City Council - Regular Meeting

I have two of them as well. Mayor. Which one? Underwood. I'll put that one there. Old Underwood? Are you shaking your head at me?

Parts of it is. It's not old.

Yeah, part of it is. Let me call to order the special council meeting. We're going to open up for the invocation by Eric Ripley and the Pledge of Allegiance by T.J. Haight.

Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this day. We thank you for the rain that you've provided, God. We just thank you for all the many blessings that you bestow upon us, God. We just thank you for this community, for the citizens, for our city employees, God, for what they do for our city, God. I just pray for our first responders, for our policemen and firemen, that you would be with them, continue to protect them as they serve our community. God, we just pray over this meeting. that you would guide us and lead us as we make decisions that impact our community, God. We just are thankful for your presence, for your relationship, and most of all, we're thankful for your son, Jesus, who you sent to die on the cross for our sins. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Please join me for the pledges to the American and Texas flags. I pledge allegiance to

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor Texas flag.

I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one indivisible. Anybody sign up to speak?

No, sir.

Moving on to presentations, agenda item number one, presentation of the classification and compensation study by public sector personnel consultants and proposed changes. How are you, sir? Long time no see.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Matthew Weatherly is here. He is with Public Sector Personnel Consultants, as Mayor just stated. He is with a firm that the city hired several months ago to conduct our most recent compensation and benefits survey. If y'all can recall, the last time we did this was in 2023. And we strive to do it every two to three years to make sure that we remain competitive with the market. We're very fortunate and happy to report that Matt overall has very little news to share with you this evening. And that's because of, to your credit, the last compensation study that we did. did require a pretty significant overhaul. That council was gracious enough to, and we had the funds to make sure it happened, but council was gracious enough to ensure that we were able to do that for our workforce. If anyone wants physical copies of this for review, we do have that available on hand, so just let us know. And then lastly, the Compensation Committee did receive a presentation from Matt just a little bit ago that probably has some more detail than what's about to be shared here or just maybe some more anecdotal information. So if anyone does want more information after this, just get with staff and anything that you have questions about, we're happy to share. So with that, I'll turn it over to Matt.

Very good. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council. Appreciate the first spot on the agenda, but appreciate your time this evening. Prepared an overview highlighting the methodology, kind of summarizing the findings thus far that we have to offer. Really, as the city ponders its 2027 budget, our scope of work was really two major phases. We began by introducing the study to city staff, inviting employees to review their job descriptions, ensure that the job content and how they spend their time at work matches up. That information allows us to make good, accurate comparisons out in the marketplace. When we do a salary survey, we like to make our comparisons really based on job duties. So I wouldn't say irregardless of job titles, but part of our scope of work was to review job titles, make sure that titles make sense, that there's an opportunity for us to maybe articulate and defend how citywide we like to use our titles when we use words like supervisor, analyst, coordinator, manager, assistant. are we able to be consistent with that? So phase one was a classification review with some employee input through a job questionnaire. Phase two was the conduct of a citywide salary and benefits survey. So I'll share both some information about what type of data was collected and show our work just a little bit in terms of the type of analysis that lives behind the scenes. But our scope was both a salary and a benefits survey. We like to answer two big questions. One, how are we doing? compared to those that we're competing with. That could be other public entities, could be the private sector. Where do we find ourselves when we post a vacancy? Are we able to fill that job? Do we have positions with higher turnover? And where it really kind of starts to shake hands with the classification review phase one is do we have career ladders? Do we have job families? Do we have opportunities if we are successful at attracting candidates to the city? Can we develop them? Can we grow them? Can we promote them? Can we keep them? so that they stay with the organization. So it kind of marries up classification and compensation. We always fly a couple of banners, but we also have to manage some expectations. Yes, we want to be competitive. Yes, we want to be fair. We also want to remind, and we did, the employees that you do salary surveys only periodically, maybe every three years, five years, seven years. You do the budget every year. So the studies themselves are not the vessel by which we see all employees receive a pay increase. We'll reserve that for conversations around the budget for things like cost of living adjustment, CPI, step increases, those types of things that I think show up annually when you talk about the budget and salary eligibility. So the study's really looking for outliers and really looking for consistency. Usually a goal for us as a third party is to ensure that all jobs have the same relationship to market. Right? You all decide kind of what that looks like from a, do we want to be at market? Do we want to lead the market? Do we want to be at mean or at median or at average? So we're not intending to back anybody into a corner, certainly with our data, but really just allowing you to make informed decisions and choices around when we budget for pay and benefits. One, where do we find ourselves? And two, are we where we want to be? That will allow us to recruit and to retain. Survey agencies, this is a topic that is never dull. Employees asked us on day one, who are you going to compare us to? We're looking for like jobs. We are looking for a combination of competitors, meaning bigger, smaller, nearby. Factually, they might be in the same business, offering the same services, and they might love to take our people. comparators, maybe a little bit more like us, size, scope, general fund, population, those types of things. So a balance of, yeah, I would say geography. We mapped out where all employees live. I'm going to contend that probably 90% of the city's jobs would be or will be or have been filled by candidates that already live within commuting distance of where we are this evening. A little bit more rare for me to relocate to take your next equipment operator job or your next building inspector job. Now, we might go steal our next police chief from somewhere or our next city engineer from somewhere, and that might be a relocation. But that's going to be a little bit more of an exception. So you'll see in this list a balance, I think, of pretty local and regional agencies. There are a few bigger players in here. So we did have to be careful at the manager level, at the director level, because some of those departments are quite a bit bigger. Their budgets are bigger. Their size of staff is a little bit bigger. You'll also see in our survey illustrations, we've got some private sector data that we wanted to include. So we use Economic Research Institute that gives us a salary assessor insight into the private sector. Because if I approach a private employer, they're not real keen on sharing information like these public agencies these other cities might be. Some illustrations of our work are coming. But I'll start with the punchline. I come to you with pretty good news. We surveyed about 140 different jobs, base pay to base pay. I'll show you what that looked like. But 84% of our survey sample is competitive. We're kind of finding a sweet spot. There's a little bit of evidence in the data that our more recent study was in 2022, 2023. The city's commitment to understanding where you are, I think there was a lift there in 22, 23 to get closer to market because the prior survey had stretched out maybe seven or eight years prior. And so we come back to you kind of on a three-year curve with, similar to an audit in a good way, a lack of findings. 80% of our sample or better. It looks pretty good compared to market, those positions that are a little bit low. I didn't have any kind of preconceived notions when we started, but given where you are and our history and working with some of the cities in your area, not real surprised. Where we do find ourselves a little bit trailing the market, especially in the private sector, is public works. So our certified operators, utilities, commercial driver's license folks, those get snatched up in a hurry. I think in your neighborhood, they kind of become a hot commodity. So the majority of my positions here that represent those positions that surveyed a little bit low are in public works. They are our skilled trades and our blue collar positions. A little bit of an eye exam maybe on this screen. A little bit harder to see, but I wanted to show my work. So we've got 120 or 130 pages that live in the background that provide some insight job by job now to answer that first question I mentioned. How are we doing compared to market? We like to compare pay range midpoint. But each of these agencies, and kind of the cool thing about the public sector, other than you live in a fishbowl, is we can get the data. We can get the information and gain understanding by job description of the formal pay range minimum, midpoint, and maximum that's afforded for each job description at each of these competitor and comparator cities. The job titles vary a little bit. So kind of back to the top, we're vetting out by job duties, certifications, minimum qualifications, experience requirements, and just pulling in data. So a paper exercise of comparing pay range to pay range. Your range is on the bottom. They're highlighted in blue. And then up top, you can see the individual cities, what they call each job title for a job match, and then their pay range at minimum, midpoint, and maximum. There is some volatility because some ranges are quite a bit wider than others. You'll see some low lows and some high highs that are a little bit out of order. So most of my worksheets are probably sorted at the midpoint. But this is an example of a job where we're right at that sweet spot. We're within 1% of market in either direction. That looks really, really good. Another example, a job common across almost all of the survey comparators, court clerk. Again, another example of a position we're within 2% of market. So again, another perfectly competitive pay range. Where we start to see a little bit of movement is in the introduction, in some instances, of the private sector data for our skilled trades. If I look just public to public, we're pretty spot on. It's always hard to just say, hey, we're going to keep up to the private, because that work could go away. The benefit structures might look a little bit different. But I do want to acknowledge that there's some portability. The other struggle, I think, in the context that we do also a benefit survey now for the city, is that I guess if I'm 23 and I have a truck payment and diapers and rent, I really like pay. Benefits light bulb may or may not have come on just yet as far as the long-term benefits of having that public sector stability, a pension plan. health insurance coverage, or at least a contribution for me and my family that I'm buying those diapers for. So pay sometimes wins for our younger workforce. But I wanted to introduce some private sector data in there. You can see now the punch line there is a position where we've started to slip a little bit behind market. When I look for trends, most of our utilities positions, operators, technicians, our mechanics, public works adjacent positions are those that are falling more than 5% behind market. Police officer, never an easy position to fill, I would say, regardless of how we look compared to market. There's only so many that want to go into this business. But the pay range looks pretty good. I think if you're offering lateral movement, if you're able to attract officers from the outside and supplemented that with people coming through and out of the academy. Now I get a little bit more sensitive about minimum to minimum. top out to top out, the length of time that it might take to top out. I'm interested in that as well. I would also share with this group, I don't have it in my slides, but some of our part-time positions were the other positions that look a little bit low. So we're working with staff on reacting to that market data, even if incrementally we need to get a little bit closer for some of our seasonal and part-time positions. But they were another about 10 to 12 jobs that we surveyed. They weren't all low. But I mentioned that. I don't want to forget to mention that so that if we do come back to you as part of the budget process that we have that just kind of mentioned. We also have a couple hundred pages of benefits information living behind the scenes. We compared the big ticket items, so health insurance contributions for myself and my family, pension contributions, employee, employer, paid time off, vacation and sick leave accruals and balances, holiday pay, ad pay, incentive pay. uh... extra opportunities for employees to grow and hopefully we don't make them more valuable elsewhere uh... but looking at all of those incentive options just a couple of highlights here but really similar to an audit i think again most areas look to be perfectly in line the city's paying most of an employee's contribution for health and a good portion of dependent and family coverage uh... for health that's very very common amongst these survey cities Education incentive for PD is really competitive. The only thing missing, if we compare your offerings to those in the market, there are some opportunities maybe to look into bilingual pay. If that's something that some of your workforce is offering services in a bilingual setting, you could offer some incentives there. Otherwise, very much in line. We have proposed some pay grade realignment, focusing within your civilian structure. We have not changed that structure. But it does afford us enough pay grades to move jobs that are low. It does afford us to say, hey, this job survey is one grade low. It's in a five. Let's look at it in a six. Or it's in an eight. Let's look at it in a nine. We also honor that by career ladder. So if we move the assistant mechanic and the mechanic We might have to look at the master mechanic, the mechanic foreman, those types of linkages. There's about 30 employees that would be impacted by their pay grade moving, really just to realign to market at average. So absent any, hey, we want to be at market plus or the 75th percentile or big sweeping statements around market positioning and market strategy, realigning back to market average. And then I want to get people that are affected by that pay grade movement onto a step in their new grade. We're not taking them all the way to their old step. So if they were topped out in one of their pay grades, but their grade went up, they might now be in step eight or step nine. So they have some step opportunity where maybe they didn't prior. And they are now in a pay grade that's market competitive. So there is about a $45,000 price tag there to move those employees impacted by their pay grade movement onto their new pay grade at their next nearest step. So no big sweeping amounts. There are some jobs that need to move two grades instead of one grade, driven by their market variance. There are also some titles that we're proposing to change. some assistant supervisors that are really the supervisors, some supervisors that are really the managers. We might call them superintendents. So there's some title changes proposed as well, and we'll continue to work with staff on some of that implementation piece of just kind of reacting to it. So I'll pause there, Mr. Mayor, in the event that I can answer any questions or spend a little bit more time on any of the slides that we had up.

Just to make sure, go back to that last slide. It's only going to impact... $45,000 to just $30,000?

Yes. The whole year?

That's an annualized cost.

Unlike the last survey that we did, we matched up all employees. If they were on step 8 of the plan, for example, and their position moved two grades down, we matched their step. We kept them on step 8 in the new grade, for example, so it was They were large costs.

In this instance... It wasn't necessary monetary. It was in the increments of the steps. Correct.

The position may receive some sort of incremental benefit, but it may be like a $3,000 raise versus a $20,000 raise, and now they have steps to move into in future years versus being topped out where they are currently. So it's still beneficial, and it's duly beneficial, I would say. And that total impact will be split between general fund and water sewer fund. So it's very manageable for the budget.

Council comments, questions? That must be happy.

All right. Silence usually freaks me out, but I'm okay.

If you're okay, I'm good. It's kind of good here. All right. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you all for your time this evening.

Appreciate it. Safe travels.

Moving on to agenda item number two, consideration of an action on ordinance approving industrial district agreements. Mr. Fox.

An ordinance approving certain industrial district agreements providing for execution, providing serverability.

Move for approval. Second. I have a motion by Councilman Ginn. I second by Councilman Lee. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Aye. Motion carries. Agenda item number three, submission and presentation of the proposed City of Deer Park physical year 26-27 budget.

Good evening, Mayor and Council again. I'm going to take this item. In the words of Mr. Jay Stokes, who is unfortunately not with us this evening, brevity is key.

Unfortunately for us? Unfortunately. Well, yeah.

So I plan to be Very brief. And my intention for this presentation is to go over what specifically has changed since the last time the budget was put in front of you, which was during workshop on June 22. So with that said, there are four main points that I'm going to cover. The first was for our health insurance costs. If you all recall, the last time we spoke about this, the industry average was roughly 11 and 1 half percent. It was seeing an approximate 11 and 1 half percent increase. And what we were told from our provider, Texas Health, was that we could expect a 10% increase across the board, which was not something that the city's budget could sustainably take on. So we started looking internally. We involved the Health Insurance Committee directors, and we very manageably made reasonable changes to the plan that resulted in two main things. Our PPO plan, our best level Cadillac option plan, has resulted in a 1.88% increase to the budget, so less than 2%, very manageable. And our high deductible plan actually decreased 2.17% for both the city and for the employees. So the overall impact to the budget was very favorable, which was fantastic. So that's one change for the good that has occurred since this was last in front of you. The second thing is our debt service costs and the debt sewer fund and water sewer fund. So just as a reminder, our debt is serviced through property tax, through the debt service fund, and also through water sewer revenue. With the most recent debt issuance that our advisors just presented last week, the CO bonds, Some of that has the allocations between how much general fund or debt service pays for versus how much water sewer pays for has had to shift a little bit. So those have changed. Overall, it's still the total debt service payments. It's just how those payments are allocated has changed a little. So that's one change. The next change is also very good news. The transfer into our CIP fund has gone down from $4.5 million to $3 million, and that is because I'm going to thank the ingenuity and the genius of our finance director, Vanessa. Our debt, the debt that serviced the community center and some other like kind projects was substantial and incurred and earned a lot of interest throughout our time holding onto that money before it was spent. And we have restrictions on what that is allowed to be used for because that debt is issued for very specific purposes. And Nicole thought that the theater, the cash theater project that we were going to fund from reserves, the renovation to the theater building, she thought that that was an in-kind, very similar type project to other parks and rec initiatives that that debt was initially issued for. So she reached out to our financial advisors and our bond council asking if that was an appropriate use for of that money. And they definitely agreed. So now we have other funding mechanisms and capacity to cash fund that project versus using reserves. So that has been a change in the budget, and that's been extremely positive. The last thing that has changed that I want to highlight is that when we first brought the budget to you in June, we had planned for an annual allotment of $150,000 for decorative street signs. Because of agenda posting deadlines due to legislative requirements and state law and all of that, we had to have this budget READY LAST WEEK, AND SO THE CHANGE THAT I'M SPECIFICALLY GOING TO MENTION TO YOU THIS EVENING, KNOWING THAT WE WERE PROBABLY GOING TO FUND MORE THAN $150,000 NEXT YEAR, WAS WE JUST THREW A PLACE HOLDER IN THE BUDGET, AND SO THE NUMBER THAT'S IN THE DOCUMENT TONIGHT IS $350,000. SINCE THEN, You all know that discussions have been had, and we're actually going to plan to fund the full $1.364 million in next year's budget. So that's an anticipated change that's not in the current document this evening, but by the time that you adopt the budget in September, that will be reflected in the budget, and we will give that reminder that evening as well that that has been changed. Other than that, there are no significant changes to the budget that's in front of you this evening. The budget that you will be adopting in September, aside from updating for the street signs, it's possible that a last minute thing or two may trickle in. An updated CPI for inflation is something that we'll take into consideration. And so the COLA that's adjusted to the pay plan may shift. That may change. And if that's the case, that will be presented that evening as well. But we don't anticipate any other significant material changes. Beyond that, this is a final, as final as it can be, preliminary final version of the budget that's in front of you this evening. With that, are there any specific budget questions that council has or that staff can address? No, I'm pretty impressed. Thank you, Vanessa. Our staff is great. Thank you, Tracy. Yes, the budget guru. That can't be left unsaid. Thank you. OK, that's all for this item. Thank you very much.

There's no action on this item, correct?

No, sir.

Moving on to agenda item number four, consideration of an action or an ordinance calling a public hearing on the proposed fiscal year 26-27 City of Deer Park budget. Mr. Fox.

In ordinance of the City of Deer Park setting a date and time for a public hearing proposed budget for the year beginning October 1st, 2026 and ending September 30th, 2027. Hearing shall be... August 4th, 2026 at 7.30 p.m. in the city council chambers.

Move for approval.

Second.

A motion by Councilman Ford is seconded by Councilman Hayes. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Agenda item number five, consideration of an action on the ordinance calling a public hearing on the proposed fiscal year 26-27 crime control and prevention district budget. Mr. Fox.

In ordinance of the City of Deer Park, Texas, I get a date and time for a public hearing on the city approving the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget for the Current Control and Prevention District. That will be August the 4th at the same time.

Second. I make a motion by Councilman Garrison and second by Councilman Lee. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Agenda item number six, consideration of an action on the ordinance calling a Public hearing on the proposed fiscal year 26-27 of the Crime Control, Prevention, and Emergency Medical Services District budget. Mr. Fox.

In ordinance of the City of Deer Park, Texas, setting a date and time for a public hearing on the city approving the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget for the Fire Control, Prevention, and Emergency Medical Services District will also be on August the 4th. Move for approval.

Second. In motion by Councilman Hayes. Second by Councilman Martin Ripley. Any discussion?

All in favor?

Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. That's all the items we have for tonight. This meeting is adjourned.

Angela. Angela.