truck.

Next is a pad foot steel roller for the street department. The next two items are probably the two biggest items that we run into the need for that we don't have. So this is what a padfoot roller looks like on the screen. We have a smooth drum roller that is just like this, but it does not compact the road base like a padfoot roller.

For proper road construction,

We continue coming back to we really need this this last few streets that we've done in wrote and wrote a reconstruction. We've rented 1 of these units and. Those run about 3000 dollars a year. I mean, you're a month. It was a 30 was a 3500. I think 3 to 3500. Depending on United or cat or whoever we run it from.

At $3,500 per month, per year?

No, per month. I would like to see if we could find a good pad foot roller, a good used pad foot roller. The other one that we have is a 2016 model smooth drum roller. Been a really good piece of equipment we would like to find one that as cat cat or united rotates out their rental fleet that we would buy up a good rental from them because they've been serviced pretty well um this one here i think the the cost benefit for this one here is less than the cost benefit for the next page which is a rope room we really need a rope room That was $2500 a month that we've now had to rent one for going on four months. That's about $10,000 for a road burn. And so for street construction for us to be able to, after we do our reconstruction, we go in there and we have to broom it off between layers of the oil tack coat, you know, and the chip rock and then sweep the loose rock off before we put the other we have to get a way to clean these streets up as we're doing the road construction. This one here will really rack up a cost-benefit that can be justified to go out and find a good usable so we're not renting this, a street room. A used one's $40,000? I found, so for one of this size, like the one we're renting, is right at $40,000. They're about $80,000 new. They have some smaller ones and as we get older with more hours on them, they get a little bit cheaper. It kind of depends on what kind of risk you want to take on. We have good mechanics, but we don't want to buy one that has six to ten thousand hours on it because a lot of the rentals will be at the end of their life when we buy them. $30,000 to $40,000, we can find a pretty decent unit.

So how many months at the year are we renting these?

this year because I need it. Yeah, it needed because you do much more than just, uh, sweeping, cleaning the street, getting ready for real work. If you get it, let's say you get somebody that loses a load of glass or whatever. You got to put me out in the We were dealing with the one.

So I guess what I'm really asking is, are we paying $2,000 for rentals every month? Yes. Which is sometimes.

About at least during road construction months. I would say easily eight months out of the year is a good estimate of what we As we're doing road construction, you know, I wouldn't say I say. During the winter, early spring, maybe not we can, we can back off on the rent. But we're probably spending anywhere from 12 to 16,000 dollars a year. In rental costs for this for this room.

Okay, so we had a history of that of.

We started, we were rented this year yesterday. So let me ask you currently.

So my question is, so the 40,000, that's outright. So if we, and I know, I know you're, I'm probably going to open a can of worms, but if we finance it through a company that we buy, it can't be more than $2,000 a month, right? Instead of paying $40,000 outright. If that expenditure is already out there, and if we can get it for $1,000 a month as a financed, we buy it and we finance it. and then we're paying $1,000 a month, and we're already paying 2,000 for eight months. I mean, that money's already, we've already allocated that, right? I mean, is that an option?

Yeah, it is an option to lease it or finance. Most of those, the companies that would finance it to you would be for new units. I don't know, you know, they might do some in-house financing with some higher interest rates, like a good used unit, but it might be more than the $30,000 or $40,000 range for new units. A good unit that they would finance over. Say, 4 or 5 years, but is it an option is my question. It's definitely an option. Yes, sir.

It's definitely an option. Um, either you want. Us to try to do the best quality work and what's best. The two pieces of equipment that we have up here now are two pieces of equipment that is essential to us providing a quality street after we put cement, which is probably around $6,200 a load for cement. So if we were to keep trying, like in the past, we were trying to get it in with the fat mill because that's all we had. So then it's more labor intensive. So we'd be saving manpower hours as well. Over time.

Yeah, I think what we're just asking, we're just trying to see how the money's already been spent and how we can spend it more effectively in order to do that. We got to know these numbers that you're talking about and we want to see it on paper so we can. make an evaluation.

In the past, this year we started to rent those because what we were doing was cost us more in manpower because we were not there for longer extents. And then we was getting a less quantity product.

And I want to see quality streets, I want to see the work put in, but just weighing the option of like Mr. Duren said, financing or leasing, or if we actually have the funds in the city budget to make this type of a purchase. So that's where I'm at with that. Also piggybacking on Mr. Simon is just looking at the evaluation of how we've been using on paper, how we've been using it financially, how we've been spending, using, renting, I guess, would be better off leasing or like you said find in-house financing or opposed to what the city has in there in the budget because right now we really don't know what how much what kind of funds we're working with on the city's behalf we don't know what we're

What do you need to know what you're working with? I'm not sure.

We want to see how the money has been spent so far so we can see if we can make any kind of adjustments to it that would be more effective.

That's what we're asking. The activity reports that you get, that shows the year to date, like at each month, as those monies are spent. This one right here, the worksheet that you have in front of you, shows the last three years how those monies have been spent. And then how it's currently budgeted this year against proposed next year. So we have 4 years. Right now on paper in front of you, these, these questions that y'all are asking are things that we currently. Don't have so we have not bought bought a broom and we have not rented at 1 until this year. We had a brome that broke down that council approved just for us to scrap, or we sold it on the auction. And so we have no brome left. So this year we started renting one until we can purchase one. The pad foot roller, we've never used a pad foot roller. We've used a smooth drum roller that we currently have. It's just we're finding that the road, the construction is not done as well as it needs to be without that pad foot roller. So this year we've actually rented a few months a pad foot roller. But like I said, the pad foot roller, the cost benefit on that one is going to look more like a five to probably a five year return on that benefit. This one right here, two to three years, depending on what we spend, if we spend thirty to forty thousand dollars within two or three years, we pay pay for it versus renting it. And so the cost benefit is a lot greater on this piece of equipment.

And you've had it for 12 and you have it for 12 months at that point. And I really, I really.

And then at least a rent, but the thing and I understand your point, but from my perspective.

we're only seeing collaborated numbers. We're not seeing numbers itemized to tell us what each department has actually, actual figures of what each department has, actual itemized figures of what each department is spending and what they're actually spending it on. So the thing of it is is in order to know the financial aspect of it to get a better understanding of how we can better suit your needs in your department, we got to know how much money you're working with. I'm going to say this and then I'm going to take my seat.

So that means to me, I'm going to speak for them. So that means to me that the council is settling on getting less quality real estate. So that means when, you know, in this course of this duration, if we keep going the way we're going, and let's say I go back to using the back wheel, and let's say we put a street in there, and within six months it's going to pile up, then the council is going to come to me and say, what happened to our street? Yeah, but what we're asking for

We're trying to see how the money's been spent to see if we could do it differently and get a better outcome. That's what we're really asking for. We're not saying we don't want this equipment. We just want to see how the money's been spent.

In the meantime, while you're trying to get that, we're still doing streets. That's my point. We're still doing streets. This is the first time. Now, when it comes to the Sheepfoot Road, this is the first year that we have started to rent the Sheepfoot Road. And I really press upon John to say, I've got to have that in order for us to do the best we can do. Because if not, then the same people are sitting around here trying to hold us accountable.

If I'm going to be held accountable, I need the best equipment that I need in order to do that. Well, you know, to say that, to say that, with you getting the best equipment. In order for us to get you the best equipment, we gotta find the money or the funds to get you there. So once we, John, bring that to us, and we look at the financial issue or aspect of your department and the monies that we actually have on hand and what we can do for each department, then we can make sure that you have that equipment that you need that we can actually purchase. But the thing of it is, is right now, we're gonna have to continue either renting or leasing until we can Get to that point to where we see more of the monies of the funds going to come from in order to make that large of a purchase. Back to where we are.

Where we are today is that we're still, I mean the budget, you can look back.

That's to itemize for the streets.

As I mentioned to council, I'm not asking for approvals today. I'm asking y'all for y'all to develop a consensus of the needs And weight them in priority, which ones are we going to try to fund? Which was not. You keep on mentioning that you don't have the numbers. You have an activity report that has it broken down to the month. I have the budget in front of you. The budget that I have. Yeah. Yes. No, it's but it's item. I don't pay for the last for the last four years.

No, no, no, no. You have it out.

No, it's you don't have each department and broken down by what it's been on. Each department has this. This is this is these are the numbers that we're going to see what they're spending it on. check register? We have that. You can look at a check register. All I'm having is what we're spending on. You don't know what we're spending on? This is what we're spending on. On maintenance and repair of trucks, on maintenance and repair of equipment, on the streets, on insurance, on electricity, on gas. Those are what we're spending. The gas and the telephones?

We don't have, that's what I'm saying.

I can bring you a box's worth of receipts.

You should have a list when you're doing...

I can give you a check register. But right now, I'm telling you what you're spending on.

When you're budgeting for a department, when you're budgeting for a department and you have itemized, you have itemized lists for each item, right? Right here. That you make a purchase for.

It's right here.

Yeah, it's based on the numbers he has. It's based on the current.

It's categories. And that's as a whole, but that's what I'm saying.

It's like your budget. You do food. You write food. Do we write ice cream, soda water, and a punch? You just do a food, and you give them a deal. And that's the concept.

We don't want to see food. We want to see what money they spend. But that's it.

Whatever you're doing, it's there.

So if they buy pens, you don't want to see it under office supplies. You want to see pens bought. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I want to see what they're actually like. thank you mr coulter for informing us on uh what we need to make the streets better in the supply list you should have a supply list you should have items that you purchase and i see your point but we had an auditor and this is before i got on council the auditor come in and did this exact same thing and signed off on the budget that everything was there and this council when you were on it approved that auditor's report so i don't understand why we're hung up on that now

And this stuff is generally just like she said. I'm available. You ask me questions throughout the entire week, three or four emails every day. Hey, I want to see this. I send those information to you. If you want that, we have check registers. We have those. Come in all week long. I'm your person to ask those type of questions. And I will give those information if you want to see how, like I said, office supplies. Do you want to see how much money is spent on pens versus paper versus ink? Those things, just ask me. Even that information is available. But what I'm telling you here is broken apart and categorized office supplies, gasoline, repairing vehicles. Those are all broken apart and categorized what we spent money on. And I have it right here on page two. So for us to be able to move forward through this process is really critical that we get on the same page on how y'all This is very dysfunctional. There's no way to get through a budget workshop. If. If we're talking about these, the needs right now is what we're presenting and I would like you all to help us get through today. By looking at the needs and helping us wait in a category. Hey, let's look at those 3 items. Let's prioritize those and try to find the funds and I will be glad to sit with you. Y'all can do my job. Sit down with me and say. You know what? They're probably buying too much paper or those decisions. I have to make those every day. Like, Hey, where's those trash? Why are y'all buying that many trash bags? Well, we did those. That's my daily job. That's what I do on a daily basis. So I will gladly sit down with y'all.

Can you come back up here real quick? First of all, And I understand your frustration, but for me, and I don't want to speak for the rest of the council, we understand what you're saying and your frustration. You want to put out the best absolute quality that you can because you don't want to have to do work and then be held accountable for that work not holding up. And I understand that we appreciate the street crew because we we see the work that y'all do. And like, yes, I mean, we appreciate what y'all are doing. We're trying to we got some growing pains that we're trying to work through and and we appreciate you coming up here. Thank you all. Thank your crew for what they do. Because, I mean, without y'all, I mean, I don't know where I mean, we'd be back in horse and buggy day. So thank you and your department for what y'all do. We're going to look at your request. And we'll try to make some decisions on if this is what you need and we can afford it, we're going to try to get it for you.

I would say personally, either way, we're going to get the best interest we can get.

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I just want to say something for Gerald as well. But no, you said I had to call a businessman this morning, not from here, from another town. But in the conversation, then he brought it up and he said, hey, I see y'all doing a lot of work on the streets in Crockett. I said, yes, sir, more than we've ever done before. And he said, it's really looking good. So kudos to you.

For reference, while we're talking about the street department, on page two of y'all's revenue sheets, on page two, we have the actual expenses of 2024. and proposed for 2027. If you look down on the third line under contract services maintenance, about center of the page, it says maintenance and repair streets. This is what council has allocated each and every year for maintenance and repair on streets for the road construction that we do and even down to the pothole repair. So in 2024, we spent $254,000 on maintenance repair. On 2025, we spent $481,000. this year for $574,000. Next year's proposed budget, and like I say, this is the one that can change. This is what we're working through now. I currently have plugged in $650,000. That's almost a 60% increase from two years ago. continuing to try what we found is our street department has become is is very cost materials heavy it's it's the the expense of doing a street construction is very expensive it doesn't require a lot of people out there with shovels a few good pieces of equipment and lots of money for tar and rock and cement and gravel and asphalt and all those Those eat up the budget quickly. We want to continue on that trend, spending money, buying the materials. That's the weakest link, I guess I should say. If I gave Gerald today, if council said, let's hire him four more people, we would not get a lot more work done. We would do some probably some other stuff, you know, straightening up stop signs replacing, you know, doing things like that and cutting tree limbs. But road construction is the money for the oil and the chips in the rock and the car and the animal. So as much as council can prioritize going towards continuing to fund us with supplies of material and equipment. That's the weakest link right now that we're asking council to continue focusing on.

I want to say something to Gerald. Gerald, I mean, I understand. I know that you and your guys are doing top-notch work. Y'all have been putting your best foot forward, but and not i'm not trying to discredit y'all's work at all but the thing of it is it's just me just looking at numbers and i understand that it's like pulling teeth trying to get the equipment to work with but it's also like us pulling teeth trying to find the monies to get you that equipment so it's not like i'm not trying to find the monies to get the equipment for the departments that need it Things like that. I'm not trying to fight against the council or anything like that. I'm just adamant about what we're doing and I want to make sure that we're doing it correctly because what I'm looking at is that we're getting, and I keep saying a lot of numbers thrown at us, and but we're seeing the numbers but we're not seeing what what these numbers are actually used for what we're doing with these and not just saying doing the monies but what it's used for so going forward i've been asking for different uh documents and things like that you know from john um I guess I'm almost getting there because if I don't ask the right questions or for the right document, I may not get that. So I appreciate what all you do. And so until we can look into the budget, you can see where.

Okay, let's hold on. No, no, no. When we can look into the budget. I asked you to stop. That's one. No. What it is. No. No, ma'am. Let me tell you where you are. No, he did, but he didn't call names and he didn't talk about performance. No, you're calling his name saying that he didn't do his job with you. No, I said that's inappropriate.

Okay.

No, that's not what you said. No, we're not going to do that. Go ahead. I appreciate you. Uh, what you do.

And, uh, like I said, I'm not fighting against the council or anything like that or the material or the, uh, what you need to do your job. But what we just need to do is find the funds to try to see if, uh,

Thank you.

Okay.

At this point, we're almost at a stalemate with where we need to go next, but what we were supposed to do back on target, and we're supposed to look at what's there, give an explanation of how we feel about it in terms of where we want, and we need to decide whether it's something we want to do. We're not making final decisions. We're not reviewing detailed budgets from last year in terms of where we are because we've already had the opportunity to do that. But we want to say at this point, they're going to present it. We're going to digest it. We're going to decide. And like you said, is it another means of finance we could use? Those are recommendations that we can move forward with and look into. but just the generic, let's get a list, all of the detailed lists that you have. This is what we're working with, and if you want more detail, you can follow up with it in a different way. But right now, we're just bogging ourselves down with our personal feelings, but we do want you to give the accountability for what's best for the district, but we're not trying, this is not the final decision, this is the first time. And right now, we are bogging down, and we need to go and follow up with it. So what needs to happen, You do have the numbers before you. If there are things that you don't understand on the numbers, that's something that you might need to arrange to get with to get a further explanation. You can give your explanation, but we're not, personally identify what everybody is doing is in their job role we're doing what we're doing with the finance focusing on. With that being said we move to the next item where we are right now.

The next 2 items I have in front of you. I've already handed them out and I asked the I don't know you may have put them already in your in your binders because I was asking for more information and cost. And so I'm gonna break these two down real quick. On our utility side, We have 2 more specific needs that are not currently being addressed in our operations budget. In our in our overall operations and maintenance budget we buy the chemicals we we pay for the licenses we we pay for all the permits and everything that it costs to run a water system in the sewer system there's 2 needs that we currently do not have addressed.

This the 2 that we handed out Mister.

So we have a water and what one in the water Department and one in the waste water Department. Our water tower. That's over top of the state school on the South loop. We have those towers, we have them inspected. The inspection that just came back on the water tower on the east side is good. The inspection that came back on the south tower is beginning to show paint flaking, rust deposits, and a few small pinhole rust in the riser. TCQ, once this gets to the point, more than likely next year, because every year we submit all these inspections to TCQ, they give us a time frame to go in and address them. If this one is not addressed, this will be one that will be, TCQ will give us an enforcement order and a timeline to get it back repaired to where it passes inspection.

They would shut the station down?

They can do all kinds of things. A lot of it is they'll fine us. They'll give us penalties and fines with deadlines to repair or make us take that tower offline while it's repaired and make sure that it gets repaired before it gets put on line. We reached out to our engineers. When you talk about engineering, they're going to go back to The core of what they can warranty and make sure that it's done the right way and specifications in paint sandblasting time. The gauges and thickness of steel. And then they bid that out. They put specifications together and bid it out. Their estimate for that tower is in the $600,000 range to sandblast and reseal that tower and re-coat it and paint it and bring it back online. We talked to several local contractors. One is one of the ones that's done work for us before. As long as we stay under a $100,000 threshold, we don't have to engineer it. If it's a small repair and we're just fixing it back up like it's already designed. The tank is already there. We don't have to redesign everything. All we need is to clean that paint, sandblast it off, repaint it, give us a warranty for the paint and the workmanship. If we stay under $100,000, we don't have to go through all the engineering and the specifications, which really run up the costs. A couple of the companies that's already looked at it has been anywhere from the 90s to $120,000. It's just kind of a given that I just not asked for $120,000. If I'm going to ask for $120,000, I'm going to have to ask for $600,000 because I have to have it engineered. Then we have to go out for bid based on engineering specifications.

Here's the water. We're bringing a water real quick. So I would really like...

It's tickling my throat just thinking about it. So that's one of the needs that in order for us to not go under any kind of TCQ enforcement order, we really need a plan on spending some money on that water tower to get it sandblasted. That's the one, and I have that form in front of you. The other one.

So what's the protocol for CCEQ? So they give you, you're saying that they can look at it next year. So just looking at it, saying that it needs repainting, sandblasting, what type of protocol is there, like said? so where they give you a warning to give you time to get it.

Usually they'll do something called the finding. They come out and present a finding and usually it comes with probably about if if we give them you know 30 days before that goes into violation notice you know it gives you a little bit of time but usually if it's something small hey you're missing you know a life vest at your wastewater plant we buy it and send them a receipt and it never hits you know it never gets recorded. But then after that it goes into notice. Once the notices are sent, usually they'll give us 30 days, 90 days, a timeline. And if we don't meet that, then we would go into enforcement order. It's like, hey, you have to fix this or you'll be fined so much a day and so forth. So we have all that time. That's why I'm asking council now ahead of time because I know that it will be coming. It's that process in that tank that the coating and everything is going to need to be addressed before our next inspection because we found it in our inspection. It's still serviceable, but it won't be serviceable long. As we start losing paint or rust starts growing, then we need to jump on that before we have a lot more construction and repairs.

John, when was the last time it was serviced?

Uh, in 2019. Okay.

So we don't have a warranty on it or no sir.

Okay. So we did both of our tanks in 2019 and, um, we, at that point we went in and spent. Uh, 900, almost a 1M dollars from both of our tanks. Um, essentially what our engineers are saying, we probably need to go back and do that same thing that we did back in 2019. I know that the exterior of it, yes, the paint is getting a little chalky. The logo still looks fine. We're not losing anything. It's still structurally sound. We need to sandblast the interior, re-coat it, because we're out of any warranties. But we can do a quick fix on it now instead of waiting until it gets into a full rehabilitation on it.

So once we do that, how long before it's a rehabilitation on it?

Normally, the warranties normally, the warranties are a year to 2 years for materials and workmanship. You know. I feel I know the time before that tower had not been fully done. For 20 years. When we did it in 2019, it had not been done for 20 years, right? It was right at 2000. When we had the last tank, and that was remember that was the, when the contractor and the one of the painters fell and it was, you know, so that's been what? 2526 years ago. And so it lasted 20 years that time. And we got into really bad where was requiring us to do it then. Here, they're not requiring us to do it yet, but we're out of warranty for it. And so I think if we kept it and we did just a repair, and I would bring back that company that did it last, reach out to them and require them to put a little bit of pressure on them. ask them to to step up to the plate because we feel like six years is definitely a short lifespan for what we invested in it um the next one is the clarifier at our south wastewater treatment plant um the bull gear has failed on that one these are old these are old units these are 1970s clarifiers And that bull gear gave way, we have 2 clarifiers, but now we're doing double duty on 1 with no backup at the wastewater plan at the South. We just did a complete rehabilitation on our clarifier at the North planet that water development board is going to be paying money for. They're going to reimburse us for that, but that would cost us right at 350,000. This one's a little smaller, so I'm requesting $320,000, but obviously all of that will have to be spec'd out and bid out. We'll have to get bids on all of that. But we're currently out of a clarifier at the wastewater treatment plant, and I have that in front of you. The only last one that I'll talk about. I have some other ones. They're in your book. I know that we're not even going to get to those. I have to show them to you as a need. But I can't also, in good faith, show you funding that will service those needs. So we're going to leave those. The last one is... It's a budget appropriation cost of living adjustment for city employees. The city has 59 full time and 15 part part time employees. I spoke I spoke to you all about this during our 1 on 1 meetings in 2022. We did a full assessment of cities all around East Texas. and some of our private industry. And we had quite a few holes that we could not fill in public works. The police department had several holes that they could not fill. We were just not even getting people applying for the positions that we had open. And we were losing people. At that time, council did a significant salary adjustment across all city departments, and we did a really heavy on the entry level. People get an entry level salaries up from 91012 dollars an hour. Police department, I think was 15 or 16 dollars an hour. We did a big adjustment across departments, especially for entry level. And brought wages up to where we're more competitive. Since 2022 in 2024, we gave a 2% column. So, since 2022. The current we've only given 2%. In comparison to inflation that has been 12 and a half percent. So, we've addressed, we've addressed. But we still have probably you know a delta of at least 10% what people were making in 2022 to what it translates today at the grocery store and with their bills and everything else. I have a breakdown, you know that 372,000 would be across all city employees. This excludes some of our upper tier employees. Some of our department heads, that excludes them, but addresses everyone else beneath them. I think it's under GA, under that tab. This right here that's $372,000 cost would be across general our general fund and our utility fund so we we could share those costs, you know the department employees that are under the department. Water rates would cover those. Taxes and revenue and other sources of revenue would cover the 372,000 of the employees that are under the general administration. Parks streets in in library and everyone else. um like i said we did talk about this quite a bit and you have this information as we move forward in this budget process um you know my hopes is that we can come back with some options to counsel on how to fund either that amount or any other amount you know that that we can place in our budget

So this figure here is with the 10.5%? 10%. Yes, I did 10%.

That's five. So as a . Do you think this is a hardship for what's going to be taken in? Is it going to require some?

I think within our current budget, like I proposed it to you, the sheets that you have, the worksheets that you have, I do not have this factored in. We're going to have to come up with that revenue. It's not currently... I don't have that revenue to say that's where that money will come from.

So the $372,000...

I do apologize. They're at the very bottom. I was doing numbers. I did numbers. Throughout the entire document, it does mention 10%. That one's 10%. Not 5%.

Yes. No. So 5% would be, you know, roughly half of that. I do apologize.

Um, yeah, I was looking up here, so I mentioned 10% throughout. So I was running also numbers on five and two and one and everything. So, okay. Um, outside of that, I know the police department, they're still, they have some specific requests that really need to be addressed. Um, If we want to go through that one and then do a quick water break, short break, or you want to... I think I'll do the police. Okay. Let me pull... And then you have your packets for the police department in front of y'all. Under tab.

The police tab.

All right.

Mayor, council, I'm going to make mine a lot faster. I doubt it. I doubt it. He's done all the work. It's expensive, but it won't take as long. Before I get into some of the capital requests, I didn't realize I was going to do that as far as this, but I want to talk about salary increases. That's probably one. Just being blunt and straight up with y'all, if we don't significantly address our pay scale, we're going to lose over half of our department. I think we're going to see a mass exodus within the coming months if we don't address it. Simply because there's so many other opportunities out there that can go down before we all start out again. If you find something for our city, it keeps them around you. If they're local, they don't want to say they have family. There's something that they can survive on. So I do think that pay scale adjustment is very significant and important to the police department. services we want to start cutting within the police department? Do we want to cut 24-hour coverage? Do we only want to respond to in-progress calls? How do we want to fix that because of the shortage like that? But I know that I have nine for sure. The person who told me, if we do not address it, we're going to start applying for other jobs. I can't blame them. Can't fault them. They have families to raise. They have young children. They have to do what they have to do to survive. So I wanted to touch on that since Mr. Anderson just talked about it. On our capital request, you'll see that I have three there. I've got them rated top priority to low priority. money from weapons that had been awarded to our department through the courts to turn those over to an authorized gun dealer, who in turn gives us a credit for equipment. With that, we were able to purchase patrol rifles. Right around the $20,000 And so we didn't have enough to finish out building the rifles, the optics, the lights, and the slings. Obviously, that's one of the most important parts of your weapon are those three items there. So we're asking for $20,000, $25 to buy the optics, the lights, and the slings to add on to those rifles when they come in. The next, I had patrol vehicles that I met with I'm in the process of negotiating with two different companies to get the prices to present that to y'all to see what that would look like, if it would make more sense. what happens to these vehicles. Unlike a lot of the other departments, I know their vehicles get worked pretty hard, but our cars only go 24-7. They hardly ever get a break. So we try to space them out where they will get a break, but that doesn't happen all the time. Right now, our current fleet, we have 11. We've got two within over 100,000 miles. We've got one, two... We've got two with over 75,000 miles. And then our Gorangos, which are our newest in-house fleet, we're averaging between 28 and 41,000 on those. And those are our newest cars. to see that mileage keep racking up unfortunately uh vehicles are an important part of our job if we can't get to where the calls are at then it's obviously an issue that's one reason i really like that lease program i know it's going to come with some probably as fair share of questions or issues like you know we we agree to a lease of these vehicles and we agree to that amount of money every year um but we're also getting a lot whereas if we just budget for one car here and one car there, you'll see by the prices, the cost has increased. For a Chevy Tahoe outfitted, we're looking at $83,000. And that doesn't include the in-car video system, that doesn't include the radio that we have to put in it, and that doesn't include the radar. The radio and radar we provide ourselves. We have that equipment in stock or it comes from a vehicle that we cycle out, but the in-car cameras, because we have to keep them in good working fashion.

I'm sorry. I know I probably missed it, but the lease vehicles, they come with nothing or do they come with something?

So the lease vehicles, what they do is it's a total package. It is a total package. They hit the ground and they deliver them here. We're ready to put insurance on them and start driving. Their pricing and their program includes the fee for the vehicle. for all the associated equipment is wrapped up in that lease and spaced out. There'll be different terms, three years, four years, five years, because then you get out your vehicle warranty. The lease companies, they monitor the mileage on these vehicles, and when they hit their mark, 30,000, 25,000, 30,000, they pick a component, say, Chief, I'm sending you a brand new unit, we're coming to pick that one up. And they're constantly cycling them out, because what they're doing is they're taking them on the backside, selling them, and recouping their money. So that's kind of in a nutshell what that program does. I'm waiting on the specifics. I've got two different companies that we're looking at. I know the city of Palestine, their police department and public works department, they lease all of their vehicles through Enterprise. They really like the program, but we're looking at Enterprise and D&M leasing. As we continue on in our budget preparation, I'll have those numbers and that information for y'all coming up. And as soon as I get it, I'll send it out to y'all so you can start reviewing it. Our third capital request, as y'all know, we've had your own for a couple of years. We got those on grants or private funding, actually, where AIDA would get through. of money for replacing these drones. So we went with one that costs $13,567.88 that would start cycling in newer blood in our drone, I believe. So as those other ones start deteriorating, we can maintain those services.

Chief, I know I don't know if it was a budgeted expense or not, but I know we talked about the the laptops, the software and how that would be something that could probably take us out of service or whatnot. Could you kind of elaborate on that?

So several years ago when we first got computers in our cars, the council then chose to purchase those computers outright instead of leasing them. Once we purchase them outright, we own them and we own all the issues that come with them. So three, four, five years later, as they've aged out, now these new ones have come in and these are no longer, you can't do anything with them. So right now, six out of our ten that we have are not CJIS compliant. So we're fixing to have to remove them from the vehicle because we can't get them to a point where they're CJIS compliant. And now we're able to write tickets. That's how we're going to issue our citations is through those computers. So you are going to see a pretty significant, about $11,000 increase in our annual fee line because we went back and created six additional computers to go with ones that were already leased so we can cycle those old ones out. And that is an annual fee. With that lease, they cover everything. In three years, they'll send us all new computers. We'll send those back. They're constantly rotating that equipment out so we don't have a maintenance issue. So I know it seems like a big number yearly, but when it comes to spending $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 in four years having to do it again, I think it works out in the long run. It's a lot easier budget for knowing that we've got that coming.

Thank you.

I got two questions.

One, with the lease program, like the other day I saw one of your officers jump in a car and he was having a problem cranking with that Durango. I know there's been some fuel filter issues or fuel pump issues with them. If you're on the lease program and they're having those issues, you would make a phone call and they would fix those, right?

Right. So each company has different programs. Like Enterprise, one of the things, we will handle minor maintenance, such as oil changes, tire rotation, stuff like that. But your bigger expenses, your electrical system, fuel system, filter, they'll have specific dealerships that those vehicles will have to go to, basically, for warranty. So the second company, I haven't gotten all that information, but one of the nice things they offer is the ability to choose what vehicle you want. Originally we got away from Tahoe's because they reminded us of April, but now they are. So likely that's something we're gonna transition back to if we go with a lease program, because we don't have those type of issues. It seems like it's mostly every time that I hear a cop car trying to start. Yeah. They won't find that issue until after the warranty has expired. Oh, wow. And they'll be like, oh, we found it, and it's going to cost $7,000.

Well, in that case, I mean, do we, and this is more of a question, do we work on that ourselves, or do we, depending on what the issue is, do we...

So it depends if it's something that's covered. We do have dealers, you know, we'll take it to the dealership. A lot of these things we've been fairly adept at fixing them ourselves. Something like this, I think it might require a... a letter from our attorney when these things are under warranty and they're emergency vehicles life safety vehicles they need to start and the thing is they do start it's just not right away they start later one of your officers had a had a hot call and he come jogging out i'm just kind of watching him and then it fired up and then he you know he took off lights and sirens i'm like and that's kind of

That's like our brand new Chevrolet truck. We have less than $5,000 on the net. My captain was going down the interstate with us the other day, and it just cut off. It just randomly cut off. It's flashed up going and shifted into neutral. Luckily, he had to snap away to do that and fire right back up. But those are issues that you don't like.

Yep. Oh, I'm sorry.

The other question I have is this is, so this drone that you have, have y'all, I know like some of the agencies down around Houston, I want to say Stafford maybe or Lake City, they have wired. um drones so like for like say the fourth of july thing it's going to be up for a while no batteries left 15 20 minutes it's a wired drone you plug it in throw it up in the sky and it's got like a 600 foot tether and it just stays there floating i mean is that something y'all's considered at all and i know they're a little bit cheaper but i mean i didn't know if that's something y'all

That's just something we never have purchased because we've been able to, you know, the battery packs, just keep them up and we might bring it down for a little bit and back and forth. Like for the Fourth of July, we spent most of the Fourth of July in the air, except for So is it better to be wireless or is it better to have a wire? Because if it's wireless you can go

I love the place.

Whatever situation you're going to call for, there's a different way to handle it. For instance, like Captain said, for the Fourth of July event, that water situation would have been perfect. We could have put it up and covered everything that was going on and not have to move around. If we're on a search or rescue operation or looking for a suspect, obviously we don't want to lie. So every situation, could it be abused? Absolutely. Especially for example, 4th of July, Christmas and Crockett, stuff like that.

So, with that being said, are there any other grants available for extra?

So, grants for drones are nearly impossible to get, even to the point you have to go to the state capitol to test a biathlon. All of our grants come from private donors. That's where we regularly get ours. The private donors have not come back with any additional funding at this point. So probably 95% of the equipment that we've gotten drones, LTRs, a lot of the stuff that we get to guys, the weapons, the breaching tools, all that stuff. We've gotten that on grants or donations. We haven't come to the city to say, hey, we need this money. I think at some point we have to let some of our private donors breathe a little bit and say, hey, we're gonna take on this responsibility. I guess what I'm saying, I don't wanna wear out our welcome to some of these private donors. That's why I'm coming to y'all with it.

Chief, when we get the information for a leasing program, first of all, would you be willing to go that route? Second of all, with the warranty and the maintenance that would alleviate from the city and you guys, that would decrease your maintenance budget, correct? That could be relocated or reallotted? Yes.

That's correct. I think that me personally, from an administrative standpoint, I think the Linux program is beneficial to a police department because it's a never-ending battle. We talk about this, we talk about it every year. We need to continue replacing the cycle now, but there just never has been a little bit of oxygen on the table to do that. So I think with the When you have these leased vehicles and they're taking on some of the maintenance of it, I think that that helps cut some of our vehicle maintenance budget. Like this year, I can tell you now from the projections, it looks like we're going to go over our vehicle maintenance budget, mainly because of the 200-plus-hour-a-mile vehicles we have. One had to have a new transmission. One of the, I believe, yeah, had to have a new transmission. So we had to have some work done on the older Durango so it was not covered under warranty. So our vehicle maintenance budget got hit pretty hard. We have a fleet of brand new vehicles, or the majority of them, a lot of that, a lot of that float gets softened up on some of that.

And one more follow-up with the program such that is that would the vehicles be equipped with everything that you need or would there still be like equipment costs that you would?

So what I've been told by both companies is you tell us what vehicle you want, you provide us with the up-to-date equipment, the equipment needed. They build all that into the price. When we get those prices and look at it that you're going to be that we see those vehicles that show up here ready to hit the road. Understood driving to equipment cars to the computers. Okay.

Okay.

I just want to briefly about raises for the police department, your department staff. I'm gonna tell you that I appreciate you advocating for your staff. You always do, y'all always do, every year. But somehow, right now, I'm just looking at the numbers. I can't see us doing, you know, raises right now for the staff. not to say that in the future that we look at that but i will say that just looking from my standpoint kind of figuring like the salaries of everyone i uh in bringing it to the attention of the council feel like that at this point in time you need a raise i appreciate everything that you do for the city I'm looking overall at all of the salaries and I see that looking at you and your administrator, Miss Georgia Hopkins, I think she's been in here serving the city for 37 years. So kind of putting those numbers together and I guess I just need to put it out there. The numbers that I'm looking at that we might need to consider or look at, um, I was looking at, um. On the salaries of the chief, and we don't get a chance to get the salaries of all of the employees. I would like to ask that we consider making a salary increase. 45 dollars and 62 cents an hour.

will stand here and refuse a pay raise if we don't address the men and women that work for me. Because the truth is, that's almost frustrating because they're the ones that are out there getting into the creeks, in the water, and pulling the dead bodies out, investigating the homicide, picking up unresponsive infant children, rushing them to the hospital. working, I wouldn't be needed. staff as a whole um the city is going to find itself in a bad spot and um i don't think we want to uh we really don't want to be faced with that um on miss georgia hopkins that woman deserves every penny we can give her um she can run that facility when none of us are there and she can actually be the first unlicensed So again, I do agree.

But I really like the emphasis that you put on the employees. We have some really good employees, and that's so important to the city that they don't aggravate. Kids come up and talk to them, and they have a relationship, and I know how invaluable that is.

If you pay attention to the men and women that work over there right now, and that's in the city. I'm not interested in with them. And I think we need to pay attention to that because they're good with the community. The community knows them. The community's comfortable with them. I can't promise you what happens when that next guy comes in. We don't know until we meet them and we start talking to them. But I think the ones we have now, they truly want to be here and they truly like their job and they excel at it. So, you know, something I didn't mention, Texas Police Chiefs Association done a study from 100 to $200,000 per cadet. When you calculate what the economy costs, the time that we pay them, the time that we send them back and forth in the vehicle, the time, they spend six months, four to six months in the academy and they spend six months on FTO. By the time you add all that together, you're investing over $100,000 And if we're not paying them right and keeping them around here, we're just trying to make a nice apartment. And it's never ending cycle. And typically, we do a three-year contract. Right now, we only have two employees that are under contract. So because they've been here long enough, their contract has expired. So I think that's something that we really have to focus on. I mean, like I told my staff, I think it's important that this council is not willing to do this, I think we put it before the voters. But I think at some point, they expect us to provide services. However, and like I said, if it gets to a point where we look at losing eight or nine officers, somebody's got to take the fall for that. Somebody's got to be able to answer those tough questions of why don't we have a PT officer working tonight? And I understand the position that puts y'all in.

Thank you. Thank you for consideration and the caring that you're showing to the officers as well as in your fleet chief. Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate you and it's taking everything within you to decline. I understand because I noticed that you put your staff, your staff before yourself. You always do that. I noticed that. I noticed that your staff also has good camaraderie with the community. Uh, in general, but just looking at right now, looking at the budget, I can't, I don't see and I know in the future. Yes, I could. I could see that, but I can't see. Taxing the citizens, you know, increasing because we're already dealing with. know increased water rates you know things such as that so we're trying to uh juggle those issues as well so um yeah i could see if if the council is talking about you know raising taxes or whatever to uh give give raises to the employees i was i would suggest let the voters vote for it or against it that'd be their choice but i'm not going to be for increasing taxes or anything like that But just to say, I appreciate you. I do want the council to consider since the chief declined his, I would like the council to consider Miss Georgia Hopkins with an increase of $29 an hour, which will give a salary of $60,320. So that's my request. Um, I'm just looking at the salaries that we're already, uh, really. So I'm just asking that you all look at them as well. Uh, make your decision on how we would move forward with increase from Miss Georgia Hopkins is chief decline. He is, but I'm still open. for chief as well. So even though he declined, I'm still open to present that to council. So council can decide if they want to move forward with offering him that increase as well. So thank you.

I just pulled up while he was talking police, the Palestine police department just posted. They're doing a civil service in August. And they're starting page up to 73,692 a year. And so that's the, that's what we're. Up against, you know, that's where our talent and they don't have to drive far. They can still live, you know, with that question when I was talking to.

That's not your competition. Okay.

I was going to ask you as well. I know you pulled up the salaries for the staff. What's the salary for the chief?

I don't think we could discuss that unless he wants to.

No, no, no. Oh, I don't know. So that's the thing. No, we don't have to say.

I think they're captain level. I thought you were talking about personnel issues here, but yeah. I mean, one of their captains was like $110,000, $120,000 for a captain in Palisades. So, I'm sure it's 150 plus, you know, in the neighborhood of 150.

Yeah. So what I was looking at was. That, you know, with you saying that, I'm looking at that. Our chief is extremely low on his salary, even compared to other departments departments.

I mean, what's to be counted too in those days are the years of experience that have gotten them there too. I mean, it's not just like a blanket, this is what you start at. Some of them have quite a few years, so it's a reflection of not only their years and their raises and their additional certification. So when you look at their salaries right at that point, you're not looking at a blank flat salary like they start your base. Some of them have earned that. And so it's not to be taken lightly. then when we talk about raising their salary that they haven't earned those salaries and they on that part they do deserve and i know you've been with several departments and you've been here faithfully but we can't turn you know you've been on that police department that many years personally and you've stayed with them It should be reflected in your race. And so we have been, Alyssa, we have been tight. And I appreciate that you appreciate the people that work with you. Thank you.

Yeah, and I see, and I have your years of service here with us as well. five months so i appreciate that so that's why i still want to put before the council to consider a raise for you on your behalf not that we're overlooking the staff i just want to make that clear because it seems like that people are trying to point that i'm overlooking the staff that's not true so it's uh i could see doing a race in the in the near future but at this point um dealing with our budget i can see those two raises going forward thank you chief Take a break.

Take a quick break.

That's it.

We're calling for a break.

I think we don't have a hand. We're going to take a break.

I'm sorry.

Man, man. Thank you. Thank you. um So we have to take . Especially for the five or six year Welcome to the circuit. Yes, ma'am. You know, I don't have a. Okay. Okay. Always. Yes, ma'am. We've always been in harder places. It gets easier from there.

So you related to Tony? He's my brother-in-law. Oh, I'm sorry. Those two places?

I had to borrow your pen for a minute.

First week you're like, oh man, in about two weeks, you say, oh man, all this time I'm going to do this. By the month is up, you say, dang.

How was I working so hard? I got all this to do.

And then, otherwise, you said, you can do it. Because I couldn't believe, I was retired 14 years. I was doing stuff, you know, part-time in between. But how do you lose 14 years? But that's how long I've been away from the school. And I've done some part-time jobs. But it's amazing. There's a lot of stuff to do. I still have to clean the closets. Oh yeah, but hers. I want to know why you don't share a budget.

I get all the reports that she really hasn't.

I can see it from here.

I just can't argue in a council meeting. She shouldn't put me in that position, but I will not allow her to lie. I see. And it's a good fact. But I'm not going to go back and forth.

No, that's a good way to accept you, but I'm challenging you. Yeah. And it's gone.

Oh.

That's a real baked egg in here. A whole piece of bacon. Who did the sandwiches? Ms. Margaret.

Oh.

Did she have meat in here? Those are really good.

That's what I wanted.

I didn't know these all had bacon.

They have a really good taste in sausage in there, too.

I prefer the sausage. I'm like you. But I saw the egg. I said that I wanted it.

Yeah.

You know, it's really hard. You can only divide and put in people down. You have an opportunity to go to private things and clean up what you did. But you want to do it publicly for the recognition. I was telling my girls yesterday, you know, I was coming up on the square. They said, oh, it's marked off. Oh, that don't mean nothing. You just ride up there. I said, but you do it out of courtesy. You ride out of there and they'll see you. And then they'll say, okay, Mary, I love you. No, you just tell them, move. I said, no, no, that's not the way you help people. I know y'all spoil, right? And everything, they said, well, you know, Mary, you just walk up and take it. That's not the way you do things. I said, I didn't raise y'all very well, did I? They are used to authority. I said, but you know, authority, self-authority is much better than forced authority. I said, you walk up in this town, and they said, oh, like I never go up in the mirror. Oh, you're the mayor? No, I'm not. They know me, but it is private. They know. They got an idea halfway through. And the little kid was telling me I was paying for giving him a snow cone. He said, you're the mayor. He said, you know what, I'm putting this on my tab for you. I said, you're so sweet. I said, you don't have to. I got my money here. He said, no, I want to do it for you. That's how you teach people how to have an authoritarian position. But if you have to tell everybody, I'm going to preach chaos for you. But you know, we're getting a lot of young kids that like politics. That's really interesting to me. They don't want to be Superman. Superman, they want to be a president or something. They all want to be the mayor. They do want to be the mayor.

That's how you show them your salary, huh?

That little kid said, Dr. Fisher, you must be rich. You're the mayor. Why do I get there? That's how you get there. That's what he said. He told me. There's a kid telling him. But he ran to squeeze the smoothest con on me. My niece. I say, yes, I am rich, but I am not wealthy.

I'm trying to tell them a difference. I'm rich in a lot of ways, but I am not wealthy.

Clearing $46 a month here in the council, you'll get it.

Somebody asked me that

I don't know if they're serious or not, but anyway, they said, did your pay increase when you made Mayor Pro Tem? I said, listen, first of all, I didn't make Mayor Pro Tem. I said, that was by default. That was by default, and no, there was no increase.

Real money. If you get paid, real money. But in the cities, they do. But they don't know it. You know, maybe they don't pay it.

What time of the night? A few weeks ago when Carol and I went out to Mimsy's and got a ribeye steak. We split it. It was $71. One month work here won't pay for that. So that was our only time to go do that.

Food is out. We ate out somewhere and it was... And it went on with what, depending on what you got on the buffet. That's right. At that Chinese buffet, the guy went and told that guy was in there, and he said, the sign said, all you can eat.

He said, you eat and go home. Don't like to get hungry, do you?

You know, I used to have a friend. They'd go when they were switching out the buffets back in the morning.

Remember that old cowboy show now? Rollin', rollin', rollin'. Keep this doggie rollin'. Let's keep this rollin'.

I saw that bacon I wanted to get for you. It's 11.22. And then it's the bread.

No, he cooked that for me.

Everybody's making it.

All right, Mayor and Council. So y'all are free until 5 o'clock, right? No. No? Okay. No. How about noon?

Yeah, that's just 30 minutes.

Y'all feel, I mean, I'm at y'all's pleasure.

Let's do what our intention was from here, from this moment on. Okay, so from this moment on,

We have the budget in front of you. I'm going to touch on just a few highlights of the budget, of the things that you need to know as you're reviewing it, and you want to make some notes, want to meet up with me later.

We'll do all of that.

If you have questions right now, if I'm knowledgeable of the answer, I'll give it to you. If not, I'll tell you. I'm going to research it, and I'll bring it back to you. But currently on the first pages of your budget, you have your revenue sheets. As I spoke on property, one of the biggest things that I'm seeing impact our budget this year. is the state legislature gave a business personal property tax exemption this last session to businesses. They increased the exemption from $2,500 per year to $125,000 per year. So small businesses, restaurants, mechanic shops, just any small business like that that was getting a $2,500 personal property tax exemption, it got increased to $125,000. So a lot of the taxes that they were paying they will be exempted from it. At least $125,000. We're finding there's a lot of businesses that, say it's a lawn mowing business, there's zero turns in a truck and a trailer. It's somewhere around there. So their personal property tax, their equipment and machinery and stuff like that went away. The property tax is being exempted. A restaurant and things of that nature, those property taxes are being exempted. The thing with exemptions, they don't remove that tax, they just shift it to somebody else. So businesses that were paying that tax and working the tax into their bottom line, as they set up fee schedules and sell a burger or mow a yard, That was all included. They're exempted and as a business owner, that's a really nice thing. However, it just moved it to the rest of the people paying the taxes. So, the other businesses that have greater property than 125,000 homeowners fixed income, everybody else gets impacted by this load. That business business owners were exempted from. That equates to 12 million. We have 12 million... Here, let me pull it up just so I can reference it. So you have in... In 2025, we had 107,000 in business property tax exemptions, 107,000. That's how many people were. They were exempted $107,000 worth across all business owners in the city of Crockett. There was that many exemptions provided in 2026. There's a total of 12,796,000 in exemptions. If you subtract last year's exemptions, you have additional exemptions of 12,688,000. That equates to current tax rates. Today's tax rate that equates to $86,000 of taxes that are shifted off of the business owners to property owners, homeowners, everybody else. And I have a copy here. And so this is just, this is some information as we're developing this budget. property owners and other people are assuming this $86,000 in additional taxes. So that's one point that I wanted to mention that as we're building this budget, that's going to come back up as we're doing, we're going to be doing something called an average property taxes. So based on average home value, this is what you currently pay as a homeowner. And if council decreases increases the taxes, any, this is what it will go up or down. But we're going to have to factor in that 86,000 dollars of revenues. Already, but before council even does anything, you know, so we have to. That goes into the calculation. The other thing is transfer of employees as promotions and license of occur. What we've seen is a. Over the last few years, more and more of our people, as Gerald mentioned, and we had talked about earlier, the street department is very heavy. heavily centered on the cost of concrete, of cement, of asphalt and all those costs, that's where we needed to prioritize more of our focus on and less of manpower to do the work. Especially as we get more and more quality work that is getting done. Our water department and streets department are very labor intensive. They will work all day long in a hole or at a leak. There'll be five, six guys digging, pumping, running equipment, putting pipes in the ground. They can work all day long for maybe a thousand dollar piece of a pipe or a valve to install a valve. And they, it took that many people all day long. Whereas on the street department, it might take four guys all day long and they could be putting down $50,000 worth of asphalt, you know. So, and the Parks Department is the same way with our TDC contract. We're very, very fortunate. To have that contract, however, we have employees that are in our parks department in our streets department. That are helping out just to keep on the workload of the water department. So this budget reflects transfers of the moving those employees from 1 department that they're not as needed in. To departments that they're already, you know, they're already helping out and working in those departments. That way it's proper. The labor is properly loaded. and paid for. Not increasing, not hiring more people or firing more people, it's just moving them. So you'll see those reflections in the budget in front of you. The other thing that this budget has got under advisement of our attorneys, one thing that's come up is council, and I'll have, let me pull it up right here. Council by resolution when the edc was terminated and abolished there was a distribution of assets plan and an interlocal agreement where the city would manage the make to make sure that the sales tax that comes in for the edc will continue going until it's paid off all of its obligations and there was these these are the these are the items right here that council approved The asset the that that all funds will go towards these items here notice to claimants so we had 2 existing lawsuits. We had the USDA loan at that time there was initial. In January 30th of 2025, so about a year and a half ago, we owed $2.3 million. We are now down to $2.2 million that is still owed on there. So legal costs, the remaining obligations for the building renovation for the Provalis contract, that's been finalized. We've completed all of the renovations required for that contract. Bookkeeping services that would go away. Consultant if you remember, we had a consultant there for a little bit that went away. And then we had a few contributions that council approved to prepare the. The roof that was out there, the West book house, the Mary Ellen college museum, it requires some things that need to be finalized and we set some money aside for that. and we set aside $20,000 in other maintenance obligations of the properties. Since then, all of those things have been addressed, taken off the books, paid off. We now have a fund balance in the EDC of a little over $600,000. outside of the current debt payments. What we approved in the resolution that was all proceeds into the EDC accounts would go towards that obligation. And right now the big obligation is the USDA note. We have roughly $600,000 in fund balance to pay down that note. That will bring us down to around 1.5, 1.6 million that we still owe. We have an estimate of about $808,000 in sales tax revenue that's brought in by that half-cent sales tax.

How much did you say again?

$808,000. And that's in your budget, in the proposed budget that I have. That $808,000 has to be made up and each year completely spent down where you don't have rollover fund balances. We need to pay off that debt. At that rate, at the proposed rate that we're projecting now, it may go up or go down a little bit. If it goes up, more than that amount will have to go into debt payment. If it's less than that amount, we'll have to adjust it down and pay whatever did come in in sales tax. So you'll see that you'll see that reflected in your budget. We have to at that rate, it'll probably be this next fiscal year and a portion of the following fiscal year. I'm going to have to get legal advice on how to apportion fractional, so if we pay off half of it within a year, you know, half of the proceeds of the EDC sales tax goes and that debt is paid off within that year, how do I factor in a tax rate because by the voters, any sales tax that comes in that you see so sex that comes in will go towards property tax rate of relief. The entire amount is going to just based on current estimates is going to be over 20 cents reduction in property taxes. The property tax rate. So we currently get about 2.2 million dollars in property. The property taxes. Over a 3rd, you know, over a 3rd of those taxes would be reduced in the following year. Our tax, our taxes, our tax rates would go down by a 3rd. We dropped them somewhere in the 60. Percent of the previous year, so how that calculation has to work and how those funds are brought in. You know, we need. Legal advice on how to. properly project those and make sure that that money is set aside in an account and goes specifically towards that. What did you say? I didn't say anything. I was fixing to say something.

Oh, okay. Okay, so with saying that, I was looking over the CEIDC funds and USDA payments. Yes, ma'am. So I was just looking and highlighted where it says transfer from CEIDC where it says on the

Are you looking at our audit? Yes, yes. OK, and it says transfer 2,234,000 dollars, $656.

So with that being said, what was that transfer for?

So, when council passed this resolution to terminate and to transfer all. So, in those assets, so there's 2, there's 2 numbers. There's a depreciation or a, an asset number. So, the properties that are owned. The city owns, and then the debt that the owns. The city now owns that debt, you know, we have to pay that debt off. It's our responsibility to manage that debt. We have an interlocal agreement that says that the city will oversee and make sure that that debt is paid off. And so I will present this to you before the, before this budget year is finalized and closed out. And it will be reflected in your, in your audit as well when the audit comes in. All of those funds will have to be tracked and show that it went towards paying the USDA note down and paying it down each year. In that resolution, it says, and y'all have copies of this, but I'll give you another copy if you need it. It says the foregoing amounts will be transferred to an escrow account to be dispersed as costs are incurred for the foregoing obligations that are related to the windup of the corporation. So I will show that, track it, here's how much money we received this month or this past year, and this is the debt that we paid off, the USDA debt that we paid off. And it'll be reflected in the budget that way you can track the activities, the amount of money that's coming in and the amount of money that's going out.

So we do have an account for the CNAC, right? So why are we having to transfer it?

Because by resolution, it has to be transferred into an escrow account. So all of those monies have to be captured, shown as a transfer, and then every dollar accounted for. paying off the debt.

So we actually really didn't have to transfer. We could have just left the monies in that account.

Our legal advice, the legal advice from our attorneys was to make a transfer into an escrow account. Whether we had to or not, that was the legal advice that we went on.

With the legal advice that was presented to us, Um, you know, taking legal advice, we just went with what was advised. Yeah, that's what we have to do.

That's what I would. I wouldn't veer off from that.

But if we didn't have to do it, what kind of legal?

I don't know that we didn't have to our legal. Our attorney said that we should. So I don't know. I'm not an attorney. According to them, that is the cleaner way to track the funds to make sure that we're not commingling funds. They have to be a set aside escrow account to make sure that there's no commingling and additional tracking required. You can see in out and it should tally up. So those were the items, I guess the biggest items that as you go through this budget, our revenue line item, as you see, you see the difference there over last year. We're continuing to see a small decrease each year, or sometimes even more than a small, but a fractional decrease every year in franchise fees as we become more efficient, People go to LEDs and the solar panels, whatever. So you have electrical franchises going down as people go to streaming devices. You have a dish, you know, satellite services and dish network and all the cable television franchise. All of those are steadily decreasing each and every year as we become as more technology comes out. The way that this is set up, I'll have certified values to present to council as soon as I receive them. Otherwise, I'm just based on last year's numbers, and I'm showing a voter approval rate based on those numbers. If you go down to the sales tax, What's that, the fifth line down, sixth line down city sales tax? The city sales tax is healthy and it continues to see a slight increase year over year as we're going probably to more locally sourced stuff. We're more online purchases. Instead of driving to Lufkin or Woodlands or somewhere to buy those things, we're buying them online. Those are being now taxed locally, which is a really good benefit. It keeps the city healthy. Other than that, you see, yes, I would highly recommend if you're wanting to buy shoes or if you can find an online option, please buy online. You're paying somebody's sales tax, and why not pay ours instead of an out-of-town? Amazon, I think, is our third highest tax contributor. Actually, I think our second. highest contribution other than walmart so it does help to buy 100 with amazon instead of going to the mall somewhere else but i never knew so a lot of people use it you know it benefited us like that yes and so those are you see the revenues um i'm continuing to work on The revenues for utilities, water and sewer rates right now I have last year's budgeted rates in there. We will continue. Closing in that number and making sure that we have an accurate number protected for next year. This does not include any. This does not include any rate increases to the water or sewer. This budget does show, and council's gonna have to, you know, we'll have to account for that, but we have a 3% CPI increase for garbage and we have a 2% increase for water. for purchase water from the water district. We currently, this proposed budget shows the increase. We're eating those costs for the water rates. Yes, for the water rates. We're not increasing water rates to pay for that. As we go through our capital requests or any COLAs or anything of that nature, we will have to probably look at that. Well, we will definitely have to look at that if that's what we're going to do. But currently, without any of these capital requests, appropriated for in the draft budget i'm not i'm not showing any rate increases in the draft budget as well however i'm showing it on the garbage side the garbage side passing on we have a three percent increase from our supplier from our contractor and we're showing in this draft budget a three percent increase uh to the uh resident so it's around 20 cents i think 26 a month

So, to reiterate the clarity, so you're saying that increasing tax rates will not. This will not have to increase tax rates dealing with the garbage and the water. But if we consider doing color raises or any employee raises, we'll have to look at increasing taxes.

taxes or decrease in another expense you know if council says hey we're going to decrease this and and put that towards the colon we either have to decrease current spending or increase a rate to bring in additional revenue to pay for it um this does include like i said this does include a garbage rate increase due to the rate increase from our contractor. But in our water and sewer, they hit us with a 2% increase. It currently does not show that being passed on to the consumer. But as we move forward with the budget, council may decide to pass that on to the consumer. But it currently doesn't. So that's the revenues. Expenses. Um, we brought from our committee, I was initially my salary line item was when I was when I stepped down to assistant city manager. My salary was being paid out of community services development department. As we brought in a finance director, we brought that salary back over to our general admin budget. So the, you have a decrease and then it increases back to. To cover for personnel costs. For myself and for our finance director.

I was looking at that, just looking over everything I saw where you also. put in another department for an assistant city administrator.

That was the previous budget. So that's why I'm saying that is being transferred back over. So we don't have an assistant city administrator position that we're budgeting for.

OK. You gave me, well, I have to go back.

Right.

You gave that to me.

Yeah, well, I mean, we'll look at it. Like I said, if.

And you put it in another department, like in the, what do you call it?

No, it's not, it's not in there. It's not in it. So there's no budgeted expense for an assistant city administrator. Going down to the street department, that's where the street department in parks I did transfer. So some people that began working in the parks department that gained water licensing, we moved them to the parks to the water and sewer departments. People that we had hired to replace them in the water and sewer departments, we brought them into the department. There's a little bit of savings and personnel cost there. The street department is the biggest 1. we had several people that. And Gerald and I met and he said, John, these guys are not these guys are working in our water and streets departments. I mean, our water and sewer departments. And especially with water lines, sewer line breaks and calls on the weekends. When somebody's on call for the sewer and the water department over the weekend, if they were, if they were budgeted out of the street department. And they're eating up overtime. We appropriated money for overtime in the water sewer, but not in the streets department. but if they're coming from the street department salary line item, they're also running up overtime in the street department. And so this right here corrects those personnel. So where you have a transfer out is being brought in into the water department. You know, those costs are being better appropriated. Um, as you see here in the street department, um, This is this current draft. As you saw up ahead on the revenues, it showed about a $71,000 additional surplus that could be appropriated. Council can appropriate that money towards some of these capital requests or appropriate more of that money towards street department maintenance repair streets to get more streets done. As it is, it shows 7, a $75,000 increase to our street department maintenance repair. So, as I mentioned earlier, in 24, we spent 250,000. We 2025, we spent 480,000 in the street department. Almost doubling our street department budget, then we increase it to 574,000 this year. This shows that projected at 650,000. Next year, so continuing to move that money into the priority of street repairs, especially as council seems to me more. Aligned with moving just a little bit slower on the street department, not gaining so much ground and doing it cheaper, doing more, doing less chip seals and doing more asphalt rebuilding, doing more concrete curve and gutter. Slowing down enough to where that project is complete. We can walk away and that's a 20 year. You know, a 20 year street, not a 5 year when we need to return and do another chip seal. Um, but those cost a lot of money for us to suspend that.

So, just quick question. So, so the, the work sheet, the budget worksheet, so you're saying that this is the itemized no, man, that's not the budget worksheet.

That's the activity report that I mentioned earlier that shows. Year to date every month, what we spend in each category for each department that you mentioned earlier, that's that sheet.

Okay. But we don't know the worksheet. Okay. So, but, okay, I guess that's what I'm looking at because I, I don't, it doesn't specify or like I said, that's what I was asked about receipts. It doesn't specify what we actually purchased in. It just.

give us overall number it doesn't like uh material supplies i mean we don't know if we actually spent that on this i can guarantee you we spin it so all it needs is you to ask and i will pull the check register whatever you it is you want to see those those expenses how do you keep our We have software that does that. But each and every week or two weeks, we'll cut 80 something accounts payable checks. So there's no way to show you every check that we cut unless you come in and say, hey, I want to see this one.

But what I'm saying is it should be documented, right? Of course. When you make the purchase. So that's what I'm asking. So can we get a printout of each? No.

There's no way to give a printout of that much information.

Like monthly? You know, purchases monthly?

If council wants to do that, I will be glad to do that. But we'll have to let council tell me if that's what they want. That information is always available to you, though.

Well, I would like it monthly. I don't know about the rest of the council.

If council wants a monthly check register or however y'all want that broken down, we can do that.

Okay. Um, so hang on one second. Let me ask you a question. So you so like under materials and like it says old gas and grease, you want to break down of every dollar. If we if we budgeted $10,000, you want to you want to break down every 10,000 every every penny that they spent. You want to see a receipt for every every bit of that money.

State does.

And the state gets it. And the state gets it.

Well, why we can't get it? I'm not saying that you can't, but we're getting outside order here.

No, I mean, that's what I would like. I would like to get what the state gets. If the state gets a breakdown, because, I mean, just in general, if you're working for the state, they want to, for every penny, accounted for. So how would we know what we're working with? Because we have an auditor. Hang on, John. We have an auditor that reviews that, and if there's any discrepancies, they bring that before council. Okay. So that means that we don't look at what we're approving, we just rubber stamp it and just say whatever the auditor say.

Because you're not auditors.

No, I'm not auditing, but what I'm saying is that we do have responsibility of the finances of the city. And so to know what each department has or spends their money on helps us to determine how much money or how many funds they're going to need the next year. So we don't just say, I'm going to give you an example. I saw postage stamps or whatever. Oh, let's see. Give me an example.

John, while she's looking, what's our ballpark budget for annually? Just give me how many million? Twelve million. Twelve million.

Okay, okay, just like, for instance, postage. Okay. Do we spend 2000 dollars on postage in a certain department?

Yeah.

So that's what I'm asking. If we can find where we can make leverage on some of the other areas where we can find monies to. purchase what Mr. Coulter needs for the roads.

I mean, let me interject one thing. Number one, we're not micromanaging department. You hire a department head to do your department. If they decide they want to support postage is what they need because some days they have to spend out some things they're not. A department head ought to be able to designate where they want if they're spending it on something other than what they want. But it's not our job to say you can't buy postage. I mean for us to go into their budget and tell them where to spend it, it has to be a level of accountability with them. If they're spending it within their budget, If you wanted to have a conversation, that would be different. But to designate, we need to take money here and put it there. We're micromanaging. That's why you have managers to do that.

Well, I mean, we hired that nice lady right there to do that for us. That's where I'm at. I mean, that's what I'm saying.

So we hired her to do that. And I hired her. Her years of experience trumped mine. I can balance my checkbook. But her years of experience as a city finance director, I'm gonna trust what she says until I can't.

What I would like for, I'm not gonna say I'm not trusting what she says or what Rick says, but I would like to see it for myself. So if she has a printout of the information of how the budget is itemized, I would love to have a copy of it. But that's what I'm saying. But my thing of it is this, is that we have numbers here and we don't have an idea of What is... We have numbers, but we don't have exactly what the departments are purchasing. And if she has that, someone like me, if I want to look at it, allow me to see it.

But you're talking about a $12 million budget. That's going to take John or her an astronomical amount of time to pull all those receipts to make those available to you. That's a waste of our time.

Well, we're supposed to get monthly reports anyway. So we don't get monthly reports on each department. But if we did, we could

keep up with that. You do. You get an activity report showing how much is spent in each department, in each budget. How much overall. No. But we're not getting it itemized. You are itemized. You are getting it itemized. You have it right there in front of you.

I'm looking at it from here.

That's the worksheet. So I'm going to move forward. So here's the thing. Like I said, if we do each and every payroll twice a month when we cut checks and everything, those are available. If you're like, hey, why are we spending $2,000? I'll be glad to show you those receipts. For me to put that number in here, it's already been tried and true. I know that we're spending that much in postage and stamps and everything else in that department. If it's building and standards and we're sending out, we have to send out notices, we'll send out 60 certified envelopes to people within the 300 foot range. In the water department, we send out 3,500 utility bills each and every month. All of those cost money, lots of money. So all of those are tried and true. My job over the last several months has been to do exactly what you're saying. Well, if there's 2,000, are we really spending? I look and I say, are we spending 2,000? Yes, we are. So that needs to carry. Oh, hey, we're saving some money. We just upgraded to whatever, and the costs are less over there. So that's why when you see every category of expense in every department, there's probably 380 expense line items. As you look, you'll see increases, decreases, flat. Hey, we're on target. It looks like we're going to stay the same next year. Or hey, insurance has increased dramatically this last year. They did reevaluate everything. We're going to go up on that next year. Those numbers are all reflected. If any of them look off line, And you want to know the information? All of those, Ms. Hicks, I don't and I haven't and I never will deny you information that you get as a council member. If you want to sit down, we have banker boxes of receipts. You can look through them to your heart's content. welcome you to do so. But to provide all of those into spreadsheets and create more work and materials and supplies for paper and bring those to you every week, month, that I don't see it as being realistic or something that, but if council says that, we will gladly do that as well.

No, the thing of it is, like I said, it's, I mean, we're getting numbers and we can't evaluate actually what that department can do. actually need what the need is.

That's what my job is as a city manager to know exactly what they need, what they spent, What we're trending to go over on, what we need to adjust, that's why it's called a budget. It's not a, hey, you will never spend more than $10,000. We're projecting that next year something will cost $5,000, $10,000, and so forth. And it's my job to go through, and now I have, you know, we have people helping with reports. Hey, listen, we're going, I want a daily review on those kind of things where we have time to say, Money's going up, going down. This is where we need to make an adjustment and come to council for approvals. If council gave me a budget, I need to manage it. And so that's what this is for for next year. I've looked through this over the last several months, and I've made these adjustments for y'all to look at. That was my job. Your job is to look at it, and if anything looks off, say, hey, can we meet later on? I'm wondering why we're spending that $2,000 in stamps. Be glad to show you, and I'll show you exactly where it's going and why it's $2,000. Thank you. Otherwise, you don't need me. You don't need me. You don't need a finance director. Y'all can run this city yourself.

Actually, we need you. If you would, we need you. If you know and you're aware of what we're spending in those departments to get this year. Like I said, we need an itemized list of what those departments are spending. Which is why I showed that to you. So you're basically just giving, I keep saying you're just giving us numbers.

We really need to move on.

That's not even. But I'm just telling you because, I mean, that's what I'm saying is that you're just giving us numbers and you're not giving us details about what expenses. What kind of details do you need of them? numbers but my question is this is my question my question this is gonna be my question is that okay since that John has went through looked at everything why are we even having a workshop if he's bringing us and he's already looked at all the numbers and and he's thinking that everything is approvable why are we having a workshop to approve a decision but you've already made the decision there's no decision made no decisions have been made okay this is a presentation mayor and council i feel that we've gotten off topic and we need to realign No, we need to realign with what our agenda is. No, that's not our agenda right now. That wasn't what we agreed to to move forward to.

not women that let me just at this point at this point I want to talk to you and I think Councilwoman has fully stated what her concerns are and at this point we're just going over an overview of what has been projected this is an opportunity for everybody to reflect and from the projection and if we're going to have a number this is just the organizers tell everybody everything has been pulled from their department it and this is a true representation because it goes through the audit it can verify that that's where the money is and where it was spent the direct line by line items are not spelled out in this portion of it and is his A businessman has already offered that he's given her what she's asked in terms of it. So what we're on to right now is moving to the format. What we're going to follow are the things in order. These are the things that are in order. Is it something that you want to do? And that's what we're working with. So I think it's been clearly explained at this point, and we do have before us the numbers. We're not doing the specific item by item, but we have the number section by section that they're evaluated in as the auditor is going to go in and evaluate them.

And I'm making myself available for each and every one of y'all individually. If any of y'all want to see individually more in detail, obviously that information is fully available. We have it all on file and it can be shown. So you saw the street department, the decrease of 115,000 total. On page three, you have the parks department. With the parks department, a decrease of $5,900 total in expenditures. Each one of these departments, anywhere that I can find some money to shave down, because there's inevitably some things that have increased. So a little bit of contingency here or a little bit of fluff, I've gone through and really looked at it to make sure that we can't take some money. And you'll see those. Every one of those subtractions, there are monies saved, monies pulled out of those line items. And where we can't, we've added. We've added those line items, and it's reflected here. The police department. They have a total of $4,592 decrease in their expenditures. However, you see over here to the side in comments, there's a few things specific more. Some of it's on the capital request side. And we'll do the same thing when we get to the water and sewer on the capital request. But there was some increases in lease equipment that was asked for. the computers, the software, the subscriptions. That's the number that it really needs to be at where you're seeing that $103,000 in annual fees and equipment for subscriptions and fees. Um, the new a new line item that we've added this year that was a request with police chief was department ammunition. Um, So before, it was taken out of his travel and training and materials and supplies budget. So if you have materials and supplies, you'll see in there, there'll be some ammunition costs. Here, due to the amount of costs and the increase on qualifying each and every quarter, or however often y'all qualify the amount of ammunition, he's asking for a specific line item on that. So you see that number. So I do need, so that 70,000, that could easily be eaten up by some of those costs there. And so I need some, the things that I knew that are going up and down that we have really no say so over, like electricity, gasoline, things of those natures, we move those. New items, Those are things that needed a little bit of council input not tonight not today, but it needs to be looked at the fire department the biggest increase there was We were told this year that we needed to just We were paying for a part-time employee at 24 hours a week we were told that we needed if it's anything over 20 and Average you know. We need to pay for a retirement. We need to be. Contributions need to be made for them fully. You see that you also see this year as you see in your books. There's been a reassessment of all city values. Buildings and equipment stuff. They haven't so if we told them that City Hall is going to cost a million dollars say in. 2005 to you know we went under tml. Today, it's going to be way more than a 1M dollars, right? So they go, they went in and did a, an assessment of all city facilities. So, in insurance costs, you'll see the rates didn't necessarily go up, but the assessment values did the valuations. To replace it in currently in current day. So that those two costs were the greatest contributor on the fire department. And you see an increase of 19,000 community and development services. You see a decrease of 5700 for your year over year budget. All of these departments I'm going through and trying to find places that we can shave cut costs and. To bring that number down because I'm trying to do it this year to where we don't have to go to a voter approval rate Or if we do I want those costs going to salaries. I want those cops going to to a cost of living The expenditures for sanitation department. That's the cost. That's the 3% increase in Customer cost over the contract. It's a it's a 1 1 million and 42,000 budget for the garbage over last year's $1,011,000. The library, you see a decrease of $185,000. The mechanic shop, you see an increase of $1,317. Some of those were making some corrections to workers comp and salaries that was not properly appropriated for last year. But that doesn't include any salary increases. The Civic Center, the biggest hit that we got there, we have a $13,000 overall budget increase for the Civic Center. And 16,000 of that is an increase to insurance. They really hit us hard on the valuation on the Civic Center. It was well undervalued according to today's replacement costs. And they really pushed that number up. So that that went up our insurance went up for the civic center by 16,600. And so I've made some. Cuts elsewhere in the budget and brought it down to an overall cost of 13,000. Then you have the EDC obligations. You see that breakdown there that we're going to what I'm going to do for council before we finalize that line item. Basically those the three unmet obligations that we have not finalized yet. Plus the note is written into this budget. What will happen though if we like say legal expenses, we've already spent some of those legal expenses, attorney expenses. So that $20,000 budget will decrease and that money will go towards the USDA debt. So the overall number is accounted for. I'll get you a more itemized number. This is what we appropriated $20,000. We've spent $12,000, so we're going to leave $8,000 in it for next year.

And what's the project's?

Legal expenses, the office roof repair, the soffit and trim repair for the Westbrook house, and I have $20,000 in maintenance that could go towards more than likely the Westbrook house or any of the property cleanups. There's some culverts that need to be installed. Some of those things we can try to address before the city starts spending its own money on the EBC properties, but all of those will be itemized as brought to council. Council will have to approve any of those expenses.

Now, my question is, so those are extra expenses that are coming out of the.

Okay, as per the resolution that council and. Okay, that's one of my mind.

The council that.

you know we're only supposed to be paying the debt and not obligations not the debt the debt these these line items that are put in here are because they're in that resolution that council and the law prescribed i didn't put anything else else else in there the water department budget um you have an overall decrease i really I feel less confident about the water and sewer department. But just because some of the items that we normally keep in there for repair. And water maintenance, or, you know, water line repairs, or say, replacing, for instance, an example. We're over there doing road construction on Darius this past week. We got a collapse around a manhole manhole started caving at the bottom until we started moving the dirt. Everything was okay. Now, we ran into the need for a new manhole. We have to pull all that old. That was not something that I was expecting manhole and areas. Things of those natures, we had 2 line items that would address water main replacement. and sewer line or sewer manhole repairs replacement that I really had to cut down those budget numbers in order to make this budget work and fit without a water rate increase. Because we're eating this water rate increase from the district without a water rate increase to the customers. So we're taking it out of contingent repairs to manholes or water line repairs or things of that nature. So it's still a balanced budget. It funds itself, but we do run the risk that during the middle of the year I may have to come back to you and say, hey, there's no money in the budget for this and it really needs to happen, so we need to pull from fund balance. This budget prior to this allowed for, hey, we need a new manhole, put it out of that, pull it out of that line, have them go buy that manhole and get it installed.

Did that come out?

it shouldn't um because that's water this is water and sewer uh the 90 the 90 000 you're talking about is in the general fund contingencies so what are we using that for contingency whatever comes up during during the year as council says hey let's pay for that well then that's where that money comes out of for instance right now uh charter uh the charter uh needle cost for the charter review that council approved you know that's coming out of contingency Those items are as council approves come out of contingency.

Okay. So that's what I'm asking. So with those water issues, because they could come out.

It shouldn't. It shouldn't because. For the water and sewer, it should come out of its own fund. It should come out of water and sewer money, not tax, not property. Revenues that you have a general fund and utility fund. It's best to come out of the utility fund and we have basically, if you look down there in on page 11. a third quarter of the way down it says water water main replacement projects you know last year we decreased it that really for proactive we should that should be increased you know last year we had money in there for a $35,000 vehicle that would pay maybe for one of our used vehicles that I requested in our capital request but I had to remove that line item And not fund it in our, you know, kind of like the police department, they were. Wanting to add where every year we buy a new vehicle, you know, that's what would be nice for the departments that are vehicle heavy. A lot of manpower, it'd be good to have 1 of those included every year. This one does not include it on the water department. The sewer department, on the last page, page 12, sewer main replacement projects, I decreased that from $100,000 to $45,000 for sewer main replacement projects. Like I say, those are all projections. I don't know what we'll run into next year, but you have a little bit of money set aside to where when we do need that manhole because it collapsed and the roads shut down, We have the fund, we pull it out of that. And so that contingency, so to speak, has decreased pretty significantly.

So what I'm asking is, So we still can use that as we need it as the citizens need.

You can, yes ma'am. Especially more on the, that should be more on the general fund. If the fire department comes to you and says transmission blew out on our engine and, you know, big things. They run into a wreck, they have a wreck and maybe a vehicle's towed. Big things that happen, we would pull that out of contingency. um to pay for those items that are not budgeted for throughout the year okay because i just noticed that it just it increased and i was just wondering that we already have something no i didn't okay because i see it's the same 2024. i'm talking about from last year i don't know maybe maybe we may have decreased it um by a budget amendment that council approved to move it from contingency at that time Okay, that gives you a draft overview of this budget. more specifics the other items that I would like to counsel to give a little bit of direction on to where we know I don't want to spend the next couple of weeks working on this and then council says yeah we're not even going to entertain that what are some of the items that we talked about in capital request some of the items that council says we support you digging in bring them back Uh, you know, quotes bringing back options options to fund because then I need to come back to the council and say, okay, well, like, you know. Uh, we have this much sitting in contingency. We're going to pull contingency numbers down and move it over to here. I presented y'all a couple weeks a week last week. You know, a spreadsheet of our fund balances of council says, listen, let's appropriate this year. To meeting these capital requests. Fire hose. This, that, and the other. Let's appropriate this much money. Let's free up this much money out of fund balance to pay for these capital requests. You have the numbers of the fund balances. Those are saved for purposes like this. It's not money that we want to readily spend. We need to keep strong fund balances to keep our credit ratings up and for. Purposes of budgeting throughout the year, if big unforeseen things happen, we need to have healthy reserves. But it's there as well as the 70,000 that you see. In surplus revenues, if we were to go up to the voter approval rate. If that's something that is council will consider, so some of the, some of the things that I would like, y'all can present them in forms of. Several motions if you want 1 thing that I would like is. Are y'all for or overall against. Entertaining a voter approval rate. And that and that amount of revenue coming from the voter approval rate. I'm not asking you to approve any rate increase tax rate increases. Are you forwarder against but do you want to fund some of these needs, especially like the operational needs the year over year expenses? uh some of the ones that i think are fairly or i guess about as justifiable as any are some of the increases to the police department's expenses like their budgeted expenses not not the capital request like you know the the vehicle or things of that nature but their budget expenses um you see the different um departmental every one of my departments every one of the departments They decrease this year, we had to really shrink in our overall expenses 1 to stay on target with the amount of revenues that we have coming in. And we're hoping, you know, we hope that we can find money for some raises. Some kind of an adjustment, the big, the big adjustment that we. The big relief that we have coming in a couple of years from the EDC property tax rate relief. That's when we'll really feel the impact to our property taxes and our owners, the people that pay property. Right now. It's a tough time to say we're going to decrease. Taxes or, you know, so I really want counsel to give me some. Some leeway 1, do y'all want me to as I'm working and building this budget? Do you want me to continue considering the the voter approval rate? The 3 and a half percent increase to revenue. That doesn't necessarily mean that 3 and a half percent increase to. Your taxes your tax bill, but I will have more of those numbers that I can bring back to y'all. i wouldn't i wouldn't be disagreeing to it because um you you basically would leave it up to the voters no um that so if we want to go over that oh that's the amount um that council can do without having to trigger an election or call for a vote you know call for an election if If there was a significant amount, like, you know, was presented today, the cost of living adjustment council says, you know what? Let's look at 5% or 10, whatever number y'all want. Those will trigger going over that.

Well, with the 3 and a half make a difference.

I think the 3 and a half will fund all of our budgetary needs. without risking, it will not fund capital requests, and it will not fund a COLA, a cost of living, the 3.5%. That will address some of the needs specifically for the police department, the ammunition, the cost for the computers, the department issues cell phones, some of those items that have become a need.

But it would give you the flexibility. It will fund those. to go to step two to address those specific needs, right? By reallocating what's in your budget now and looking around yourself. We know, I say it is old. I mean, that's it. But in spite of being old, it's growing. I mean, just looking at the little holes that are popping, I know our streets and stuff We're challenged. Every time a street is touched, some other big hole will open.

Stormwater, everything.

I live on Southport. Just looking at the change. And I hear them people hit that big hole every day. And I feel sorry. I hope they didn't bust something else. I've seen the wheels fall off the cup. I got picked up by four hub cups in the last week. I mean but that's all over and so the broken hydrant in front of your house it's been there that would come out of like that water main replacement line you know and so as we shave down of those if somebody runs off the road and hits something think unforeseen items we're getting tighter and tighter yeah it's it's really it's a it's and but I know not just mine but it's just a high pop area I just hear it every day how much I know I'm not the only one hitting it so it's aesthetic but I was just saying in terms of what we could do to address because I every time you feel one hole in an older city and the streets are looking better but we know it's roads who never I believe we didn't even know they existed they're back in the back and people because they say come look Dr. Fisher come ride me I don't like the rabbit I said I'm gonna give you a council person tonight We do have some major needs, but I think if we could do a three and a half percent. I hate paying tax like everybody else, but I do know that at the end of the day, it's more equally spread that way because I'm finding out more and more people getting property now. They're buying property.

every time a sale goes up somebody's buying it so i think that is a good source of consideration um and then we juggle so how comfortable do y'all feel about that is it are you comfortable enough that you want to entertain a motion that we discuss it and we bring those numbers back i want you know i want to feel fairly strong that I have y'all support on that. I'm not wanting to talk about something, you know, build a budget around something that you come back and say, no, we're not talking that.

I'm just giving an opinion. Y'all know I'm very opinionated. At this time, I don't, I'm not interested in entertaining and looking at an increase on taxes for the public. Okay.

But you said, you said any kind of tax. He said he could do so much before the voter approval.

Yeah, up two. No higher than the voter approval rate.

Well, until I actually just let me look at it again, let me review it again. So right now, I'm not in agreement with increasing or using approval.

I understand.

So what we're doing at this time, someone... I would like to make a motion that John does move forward with looking at the numbers and everything to bring it back to Council so we could proceed on discussion. I second.

OK we have a motion has been moved and second. And so this is just basically allowing him to go look at the numbers and bring it back for discussion. Any other questions? We're ready for the vote.

All in favor?

So the next few items y'all can do it in form of one, one at a time or all together. Which items do y'all want me to try to look at funding in the capital request? We have the fire department. Uh, fire hose that we talked about.

Yes.

Um, we have in the police department kind of kind of how I took it, but I may be wrong, but patrol rifle equipment was probably the number one. Um, and that was that that was that I think it was 2020 thousand and $25 and then a vehicle vehicle. Um, like I said, these items would come from either fund balance or let's say with the police. That's the police department. Um, and then we have the U. B. T. The drone.

Um, I did. So how would I go about putting that into the capital request on the races for chief and miss Hopkins? Well, it would actually be on the what would you looking at that and bring it back?

I think we need to look at races for the officer.

i mean it would be so it's a kind of mix so that would be a cola request would it not you know i think it'll be up to council to decide how y'all want to manage this discussion that's y'all's decision to make if if it's done in a form of a motion outside of these other directives Um, you know, if it gets something y'all wanted to bring those numbers back, then I'll do that. Um, if y'all want to do the capital request first and address those and then we can address color.

So we need to do that today.

I want some directives of what y'all want me to entertain. But I mean, in the form of a motion yesterday, I would like to know council's support in which direction to try to gain. Numbers come back and if you'll say hey I want to look at at least this much in a cold or alone only a call for the police department or only a call for the police chief or you know or just whatever goes that Council is going to have to give me those directives but then I bring back the numbers and what it actually could have seen what could have chiefs to step back up.

Chief please.

now chief i know your recommendation in your in your budget request was 25 percent um is that in any one negotiable So John could we negotiate numbers and seeing have you like run numbers and bring that back to Council and see what those numbers are. are susceptible if they are susceptible to. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

So how would I how would I motion that I would that would that just needed to be to entertain and bring back numbers on and you give me a window, you know, OK, you give me a window like I said I showed you numbers for a 10%. So I would say it was just based on the 2022 numbers on inflation since then if you want that amount. Here's the total amounts of what is going to hit each department here's going to be spread out to utilities and water and

So so I would like to I would like to move to for for city administrator to run run numbers in negotiation with the city for Kola and bring those back to Council pending approval.

In turn inform us on what we what direction we would like to go.

before you go i have a question chief it's my understanding y'all don't have y'all don't do certificate pay right now y'all don't do certificate pay right now uh So I would ask that if we did along with the 10% COLA that we try to include that back, because like you said, I don't know a law enforcement agency that, and if y'all don't know, they've got to have certifications per T-COLA.

I wouldn't even understand that, why you wouldn't even be paid for your certifications. So, and it's, and it's dependent on level.

You have basic and intermediate, advanced and master's. So three instead of four, kind of all inclusive of that. So it wasn't just... So that could be in discussions after we get numbers and whatnot, right? Correct.

Yeah, that's that's how Council feels that they want those numbers from public works.

All of our water license is wastewater license.

None of those CDLs and everything.

We don't pay for those certifications currently.

But are those certifications required? Yes, sir. Water and wastewater are required by law.

They're paid out of the pockets of the employees.

No, there's no certification paid. There's no incentive paid.

They paid for the course.

That's what I was getting at.

The courses are paid for, but they don't get an extra bonus for taking the course. So it's not that they have to have a burden of it. but they have the knowledge.

Let me ask this. Once you get those certifications, it's a one-and-done certification?

No, it requires annual CE to maintain. It's like the fire department. They have the master's, advanced, intermediate certification levels and required CE. It's pretty much all of it. So I get it. I know the parks department, not as much, but I know, I know the Tico.

Like if you're, if you're a basic, if you're a basic and you don't get your intermediate license within four years, all those classes that you have to take, you have to take them again the next four years. And so we're paying for classes over and over and what all they have to do is just get their certificate and be bumped up. Then they don't have to take them. So that's what I was. I mean, we're, you have cops that have, you know, that have been cops, but there are a basic, they're repeating those same classes every year because TECO manage it and they mandate those classes. So that's why I was, I mean, like you said, I don't know if a law enforcement agency doesn't get paid, you know, for certificate pay. And I don't know, I can't speak to the wastewater and the firemen. Like I said, I'm never running into it.

It's very similar. You know, you have annual CE that's required and it's required by law. TCQ will write us up if we don't.

Yeah.

So with that being said, so can y'all certificate pay, is that allowed in y'all's budget? Or y'all just?

No, not currently in our budget. The budget that I'm in is kind of built that in for a request, so to speak.

Okay, for a request, but it could be placed in y'all's budget. Yes? Yeah. You're asking could it be? Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

Yeah, because that's something that's going to reoccur every year. It's not just, you know, like a one time and done with each year.

It's an increase.

So we'll be able to not just increase to you and

every year, for every officer.

I mean, even when you get your certificate, you still have to upgrade continuously. Upgrading is not that the city's not picking up the cost for it.

It's almost like with any certification. You have to go to training. Like Councilman Durham was saying, you know, at their basic level, they're required to, there are certain classes that they're required by the state to get until they get outside efficiency level, they have to continue to retake those classes. But the idea is to push them through and push as much training to get them up to that level. on how many hours of training you have plus your years of service. So you don't just get so many hours of training and automatically get bumped up to intermediate, advanced, or masters. You also, it also has to calculate years of service. And so that, you know, the days of free training will start to get slim. A lot of new training classes now average anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per option. Not to include your

Okay, we have a motion and a second to bring back numbers on the cost of living.

Okay, we have that. It's on the floor?

Yes. Motion and second.

Oh, okay. All in favor? Are you for bringing back numbers on the cost of living? So the last item

And if you want to y'all can include, like I said in the form of motion, but just to bring back to y'all's recollection from the fire department. Um, do y'all want me to try to find placement in the budget fire department police vehicle patrol rifle? Um, me personally, I would like to recommend only a broom, not the I think for the projects that we do, we try to stack them as close as possible and we just continue renting the. But I feel like a broom is probably the biggest. Need throughout the entire year. And probably the biggest return on that investment. The broom is 1 and then. I really need to find financing money options for our, our water. Tower and our clarifier. Yeah, so. I would like counsel to guide me, you know, really the rest of them that are in your budget book. Like I said, I presented him as a need, but I think financially there's just no way to swing each and every one of them. So if we have to categorize those, I would ask at least for support for against those items.

I know the water tower is, uh, because we need to cut that one off last week because it's still off.

Our east tower is offline right now.

We can't afford to let them deteriorate.

I'll make a motion that, uh, we allow you to do the research on the numbers on all of the items that you just just mentioned.

Okay, I'll second that.

Okay. Second meeting discussion.

I do have one thing, John, when you look at seeing what it will cost to finance a broom instead of buying it. Yes, I will.

Yeah.

Because if we can, like you said, if we can get just to that two year when we get out of underneath that easy, then we can pay it off. But I think if we just see what it costs, see what it costs to finance one. Sure. And see, I mean, it may not be worth it, but I'd like that if you don't mind.

And for the water tower, I would like to see like local versus, I think, like you said, the business that we had to do it. Yeah, I would like to see those comparisons.

There's I know when we did it last time we brought in, I want to say 15. There was 15 quotes on that one. So I have a lot of vendors to pull from. And yeah.

Okay. Ready for the vote. All in favor? Opposed?

3-4.

Motion carried.

I'd like to make a motion. I think just, uh, just, uh, reverting back. I would like to place a motion on the floor, whether it cares or not, um, to also have John to bring back numbers, uh, on behalf of Police Chief and, um, Ms. Hawkins pay increase.

Just the police chief or both fire chief and police chief?

The police chief. Right now I didn't look at the fire chief.

They're the same pay. Both of them have pay parity.

As you're making your motion. They're both doing the same pay? Yes, ma'am. I was working on that last night because I just got the salary for the fire department. So I would look at, well, that's the case. I would look at the fire chief, the police chief, and Mr. Georgia Hopkins. You can bring that information back, just the numbers.

I get a motion.

We have a motion.

We just need a second.

Yeah, I said we have a motion on the floor. Nobody responded. Okay, so for lack of a second, it dies. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Council. I know this is probably the bigger chunk, and we'll fine-tune it, and our next meeting will not be, I hope, near as lengthy, but it'll be just revisiting. We do have a couple more minutes.

I thought that was it, though.

Number three and number four.

Number three. Where are we now?

Number three.

I put my paper out. I'm like, them kids, I'm going to close my book. I've been hitting my children all weekend. I have nothing left. You're going to number three now. Oh, item number three. Consider an approved participation in the Texas 21 program, including payment of membership dues and authorized travel expenses for designated delegates and appoint City of Crockett representatives.

Mayor and Council, this is the text 21 program. They are a collaborative of many government government organizations. They have a board that they appoint every year to represent the effort. There's several efforts, several U. S. Interstate efforts that they're working on. 1 of them is U. S. 287. We had a senator just a couple months ago draft a resolution trying to get some traction for an interstate for U.S. 287. That's where TEXT 21 comes in as most – that's where – that's what we're interested in is that effort of the TEXT 21 program, the U.S. 287 initiative. Their annual membership for a city of our size is 2500 dollars a year. That money pays for the cost associated with. Supporting efforts putting putting. Studies together and reports proposals. Talking talking and lobbying senators and representatives, congressmen. Movers and shakers in there primarily our federal government to try to get support for the 287 corridor. Project. There are cities up and down the 287 corridor that are members of this. Along with it, they have at least twice a year, they have conference, they have meetings where they have speakers come. They invite some of these representatives from our state and federal government to get support on it, to get more knowledgeable and to get some traction on it. as well as they have monthly and quarterly Zoom meetings and updates on this project. So I need counsel. We did pay for it. Council at this time we were going to at least attend the meeting that they had last month. So we had to pay. We paid for I did pay for out of our travel and training budget. I paid for one years of dues for the current years that we're in. And I guess Primarily to gain appreciation of whether it's a benefit, whether it's something that council should support or not. In attendance, and so I just need, I guess. It was brought, it was brought to council in a form of emotion that we, we discuss it and approve whether we continue membership. And so there's. There's 3 items really in this next motion that I, that I hope to get from this. Do we continue paying the 2500 dollars a year for the participation in the text? We went program. Do we include travel expenses for designated delegates? It's a little bit different. To attend these other than like, like travel and training, like, get going to classes, gaining and stuff like that. It's more of a. It's more of a lobbying effort representation effort, but on behalf of the city to attend these meetings, it's not something that's necessarily required. It's more of a. Do we believe this is what we should be spending our money on and then also appoint representatives? They typically request for 1 primary and 1 or 2 alternates representatives for the city.

So can we discuss this before there's a motion or not?

Well, we're not really supposed to if a motion is made in second, then we can discuss. Okay, but I guess in the in the motion that I'm asking, we can participate and pay the membership dues. Do we travel on behalf of the city to their meetings? Last meeting was in Dallas, I believe. Sometimes it's in Beaumont, sometimes it's in Amarillo. It follows the 287 corridor, so sometimes it's in Granbury, you know, just different locations. Uh, appointment of representatives for the city just.

Just to be clear, they also offer online as well.

Yes. Yes, ma'am. That's what I mentioned. They do the zoom meetings. Yeah. So you don't have to, you don't have to travel. And that's why I want 3. I won't.

I mean, 10 out of the travel.

That's why I want. Those 3 points captured in the form of emotional. What do we, how do we, you won't profit to participate.

mayor and uh mayor and council i would like to move that we appoint the designatees um for uh is it takes takes 21 is that what it's called yeah it takes 20 for the text 21 program i move that we um that we that we only it's that we attended the virtual trainings and only attend the travel trainings that are that we that are required or basically mandated. If if that and I I motion that we continue to pay the annual fee.

Do you want to in that motion, who do you want to nominate as a representative?

I thought we already nominated somebody as a representative. Did they nominate Ms. Higgs?

No.

This is the first time it's come to council.

So in that motion as well, I would like to nominate the mayor, Ms. Higgs, and Mr. Duren, if he would accept.

As alternates?

Yes.

Okay. That's the motion?

That is the motion, yes.

Okay, all in favor? I'll second. No, I mean, can I get a second? It's getting late, I'm sorry. I'm trying to get out of here. I'll second it. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. When it comes to this, where was the idea conceived for an interstate? Actually, the guidance. He spoke to me a long time.

No, I'm not talking about us. I'm talking about the original idea for an interstate.

Well, the one that was pushing it. She talked more with it, but I did. He was, it wasn't, it was a senator. When they appealed to the senator, they said that the transportation and the route and it was done as a traffic control thing. They said it would take the weight off for 21 and But it wasn't, it wasn't on a, it was on a working level that it was done that appealed to the senator that was pushing it. Okay, so. Based on, with TxDOT about what would be the most efficient way.

Okay, so TxDOT is involved.

Yeah, they were wanting to see the most efficient so that they would know where to build and expand.

Okay, so it's about an interstate. And this is nothing against anyone. I've just been muddling this over in my mind. And all y'all are wonderful people, and even if you'd have put me on it. But who of us knows about highways?

I'm learning. I've been attending. I've been attending the trainings. So that's the benefit of the online trainings.

And is it a need?

Well, the highway 287 is coming this way.

How is it coming this way? Whether we're involved or not?

Okay, whether we're involved or not, my understanding is they could divert it.

Just because we weren't involved.

They were trying to get a route. They were trying to get a straight route so they could travel from one end.

So in order to do that, they've got to get the easements.

It's kind of like this thing. Okay.

The point of the point I'm trying to make it if it is, if it is a bonafide need, why are they sucking more money? out of out of these little cities. Uh, you know, if it's a bona fide need, why are they imposing upon us and try to get us involved? Probably you could say something and they may listen to you, but more than likely the engineers We'll take that with a grain of salt.

But I think the way you were speaking, a lot of it is going to affect us now. It's going to kind of circumvent them so that they're going to be involved in a way that... they are going to be kind of going around them and they won't be going through them because of the way that it is. But I don't understand what you're saying.

All right, but you can go in.

It's killing Dybala.

It's killing Cardin.

Oh, is that where you're going?

And it's going to kill some other towns on 69. I'm not talking about 287. I'm talking about 69, the new interstate over there. uh and probably no matter what any of those people in that city did they still were not going to come through there they're going to they're going to circumvent circumvent so i'm just saying we'll probably spend this money and you may oppose this we'll probably spend this money every year And in the scope of things, it does amount to a hill of beans. It's going to be done the way TxDOT wants it done. And it's going to go where it's going to go. I'm just...

I understand. Yeah, and it is kind of, but we use 21 straight up. I mean, I use it a lot, so I do understand.

Well, it's 287.

I'm 287. And then it's going to Tx somewhere there. I mean, he's right. But the key thing about this, this is not a life in... Comfort. If we get enough, we can say no. I mean, we see that it's not going the way that we want it to go.

But the thing of it is, it's like the economic value that we're looking at.

What I'm saying, our little committee and that $2,500 is not going to hang it on or stop it.

no but you have other cities that that that comes together they're at that meeting and they have in and have input so i'm just wondering though what input could we have okay so what i what do you know what we have what we'll have to do is we will have to let you speak with with david so you can get detailed information mr david dean He can give you more detailed information that to all the questions that you're asking because I'm just now.

But now what I'm saying is, could you, Mr Dean, did you offer him? Could you offer him any intelligence on it?

Well, actually, actually, I'm asking him to come in and do a presentation. Actually, that's what I was.

That's fine and good. But could you or anyone else offer him any information that he would receive on it?

Yes, Mr. David was today as well.

Well, okay. Here's what this is.

Here's my two cents on it.

Federal government being the federal government, if they want to put a highway in from Beaumont to Amarillo, it doesn't matter what Crockett says. Exactly. They're going to put it in. It doesn't matter about our $2,500. My only concern, and Mr. Price, I thank you for nominating me, and if that's what the council decides to do, I'll happily be a delegate. But I'm opposed to it because we're set right here and told that man that we couldn't give his people a raise because our budget was so tight. And we're going to spend $2,500 for this project. Right. And it's going to be 20 years before it comes through. Furthermore, we're going to have three delegates that are going to be sent to Dallas, or Grapevine, or Beaumont, and that's going... Yeah, I think they're alternate. Okay, just one. We'll say one. For two or three days, because I travel a lot in my job, and you're talking about food and hotel and everything else, there's another probably close to $1,000 by the time you get back. And if you have to go, because there's probably going to be mandatories, you're going to go twice a year. There's $2,000, $2,500... We're in almost $5,000 that that man right there needs for his training budget for his police officers that is required by the state. Here's the thing. I want economic development for Crockett. I think we need the business. I really do. But I don't think at this point in time or at the infancy of this project that we need to be involved. I think we need to pass on it. I think we need to put our resources to something else and build Crockett up. Now, if it starts to get closer and the government says it's going to come through, then sure, we can jump on. But until then, our purse strings are tight as it is. And to me, I think we could better spend that money somewhere else inside this community.

Well, the situation with that is, he just stated that those funds are coming out of our travel and training. So if it's coming out of our child attorney, it doesn't have anything to do with the... That's the same part.

I mean, that's what I'm saying.

We can move our money around it to... Just like you said.

$2,500 is going to make a difference.

Yes, it will.

To him, absolutely. $2,500 for one year?

Because I'm going to tell you right now, those classes that he sends his people to.