City Council - Regular Meeting

Everybody. It is 6:30 and I'm calling to order our Elgen City Council meeting on February the 17th, 2026. We'll begin with roll call with St. Pierre,

St. Pierre here, Crim here, here. Mcshan here, Kasnovski here, Gibson here, Swain here, Love here. All council members are present with the exception of uh council member Rodriguez who is at a work uh commitment and I need a

there was a motion by Swain. Okay, there you go. Council member Swain. Motion and second by Mayor Pro Tim. We'll begin with council member Swain. Swain. Yes. Love. Yes. St. Pierre. Yes. Crim. Yes. Frasier. Yes. Mcshen. Yes. Kasnowvski. Yes. Gibson. Yes. And I do believe our invocation is by uh Deputy Mayor Pro Tim Blood.

All right, if we can bow our heads. Lord, we come today before you grateful for the opportunity to serve our community as we gather in this space of leadership and responsibility. We ask for your wisdom, your clarity, your discernment in all things in every decision and every discussion that we have. Help us to listen to our community and one another with open hearts, speak with integrity, and to lead with courage. Let our work tonight reflect unity over division, collaboration over conflict, and service over self-esteem. May the decisions we make tonight strengthen our community. May them uplift our families and uplift the opportunities that we go forth to thrive. Grant us patience in disagreements, humility and leadership, and shared commitment for the greater good, which is our community. In the name we pray. Amen.

Amen. We stand for our pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all flagged Texas one state one and indivisible. public comment. We have Christa Marks.

Good evening, everybody. Um, first of all, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your service to the community that we all love. um the job that you do is sometimes thankless, but I just want to officially be on record of saying thank you and also a specific thank you in ter in regards to one of the consent agenda items, which is all of the goodness and the ways that the city will support us with Relay for Life. And I want to talk for just quickly a couple of share some numbers with you. Um this occurred to me on the way over here. 35 years ago today, my grandfather died too soon because of stupid cancer. He died because of a diagnosis that now 35 years later is able to be detected early, is not only treatable, but it is beatable. I have several friends who are on the other side of it um doing great and as honorary as ever. Um, my grandpa died seven months, no I'm sorry, five months prior to meeting his first greatgrandson. And I relay because my son is growing up in a world where were he to get that diagnosis, he would be able to continue to live on. Um, 14 years ago, I got my own diagnosis. People would always ask why I relayed. Why do you do this? Why do you do so much money? Why do you spend so much time? I'd relay because you never know whose life is going to be saved. 14 years ago, it was mine. Thanks to early detection and the work that's been done by American Cancer Society for that. Were it a decade sooner, my I wouldn't be here right right here, right now in front of you. 21 years. We have been relaying in Elgen, Texas for 21 years. We're legal now. Um, and we've taken it to the park and we're really excited about taking to the

park for year number three. It's happening in 67 days, but who's counting? Um, in 167 days, we will be gathering at the Veterans Memorial Park expansion for music. We're going to have Relay Gone Rad. We're kick taking it back to the 80s. So, having lots of good fun with that. To date, we have 12 teams registered, including Elgen Police Department. Thank you very much. Um, we have a goal of $50,000 that we would like to raise to beat stupid cancer. Um, currently we're sitting at 17,000, which is amazing with 67 days out. So, our secret goal is 65. Um, I will next week be sending out invitations to 85 identified survivors of cancer. And I know that there are so many more that I don't know. So if you know of anyone, please let me know so that we can invite them. We will have the survivor celebration on March 28th. It will be lunch and it will be lots of good food, good time, and a chance for us to stand together and stand strong. Those are my numbers. We're doing it not because of all those numbers though, but because of the number one. We relay for one more hug, one more kiss, one more birthday. One more favorite juicy hamburger. One more opportunity to share a laugh, even to share a hug. And I think that's my time. There's my one. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, on to announcements. Hello, Mayor Council. I always have to mess with how close do I get. Um, I only have two announcements for y'all tonight, so I'll be brief. Uh, we have the parent support group. Oh, sorry, Christina Alvarez, Main Street Manager for those walking watching at home. Um, parent support group, Saturday, February 21st, 10:00 a.m. here at the public library. And then we have family movie night, Friday, February 26, 6:30 p.m. also here at the library. Um, and I will have more announcements for y'all next meeting. So, look to that. Thank you.

Thank you. Our city manager report.

Sorry about that. I was signing up for relief for life as you call me. actually doing it. Well done. Yeah. Sorry about that. Getting back to business here. Other business. Um in my report, uh mayor council, uh you do find the u planning and zoning commission quarterly report and the uh 2025 annual report for the PNZ. Well,

and that is my report. All right. Any questions on those reports? The it's in our packet. All right, moving right along to the cassin agenda. U, we have the uh minutes from our last meeting, Elgen Music Festival Partnership. That's a waiver to close street closures and and um on April 11th through 3 through 10. Y'all can read that. An open container waiver. April 9th through the 11th. Um the special event park waiver fee uh for the street closure on Depot Avenue for the relay for life. um police department and I think y'all have those numbers in your packet as well. And then the resolution to execute ex execute contracts for property acquisition for the Kennedy Street and County line. I hope we're almost through with all of those. I've signed quite a few. Is there anything we want to pull? Uh Deputy Mayor Pro Tim, you want to add anything to uh the Relay for Life? Do we have a team yet?

Council. Okay, there you go. We have a team. Okay. We have a council team. All right. Cuz Robert didn't want to join ours. No, because we're going to have like three teams ourselves. So,

that's okay. As long as all is council there, we technically won because we will have all of us and treats and treats. And following the the actual run, we will be hopefully everybody will come over to the mayor's breakfast and we'll be in Memorial Park serving breakfast beginning at 9:30 and the program will begin at 10:45. So as you leave uh running from ACC, run on over to the to Memorial Park and get some breakfast and the whole bit and enjoy prayer and gospel music by the 19th Street Missionary Baptist Church from Austin, Texas. Yes.

Question. Did Did you just say run? I'mma drive. Y'all come on over to the park. However you want to get there, it's fine. We We'll still have team. All righty. Thank you. And then of course that she already told us about that night, too. So, we have a full day of Relay for Life and uh unfortunately I have a lot of members of my family who I've lost. My mom is a cancer survivor and uh so this is near and dear to my heart. So, I want to do all I can do. So, if you don't get ahead of time and and can donate, you'll be able to donate there, too, with the QR code. So, we'll give you all the opportunity. All righty. Do we have a motion for the consent agenda?

I make a motion to approve. I have a second. And all right, beginning with Deputy Mayor Pro Tim. Love, yes. St. Pierre, yes. Creme, yes. Frasier, yes. Mcshen, yes. Kovski, yes. Gibson, yes. Yes. All right, moving along to our new business. And the first one is the adoption of library policies. Good evening. I'm Heather uh serving as the library services manager and I would like to just come before you again to see um seek for y'all's approval on our library policy. It has been uh reviewed by our city attorney and modified to where it meets the standards. So

we do want to say uh mayor if I can also too um from in review of the document uh I think we still believe at least um I believe that we still have a little bit of work still to go in the bullet uh which is be like the third bullet from the bottom which still describes um where it calls out certain conditions. And so um I think just to salvage a lot of great work that that the library committee has worked on really and not to complicate ma complicate matters. We we'd ask uh the council to please entertain the policy without that bullet uh in its entirety at this time and We would appreciate that from this council.

And then we'll bring back that bullet. Well, um, not the bullet. Would it be easier to table the whole thing? And well, I we tabled it once already for this particular reason. Correct. And and that's why at this time I don't want to put the council and even the work that this this uh library committee has done on hold once again. And so I don't think it's fair for either the council or the committee. And so we'll work on that off to the side uh time indefinite. And once we're ready to do that, once it's ready for game time, if and when we'll bring that back up, uh we're going to have a lot of discussion about that. And uh when that's ready, uh if it's ready, when that's ready, we'll bring that back. I just don't have a particular time to where I would put that before uh the council. That's why I'm suggesting if we can just take that one out for now and if we can pass those other provisions of this policy, it would be great for the library uh as it stands and we can again keep working because I suspect that we're going to have some really great policies still come up, really great ideas. These are some improvements that are happening and as that goes we're going to bring some policies and this could happen in a month, three months, six months and so that's why I ask that we do it that way until we can keep the public's library moving um as we go forward. I I know that there are some work and there are some cities uh reviewed. This was not done specifically um identifying you know our library, our city uh but other communities uh with like um policies. Um but I want to also be true to what who we are also what fits us and uh we're just not there yet. So doesn't fit us at this time and until it does then we'll bring that that bullet back. I could be wrong, but that's why you all are the last.

No, your name. I I agree with that. Um to approve the policy as is with extracting the highlighted paragraph. I agree. Yes, that's a motion. Okay, just I'll second.

Okay. All right. We'll begin with council member. Any more discussion? Sure. Thank you. I was watching heads. We got the nod. Okay. So, we'll begin with love. Yes. St. Pierre. Yes. Crim. Yes. Razer. Yes.

Mcshen. Yes. Kasnovski. Yes. Gibson. Yes. Swain. Yes. Okay. Motion carries without Thank you so very much. Thank you. Okay. Okay. The next one is a resolution of the city of Elgen, Texas, authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with Stacy um Ford Osborne for public information and communication services. And I do believe you wanted to table this for now.

Um well, I I did want to mention Yes, ma'am. Uh ultimately, but I did want to make a couple of just major highlevel um points on this and what we're working on really. So, as as you know, uh, Miss Osborne has been working on a couple roles or working uh, as our interim community services director and our public information office uh, officer. So, one of the main ideas is breaking those two apart. Um, and so we don't have those two things. Um, and so we don't co-ingle a an employee position with a contractor position. So, we're making this entirely a contractor position and solely that and two um that also with this and oh I'm sorry we also have

um there was uh some core things that I know Miss Sanders was uh working on too, but go ahead introduce yourself and let us know Hi, I'm Pam Sanders. I'm the HR director. Um, some of the things we're working on are the scope of work and highlighting identifying the different tasks that we as a city want the PIO focused on. That takes it away from community services and highlights branding, messaging, reputation building, those kinds of things. And so, we're putting that in the contract to be more specific and identify those areas of need. And so that that's why tonight we're pulling this back because it still has some semblance where it was still attaching the position uh was still the PIO was attaching to other positions uh like the media specialists and others and we're saying let's focus on PIO. Let's target it to say we need assistance mostly right now in certain areas to focus on and once that's done we're going to go ahead and bring it back. And so we'll continue to work on that. We'll bring that back. There's no rush right now. We do have um we'll bring it back in.

We'll have it at the next meeting. At the next meeting. Yes. So, we'll ask if we can table that, but we did want to give you a brief high level what we're working on, why it's kind of getting back and forth a little bit. We're extricating it from the coingle mashup we had before. I

make make a motion we uh table this particular agenda item. I'll second it. It's been moved and second and we'll begin with council member Crim. Crim, yes. Frasier, yes. Shen, yes. Kasnowski, yes. Gibson, yes. Swain, yes. Love, yes. St. Pierre, yes.

Motion carries. The next is a resolution authorizing the city of Elgen to enter into an interlocal cooperation agreement with the Lower Collar River um authority for radio services and equipment. Evening council. My name is Michael Gonzalez. I'm the public works director here for the city of Elgen. Some time ago, the Lower Colorado River Authority approached the city of Elgen and asked if they wanted to be asked us if we wanted to be a part of their private LTE network as they did with communities up and down the I35 corridor. the LCR has the hydromeat system and so okay I I don't know much about telecommunications but I do know that I'll take whatever lengths necessary to get um our water operators uh in touch with the folks that um can help them improve the quality of their job improve improve the way that our skate system talk to each other. So they got some room on this LTE network that's here locally that they'd like to provide for us at a small fee. We're already paying for this service with our public carriers. um why would we move? Why would we make this transition? There's a couple of reasons. One of them that it's a more secure system. So, luckily, we haven't had any issues with compromised data in our in our infrastructure, our water and wastewater system, but this is a more uh smaller, more private network that would keep us um more secure. Reliability. Um, if you guys remember, I remember we were driving around February of 21 making first tracks in the snow and there was only one other vehicle out on the road ahead of us and it was LCR truck going to the radio tower that we were driving by. Um, they have battery backup that lasts about two weeks on these uh cell services. So, the reliability is there that can that can really improve the service that we have talking to our SCADA system. And then also the customer service is going to be an improved um we feel it's going to be improved. When we talk to our public carriers, there's not a good solution. They'll send you a box. We do the installation ourselves. We try to troubleshoot it ourselves as much as we can. If we were looking for better options and one of these better options provided to us is the um the support that the LC provides with their call center and helping us figure that stuff

out. We've met with a few of their staff on site and see if our equipment is capable with with their equipment and we're running through some of those tests now. But this resolution before you would make that form will allow us to work with them in in greater depth. I I think it's important too, Michael, that isn't it costwise is substantial, right? In terms of savings,

so far we're we're looking at the units that we have and we we pay an annual fee on on multiple of our equipment. Um is around $75 per unit per month. Um, right now the initial findings that we're that we're looking at um is 42, but we're not going to bring any cost associated into this until we get a task order or something that we can either purchase from them or or move over to. Right now, it's just going to be the factf finding mission of does this work for us. And in terms of contract, we're looking at what is this an annual thing that we

believe we would pay annually and we we'd be able to I mean what we're agreeing to with LCR is an annual. Yeah. The cost breakdown for us was annually.

Any other questions for Michael? I know it mentioned too, Michael, just real quickly that and something the public probably aware of that this is a primary purpose for this system, this trunking system is for emergency services. That's right. Yeah. Throughout the whole system, emergency, they're they're making space available for emergency services. Um later on there's an opportunity for us to get involved with their pushto talk system, the handheld radios, which is interesting to us when we think about um we use the local GMRS radio bandwidth for for special events. And if I have two public works guys on either end of Main Street, they can yell further than that radio can go. But there might be an opportunity later for us to explore that a little bit more and see if we can communicate um better amongst town. Um, initially we're looking at the SCADA system and how that's going to interact with our

this would be a big plus for emergency management operations. I I wish I could speak in more greater detail to how they're helping those services. I'm just looking at it for the utilities right now. Right after about 30 pages, I got confused, but 30 pages of the contract I read. So, I'm all for saving money. Do I have a motion?

I make a motion that we uh approve the authorization for the U interlocal agreement between the lower Colorado River Authority and the city. Second. It's been moved by Crim, a second by Swain, and we'll begin with Council Member Crim.

Crim. Yes. Out of abundance of caution, because I'm an LC employee, I am recusing myself from this item. Thank you. Mcshan, yes. Kaznovski, yes. Gibson, yes. Swain, yes. Love, yes. St. Pierre, yes.

All right. Moving on to number four. It's a resolution of city of Elgen authorizing the city manager to negotiate an an executive agreement to conduct a study for setting future utility rates for water and wastewater. Evening council. It's me again. Um through our budget discussions last year, it was agreed amongst the council and staff that we'd like to have a better understanding of where our utility rates fall in uh our organization, organizations that are similar to ours, how we rank across the state and and further and so on. Um the way to do that is to have an outside firm come in and look at our structure and see what can be improved. Once we make that commitment to work with the firm, we're also going to look at um perhaps some tiered um invoicing and how we um industrial users are or have a more significant impact to our system. So maybe there's some policy there that can be changed. Um is our is our rate structure the way it needs to be set out? And so we're going to work with an outside firm to help develop that and give us some more clarity on um where our rate should go, maybe stay the same. Um, so we sent out RFQS to get those um, firms to to look at our system. We had six respondents and we gave that to the staff and had them grade them. The results are here for you tonight. They're ranked in order. Um, did the same kind of ranking system that we used for our benefit analysis, um, salary and benefit analysis that we just completed. We did a similar style ranking system for that. So, these are the results here before you tonight. Um, city manager wanted us to put a uh a rush on this on this program. We had originally had an idea to bring this back before you in March. So, we have it before you in February. Again, we just want to keep that high level of urgency on it. Um, so you can have some data to look at when we go to prepare the budget over the summer. We'll try to get there. We won't have a finished product by then, but we'll try to get you some some more data. I think the word I used was expedited with a sense of urgency.

Sense of urgency. I don't think I use the word rush, but yeah, I'm I'm glad we're doing this. It's needed. And I think for anybody listening from home or watching, um I don't know that we've done a rate study either ever or in a long time. Um, and so this will allow us to, I think, charge for the appropriate amount we need to in order to keep our systems going and look at long-term, you know, how we how we price our rates. And you can't just do that by, you know, getting on Google and looking at what Taylor's water rates are or wastewater rates. You really need an expert. So, I appreciate this, especially expedited for uh the budget season.

Yeah. and and also you you fold in your CIP anticipated, you know, build up cost, ramp up cost, and so you're able to do quite a few things and be pretty accurate as to what you plan to do as much as it can be. So, it's based on facts and how you march forward with it. We're excited, too.

I'll make a motion to approve as written. It's been moved by Kasnoski and second by Gibson. And we'll begin with Kesnoski. Kesnowski. Yes. Gibson. Yes. Sing. Yes. With the seniors. Don't forget them.

Love. Yes. St. Pierre. Yes. Crim. Yes. Frasier. Yes. Shen. Yes. Motion carries. Okay. And now we'll enter into um we'll close our regular meeting at 657 and we will enter into executive session uh followed by chapter 551 of Texas government code to discuss any matter specifically listed on the agenda and or as permitted by chapter 551 of Texas government code. The city council will convene now the executive session pursuant to section 551.071 071 of the Texas government code to consult with the city attorney regarding possible and contemplated litigation arising out of an an employment matter for which the city seeks advice and counselor

We are reconvening into our regular city council meeting. There's no action taken on the executive session. We have any announcement of further announcements. 7:34 and we are adjourned.

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