City Council - Special Meeting

I hope that's not what that is. Will this help? Should I do this?

I already did.

Yeah, sure. Laurie, you can hit yours now.

Don't know where they are.

That's the ones I just took off.

That's the ones. That's the ones for seeing at a distance. These are the ones for seeing up close. I wish I could wear bifocals. Oh well.

I think I'm with you though, Jim. I may go on the visitor side for the first couple games.

I made a sleeve last year. Shading. When the fire broke out. I made all the window spins. A fight.

What have we said about behaving, Jim?

I'm going to start in it. It's time.

Oh, it sure is. We'll get back to the agenda. Okay, I'd like to call to order the special city council meeting for Tuesday, August 4th, 2026 at 5.31 p.m. If you would, if you could stand for an invocation, please.

Amen.

The United States of America. Thank you. Roll call of the members. Council Member Mapes.

Here.

Council Member Hawkins. Here. Council Member, what's your name again? Rusty. Rusty. Present in the camera court. Mayor Pro Tem Freeze. Present. Council Member Brenning. Here. Here on video. Okay. We have one citizen visitor comment. And I'm not going to go through the rules. You know them well enough. So if you'll come to the podium. Starting out, Dennis Moore, 301 Mission Street. Starting out, I do support law enforcement and people's safety.

But I'm also for the people's constitutional rights that protect their privacy and liberty. You are innocent until proven guilty. I don't know all the details. I think the county approved a contract with this private company. Flock means birds. The name they gave their cameras. This is a private company owned out of Atlanta, Georgia. There's already two in the city limits. There's one down by 56 and 67, and there's one at 144 and 67. And my question is, I know y'all can't answer anything to that, but has the county already entered an agreement? I don't keep up with nothing. I didn't even know what a flock camera was until a couple of weeks ago. Never heard of it. Kind of like AI centers. Didn't know what it was. Now all of a sudden I'm seeing them. Has the county already entered into an agreement with the Georgia company? How long are the records kept? When they scan my tag, how long do they keep that? They keep it six weeks, a month, forever? These are questions that need to be asked. Does the county keep the data collected locally? Because I was watching videos last night. Some entities keep them locally. They don't share them. Are they shared with the flock companies? They're with the flock companies nationwide that covers a growing part of the United States. Does the city have an interlocal agreement with the county on the use of cameras in the city limits? The Fourth Amendment, the right of people to secure their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizure shall not be violated and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause. Where's the warrant and where's the probable cause? And I hear this. Well, if you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about until the definition of what wrong changes. I'm sure people in Russia. are told if you do everything you're supposed to do you'll be fine i'm sure people in communist china are told if you follow the rules all the cameras we have watching every movement you make you're fine and you say well that's not here in a perfect world this would be great there's already been abuses of this in law enforcement and in private areas where people are tracking people they can tag you they can put your Tag number in the system. And if you drive by, it's going to take a special picture and say he or she is there. You say, well, if you're doing nothing wrong, it doesn't matter. I understand that in a perfect world. And I just would like y'all to consider this. I don't know none of the particulars. Like I said, I didn't even know what a flop camera was until two weeks ago. And then I'm looking down the road here and there's already one set up. So I've been on the Internet. trying to figure out what this is but it is a private company out of georgia and i assume the county i read that they had voted on something maybe in february contract i think these cameras cost a thousand bucks a piece but how long is them how long are the data being kept and who are they sharing it with i mean i'll be able to drive to here to utah and back and it's nobody's business if i'm going to here in utah and back thank you

Yeah, once again, it's not an agenda item, but I will say it is an issue in this town. You're the 5th person. That has addressed me regarding dress size with me individually. I had 4 calls. I wondered if we had a contract that city agree to these once again, maybe we've talked about. I'm sure council you are the base cameras we aware recently.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, people are concerned with it. George called wanted to get taken down to. All right, we will address it. I'm certain. Thank you Dennis. Budget workshop. Obviously we're not totally prepared for this, but I would ask that you start putting your questions together for our workshop that's coming up. I think it's early to hit questions. We want to look at changing percentages of individual items, reductions, things you wonder why it's happening. Be prepared to address those because we will have all of the people there, all the department heads. Just a question, are any of you ready to ask a question yet? Specific question about budgets with anyone that's here. We have explore Glen Rose, we have Jim and Veronica, myself.

Does Tracy want to talk just broadly? Looks like just kind of as a percentage change and numbers moving around kind of your department. kind of what you maybe are planning.

So I, overall, Hi, I'm Tracy with Explore Clean Rooms. So I did have a lot of changes in my budget, but mostly because I wasn't in charge of the budget last year. And I disagree with what the percentages were last year. So this year, we are focused strictly on the majority of it, in my opinion, is advertising and social media. So the... majority of that is or the the biggest changes were focused on that that is uh my department now in my in my opinion is is a destination marketing organization and so uh Everything that we do should be pointing people to this location. We also last year didn't account for memberships for our hoteliers and bed and breakfast owners to have Texas Hotel Lodging Association membership. And so now we did. So there was a big percentage increase.

Where is that?

That is under dues and subscriptions.

What was that, around $6,000?

Is that correct? It was around $9,000 for all the entities.

And this is probably an administrative question, but, you know, as we've tried to get an interlocal agreement with the county on the hot tax, line item for revenue that is their share of hot tax yes sir so that we'd be able to track it report back and then also kind of keep an eye on you know what that number looks like yes sir i think that's a great idea to to distinguish what is coming from city and what's coming from county i will always want to keep that separate and and itemize all of that

Since it is your budget, I will tell you that I had an update from Danny that county hot tax is going to go from the estimated $100,000 to $168,000 as estimated revenue for this fiscal year coming. And we do have meetings scheduled with him on August 10th. That you will be at as well, I'm sure. On August 10th?

Okay, great.

Anything else, George? Anybody?

I've got another couple. Okay. We can wait until Saturday.

It's up to you.

And I'm guessing this is probably another administrative function. What's included in fine, fees, and forfeitures?

I don't know.

Yeah. Maybe we ought to change that title to something that is a little more personal.

Well, OK, are you talking about where it says event permits and CVB events and how we got to that $11,000?

Probably the same one. Yeah. Yes. OK.

So on the next page, I'm sorry, I misunderstood the question. So event permits are when when my department sells permits at an event, a festival. For a vendor booth, for example, or a food truck, they pay. And so we account for that there. And then room rentals would be the other CVB events.

Which is the other half of the lane building? Yes, sir.

Yes. So if there's an event that we book and promote, and that's just obviously a projection. I'm figured if I did one event per month. Also we just, we have, small events here and there. I'm thinking of our book signing event where we sold some books about the traveling tuxedo and we made a little bit of money there.

Could we maybe change the heading of the category from fine fees and forfeitures to... something else something kind of more appropriate yeah like uh just revenue revenue permit permanent revenue activities i'm great with that i just think if the average person looks at it they're going to say yeah why is the cpp collecting fines forfeitures and fees yes sir that's misnomer it isn't it well you can name it whatever you want but i see what forfeitures i don't

but come on, call George, see if he's okay with it. Or do you want to save it and make us all wait until the 15th?

Yeah, we can do it then again. Wayfinding signs?

Yes, sir. So just to look, I feel like we have a deficiency in that department. We need some wayfinding signs that are up to date and show where our downtown is that has a coordinated brand. And these signs are a little bit expensive. So I figured we could get a couple each year for the next three years. So it's just my way of putting up better signs for the visitors that come to our city.

Why do you want it out of your hot tax rather than out of like a parks piece?

I don't have a parks piece.

I know. That's my point. Why wouldn't we keep it in a parks location rather than spend your hot tax dollars on Wayfair signs?

because I feel like it's an initiative that I want to see visitors, I want to make them comfortable when they enter our city and make them, you know, just more comfortable. So I feel like that is related to guest experience. So until I have something like that, this is, I think, a good use of our money. And I'm not suggesting that we get all new signs everywhere, all over the city, just a few per year, that if we use the same company, then we can have them all have the same look and feel. So just doing a little bit each year.

More specific in the budget meeting, but we've had so many iterations of what type of sign do we put business names on there? If you look at our business environment right now, you've got Levita, you've got Green Pickle. If they had a sign, it'd be wrong. I mean, so we've got some styling we need to talk about, but the way we put it, we can just sign that sheet. Anybody, anything else? All right. Any other questions within 1 of these departments? We've got police. We have development services. We have Jim and Veronica. If you have anything that is pressing enough, you'd like to address it now. Yeah, you have something.

I had the support from Veronica, I believe.

that we are encompassing the cost of the extra building.

Yes.

At least until we can decide what we're going to do with the two other buildings.

Yes. And now I'll re-look at those numbers and make sure that I can at least project what 12 months looks like. Now that we've been kind of through a hotter month, we can see what our add is being that the date is coming gone when all departments are supposed to have their budgets presented to staff or to to yourselves or jim and the mayor i'd like to know what departments have not submitted their budgets they're all yeah everybody's everybody's had uh a chance to give me the updated numbers yeah we've got at least one go-round yeah perfect thank you you bet

I have another question.

Go ahead. Jim, when we're estimating the revenue for water, sewer, and trash income, I see it's the same, but shouldn't that take into account the rate changes that we passed four or five months ago?

I wasn't aware that you ever passed them. We did. You're talking about on Frontier? No. No, on Frontier. I thought that he got put off because there was an election coming. That was two years ago.

We approved his proposal for the rate study. He suggested a five-year plan, and I think the motion was either to do the first two years or three years of rate increases. Okay, we'll review. I think it was four or five months ago.

Well, I don't remember.

I think Troy was from here.

He was, yeah. It's been that long? Almost a year. Okay, yeah. So I know we did pass a little something on water and sewer in particular. We'll look at it. since... Can we get like a list of all the FTEs in each department?

I'll have that for the meeting.

For the meeting, yeah. And then... capital like capex spending sip stuff so you know like i don't know if this is if we're still planning on a truck i know you had kind of budgeted some each year to have a truck but not buy one i think that was an idea two or three years ago and set aside some so there would be something in it is that what this 40 000 is that actually that actually can

They can go away can go away.

Um, we have no plans to acquire another truck this festival year. More trucks and we've got a police car sitting around. Yeah, we just haven't addressed that specifically. Yeah, but you're right.

It probably will come off total same way with the. Uh, fire marshal vehicle same way that 88,000 dollars. was just a carryover since they've got one.

Well, they still haven't been addressed, so we have to keep it for the moment. Perfect. But I expect we'll be able to take it off for next fiscal year. Hopefully. Better hurry, I guess.

Better hurry.

But we'll have a deficit next year, but we'll have an increase in our revenue this year. It bounces around. Yeah, it does. Anything else, anybody?

I've got one versus we're talking vehicles and it's really the code enforcement vehicle or what is our expenditures like on maintenance of that vehicle since it's I think a 20 year old vehicle or we. Is that a vehicle that needs to be replaced or are we spending more on maintenance that it's worth.

She drives a 2020 model. I think she's in good shape out there.

I haven't seen any invoices or signed any checks for anything that alerted me to undue expenses on maintenance for a vehicle. But I don't think so. Let's move to individual items for consideration. Item number six, discussion, consideration of possible action regarding the adoption of the city of Glen Rose maximum proposed tax rate for 2026. We all received the computations that Veronica put together and proposed new rate. This is a little new to all of you guys. Will you hear when we did the last tax rate? You weren't. Okay, you good.

I feel like we're getting the car before the horse as we don't have all the expenditures that the city is going to require. I feel like we need to get. Figure that out before we set the tax rate.

That's just an opinion.

What did you say?

It's just the maximum proposed.

Yeah.

yeah it's a maximum proposed it's not the final rate it doesn't have to be the final rate yeah exactly the way the process is you have to set the you have to set the max rate the legislature requires us to set a max rate and then you go through the budget process concurrently working towards that max rate so you ultimately hopefully get a balanced budget at the end of it i don't i agree with you i don't particularly like the process i would much prefer to go through the expenses first but this state requires us to set the max rate and then that's where we hold the public hearing for that max rate and we'll take we'll take citizens input and then once we kind of go through the budget then we've got a rate that we've set

Yeah, that's what we've done since I've been here. That's the process we've used. And once again, it's not carved in stone. It's one that we'll look at and justify or reduce at the ultimate. You know, and quite frankly, property values, protests, all the things we need to look at those two and make make a wise decision. We don't need property tax one day.

We may not get it. The legislature may change the property tax. This is a very tenuous budget year for a lot of reasons. What the legislature may or may not do with property tax rates and buy downs and eliminations and turning it into like a In the school mode, like a water where you've got, you've got so much population. And then you get so much increment per population. It's a very. Can be very tedious to try to go through the process if it changes.

Yeah, I suggest we just go ahead and consider the maximum. Um. And then we'll have the public hearing later and we'll, we'll be better suited to know exactly where it needs to be. It's not a big difference where we currently are for a year per dollar. George, what do you think?

I personally think that since we have every year, um, I've been on council, we've reduced the tax.

Yeah, I understand too. Did we actually offer in the max rate a reduced rate? I'm not sure we did. I think we went with the suggested number. No, we didn't.

The no new revenue rate is below. Yeah, that's right. The max BATRE rate is 28, 28, 8. Last year it was 27.

Yes, there was an 8 too. We went a little lower than the point 2, 7, 8. that's what the proposed rate was.

And then we settled at point 2, 7. Up to council. I know that. You know, the revenue rate is going to give us the same amount of revenue, but we don't have the same amount of revenue. I'M NOT OPPOSED TO REDUCING THE RATE, AND I'D LIKE TO SEE US REDUCE THE RATE AGAIN BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, ONCE AGAIN, FROM 25 TO 26, WE ADDED ROUGHLY $8 MILLION WORTH OF TAXABLE VALUE, BUT SINCE 2023, taxable value have increased 16.13%, $45 million for our tax base. So I'm not, it's a good thing that our rate, our base is going up. We would be in a bad spot if our base were flat or going down. It may, it may, but we may not have property tax to levy then either. So it's, I would be comfortable back again to 0.278, which is what we did last year, and then try to slide in at 265. Or we could do 265 and still know we're going to gain revenue. Why don't you make a motion to that? I will. I'll make a motion that we adopt the max rate of 0.265.

265 now? Yeah. You asked me to make a motion. I thought you were going to go with a maximum of 278. Okay. It's been seconded by Council Member Brenning. What was the rate again?

265.

Okay. All in favor of setting the maximum rate at that level? All in favor? We have three.

I just have a question. You said if we set it at that rate, we're still, we still, because of our faith, So we're still able because our tax base has increased. Correct. Okay.

By how much approximately? $8 million from 25 to 26. Our taxable rate is $325,568,929 off of 3-17-031-917 last year. We actually have a slightly higher tax base, but that was the calculation that we began from. Our tax base was actually a little bit higher once they got through all of the protests and all of the. What's what's it called your. Your deductions, your homestead deductions and all those things, it came in slightly higher than what our taxable rate was that we set it. Our taxable value was that we set it based on. So we're slightly higher than last year than what was estimated.

And history will tell you the protests won't change much of any of the revenue of the million five or so. I agree with you. Yeah, okay, let's go back to it again. Let's go back and consider this again and decide what your votes are all in favor of this motion. We have a 30 pass, but what is you are you going with it now?

Yes.

Okay. So we have 4. 4, and Patty, are you abstaining or against?

Yes.

Okay. 1 against to pass this. Maximum tax rate to be adjusted as we see our revenue levels. Discussion consideration possible action regarding setting the time, date and location of a public hearing on the two thousand twenty six maximum proposed rate. You have a list of dates there.

Well, I suggest the September meetings that'll give me enough time to publish.

What was the date on that?

You know, 2nd, Tuesday you talking about 2nd, Tuesday? Thanks.

It is Tuesday the 1st. Excuse me, the 8th.

All right.

Would someone like to make a motion to make that date, the 8th, our meeting, to have a public hearing? I can give you plenty of time?

Yes.

I'll make a motion to the time and date for the public hearing would be September 8th, 2026. We have a second? Second. Second by Mayor Pro Tem Freese. All in favor? Five zero passes. The date will be set for September 8th on Tuesday at our regular meeting. Okay, I'm now going to adjourn. regular special meeting that we have now in order to move to executive session. And of course, for the provisions of Texas Open Meetings Law, Subchapter D, government codes, Vernon's Texas codes, annotated in accordance with Section 551.074, Personnel Matters, concerning city administrators. So I now will adjourn the regular special meeting at 6.03 p.m. And you folks going home, or what are you going to do? Yep. All right. We can probably stay in here then. Thanks, Dennis. Okay, we're going to move from executive session to move back into our special city council meeting scheduled for Tuesday, August 4th, 2026. We'll open the regular session at 6.57 p.m. Council, we had a discussion in the executive session. Does someone have any questions or ideas or motions that they'd like to make or direct staff?

Mayor Bowles, I'd like to make a motion that we direct staff to move forward with a contract negotiation with our chosen candidate.

Under the terms that we have discussed.

Okay, we have a motion.

Second.

Second.

Second by council member Hawkins. All in favor, moving forward with directing staff. Three, four. Anybody against? One, abstentions? I'm going to abstain. One abstain. One against. Three, four. It passes. We'll direct staff to move forward with the contract with the number one candidate. And with that, does anyone have any comments, any notable things within the community we need to know about? All right. Meeting is adjourned at 6.58 p.m. See you all tomorrow. Thank you, Rich. Be careful out there, man. They may move you to Utah now.

Yeah, really. We've already been selling stuff out of state left and right, so it's time for me to get out of state.