City Council - workshop

Okay. Mayor. It's seven.

Let me call to order the May 19 Deer Park City Council workshop. Did anyone sign up to speak?

I do not believe so, sir. Let me go double check. No, sir. No one signed up

to speak.

Agenda item number one, the presentation of the American Heart Association Mission Lifeline Silver Award. Andrew's walking up. I guess it's your thing.

Good evening, mayor and council. Mr. Stokes, Mrs. Caslow. So I wrote this down because if I try to ad lib, it won't go well for me.

So, bear with me real quick. So, what you see up there is the 2026 mission lifeline EMS recognition silver award. So, EMS submitted for the first time and received this award with Target Heart Attack Honor Roll. These are national recognitions that acknowledge EMS agencies for providing rapid evidence based care to patients experiencing severe heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular emergencies. The award is based on measurable performance data and recognizes agencies that consistently meet national standards for rapid assessment, early treatment, ECG interpretation, hospital notification, and timely transport decisions.

The Target Heart Attack Honor Roll specifically recognizes agencies that help reduce the time between EMS first medical contact and patients receiving life saving cardiac intervention at the hospital. This achievement reflects the dedication and clinical excellence of our EMS personnel, the strong collaboration between EMS and our hospital partners, and our continued commitment to continuous quality improvement while providing the highest quality, most appropriate, and timely patient care possible to the citizens of Deer Park this would not have been possible without the hard work training and commitment of our EMS providers I'm very fortunate to work alongside some of the best providers in the area so we just want to bring this and present this to y'all and hopefully next year we will achieve gold. You can come back. Awesome.

It's awesome.

If we could, if we could picture.

If you all from the EMS fire department would like to come up, please.

So we're supposed to come down there or do you want You're your gig buddy. Yeah. Let's just stand up here.

Yeah. That may be easier. Okay. Y'all can all fill in.

Yeah. The tall ones get up front. Agenda item number two, discussion of issues relating to the quarterly financial reports for the fiscal year twenty five-twenty six second quarter ending March 31.

Yes sir. Good evening mayor and council. Tonight we're presenting the quarter two financial report for fiscal year twenty six. This is activity through March 31. As always our financials were discussed with our finance committee prior to the meeting. And as a reminder for the sake of time we keep the presentation pretty high level. But if you do want to kind of get into the details a little bit we do have a 124 page financial report on your agenda that you're welcome to look through that gives line by line details on revenue and expenditures. So, with that I'll start with a few highlights. So, we continue to see strong collections in our property taxes. Property tax bills are due upon receipt, but payers have until January 31 to make their payments before penalties and interests are assessed.

By the end of the quarter, 96% of our levied property taxes and 98% of our budget has been collected in the general fund. In quarter two, we collected 80% of our general fund budgeted revenue with 48% of that number being related to property tax payments. In our fiscal year twenty six budget property tax accounts for 38% of our revenue so that it's important to maintain the strong collections which Deer Park does. Our second highlight is our industrial district revenue. A 102% of our industrial district budgeted revenue has been collected.

We budgeted to receive 14,100,000 and we've collected nearly 14,400,000 which exceeds budget by about 255,000. And our last highlight is our expenditures and they are trending on target with budget as 43% has been realized by the second quarter and another 12% encumbered. 50% is kind of our soft goal for quarter two halfway through the year. So, we're right on target to meet budget by the end of the of the year. And we'll go to property tax.

Okay. As I mentioned earlier property tax and industrial district payments have performed as expected and are on target with what we budgeted. These revenue streams collectively account for about 63% of our budget revenue in general fund so it is they're vital to city operations and it's important that they stay on target. In quarter two we've collected 45,600,000 in property tax and industrial district payments this number is made up of 21,700,000 in property tax payments allocated to the general fund 9,600,000 in payments allocated to the debt service fund and 14,300,000 in Industrial District payments that are allocated to the General Fund as well. And we can go to sales tax.

Okay. So, sales tax collections have continued into quarter two. We did see a slight decline when comparing quarter two to last quarter two in 2025. It declined 4.16% or about $208,000 Year to date collections are down less than 1% compared to 2025. Just keep in mind 2025 was our highest collection year to date.

So, the fact that we're keeping pace you know less than 1% compared to last year I think is very positive for the city. And across all sales tax revenue accounts including CCPD, fire and CDC, 6,650,000 in sales tax was collected with 3,300,000 of that being allocated to the general fund. And in regards to the budget, we've collected 41% of what we estimated to receive. So, we are on target to also exceed budget for this year in sales tax. And just as a reminder sales tax is collected by the state and then it's remitted to the city and which causes a two month delay between the time taxpayers pay their bill to the time we actually receive it here at the city.

So the numbers you're seeing are reflects four months not six months as you would expect halfway through the year. Okay and we'll discuss enterprise funds. So the city has three enterprise funds the water and sewer fund, the storm water fund and the Dow active complex water and sewer fund is our largest enterprise fund and has collected 7,000,000 in revenue representing 44% of its budgeted revenue these services are built in arrears so this reflects five months worth of collections It has realized or encumbered 10,000,000 of its budgeted expenditures equaling 59% of its budget. Stormwater fund has collected 194,000 representing 38% of its budget revenue. These services are also billed in arrears so this represents five months worth of collections.

They have realized or encumbered 273,000 in expenditures which represents 48% of its budget. And then the DAC has collected 345,000 in revenue which represents 33% of its budgeted revenue and realize we're encumbered 1,130,000 in expenditures which represents 53% of its budget. And we'll discuss fund balance. So, on this slide you can see our adopted general fund budget is 60,100,000. You can also see how that's divided among the departments and how we've allocated our resources on the left hand side that's the dollar amount on the right hand side is the percentage.

You can see we've entered the year with a fund balance of 54,170,000. Our fund balance represents 90% of our adopted budget as long as there are no changes in operations can sustain the city for three twenty nine days. And lastly we'll discuss debt. As of October 1 the city has an outstanding principal debt obligation of 139,200,000. The debt service payments for 2026 are approximately 13,800,000 which includes 8,240,000 in principal payments and 5.59 in interest payments.

These payments are due the principal interest is due in March, March 15. We did just make that payment and it is reflected in this quarter. And then September 15, we do have the interest payments. So with that, I'll conclude the report and answer any questions. I didn't know we looked financially strong.

They must be happy they don't have any questions. All

right. Well, thank you. Very good.

Thank you. Mister Stokes, I guess that's all we have for the workshop. So this meeting is adjourned, and we'll start our regular city council meeting here shortly at 07:30.