City Council - Regular Meeting

So glad that you could join us today. We're open with a prayer and then we're going to our council meeting. Dear Father in heaven, we just come before you with bowed heads and humble hearts. A lot of our hearts are troubled because of the number of people that have been affected with different accidents and different things that have happened in their lives. And when one of us heard, we all heard. So Lord, as we gather together to take care of our city, that's what you call us to do in the assignment that we have. We ask that everything that we do would be easy to you and it would be done for the benefit of and the edification of you. But not only you, but we know that you care about all of the people and what we do. Help us make the right decision. We thank you for all of those that have taken a sign to join us in this event. And Lord, as we go through, we'll just be careful to give you the praises because we know that you do all things well. In Jesus' name, we claim it all. Amen. I pledge. I said we don't want to make sure that we don't deny anybody a seat that would like a seat. There are still seats available. Feel free to have one. Once again, we'd like to remind you this is our city council meeting for June, July 20th. Thank you so much for taking your time to come and see and help take care of the city's business. With that, we are recognizing all our visitors. With that it brings us up to our public comments and I'll share the information with you. I'm sure all of you do already have it. It said public comments from the audience. At this time members of the public will be allowed to speak on city related matters only. No personnel matters or matters under litigation will be allowed. The length of time may not exceed three minutes. City Council shall not speak under this item. in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. The council may not deliberate or take action on matters except as properly posted in accordance with the law. And to simplify that, what it basically means, if you come up with a comment, we're going to smile. We didn't disregard it, but nobody can actually comment on it. We appreciate anyone that has to come in so at this time is anyone. No one was a long speech and we didn't have anybody saying what you understand the process and so that brings us right now to item number one approval minutes from the special session July 6 2026.

Mayor and Council, I move that we approve special session July 6, 2026 minutes.

I second.

OK, it's been moved and seconded. I'm ready for the vote. All in favor? Motion carries. That brings us to item number two, report police department manpower and criminal incident report for June 2026.

16 officer or 2,694 hours upon 416 calls for service. Investigated five traffic accident made 66 issue 211 traffic citations. We believe that 74 reports responded to 27 alarm calls, 23 of those were false alarm. You'll see a breakdown of our report. I'll entertain any questions you may have.

I want to say thank you, Chief, for responding to the situation that I had with you for over this weekend. Like I said earlier, between you and I, that was a situation that I was unaware of, and to know that you were aware of and that you were ascertaining the situation, thank you again.

Any other comments? Well, we thank you. Good job. Good job. We love our police officers. And that brings us to item number three, fire department monthly activity and status report for June 2026.

For the month of June, we had a total of 38 calls, 30 of those being inside the city limits and eight of those being in our county response area.

Well I guess the question is the rain kind of slowed down. So your word to everybody is to?

We sure appreciate it. Does anyone else have any comments? Thank you so much Chief.

okay it brings us to item number four consider and approve moving the august 17 2026 city council meeting to august 24 2026. mayor council due to this being the official budget calendar that we approved a couple months ago there have been a couple or there's been one change requested from several council members that the august 17th date was going to with on their schedule, and so we're requesting that that date be moved to the 24th and that will move all of the public notice requirements along with it. Will have to be sending out public notices and I need to know that the 24th is now a good date. If that is a good date that we can move forward with. we'll use that for all of our as you see here that 24th meeting is going to include all the the hearings of the budget tax rates and approvals of the budget and tax rates that we don't be here for a long time. Well hopefully most of the media. The scut of the decisions have been worked out by the end. That's also after we've gone through the public process of developing a budget. That will be the opportunity as well for the public to give input provide input last minute changes to be done and then approvals done. So it's important that everybody be in attendance. That's why we didn't want to have a 17th meeting and risk not having everyone here.

so we're ready for motion make a motion that we approve moving the August seventeenth city council meeting to August twenty four a second okay it's been moved and second all in favor thank you

okay now that brings us to fiscal year 2027 budget workshop number two

All right, Mayor and Council.

I was given some homework to do after our last meeting, told to go get some more numbers. I've met with each of you since then, updating those numbers and giving you more information. I do have printouts in front of us, and we wanted to go over those quickly. I will get to... this initial form basically to to recap where we were on our capital request after meeting with department heads going over budget. Um, if council says different, we'll continue finding money for those. But as an update, uh, the vehicles that we requested, um, At this time, we're going to back off of requests that were being proposed to come out of fund balance anyway. Any of the requests that we felt like would have to come from our savings account or fund balance. And I don't and most of them were based on availability of the market. So like if I said, hey, I want $35,000 for a used truck. I don't have my finger on a used truck right now, so we would have to go out and shop the market. Give me the opportunity. Let's go through this budget process. The things that are required to be budgeted from and revenues that need to be found. The things that would come from fund balance. When those opportunities arise, if one or more of our trucks go down and we just really have a strong need and maybe we find a good deal, I can bring that to council at that time. Obviously, if it's not in the budget, I'll have to bring it back to council, but just basically wanted to Address the things that really needed to be addressed with in this meeting initially the two things that we we felt That we needed to go with the three things so three things was the streets the street broom or the street sweeper Just due to the amount of money that we would be saving I would like to get councils Approval to move forward with finding a good used unit. I did reach out mr. Durin to Caterpillar, United, and I'm sorry, what's the place in Lufkin? Timber Jack. So they all have different used options, but none of them offer a lease agreement or financing option for used, only new. So we could go that route, but it just be using basic market rates. If we were to just take a loan from the bank and pay it over three, you know, two or three years like that, we just be doing it at market rates. Um, I feel we found several options anywhere from 25 to about 35 25,000 had no cab on it. It was an open cab. And when you're talking about a street broom, That brings up a lot of dust and that's a pretty tough environment to try to work in and breathe in. We're also looking at one option, which is a skid steer attachment. We just really want to look at the warranty and how because we do have a good skid steer with a cab and everything so that would be a lot cheaper option we just want to be sure it's a good strong something that's meant for everyday use and that would save a lot that was about nine thousand dollars for a new attachment for our skid steer so we're going to shop a couple of those options but i do want to get um you know council approval for that the fire department we did include in the operational budget that we have in front of us a capital outlay of 8 140 was his reduced ask for hose. Basically he reduced the five inch hose and went with the attack hose. So those are the ones that they lay out on the fire scene and need to be cleaned and dried. So that would give them that rotation. The big hose, he was going to hold off for now. um and then the the third one that we really need to find funding for is the police department's rifle package that was their number one ask and you know i would like to at least try to find council's blessing on that for paying for that out of fund balance the other items the needs at our facilities the vehicles. Uh, I think everything really paled in comparison. Once we started talking about the need and the length of time that's been since a cost of living adjustment, we really felt like that that was the number one need is to retain quality employees. And um, if we do have openings to be able to recruit quality employees and so cola after talking to council members and department heads, If we're talking about color, we don't the other items are going to have to wait. And so the the last two items that would be funded out of Our utility fund is our water tower. Refurbishing our water tower, sandblasting and painting our water tower. In y'all's packets, I'd handed it out at our last meeting, but the fund balance sheet that we've given you, there's a line item for make sure I'm telling the right. There's a line item for a usda asset reserve. That's money that we set aside each year for short lived assets. That's what this is. The water tower is a short lived asset. We invested the half a million dollars in getting it sandblasted and repainted it six years ago. The coding is not lasting. We need to address that. We do have a short lived asset fund. that I recommend us pulling from to cover that and then we can build that short left asset fund back. This would not impact our water rates, our water utility rates. We have money being set aside each and every month for items like this. The other item, the big one, that we're under mandate to fix, our sewer plant is permitted Thus, every three years, TCQ is presented with our permit plan, what it takes for us to treat, how much we can treat of sewer, and the whole process to get to clean water that goes into the creek. It requires two clarifiers. Our system operates with two clarifiers. We're down to one clarifier, and it's not in great shape. That is a mandate that we need to get that back online. Using the quotes from our last clarifier at the North plant. Like, I mentioned the council, we believe this ask is going to be in the neighborhood of 320,000. But we do need to go out and get some bids, and then I'll come back and keep counsel in the loop. How I propose to fund that need is we also have an account. If you look at your fund balance sheet, we have an account. I can I can hand another one out to all afterwards but we all we have one called the USDA I S on that is our debt service when that's where we pay the annual debt from for the USDA equipment. We've set aside additional funds in that I have to cover that service but in the tune of about 3 years worth of that service. We only need one year in advance. We easily have $200,000 that we can draw down out of that account and still have a full year's worth of debt service payments in that account. That would give us $200,000 towards that $320,000. That's where this comes to play. This is on the clarifier. This is on the clarifier, yes, ma'am.

And you say the debt service? Yes, ma'am.

USDA INS account. Okay. That's where these two sheets that are on the top that we just handed out to you come into play. The water customer and the sewer customer spreadsheets that shows our rates. And actually I'll pull it up right here as well. so for before the clarifier if we're to bring in additional 120 000 i guess the two main directions from council would be do we bring in that hundred that 120 from fund balance or do we bring in that 120 um through new revenues we we adjust our sewer rates in order to cover this need another thing that i would like to do with that need is after council after council. If council was to approve a sewer rate adjustment to cover the need for our clarifier, I would like to set that money aside after that need is met to continue going towards depreciation or short lived assets for this very neat because the other clarifier is getting close to needing to be replaced. And when that was done, there's other needs. We have big pump stations, uh, our lift stations. So with all of the needs that we have, just like we were able to pull from some asset reserve accounts that we currently have, I would like to continue putting money aside to where we don't have to adjust rates in the future. Every time we have a need, we have money setting accounts to address those specific needs.

What accounts are these money setting? Are they sitting in Are we borrowing from the sinking fund, or where are these monies coming from?

No, we're not allowed to borrow from that. The accounts that you just saw, those are all setting and separate accounts, the standalone accounts. And so the other, I guess, the main and the last question that I need direction from council is I gave you all a spreadsheet. the spreadsheet here that's in front of you. Um, the police department brought a brought some proposals, some needs for employee raises. Um, I brought y'all some scenarios that I would like to I would like to split the split the ask in two different scenarios. What I'm asking for tonight is to get approval on something called a cost of a cost of living adjustment, not a raise. In 2022, we did a salary study of our city. of all of our city employees. We had we had openings across the city. Um, in public works, we had, I believe, five police officer positions open and no one trying to fill those positions every time we would put out notices for hire. Um, and it got to the point to where council said we need to prioritize this. We did a salary study of ourselves in comparison to many other cities of our like size in our region, in East Texas, not using Metroplex numbers or Houston numbers or anything like that. And we came back with numbers that council said, this is what we need to do. And we approved salaries, a salary adjustment across the board to address our employees. And it was primarily all on our entry level. That's where the primary focus was. And then any salary adjustments lessened as the as the rates got higher, you know, with our hiring employees, with our leadership position. And that addressed the need. It filled those positions. All of our positions were filled. The police department's positions were filled. And to this date, they remain. Our positions are full. But what's happening is since 2022 inflation has hit us by 12 and a half percent and we have not adjusted for it. Um, we've maintained the same tax rates since 2022. We've maintained the same salary level since 22 22. And so first of all, I want, I want to propose the council that we addressed a cost of living adjustment to adjust for inflation. There's also a there's also a need for raises. There's a over and above that. But that will have to be proven. I feel like that needs to be proven and justified by council, um, with data. Um, in 2022, this is what we paid our people. This is what we agreed to. Since then, we have not stayed On task with that, and we slipped so the people what what our employees were making in 2022, they're no longer making that. So I'm asking at least to get get us back to that. Governments around us, even in our county county governments and all the districts we've seen them each and every year, not every year, but. Many of these years provide colas provide cost of living adjustments and we haven't So I'm asking for 10% Cola across the board and That's that's for all employees from police chief fire chief Department heads on down that excludes myself city secretary and finance director Over

be clear okay so with you asking for this raise and I appreciate you all everybody for everything that you all do and I do have to speak on behalf of my constituents so with that with your offering or requesting that this across the board raise then that means that we would have to in turn George, our people are the because the constituents are the taxpayers. We don't have they would have an increase. So they would have to pay more taxes, more water rates more. And we just last year we just increased the water rates. We just increased the sewer rates.

We increased rates to cover repairs at our wastewater plant and we increased rates to drill a new well.

So we've been increasing rates.

okay when is it that we have not had that's that's what i'd like to know when could you uh finish the proposal my presentation so what i'm asking for it what what you mentioned was raises we're not asking for i'm not asking at this time for a raise i'm asking for cost of living adjustments to address our employees basic needs um to get them back to what we agreed to pay them in 2022. After that, we can discuss raises. These employees, every one of them that are, even from the ones that are in here, the employees that you're talking about and the constituents, they're taxpayers. They live in this city. They work and they live in this city. So what I want to go over first, I want to go over the impact, and that's what I've provided to y'all early on in the week, and I want to go over quickly on that. For all employees, excluding the admin staff, at a 10% COLO, the total raised cost is $448,000. That hits our general fund by $338,000 and our utility fund by $109,000. the tax rate needed to address a 10% cola as the budget was presented to y'all last meeting that that budget was built on the voter approval rate that vote that that covers the capital requests that I mentioned, but none of the others does not include vehicles doesn't doesn't include any of our capital needs, but it addresses all of our current operations. That is estimated to impact the average homeowner in the city of Crockett by an annual impact of $75.71 a year to their tax bill for the city of Crockett. That's that 10% ask. The employees that are funded by our water and sewer revenues that would impact, um, that would be a monthly impact of approximately, um, uh for our for our water bill would be a dollar thirty five and for our sewer bill would be a dollar sixty five a month that's two approximately and that's that's per gallon No, no, no, no, no, no, that's that's the monthly impact to the average homeowner. That's that's what it will impact. My bill, your bill, just a dollar extra, a dollar, 35, a dollar, 35 to the water bill and a dollar 65 to the sewer bill.

Um. And then the monthly impact, what did you say? $1.35. $100K?

$631? No, the $100K doesn't... So a water... Yeah, the monthly impact on the tax rate side would be $6 a month. Yes, ma'am. And then on the utility side... doesn't matter what house you live in, you know, but if you have a water rate and a sewer rate, it's $1.35 and $1.65. It would be the impact of that.

Um, that's true.

It's gonna be easy math from here.

That's not even too soft drinks.

It's not from here.

It's easy math. If council decides to track down from there, Or track up from there. It's based on a calculation of 10%. Um, we can go from there. I just need to know what direction Council wants to go in. Um, that's what I'm asking for and what police department is asking for for all of our employees is a minimum. We need a cost of living adjustment. The police department has presented another need, and I won't speak for him, but his need is to be able to retain officers that can easily go to another city. That's where raises come in. That's where competitiveness comes into play. and so and that's a very real thing that's a very real need to lose people to bigger bigger departments and so i also have numbers on raises you know what that's going to cost us to be competitive with our closest cities the initial number that i'm asking for are not raises i'm asking for can we pay our employees what we paid them in 2022

So let me ask you a question now. So as far as the raises, so is that 2022? Because I went back and looked I think one time before. So how many times have the employees not received raises?

how many years for since 2022 so we had it since 2022 we did a cola of two percent since 2022 in 24 we did a cola of two percent um so we've fallen about ten and a half percent behind in for inflation well the thing uh reason i asked i was like because you were giving when i went back and learned people giving raises like every year

It's based on Council's budget that they provide me.

John, to be clear, the increase to this tax rate does not require

Or does not mandate or trigger an election or vote?

So if you go to your tax rate analysis. I have a FY 2026 tax rate analysis. Our current budget. I should be getting certified values in this week all of these are kind of the chicken and egg process trying to be ahead of the game so we're not behind the game but we don't have all the numbers so we have we're basing these numbers on estimates provided by the appraisal district I don't have numbers on new construction a lot of the Everything that I've built in this budget are worst case scenarios. This budget really stands to improve. If new construction numbers come in, right now I have not built in any number for new construction. New construction does not impact our budget. It's new revenue. That could immediately feel when I come back to Council. Hey, if this is the number for new construction, now we can fund this or now we can reduce that tax rate by this much. I'm not including any of those numbers. The numbers that you see in front of you on that tax rate analysis. You have our current number. This is the current amount of revenue and the tax rate. The no new revenue rate to bring in the same amount of money as last year and you have the voter approval rate. And so the voter approval rate for the entire budget has brought in an estimated $77,000 into our budget. That's addressed the needs from our insurance, our electrical costs, and especially insurance because they've gone in and they've re-estimated or re-evaluated all of our properties. That caused some significant jumps in our in our, um, coverages, um, electricity and several departments needed to be. This is addressed all of those needs without going over the voter approval rate. If you're going to go, if you're going to consider a cost of living and truthfully, if you're going to consider a cost of living of 2% that's going to trigger That's going over that voter approval rate. It will not go over the de minimis rate understood. So the voter approval rate, if we go over that the citizens. Through this process have an ability to listen to our meetings to attend our meetings to provide input. Say no. You don't need to give raises or you do need to give raises. If Council makes a decision that the majority of the citizens do not agree with, they are provided the opportunity to petition for a rollback. And it basically rolls us back to this voter approval rate. So if Council says we really feel like we need to do a cost of living and it's going to cost this much, if it's not supported by the citizens, they still have a voice. But it's not going to trigger an automatic election. Understood.

So basically giving raises. So you're saying that we have the money to do this, that we're not currently in the red to do what to give to give raises. We currently have the monies to give raise.

No, that's why I'm asking for it tonight. No, we don't work. So Our current budget, as presented to you already, the draft budget that I presented to you does not include raises. And so if council is going to prioritize and provide for raises, that's not budgeted for. And so that's going to require an adjustment on the water and sewer rates, and it's going to require an adjustment on our tax rate.

OK. So when you proposed the 10% and you were saying that could be fitted in with just the recommended part that you had for when I go over there.

That's for the initial request of just the COLA, not raises.

Yeah, I said just the cost of living. But you know, I guess overall looking at it, the people that are getting the cost of living that we're projecting, they live here. They're gonna get texts, they're gonna feel, they're gonna be supporting it too. I mean, it's not like we're giving everybody the strangers. We're giving people that live in the community an opportunity to stay in the community, to better themselves, and like I say, it's a small amount, but it is enough to show that we care about the people that are keeping our city good corn, because they are making a difference in the city. If you've looked around, you can see all the work that's been done. and the people are just showing up and they seem to like their jobs and I think that's only fair you know to to not expect anything more from from the council and even as us that that are in here we're all in it together we're all paying taxes you know but if you've been to the Dairy Queen I won't name places we've been to any eating place lately you might want to see what they tacked on your meal Everything has gone up. Nothing has remained the same in the city. So we are expending our funding across the board to help other people. Why not the people that are helping us?

I would like council to include in their discussions, and I would like this to be a fixed rate COLA as well, not based on percentage. The numbers are developed or derived from a percentage. But I would like the same amount that the entry-level employee Is provided a raise to be across the board to be weighted evenly and not by percentage to where someone that makes more ends up getting more of an increase. And that's how we made the adjustment in 2022 that. The groceries and everything that they buy the same people, you know the person that makes $18 an hour. He needs that raise, if not more, than the person that makes a little bit more. So I would like it to be weighted evenly and not based on a percentage.

I don't. So basically, so the same thing looks like with the budget report. So how does that weigh in there? Like with the department, the department's spending and things like that. So how does that weigh in there? When we are like basically in the red, how do we climb from there to get places?

We're not in the red. I don't know. I'm not asking for, we're not asking for raises from departments, from the reports that you're seeing. I'm asking for raises that would go into effect in October. This is, I'm asking for the funding to address the COLAs that would go into effect in October. But to talk about our budgets being in the red, they're not in the red. But that's not where the money comes from anyway. We have 56 employees. Full time, yes, we have 56 and I believe 76 or 77 with all of our parking employees. Library employees and many of our employees and we have some of them part time even in our water and sewer departments are part time.

That includes the ones we just hired?

We haven't hired really many recently, but that includes all the employees.

Are we still bringing in employees that we are hiring? Are we bringing them to the council to be approved so we can add their salaries to the budget?

No, I only hire an employee when there is money budgeted for an employee. I don't hire an employee that I don't have funding for.

We're not creating any new positions. We don't create positions. We fill positions that we already have funded, right?

Right, yes, ma'am. If I don't have a position funded for it, then yes, ma'am, I would.

So are you leaving any of the employees that were employees on the employee list so you can fill that position later? I don't have any openings but it wasn't somebody already has. If they have not they've ceased employment are you keeping them on the road or the position is still budgeted for you because this is the budget for.

Was that a summary?

That is a summary. You have the numbers in front of you. I'll prioritize the needs. I do have my, where is Jason here too? Well, we have, you know, police chief, fire chief. I don't want to speak for them. Like I said, I do, based on his initial request. I do want to bring back like even the the rifle package if that is a specific need that. If we have additional funds that come in after certifications are done with appraisal district, we may be the fund that if not we need a fund. I believe we need to find out from our fund balance and and by the the packages that they're needing and that's what it hurts for.

Sir, that is a one time purchase.

Yes, yes. The other items that as y'all saw in y'all's draft budget, all of the items that were put in there, those have remained the same. We did, like I told you, the voter approval rate, Did bring in roughly seventy seven thousand dollars of new revenue and We've also made those adjustments as requested by the police department For his annual fees and equipment equipment leases all the items that he was needing. Those are now budgeted for in the budget in the draft budget The and the trap and his training budget and We made adjustments to that, too, and brought his training budget up, as well as his annual fees and equipment leases, the cost for his body camera and the tasers and everything else that they were not being... Chief, did you...

I know we had talked at the last budget meeting, we had talked about leasing vehicles. Did you happen to follow up on that at all? Did you get anything back? You said leases made me remember that? Yes.

This is something, this is not the official, the one that was given about the company. I couldn't get the print off from the right side, so I put this together. So I'm just going to kind of touch base. That's if we were to completely replace our entire fleet and add two additional vehicles. So we'll look at the second box on the first page. If we decide that we want to do that, our first year cost would be $182,000. That would get us 13 brand new vehicles. That includes the equipment. When they show up, they're ready to go to work. It's a total of 28 months of police. So that second, third, and fourth year would cost us $266.340 per year. At the end of that lease, at the end of that fourth year, Enterprise would write us a check back to the city for the equity in the vehicle for $378,700. Again, these numbers are worst case. This is if we replace our entire fleet. Do we honestly need to replace our entire fleet right now? No. We have five vehicles that are high mileage. They're probably the oldest ones in the fleet. those are definitely the ones that we need to focus on but going forward we have to focus on the other ones that are getting older at the same time if not we're going to keep running into these situations where we we're having to go out for a loan and spend three hundred thousand dollars to get three vehicles or four vehicles i think that helps keep our vehicles constantly being replaced and sent out as they get older. So I wanted to just throw some worst case scenario numbers. The representative of Enterprise advised that she would be more than willing to come down and discuss program or any questions y'all have any specific questions y'all have so if there's something else specific y'all want me to look at as far as hey let's look at three vehicles four vehicles and start this program out a little smaller to see what those numbers are then obviously that's something that we could do pretty easily It's a lot of perks to it. One thing I will say about it, if you sign this agreement and you agree to this lease, then that amount of money is going to have to be budgeted every year. So we're going to go into each budget workshop. Let's say we go ahead and sign on to do it. We know we're going to pay $182,000 this year. But going into budget workshop next year, we know that we have to have $266,340 for that lease. That's before anything else comes out. So we know that we have to have that. So that's something to think about going forward also. If we commit to it, it's a long-term commitment. Because if we decide, oh, we don't have that money or we don't want to pay this lease, then we have to give them all the vehicles back and we're back to square one. So I think we need to replace the entire fleet. Of course, if I had my wish, but I understand that that may not be feasible. So at a minimum, I think we need to look at our oldest vehicle, the highest mileage, and start cycling those out. And I had a number throw out today that said it's going to be between four and five vehicles that we need to look at, which is going to bring that cost down significantly. so that it doesn't matter how many vehicles you decide to lease I'm sorry so you do have the option on how many as the lease continues let's say next year two of our Durango's get high mileage and we want to cycle them out we can add those vehicles to the lease and just continue that lease so we can add to it as we go that may adjust the cost though depending on what the vehicle's worth how much money we're gonna get back in equity at the end of that lease. But yes, we can do that.

And is there a certain amount of mileage that you can put on a vehicle?

So our average mileage right now per vehicle is roughly 20 to 25,000 a year. That's what they ask us for this lease. So these numbers, They do that so they can get more money for it when they sell it. That's why we're able to get that equity back into the vehicle at the end of that lease. So chief how much have we spent on just say in the last 5 years on vehicles I know that's a question you probably don't know just roughly.

okay well well then this sounds good we've been this last three or four years we've been pretty disciplined we slipped a couple years then last year we bought three to catch back up uh this year If Council and you know, if y'all say we at least need if we bought about two vehicles a year is what that's what it would take to keep us with no older than five or six year old vehicles. 100,000 kind of 100,005 to six year breaking point. We would have to buy two pretty much every year and last year we bought three. this year we probably need to buy at least one if we want to stay on task. And so, But it's you know that I won't mention much, but I'm not the least thing it takes its chunk out of the pile before we as you as he mentioned next year when they say we need 260,000 has to be there. Our voter approval rate only brings in 70,000 and so it's going to cause us every year to dance to their tune or they take our vehicles away. So that'll be just by default.

So will that be a part of that service as well?

and that's not a debt service that's not a debt service no that's that's something that we would have to budget for out of our operational because I know and rate but you know something for me to kind of rule from ideally you want to replace at least two vehicles every year probably the same for public works so they're basic so if you do cycle those out you get more money for them and you auction them off If we were to decide to buy two patrol vehicles this year, outfitted and ready to go, we're looking at $175,000 to $180,000 before we put any of our cameras on. So that was kind of my mindset behind looking at this after talking to some of y'all. We're talking about a lot of money just for two vehicles. And that's not with a lot of fancy, really fancy equipment. But again, the downside to that is You're married to that number every year going forward. So I know the city of Palatine, they have a police agreement with Enterprise. Their police department and public works department, they look probably different. So far, they've been happy with it. They haven't had any issues. That's just one of the departments that I've talked to. But I'm sure every city's different. Every city's finances are different. I just know that we've got to continually replace vehicles. Unfortunately, we don't have that option. We don't have a vehicle, we don't go. This is, you know, the fire department and the public works the same.

Chief, and this number, $266,000, that's for 13 vehicles. So if it was three vehicles or four, do you have any idea what that ballpark number would be?

I don't. I mean, I know that it's going to be considerably lower. I can tell you that if you look at that... That first box there, 2027 Topper, you're looking at $1,645 a month for one vehicle. So if you've done the quick math, times 3, 1645 times 3, and then times 12, that's going to give you a rough number if you're looking at just three vehicles. But that number is for the least cost, but that's also equipment included.

If my smartphone is smarter than me, it comes out to $59,229. So $60,000 we would have to dedicate every year for that lease. I mean, that's for four.

Yes, if we've done that number. and we replace those four. So if we lease four, say next month, we're not going to get rid of those next year. So our other vehicles are going to start aging out. So probably before that lease contract is up, we're going to need to replace two, three, four more. So that number is going to rise. If we started initially, we could probably get through two years of... of those vehicles before you had to start?

Did you suggest that we not consider doing vehicles because of COLA or are you still considering doing vehicles?

No, I'm talking about what the budget currently has in there. It does not have any new vehicles in the draft budget. If council wants to purchase any vehicles we will have to either finance some or pay for them out of fund balance.

Same thing with COLAs?

No ma'am. No COLAs are not out of fund balance.

You say COLAs are gonna come out of what?

colas would come out of sorry i'm thinking in my head i apologize yeah colas colas are going to be coming out of our property taxes and water and water and sewer rates taxpayers so i mean theoretically ideally chief so if we if we let's just say hypothetically we did this we got three cars now this month or october To keep it kind of feasible and keep a relatively good stock of vehicles in two years, we need at least three more. So like every two years we're rotating out. At least three vehicles. Would that alleviate some of your strain on your vehicles? So you'd be getting six cars, and then every two years you'd be, or if they're about, yeah, about every two years you'd be replacing them. Okay.

So one of my concerns, as I heard somebody mention, is going out for a loan or a bank loan, you know, getting three or four. I learned the hard way several years ago. We financed several new vehicles, and the unit I was in was total at the intersection of 19 and the loop. Total loss. The insurance wasn't even enough to cover the vehicles to go out and buy another vehicle.

Sort of like I said at the last meeting, that kind of, you know, helps out your maintenance and alleviates funds and stuff from that, right, as well.

Yeah, it keeps them fresh on their bumper to bumper launches, their power train launches, stuff like that. That would be alleviated then, right? Would that alleviate the maintenance line items? Probably not. Oil and oil changes. Windshield wipers, lights. But your major costs, your transmission, drive train, all that stuff, you're going to keep them under them, right?

Chief, thank you for putting in this work.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

If I may, while I'm here, we were talking about cost of living, pay raises. I don't know if we can go back to that one sheet that had it all spelled out.

This one?

Myself, the fire chief, Richard Coulter, we represent each fire department, and we're supposed to fight for each fire department. I think it's imperative at a minimum that these employees, and when I say employees, I mean across the board, get 10%. As each of you know, we all know, the cost of living has skyrocketed. And something I think that we don't always think about, something I'm dealing with with some of my guys, And some of y'all may disagree with this, but our insurance, our medical insurance is not the greatest. I've got an employee that can't afford to put their family on insurance because it cost him $755 in paycheck to cover his family. That pretty much takes away his whole paycheck. It's actually sad, but it's actually cheaper for our employees that have insurance to go to the hospital and get a procedure done and pay the cash price versus using their insurance. We've got, and I'm curious how it works, it's the same. We've got a lot of our employees that don't cover their families because they can't afford to. They're having to go for procedures and pay cash out of pocket. Cash they really don't have because of what our pay scale is. So when we look at these numbers right here and we see all 10% and we see PD 15 or 25, those are the numbers that I'm asking for from my team. I wouldn't expect anything different from Mr. Coulter or the fire chief. That's not saying that any of these guys are worth any more than anybody else, but it's my job to fight for my people and try to get what I can for them. And one thing that I heard that you want to compare to cities our size, well, unfortunately, that's not who we're losing or going to lose employees to. We're not losing them to Madisonville or Jasper Center or something. We're losing them to these agencies that are starting out at $65,000 and $70,000. And I understand that we can't do that here, like I said last time, but we have to find that happy medium that is attractive enough to keep them here. Either they're hometown people, or they have family here, they have roots here, it's enough that they can survive on. one income or two incomes that they can survive. So I think for all city employees, it's gotta be priority to push through 10%. And I think as far as the police department, y'all already heard my request and what I would like for a pay scale for my staff. And I think we have to listen to the other agency heads to figure out what it's going to require to keep our employees here. I don't like the idea of having a full staff that we've trained up for three, four, five, six, seven, eight years, and then get them ready, find great investigators, and then send them down to Walker County, or send them to Palestine, because they're trained up, they're prime officers, and now we're starting back over at the bottom of the barrel.

And his supporters say John if I got it I got a question real quick just doing some quick math on the kid on the top all employees 10% Cola if it was raised with the water bill in the ceiling nine dollars and thirty one cents is that is that about right yes per per pretty much i mean nine dollars and thirty one cents

Okay.

Was that it? Yes, ma'am. I apologize.

There's no easy way to put it. This is the tough decisions that's before council. I do request continued direction from council. How do you want me to develop this budget? As you saw on the budget calendar at our next meeting, I'll be bringing draft budgets to council with the draft, because then I'll have certified rates, and I'll have those to be brought back to council. and so i need to know how do y'all want me do y'all want me to fund one police car do y'all want me to move forward with the draft budget as is with it and and what colas do y'all want to uh apply towards this draft budget i want you to those are the no this is the impact this is the numbers but i still need to build it into the budget and bring that back to council you know for Basically, you'll have an opportunity for final approval in our first meeting in August for the draft budget. These are the decisions that get us to the draft budget. First Monday, we approve the draft budget. I have to go to the newspaper, put it on our website, put it out in Lobby Foyer. People can come in, make comments on the budget. And we have to publish that. And basically for three, four weeks, we'll have that published in the newspaper on our website. And then at the third meet, what is it, August the 24th, that's when we'll come back and actually vote on that budget. But we'll also have opportunities for public hearings, you know.

I just I mean I've still been doing some homework and kind of trying to look at the numbers and see what was what was real and what we could do and I mean I mean and I want to give raises I want to give raises to everybody I want you get a raise you get a raise you get a raise but it's just I just don't see that where we can actually do it financially I don't see that I'm seeing that When I'm looking over these reports that you give me, the budget report, I'm looking over that the salaries are the majority, taking the majority of the monies from the city already. And I think that we need to look at giving raises, but we need to look at our monies and see where we are. I took the sheet that you gave me with the salaries there, and hopefully I didn't miss out or anything like that, but I mean, it's just that, Right now, I mean, I could see doing it in the future, but right now, I don't see where we can do it. I also looked at the interest, the debt service interest that we're fixing to have to pay. It's over a million dollars in just interest. Oh, man. Well, that's what I got in this book here.

Yeah.

I'll pick it up. I mean, I'm just asking you to help me see it.

I've met with you, and I'll help you see it every time you meet with me.

Let me just make a statement right here. Okay, you're pulling numbers. Let me just explain. You've had a discussion with that state trip statement, but if he corrected, I mean, going back and forth, it's not going to get it.

I'm just no you said he said it and he just state your statement and then we're going yeah you can make your statement but if he says it what is it correct then you just go on with your statement okay no problem so what it is is like I said the debt service this year August of 26 we're uh we're paying I mean uh it's just an interest not even touching the uh principle of anything we're paying over a million dollars and then we're even coming into the year of February, I believe, this coming year in 2027, just in interest on this debt service, we're paying a million over a million dollars. And so I'm trying to figure out where are we getting the monies if we're borrowing monies from our sinking funds or Where are we getting the monies to pay this? Because when I'm looking at this, all this money that we're in debt with, I mean, that's not even touching the principle that our next generation, second and third generation, we won't even be able to see it. when they start paying the principal so we're leaving them we're handing them the rest of the debt but my whole issue is that you know that we're about we're not being mindful of our spending we're doing some overspending and we need to see where we need to

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I get your point about fiduciary responsibility. And I can't stand it when the federal government raises our taxes or whatever they do to buy gold-plated toilet seats. Councilwoman Hicks, you sit there and talk about fiduciary responsibility, and we're spending $2,500 on a project that may or may never impact Crockett. That's $2,500 that we're wasting for the text 21. That's $2,500. You're looking at these people in our lobby or in our – don't get me wrong. I don't want to raise taxes. I'm absolutely against it. But when you're looking at people that are starving to death because of – that are our responsibility to take care of, how can we not give them a raise? How can we not? These are our neighbors. They live next to us. We eat with them in the same restaurants. We have to do something. Now, I don't want to raise taxes at all. I really don't. I mean, I'm absolutely, but $9.31? The guy in the back said it's a Happy Meal. That ain't a Happy Meal. You ain't bought one in a while. They're about $12. Okay? I mean, and you're right, we have to be responsible to our voters. And I get it, and I don't want to raise taxes for them. But I also don't want to lose our employees. If we don't have our city, we don't have the people to run the stuff, what are we going to do? Who are we going to call? Ghostbusters?

One thing I do see, I see us, a lot of times I see what we're doing is, because I see us missing in Palestine a whole lot. And Palestine have a lot more revenue coming in than what we do. And I do see that they also have industry.

things such as that so more taxpayers we're also over a million dollars delinquent in our taxes so i mean um you're throwing numbers out these are the numbers i'm looking no ma'am just looking at numbers and knowing how to interpret the numbers and get correct information but to say that we're overspending to say that we're delinquent and delinquent in payments Those are false statements, so I will make that mention, but I won't get into back and forth and arguments with you. But I will tell you that the numbers that you're reading are not facts. They're not facts. You're taking them out of context. Every item that's in there were for major infrastructure build-outs. When we borrow money, it's for major item infrastructures that we do not have the cash flow for. Those are all approved for by council. So to bring that back today and talk about it as a reason why you're not going to consider, and you keep on mentioning raises. This is not a raise. This is a cost of living adjustment. So to use decisions that y'all have made in the past to keep our water towers online and our clarifiers going and install a water well to say these are reasons that we're not going to do this. Where are we going to get the money from? If you read that budget, it also shows where that money is coming from. That money is already budgeted for. All of those asks and needs are already appropriated for. The only one that's not appropriate for tonight is to address the cost of living adjustment. That's the only thing that we're really, that I'm asking for us to consider where that money's coming from.

Mayor and council, I'll call the question and Lou to make a motion.

Question? Okay.

any council's direction tonight you also the the budget you see the impacts on our on our rates You've heard the things that we can fund within our budget and the things that will need additional direction. The things that I'll need direction for is the items that you want us to take from fund balance if we are going to approve a purchase of a vehicle, a purchase of the street broom, and a purchase of the police officer rifles. Those three will have to come from fund balance. The rest can be budgeted for within our budget. And do y'all want to assess any kind of rate increase to pay for the clarifier, or do y'all want that to come from fund balance? And do y'all want to budget for a cost of living adjustment?

John, I move that you continue with the with the um with line number one uh all employees at ten percent um with the tag rate with the tax rate increase of 0.0796 um at a fixed rate um and you bring that back to council um and you move forward with the um let me say procurement but the with the search of of uh the the sweeper uh for public works and that you move forward also with uh the purchase of the um hose for the fire department purchase those yes in the rifle package okay um was there anything else i mean i'll second his motion

But go ahead. I'd like to modify the discussion. I'm sorry, go ahead.

It's open for discussion.

In part of the discussion, I mean, I'd like to, I don't even remember how to do it, modify the motion to include the rifle package to come out of the fund balance.

Fund balance, yeah.

OK. He could amend his motion. If after the second is made, he can go ahead and move forward with an amendment to his motion, if a council will support it with a second. Well, I'll second.

He's got to make the motion? Yes. He's .

so so mayor and council I moved it um John you continue with the with the 10% increase and of for a tax rate increase of point oh seven nine six percent I mean 0.0796% to the utility and at a fixed rate. With that, you continue moving forward with the purchase of the fire hose for the fire department, the sweeper for the public works, and including the rifle and scopes for the police department. I second. The clarifier, so i'm moving forward with the clarifier that will be purchased that that that is a one-time purchase is that not correct yes do you want to know that with that being a one-time purchase do you want to fund it from fund balance or do you yes second okay it's been moving second all in favor opposed motion carries

All right, Council. That gives me enough direction to move forward. I'll continue discussions with Council as these new numbers come out. This week I should have certified values and I'll continue bringing a draft budget probably by the end of this week if I get the numbers in time. Back to Council, you'll have about two weeks to review them before our first meeting in August.

Are we down to new business? Yes, we're down to OK, we're going to be we're down to new business.

Yes.

So on on new business last meeting. I made a motion on the text 21. I would like to call that back into question so I can clarify the the motion that I that I had made.

OK, did you present that as a motion to?

To place back on the agenda for discussion, yes, to place back on the agenda for discussion. To modify my motion.

Possible action OK, it's been some motion and moved in second. All in favor. OK, motion carries now. So that would be for new business. So that brings us.

I need to know about the

do you want to bring this item or what are you talking about i'm not sure are you wanting a new um business item to place in the agenda or what for future agenda is that what you're asking i'm not understanding We'll just bring that back into the next meeting if that's something you want to present in our draft budget.

I move that we replace the item of swimming pool to discuss on our next budget meeting.

Second your motion.

Okay it's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Opposed?

She wants to bring the swimming pool into our budget discussion at our next meeting He was again

I appreciate it. Like far as the question that I have, like what the homework that I've done, I appreciate you going there with me to show me what you're doing. Because I'm seeing some numbers on here. The budget report. The budget report, you got, there's a lot of, like here, you got the original, you have $800 here. Leave over here, you got $1,800.