City Council - Regular Meeting

meeting of the Henderson City Council to order at 6 PM on this 8th day of July 2025. I declare a quorum is present and declare that the notices have been legally posted uh according to the open uh meetings act. Would you please stand for our invocation led by Reverend Weatherton and then that will be followed by the pledges by uh Councilman Jackson. Amen. United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation

under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all the Texas flagism. Uh, Miss Jimmer, are there any uh, citizens comments turned in? Okay. All right. Okay, we'll move on to the uh consent agenda. Uh just jump right over that, didn't I? Uh what about uh council and staff? Do we have any announcements that we would like to make at this time? Okay. Hello everybody. So I'm actually from Vanzant County. This is something that we have already passed in our county. This is something that you can choose to do with us just so you kind of know where we're going. Um so you kind of get context of what we're going into. So, I know that y'all have some battery energy storage systems coming in as well as we do. And so, this is about safety. Oh, sorry, little kids. Out of breath. Okay, so 391 subregional planning commission. It's a part of local government code. So for those that don't know, this was actually put in by legislation because it was very evident that there were a lot of entities that were overreaching into our agricultural land into our rural areas. And

incidentally, that's what we're seeing a lot of with the solar, wind, and batteries. There are currently 3 million acres of projected land set to be consumed for solar, wind, and batteries. But they are targeting unincorporated rural areas because there are less restrictions. It's a lot harder to go into Dallas than it is into an unincorporated area. So this is the actual law that exists. It creates an entity that has power within itself. So this encourages and permits local government government units to form this this commission in reference to plan plans for future development including needs for agricultural land. It includes impacts to health and surroundings of for those of the families and for progression of the community. So basically what you're doing with this is you're just ensuring citizens safety. And we'll kind of go into that a bit further, but I want you to kind of understand the purpose of this is for the health, safety, and welfare and concerns of the citizens. It does not give you power over your neighbors. It doesn't take away power from you. This allows them to coordinate with state and federal agencies in reference to safety, welfare, and concerns of their the residents within. So when you look at this, um, it covers incidents. For instance, this is a very old community. It's a beautiful community. I went and ate cotton patch a minute ago. You'll have beautiful photos of your history in that building alone. You can tell by the history of the buildings. It's beautiful here. And there are a lot of historical values within your community that this allows you to protect those. And another, it allows you to get involved into the planning and the progression of that build so that every step of the way you can reassure those within your community that they are safe. So if they're concerned about this or that, you can say, "Oh, we have this from the company or we have this from them saying that we know that you're safe because XYZ." Okay. Safe from what? So we talk about solar, we talk about wind, we talk about batteries. They brought a they bring a

lot of tax revenue to the community. We know this millions of dollars of tax revenue assuming you don't give an abatement but even then there's a lot to that it we know that it generates a lot but most people don't consider what that may impact and even if you do get that revenue it's important that you ensure citizen safety that is your role everybody in this room wants our children safe I think that goes without saying so the reason I bring that up is because it is known that battery energy storage systems cause contamination there is proof in multiple entities from arsenic, lithium, barerium, and others being found in water sources and land and people even testing positive for lithium poisoning in their blood. So basically what you're saying is you're asking them, are you sure this is the right location next to this school? Because if you try to round up a whole bunch of third graders and get them out of a building because there's toxic gases in the air, how certain are you that you can do that quickly and safely? And these do require evacuation. These do require emergency shutdown when they go into offging. So, if you don't know what offging is, it's where one battery after the other catches fire and it releases up to seven different types of toxins between hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic. You get where I'm going? And you have to have a hazmat team show up and determine what the like how how which which chemical it is and how far to evacuate. On average, it's about two miles evacuation and an additional 10 miles of indoor lockdown at that point is what you're looking at. So you're looking at a minimum of a probably 15 mile range that you have to get people safe. So a lot of times we're seeing them next to schools. We're seeing next to water sources. For instance, in Vanzant County, they're building it right next to the Lacy Fork Reservoir which is for Cedar Creek Lake. So if Cedar Creek Lake is contaminated, then Henderson County would be impacted, for example, because part of that runs through your area. And if it does, it not only affects your water source, it affects your other recreational

incomings, your funds for those that go out on the recreation of the lake. They can't do that if it's toxic, right? And so these are proof of that. So you see this three miles of dead fish, you have dead walruses and seals. Livestock had a significant case of still births as did goats, sheeps and the like. Um, and for those that don't know, if you're a rancher or farmer, you know that still birth doesn't come from genetics. It comes from environmental, what they eat, what they breathe, what they drink. So this QR code over here on the right, this actually takes you to the lab reports. There is an entire website on lab reports that tells you the 20 plus cases of water they tested, the um protected slooh's testing. It tests the environment, the land, the people, all that is on that QR code from Monterey Bay and it gives you all their test reports that show you how dangerous these contaminants really are. And they're still uncovering just how dangerous. So again, your role would be to coordinate, for instance, with TCQ and say, "We're next to this water source. Is it really safe? Can you give me what the reports are? Because this water report says that this distance is impacted. Can you ensure my citizens are safe with this water impact?" So on top of that, you can form this with any entity. So usually can do two counties, two cities, or a city and a county, a special district, and a municipality. There are multiple areas that it can join this, but it's based off of the council of government regions which are established by the governor. So for instance, Henderson County is in the same COG region as Vanzant County and as Smith County, right? So you can join with any of those entities or sub entities to coordinate with state and federal and government agencies. And it does this, you can do this by going through TCQ, Texas Commission Environmental Quality, uh, Public Utility Commission. You can go through,

um, Federal Energy Reliance Commission, really any government or state agency. So, if they're a government body or if they are a state agency, you can coordinate with them. One of the things that we're sitting here thinking about right now is in their reports, they're talking about how, like, this is from the legislative report from this last session. They stated that battery energy storage systems attract lightning strikes. So a government agency that could potentially follow the line of lightning strike tornadoes and things like that would be the National Weather Service. They are a government agency. They can check the patterns of that area to say is this really in the right path for these x amount of batteries, right? So this allows them to do that by voting. You vote. So what you do is you you have what? So six members here. So four out of six. If you have majority vote and you say we want to ensure citizen safety, we want to vote to join. That's it. You sign an ordinance or a resolution if you're county or city or any other means. So you can do contracts, you can do things like that that are specifically stating that we agree that we want to work together to ensure citizen safety or however you create the bylaws. We have one started. You can review it. You can say is this the right bylaws? Do we want to add anything? Do we want to amend anything? It is then voted by those that have joined together to say this is what we agree to go under and then you move forward. So this can be in reference to public utility, land use, water supplies. And if you see here, it also says open items or open spaces and other items relating to the commission's general purposes. Um, this this is key to me because I feel like a lot of time we hear it's private property. It's private property. Well, yours end your rights end where mine begin. That is a common phrase when it comes to property rights. And here's the thing is I told you about those damages. Those don't just hurt those on that

property. They hurt anybody within that 15 mile radius. So, you can do what you want with your land. You want to build a chicken coupe. You want to build a barn. It's not going to hurt me outside your boundary. But if you're putting in toxic chemicals, which is what these are, these are known toxic chemicals. They cannot be left. I don't know if you've ever heard of a super fund site, but that term is known for a reason. A super fund, what that would look like is you have a private entity that decides to build toxic properties being a battery storage system on their property. It cannot be left to dilapitate. It cannot be left behind. It has to be cleaned up. Well, if they build under an LLC, limited liability, and they shut that down, who's now responsible for that cleanup? The land owner. To give you a context of price, like just going off of ours, a $100 million build on average is a $300 million decommissioning remediation, meaning that that land owner has to have a starting cleanup cost of $300 million. He likely can't afford it. So, the county or city is who that falls on. you now have to clean that up at your dime, which you probably can't afford $300 million either. So what happens is EPA being as nice as they are will step in and clean it up for you. But that's when they create your county or city as a super fund. Everybody in your county or city will have to pay that back, including you. If you live within this jurisdiction, you will be responsible for cleaning that up and you will be marked as a super fund site until it is deemed cleaned. So, if a toxic runaway does occur, that will be a much longer time and you still have to clean that up, too. And this is something I put on here because it says, "Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail." Human rights being safety, knowing that your generational land, your future generations, your future is safe. That's all we're saying. We're not telling them not to build. That's not the case. There's just a lot of things that are

moving in ways that aren't quite adding up. And to give you context of that, in Vanzant County, if you haven't seen it on the news yet, we are not allowing any batteries in our county. It has already been written. It is stopped. They are currently three going on four months behind on their project because we asked them to verify the state fire standards and codes. Nothing else. Fire standards and codes said, "Provide us proof that you have a sight specific emergency plan. provide us what your your XYZ is. You have a egress and a degress of X amount. It's in the fire codes, the NFPA 855. I'm sure your fire chief knows that one pretty well. And they couldn't provide it. They couldn't ensure our safety because they couldn't even provide us proof of the standards and codes. There are laws available to us, including the 391. Now, the 391 consists of a two-third ratio. So, it can be kind of altered a bit, but it's a two-3 ratio. So, if there's six here, you could have at least two elected officials and one citizen join this commission. Or you can increase that number. You could do four elected officials and two citizens. You just have to maintain a twoth3 ratio. So, for instance, it's currently my judge and my commissioner or myself for context. That may grow later, but that's the starting point. And you basically just get together and it's think of it as any other group, right? So you get together, you decide to join, and then you have your notetaker, your secretary, your treasurer, and then you have votes and agreements. Majority votes win, how you're moving forward. You determine how you're going to write letters and who they're going to go to. And you discuss, for instance, with TCQ, we have concerns next to the fact that it's next to this water shed for Cedar Creek. It's literally at 1900 feet, which is about a quarter mile. It's not very far whenever there's proof over three miles out of contamination, right? So right here, this is something I I did put in here. So when it says that you

can get a government unit on your commission, for instance, um if TCQ wants to put someone permanently on your commission to work handinhand with you consistently, they can loan them to your commission because you're a government body now in that commission. They can loan them to you and say, "You're now working for this commission. You're still being paid by us." So, it's on loan to you for at your discretion to use as you need, but it is a consent and it doesn't expire until you all agree that it expires. So, if they choose to join you, you have to have a mutual agreement that y'all no longer need that person. Right? This I wanted to make sure you had. This is actually Hill Country Energy Subregional Planning Commission. This website right here, this is Kindle and Kirk County. Now, I know y'all know what's going on in Kirk County right now. How could we not know, right? Incidentally, they are also fighting the lithium there. If you don't know, they have a 391 commission already formed between those two entities. This is their website. I I mentioned bylaws. You can go on there and view their bylaws. I mentioned the resolution and ordinances. You can go on there and look what that looks like for them. You can look at every document they've sent to ARCOT, every document they sent to TCQ. You can even see the meetings they had with TCQ. I've been in their meetings and I've even been in a direct meeting with the president of ARCOT for them. Okay, there's a lot of things that this can do. So, to give you context of successful cases with this, um you may or not may not remember there was a big incident way back when where they were building the Trans Texas corridor. It was going to go from Mexico all the way up to Canada. It was going to consume about 300,000 acres of Texas land. Right? Most people don't know why it didn't get built, but it was actually because of this commission. Um Trey Duhan, he's now the the judge of Waller County, but Trey Duhan formed this commission and coordinated with Tex and EPA. So Tex was building it and they were concerned

about the the destruction of the land, right? Makes sense. They reached out. EPA said, "Okay, Tex, come talk to us." Text dot said, "We don't want to do that." So now EPA is already involved. they're already coordinating with the agency. So Tex dot says or EPA goes, "Oh no, you're going to do that. We're pulled their lawyers in." Well, now Tex dot really did not want to work with EPA lawyers. The only reason the Trans Texas corridor got stopped was because of a 391 subregional planning commission because EPA stepped in. Here's the thing. When you pull an agency in, you don't you're not the expert. They are. if they step in and they see a problem with the water location, they see a problem with the, for instance, one of those things with aircot and PUC is the cyber security. Some of the sensors and the control systems have found to be found from listed national security entities. They are no a known national security threat. Going back to Vanzant County in ours, they found that they have cattle software, CATL. Cattle is a known national security threat according to congressional letters from 2023. On top of that, there is an unraveling evidence that there are multiple entities up to 90% that are using this software. There are multiple rooters articles. There's White House documents telling you that these are national security threats. So, you can coordinate with PUC in reference to their cyber security standards and say we have concerns about the software within. If they find something that is a violation of national security, they take over. Your commission is still involved. You're still given information every step of the way because they got activated because of your commission, but you are now involved in critical choices. Does that make sense? You're not waiting around to find out what may happen. You know every step of the way. your fire marshal, your fire chief, your police chief, whoever it may be, they

can be in involved every step of the way to know what is the emergency plan. How are we getting our people out? How are we keeping our children safe? That's all this does. It doesn't it doesn't technically give you to step in and say you can't do this. It says hold on, let's put up a let's put up a yield sign and say is this the right location? And let's ask the experts because a lot of times EPA, TCQ, even parks and wildlife, if there's an environmental thing going on with bald eagles for instance, those are all reactionary agencies. They handle aftermass situations. What this does is it gives you the ability to find out before something happens, if something may go wrong. Think of it like the the flood warning we all wanted Kerr to have, right? They should have had it. We should have known it was going to happen. You don't want to be those people that in the end you find out you could have done something and you didn't. And the thing is is I have a spreadsheet. There's been more than 58 fires in under five years. That is why there was so many bills and laws going through this. This is why Trump is pushing back. This is why you're seeing a lot of push back on renewable energy because you have a lot of actors. There's some good actors, but there's a lot more that saw the money and they ran with it and they took advantage of a situation that was made available to them because why wouldn't they? capitalist, right? You want the money. So, basically what I'm gonna summarize what you can do is you can vote to join Vanzant County. You're in our COG region. We're looking for people to join us to join us to ensure citizen safety, to ensure the future generation safety. We're not asking you to pay for anything. We're not asking you to go out of your way in crazy ways. We're going to ask you to work with us to work with those state and federal agencies to activate the subsection of the law so that we can create that entity that investigates and coordinates to ensure citizen safety and welfare. Any questions? I threw a lot at you

really quickly. I've never brought my kids with me, so I got a little nervous. Oh, he's playing Minecraft Legos, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for coming. And uh do you have I know Cersei has it has some information. He's not here tonight and I can provide you a lot more. I unfortunately have over 500 links and I'm not exaggerating in documents and honestly you can even call my judge and my commissioner directly. They were going to try to make it tonight. you know, engagements, meetings, but if you do want anything, we're happy to share with you what we have, including what we've already started. All right. Does anyone have any questions? All right. Okay. Thank you for coming and um our presentations. I'd just like to say this. I'd like to thank uh everyone that had a hand in our freedom fest that we just had from the planning to the workers uh before after all of that. Uh I just like to say thanks to everyone that had a hand in it. I know the chief was wet was sweat uh and whatever you did I just like to say thanks for that if you were there like to thank you for coming also any other comments or anything from the council. Okay. All right. We'll move on to our consent agenda. This consent agenda contains routine and non-controversial items. Are there any items that the uh council would like to move into regular session?

If not, could I get a motion? That motion was made by Miss Wares and second by Mrs. Martin. All in favor say I. Any opposed? Same sign. Agenda. Now we'll move on to our regular business session of our business meeting. Uh we'll move to item number three. Uh that will be consideration and possible action upon the second reading of ordinance 2025-05-01 reszoning the property from an R1 zone to a PD zone located on 900 East Mainberg. Good evening, mayor and councel. Yes. Uh these items um of course were presented to you last time. Um and of course this is the second reading uh regarding ordinance 202501 reszoning a property from an R1 zone to a PD zone located at 900 East Main Street. And I'm simply here to to answer any additional questions. Also have any questions? All right. Um, if there are no other

questions, can I get a I'd like to get a motion on that in a second. War that. Um, all in favor say I. Any oppose? same sign number three carries. All right, moving to item four. Consideration and possible action upon the second reading of ordin ordinance 2025-06-01 changing the zoning from low inensity indust industrial to institutional for an application submitted by the city of Henderson to amend the zoning map on property owned by the Henderson Soccer Association located on FM782. Bradenberg. Again, this is a a second reading. It's a procedural move on this particular piece of property to resone it to institutional. So, there any questions by Mr. Strong, second by Mr. Jackson. All in favor say I. Any oppose? Same sign. Okay, we'll move on to item number five. Consideration and possible action calling for the regularly scheduled council meeting to be held on August 7th, September 2nd, and September 9th, 2025.

All right. Could I get a motion five? Motion was made by Mrs. Martin, second by Mrs. Wararez. All in favor say I. Any oppose? Same sign. Item number five carries. Okay, moving to item six, consideration and possible action upon calling the two public hearings on the uh 2025, 2026 proposed budget and proposed tax rate to be held on August 19th and September 2nd, 2025. Could I get a motion? Motion was made by Ms. Warz, second by Mr. Jackson. All in favor say I. Any opposed? Same sign. Motion. Item number six carries. Okay, now we're down to our departmental reports. U. The council may deliberate and make any inquiries into any items listed in the departmental reports. Does anyone wish to do so at this time?

All right. Uh, we will hear hear from Miss Aaron this time. You don't want to hear he wouldn't do it. Well, I mean, are all these people here for me? I didn't realize I was that that popular. Yes. This is numbers. Numbers. Well, I had to walk my walk up. I was inspired by Cliff. It was gonna be um Aba doing money. Took all my money. No. Okay. Um now this is some of the reports what y'all see each month. just trying to kind of maybe explain them a little bit more. This is this report branded us for me from the water department. So, it shows what we're billing out for water and sewer and then our garbage collection. So, this is what shows up on the water bills. And I mean I I do kind of start hoping for dryness in the summertime just so we'll get a little bit more people sprinkling, you know, using their sprinklers, get a little bit more revenue, but I don't want any fires. I don't want it to be too dry to where there's fires. Um but usually in the summertime, our our money the revenues do pick up a little bit

because of the the watering of the yards. And so this this one's actually through May. June we had a little bit of rain so June's as big but we'll see how it does in July August. There's what that's what that is. Um next is our hotel hotel motel occupancy tax. These uh these hotels they self-report so they send their money monthly. Um this has definitely started you know picking up of course during COVID everything was shut down. So it took a couple years to get the uh tourism fund back up again. So you can see there the the different hotels and the amount of money that they um bring in that motel six they there for a while when I first came here they weren't um bringing in that much but they've done a lot of renovations and so they have picked up their revenues. So no tourism is thankful. This is the the main source of revenue is from the hotel motel tax for the tourism and then of course the civic center rentals brings in money for them. More numbers. This is bank reconciliations. This I do these monthly as well. Um this just shows the different funds and the accounts um that we have. probably 30 or so bank wrecks um each month. General fund being the the biggest biggest fund. just scroll down through have any questions just but that's what after doing the bank reconciliations for

all of them then the report that y'all see the investment report is where I get that those numbers from after after the bank reconciliations um investment summary. We start out showing kind of where we started on all the funds and then each month the changes. Of course, at the first of the year, um our property taxes don't start coming in our bigger amounts until towards end of December and then of course January and February. So you'll see in at the beginning um as far as the general fund um more negative amounts and then as we get into January, February more of our tax dollars starts coming start coming in then we get some positive numbers there. And so you can just kind of that's just showing all the different funds where we started and then the changes um each month positive or negative and then where we are right as of May. And the last one is just I thought interesting just to show you um sales tax because sales tax is you know one of our bigger the bigger amounts for the general fund. And you can see there, we we didn't know when, you know, when COVID happened in 2019, 2020, we really did not know what was going to happen. Um thought, oh, that the numbers most likely would go down just because of people having to stay in. But what happened was thankfully we did have like Walmart and Lowe's and people got out and started doing a lot of projects themselves. And I guess that's just continued. So

you can see like even from 2019 to the 2024 will be 2023 to 2024, you know, we're up to 9 million and hope hopefully this year from that last three months are good. We'll hit the the 9 million again. So I'm hopeful of that. This has changed more than like even the property taxes. Property taxes has stayed it hasn't really increased. We're kind of limited as to what we can the amount we can go up on property taxes. Of course, a lot of that depends on how much new new construction comes in. Um that's where we're hoping for headco bringing in some new businesses and when they do that that helps us with our property taxes. It also helps with you know sales tax. I'm hopeful for that the business part to start getting some businesses and just helping the city. Um, overall, I mean, I had a I had a uh I haven't seen the movie, but apparently Ben Affleck, it's called The Accountant. He's apparently an a an angry accountant, I guess, because he has like a machine gun on the front of it. Um, so tried putting my my face on there, but I thought that might be too scary. I didn't want to scare everybody. I'm not that mean. Yeah. private viewing. You can see I was trying to see if maybe she could take my abacus that I have in my office, replace that with the machine gun, but yeah, we weren't we weren't able to to accomplish that. And so, and I was even going to bring the abacus down and get some numbers from people and do some adding and but that's kind of complicated, too. I'm very thankful for calculators.

I'm just so so thrilled about this. I did even look up Three Stooges. There weren't that many Three Stooges stories about accounting. Uh maybe doing taxes. There was a little bit on doing income taxes, but um so yeah, I love numbers. Not everybody does, but I do love it when it balances and all of that. So, and now, yeah, we're we're we're big into the budget now for the for the 25 26 years. So, that's fun, too. Just meeting with all the department department heads. So, any questions on all these numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. Hopefully, you don't have Thank you. Thank you for the work that you do. Oh, sure. Hopefully, y'all don't have any nightmares, anything like that. All righty. Have any items for executive session? All righty. So, I guess this comes down to Melissa. Favorite time. All in favor say I. Motion carries. So we are adjourned at 6:39. Thank you all for coming.