City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Here. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see. Thank you. Yeah. All right. All right. um um Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

All right, we will call this regular scheduled city council meeting on July 13th, 2026 to order at 6 p.m. Roll call.

Mayor Turney.

Here.

April Arand. Here. Jane Ridgeway. Here. Alex Esquivel.

Here.

Dr. Pam Sardo. Here. Gary Chappell.

Here.

All right, if you'll stand for the pledge of allegiance.

United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We have a guest here from the church. Do you want to do the invocation? Yes. Thank you.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we come before you tonight with grateful hearts, thankful for the privilege of gathering and for the city of Josephine this council serves. We thank you for the mayor, city council members, and the dedicated staff who pour their time and energy into making this city a better place to live. As this meeting begins, we pray for the outpouring of your Holy Spirit and your wisdom. Your word reminds us in James 1.5 that if any of us lacks wisdom, we should ask and you give it generously. Grant these leaders the discernment needed to navigate complex issues on tonight's agenda. We also pray for our spirit of unity and mutual respect. Even when there are differences of opinion, let the conversations be marked by humility and a shared commitment to the common good. We also let the residents of Josephine protect these local communities, establish and bless good local businesses, and grant safety and encouragement to first responders and others who sacrificially serve. We commit this meeting entirely into your hands and ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Amen. Amen.

Before we move forward, I've got something I'd like to speak on. The 4th of July event. I don't know if any of the residents or anybody was here or not, but I myself and probably on behalf of council, All the staff here, I know all staff's not here, but if you would stand up. Everybody that is staff of Josephine. I just want to say that it's usually a big event, as our new fire chief has been finding out. And this year was bigger than even last year. There was just so many people and it just ran so smoothly. Just excellent job. Excellent job on the fire department, police department, public works, administration, just everybody because I've seen pretty much every employee there. So I just want to say thank y'all and a great job. Well done. And before we get to the first item, Lisa's going to Go to the next. We have a recognition that she's going to do.

Yes, sir. Tonight, Mayor, we'd like to take a few moments to recognize several employees whose quick thinking, teamwork and compassion made a tremendous difference during a recent medical emergency involving one of our Public Works employees. With his permission, Kyle has allowed me to kind of tell his story. While working in the field, Kyle experienced a medical emergency and lost consciousness. Fortunately, Cameron, who was driving by in a public works truck, noticed that Kyle had slumped over and stopped to assist. At the same time, Rowdy, who was mowing nearby, saw what was happening and quickly joined in to help. Thomas was notified and responded immediately. Kyle was transported to the fire department where they provided care and Then they transported him to a hospital for further treatment. Kyle wanted to express his sincere appreciation to Garrett and the entire public works team and fire department for their quick action. He said the doctor said there could have been a very difficult, different outcome had they not responded so quickly. So we just wanted to take a moment to recognize that We're more than just coworkers here. We're a team that looks out for one another. We're incredibly grateful for Cameron, Rowdy, Thomas, our fire department personnel, Garrett, all the public works team, and just thank them for their professionalism, their teamwork, and to tell Kyle that we are very glad he's still with us and doing well.

You all want to come in here? And then we got some of them hiding in the back that won't come up.

It was a bad situation, but it had the best possible outcome.

Yeah, I'll just say that, you know, having that fire department over there, and my wife burned herself, and we took her up there, and it's just amazing, you know, to have right here, and just the staff, even some of them that are volunteers, it's just, you know, it's a huge asset to the city, so just thank y'all so much for everything you do. All right, now we will move on to, we'll do the consent agenda first, Pam, and then we'll mix and do it.

Do you wanna do citizen comments we have?

Oh yeah, citizens comment, yeah, my bad. But we'll do that one in front of those two items I'm gonna move. All right, do we have any cards?

Yes, sir. Brad Allfinger.

You sure that's your name? State your name and address.

I got to make sure this is on. I've gotten in trouble for that before. It's on, right?

Yeah, but we can't hear you, though.

I'm Brad Allfinger, 1410 Harvest Lane. I want to talk about the High Meadows Drainage System. It's a city-approved above-ground system that's worked most of the time. The times it doesn't is pretty bad. It seems like in phase two, three, and four, we're doing pretty good, but that's small water coming down. There's places in one that is city-approved easements that takes the water back to the ditch that runs along the north end side there's a culvert just short of the stop sign going up harvest if you stop get out of your car this big where it's eroded for green slimy water you look down that easement going towards the back same thing several places it's eroded it needs cleaning out it can't drain to where it's supposed to Then you go down the street next to one lot up from mine. I think everybody knows where I live. Same thing, culverts come under the street, it goes into the drainage ditch, that's the city drainage easement, and it's filled up with dirt. Water spreads out, it never makes it to the ditch out back. And then the very corner one that goes to an angle, that takes another four or five culverts worth back to the back. It's filled up with dirt. So they never drain. It just spreads the water out. That's a pretty easy fix, I would think. I'm not a dirt person for a better term. Jason would know better. But those need to be cleaned out so it'll drain. When you do that, it's going to add water to the ditch that we've always been worried about. Dunaway did a study on it. It's not sufficient. The city couldn't afford to fix it back then. I think Eddie was talking about a retention pond down by 640. Couldn't afford it. Kimberly Horn did a study. I'm not sure what we paid, 50 grand for the study, and it was three different areas of the city. That was voted to get funded last summer. we're no longer with Kimberley Horn. So we're back at ground zero. This picture here was from six years ago. And that's the Mull's back porch. And that water is somewhere around 350 foot outside of the drainage easement. This happened when we had about a week's worth of rain. It was not a 25 year, 50 year, 100 year flood. And I think they use a 100 year flood for drainage bars. I'm not sure that's what I had to use. I built a house out in East Texas. But that happened when the culverts that go under 640 went underwater. And when they lose their siphon, in fact, they don't carry water. The only thing that saved that from coming up in houses is it went over 640. So that's about 10, 11 foot deep right there, what you're looking at. Do it about 30 miles an hour to the east. There has been absolutely zero improvements from there. We've moved the ditch around. It looks better once a year. First two-inch rain, it erodes again. That's what dirt does. But the only difference there is they've repaved 640, so that water would get at least two inches deeper. That puts it in houses. We're on the third engineering company to look at this. At some point, we need to pull the trigger and fix a failed system. It is failed. There's been nobody to deny that. That's about all I got.

All right.

Thank you.

Yep. David Scott.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

Please state, just before you start, please state your name. That's where I'm going next.

My name's Dave Scott. My parents live here in Josephine. I'm a retired 30-year career police sergeant. Based on that information, I prefer to keep the address relevant, confidential, but it is on the card for city's review if need be. Like I said, I'm a retired police sergeant. I'm here to speak on behalf of my parents who live here in Josephine. Please delay until 2027 or deny the professional services agreement with Miles Consulting for Hunt County Municipal District 4. A municipality should avoid entering a developer agreement drafted by a law firm that was referred to multiple times in a temporary restraining order for the nearby Double R Mudd 2A authored by the Texas Attorney General. Also, my understanding is that a court hearing is scheduled for mid-November. I'm not a lawyer, but in my opinion, this MUD 4 development agreement may unintentionally create legal and risk management concerns for Josephine. In February 2025, the Collin County Engineering Department wrote a letter stating that there were missing documents and mentioned a deficient and incomplete plat application. Several months ago, the Hunt County Commissioner's Court attorney took 40 minutes to verbalize all the concerns and deficiencies and then put, excuse me, and then the Hunt County Commissioner's Court unanimously denied approval of Double R Mudd 2A, it's public record. The best way to prevent problems in Josephine is to deny or delay this Mudd 4 request from the associated law firm until at least after the end of the year. Secondly, the second topic, please deny the request to amend the zoning ordinance and zoning map of the City of Josephine from LR, local retail, to a planned development. Also, the property needs two entrances for safety, in my opinion, at least from a public safety first responder expedient response standpoint. Your current local retail zoning and ordinance requirement requiring two entrances is perfect. Don't make an exception. Plan development zoning in Texas is often created through highly customized ordinances and site plans, which can produce pages of special conditions, cross references and exhibits that are hard for staff, applicants and the general public to interpret and apply consistently. In contrast, A standard local retail site usually has a concise set of uniform regulations and specific list of uses. Specific minimum required distances, a building or structure must be from a property line or street, specific height and specific parking that are easier to administer. You know what you're getting when you get local retail. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Sue Silver.

Good evening. Tonight, I'm expressing opposition to the professional services agreement.

Ma'am, could you hear me?

My name is Sue Silver. I live in McKinney. Tonight, I'm expressing opposition to the professional services agreement with Miles Consulting. I have four questions concerning this agenda item. First, have you considered asking Miles to use a different law firm? Second, have you determined the real risk of moving forward tonight? As you know, Texas local government code requires careful adherence to statutory procedures and disclosures. Regarding such disclosures, Third, did Miles or the law firm transparently reveal all disclosures regarding the law firm's status with the Texas Attorney General's Office? And fourth, is this law firm simultaneously defending against an issue with the state involving developments? Please consider whether this agreement meets best practice standards and please vote no. Thank you each for serving on Josephine City Council and making wise decisions tonight. Thank you.

Last name Westberg.

Hello, my name is Trina Westberg. I live in East Plano and dear mayor, city council. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak tonight to you. Thank you. I do not live in Josephine city limits, but I travel on Josephine roads, including route six. I have friends over in this area and I do come to see them. And I do have an interest in the council meetings. Regarding agenda item 4.3 on the Miles Professional Services Agreement, please just say no. I'm asking you to please consider the questionable enforceability of the agreement. Earlier this year, the law firm in the development agreement was mentioned 11 times in Ken Paxton's filing for the double R MUD 2A development. Do you have confirmation that all these issues with this law firm have been resolved with the Attorney General? My understanding is that there will be a hearing later this year. Attorney General Ken Paxton has great concerns, and his office is pursuing issues related to a nearby development. Therefore, have you analyzed the similarities and differences, financing structures or compliance issues. Are you confident and positive that the provisions in this? Will the MUD 4 agreement not later be challenged, invalidated, or require costly renegotiation? What do the residents feel about the cost to the taxpayer of a possible renegotiation? Again, please just say no. And regarding item 4.13, on the agenda about changing from local retail to planned development instead of strict retail rules. For example, lot size, building uses, dictating where stores, restaurants, and consumer services can operate. If you allow rezoning to planned development, you now allow developers to negotiate regulations of a mixture of uses. Now the developer can bypass the strict standard zoning codes for a specific project and the potential for overcrowding. Enforcing planned developments is difficult when the project evolves over time. For example, planned development buildings can be expanded and parking may be redone, adding workload and cost compared to local retail with objective standards. Plan developments can contain words like encourage and minimize, rather than clear regulatory language using absolutes like the word shall. That is found in conventional local retail. I know you care about the safety of citizens, so please also require two entrances. And as written in Josephine ordinances, please do not approve this request. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

um first name is jose i'm sorry i can't pronounce the last one hello jose i live here in riverfield and josephine um mayor and council thank you for your service i have concern about two items first item please don't approve the zoning change from local retail to plan development for the milton street property the comprehensive plan set that zoning for a reason Local REITSA has a published use list and clear standards so neighbors know what they're getting. Plan development allows a broad mix of uses with far less predictability. Second, the MUD-4 development agreement. I'm asking you to vote no or at least delay until the issues between the law firm on this agreement and the Texas Attorney General are resolved. Questions I have, have the city analyzed the audit risk here? This same firm appears in the paperwork for RRMUD2A where Hunt Council Commissioner's Court, Collin County Engineering, and TCEQ have all raised concerns. Are we confident this won't complicate financing or infrastructure commitments down the road? I also ask why this agreement includes language about not boycotting Israel. why it references Sudan and Iran, and why it expires this December. That short time frame alone makes me question why Josephine would enter into this now. Thank you and God bless.

That was the last one.

That was the last card. Do we have anybody else who didn't fill out a card who would like to speak? All right. We will move on from the

citizens comments consent agenda council questions or discussion I just want to say I like the new reports but they were very nice whoever made those yes it is I'm sorry I didn't it's my voice I'm sorry I can get closer like this. How about that? Maybe we don't need to buy those new microphones after all if I just get close enough.

If not, we entertain a motion.

I move that we accept the minutes from the previous June meeting.

Second. The consent agenda?

Oh, yeah, the consent agenda and the minutes.

All right. We have a second. Now, all in favor, right hand. All in favor? I'm going to juggle the next two items around. So I'm going to move 4.2 and 4.10 to the top. We'll start with 4.2. This is discussed in possible direction to staff regarding a request from Heritage Baptist Church for a long-term rental agreement for the community center. And I believe y'all have somebody here.

Good evening. My name is Breck Wheelock. I'm one of the pastors at Heritage Baptist Church. We've been meeting at the Community Center for almost a year now. Our first Sunday was, I think, the first Sunday of August last year. And the Community Center, first of all, has just been a tremendous blessing to us. So just wanted to extend to you our thankfulness for that. As you can probably imagine, there's a lot of planning and prayer that goes into choosing where a church is going to be planted. Josephine was always on the top of our list. And the fact that we had several families who live in Josephine, just around the corner, also really kind of pointed us in that direction. The fact that Josephine is one of the fastest growing cities in North Texas, we felt like it needed a good gospel presence. But then when the community center was a viable option for us, we really felt like this is where God would have us. And, uh, this last year has been a good year for us. And so we're hoping that we can have maybe a long-term contract moving forward with the community center at the present time, we can only do, I think six months. Um, but you know, we're here for the long haul and we're, we're trying to grow and, uh, the building really is adequately serving our needs. In fact, just recently, about a month ago, you guys opened up one of the offices. And again, we just want to extend our thankfulness for that, because we're now able to use it for a nursery. And the kids love it. There's windows there. It brings sunshine in. So it's really been a delight for us. So that's the main request, is that we're hoping to have a long-term agreement, if possible. Coupled with that, one of the challenges that we've had over this last year is there are several periods of time where we can't use the community center, primarily because of voting. And I mean, we understand that, but it does make it difficult when we're trying to establish our presence here with Josephine. We're going to events, we're canvassing neighborhoods, social media, we're trying to let people know that we're here to serve them. And so that requires a consistency. And these last three months, there's going to be eight Sundays where the community center is not available. And it just makes it difficult when we're trying to get people to come. And it's like, we're there, and then we're not, and then we're there, and then we're not. So we were hoping maybe there could be a discussion that we might be able to have at some point of alternative options for those weeks. So those are our main requests.

Well, I'll just say, just so council is aware, there's no action required on this. It's optional to start. But. I'm not opposed to the church using it. I'm not opposed to anybody using it. I feel like it was built for the purpose of the citizens as a whole. For everybody to have the opportunity to use it, I don't think it was ever intended to be built and designed for long-term contracts. I feel like it's for events and... Baby showers, weddings, whatever, receptions. I just I don't feel like it's in the best interest for the citizens to enter into a long term contract because then no citizens can ever use it on those dates. And that was one of the big deals was we were looking forward to was the elections overrun the city hall. We wanted to get it out of our city hall because it disrupts staff tremendously. So that's how I perceive it and I'll open the floor to the council.

Thank you, Jason. I have a couple of questions. I know that the EMS ambulance service is currently parking at the original fire station. And certainly I defer to the new Chief Florentino. The past fire chief had suggested that the fire association keep, this was before the public safety building, keep the original fire station on Hubbard and rent it out to groups like Boy Scouts and things like that. I didn't know what the plan is.

um for opportunities like that because there's good space over there and i believe we've inherited that building is that correct public works is using it we're using it for storage uh public works is working out of it um so ambulances there yeah the ambulance is still there the ambulance houses over there um and i know they're storing you know water about they're adding to their storage

okay um thank you for that um also um i didn't know what is the permanent election location plan um i've seen elections in both buildings this building well the last one was a mis-scheduling hat on

they scheduled events over there and they weren't supposed to that is where elections are to be that is the permanent location is where we intended moving forward the last one that we had here was only because they had a schedule mishap and staff scheduled an event over there can i ask a question yeah

Is it a possibility that the voting machines could be in the old fire station? Because if there's other churches, and I believe Jerica said that there were other entities that used that on Sundays, that it's not just this church. Could we possibly set the fire station up in a...

It'd be hot or cold.

They don't have the facilities inside of it to actually keep that building cold.

It's just an open shop. It's not ADA.

Yeah, it's definitely not ADA.

It's not for the public, basically. I mean, you don't meet all the requirements.

Okay, then I guess my final question is this. I appreciated getting the details from Lisa in an email. There was a comment about using, and same thing with other groups that are nonprofit and the exercise groups and the Chamber of Commerce, that nonprofits could use it without a fee 12 times and is what I'm not sure of from based on the email is if they have been paying or if they have received 12 free uses per year from 25 to 26 I'm not sure if they went ahead and paid or if they got those 12 uses which are in the documentation okay would it be

Okay, so

as a community service, or trying to help in a reasonable manner, can they receive 12 free uses?

It's per month. It's one per month. One per month. It's 12 a year. OK. So however they want to use it. OK. I thought when we originally approved that, it was one per month. That's why we came up with 12. That's how we get to the 12. It was one free per month.

It's what I was thinking. The annual was 12 a year, essentially. So, like, for example, say a church, there was a catastrophe at another church. And they just kind of were told back to back that they could until they were building dominators or something. We could temporarily go out for a rest.

But that makes sense for circumstances, right? But I think that will obviously be at the mayor's decision for those specific things. I agree with the mayor on this one. That's my stance. I think we, I'm all for it 100%, but I think what we do for you, we're gonna have to do for other entities who decide to say, hey, after six months, they want to negotiate. And I think it just opens up a revolving door. I'm super, super grateful that you guys are here and you're using the facility. And, but, you know, I wish you all best as far as finding where you are going to plant your seed and grow. But I'm going to side with the mayor on this one.

I think on our end, as far as I know, we have always paid. We've never made use of the 12-month exception, and we don't plan to. We're happy to pay that $75 a month.

Yeah, and I don't think that's the ultimate issue. I think council as a whole, I think this is going to be an agenda item. This is going to need to be re-evaluated. We have a very high interest in it. We started out low on the cost, you know, to let the public know that it's here, to get the citizens to use it. We've had quite a few emails about it being locked in for months and months at a time. People want to use it. So council as a whole, you know, we'll sit down and discuss all those terms, and I think it needs to be...

So just for summary clarification, the elections can be up to three times a year. So that could absolutely be three, six, nine weeks totally out of circuit anyway.

Right. Correct.

For all the churches. No, for anything. Everybody for every use. Boy Scouts, whatever it is. So is there any kind of sunsetting opportunity to reconsider a little bit more time as a community service?

what do you mean i mean give them a little bit more time to try to find a new location they do want to be be here they do want to be here obviously they've said that i mean what do you mean more time we're not telling them they can't rent it we're just whenever we have the elect are you saying during the election time or no they're asking for a long-term contract solution correct longer than the six months right so i think i agree with the mayor this needs to be we need to have an agenda item and then we just need to iron out a lot of the wrinkles and you know maybe put forth something in writing and then so we can look at it and work with with whatever that you put forth and then go from there from right now we're kind of just if it's not something we can vote on we're just going to come up here and we're just going to be sure yay and nay yay and nothing's going to happen until y'all put something and it becomes an agenda item so that's something that i'll put on towards the end of this uh session will be for that

Well, I appreciate your time, and thank you that we can continue to use it as much as it's available. And on our end, again, we want to continue to have a good rapport with you. We consider ourselves another entity that can hopefully provide ministry and service to the community. And so if there's any ways we can help with that, let us know. We're here for that. Thank you.

We definitely appreciate it. Yeah, we appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

so we will as I stated we're bumping the other item which is four point ten this will be the discuss can consider Josephine municipal development district MDD planned expenditures for the current fiscal year 2025-2026 in the amount of $9,000. You want to go ahead and state, Lisa?

The last municipal development district, the board decided that $9,000 would be about the amount that they would need to finish out this fiscal year because they did not have a budget originally. They can't spend any of their money, so this would be a request for the city to fund that $9,000 to get them through to the end of the year, the fiscal year.

council that's just that's so kevin you want to come up that is the actual budget though for next year

Our city attorney is advising that the second part of that would be that the MDD would need to pay back the city There needs to be a formal agreement in place Because if the city is just giving money to the MDD to use it has to be based on constitutional Constitutionally sound purposes, right? So there needs to be formal findings with a formal agreement in place That says the city

like a 380 agreement would because it has to be for public purposes and it has to be to benefit the city thank you so i have a question does any of the this if what they want to spend does that have to get filtered through or push do we get notified on that or is that something that they can spend on their i'm sorry say again that Is there any of the money that if we do give them, do we have any oversight of that, that's what's being spent?

So you approve all of their expenditures?

And this is just kind of what they're asking for, because they can't dip into the money that's there until October. So they're asking for something to get them to the end of the year. But you're saying that we need basically an agreement.

you can do an ila in our local agreement on that specific issue of advancing the nine thousand dollars against the budget

Council?

I just have one question. How did you come up with the $9,000? What are you actually looking at spending that money on?

What we're looking at is to set up our own website. our own email system. We're also looking at marketing materials in terms of business cards, folders, and such drawn up to it. We are basically in the end, bottom line, we're the marketing arm for the city of Josephine to bring in commercial, retail, and professional businesses so that we can grow the tax base so that you can then use that money to help the citizens of Josephine, police department, fire department, servicing roads, purchasing land within the city, further development what about using the city's website piggyback well I have discussed that I was told they're absolutely going to do any changes to the website and to be friendly the website is very dull it is not particularly friendly to use and it has no marketing issues on it whatsoever there's no slogan there's no real uh logo that pops we're trying to sell the city we want somebody who sees it to recognize it maybe an expression go with it hey i remember that this is all about marketing and by having our own website we're free to have interaction with people we're free to interact with the council members through a public window under the Open Meetings Act, a bulletin board is called so we can talk to each other. It's a bulletin board within a certain ramifications that we have to keep. That way we can talk, like I said. That's why we're meeting monthly instead of quarterly. If you want to get things done, you can't do things on a quarterly basis. So the money we just figured up, that would cost the website, email system, and then marketing materials. We liked to hit the road running on October 1st. The budget, of course, budget year is October 125 to October 126. But it wasn't voted on until November 25 to create the NDD. We didn't have our first meeting until April 27th of this year. So there was no budget. Other money is being collected, but there's no budget for us to legally.

That's all understood. So I'm still hung up on the $9,000. You're going to have to get a little more details because opening up a website is a couple hundred dollars. And that usually comes with email. Sorry, go ahead.

Not necessarily. It comes with an email. Yes, it does.

I've got like 14 different companies that I work with all the time. Yeah, it does not cost that much. Are you guys planning on hiring someone to develop this website?

Do you have a company in mind that we could use?

I have multiple, but the question is, is you should be coming with a budget with real dollars behind it. You should be saying, Hey, I want to go with company XYZ. We've already priced this out. We're expecting $2,500.

We came up to ask if we can do it. We were told we couldn't advance that.

Most consulting companies will tell you exactly what you need to know on a free consult before you have to do anything with them.

Well, we don't necessarily have to use a consulting company. We can work it out ourselves.

Well, respectfully, I'm going to have to disagree with some of the things that you put up, especially when it comes about our website. It's a perspective, but there's a lot of city staff here that work tirelessly and improving that. And for you to come up here requesting and being a part of the city. The city's done pretty good for itself. It's been standing on itself very, very well. And we are bringing a lot of people coming in and out of here. So the city for itself can pretty much brand and market itself very well.

From a marketing perspective, the website does not market itself.

And there's so many other departments in the city are using that website that you just put down.

No, the website is for the city. Okay. No one denies that.

Is the NBD not part of the city?

It is part of the city government.

It's basically an arm off of the council.

It is, but it's also a political subdivision under Texas as well. We're trying to market. The website doesn't have market materials on it. We are looking at a separate website connected to the city website where we do the marketing.

how the city wants to present its websites all up to them hold for a second please yes sir so on our city website is there no way that they can provide that material to our designers and they could they could there's a page uh for economic development we could just convert that to mdd okay and then they could add and we can put tabs and i'm sure we could but it would be incorporated into our site

So that problem is solved.

If I could back up a step and thank you for your comments and thank you to Alex. The MDD can only do project-related work. And everything that is done has to have a project number. The sheet that's in front of you is the website's just one tiny fraction of that. The first thing we talked about was brochures so that we could get brochures and, yes, finesse the website and get it splashy after attending a statewide economic development conference and getting benchmarks from around the state of what other cities are doing around the state there was no intention of insulting anyone and i'm sorry it came out that way that's not the intent at all the goal is what you see listed here Melissa graciously put together a budget for 2027 which is at the end of our pocket for tonight this is a cut piece fraction sliver of that divided into what would be operations and brochures and marketing materials to start with out of that late page like 287 later in the agenda so it's it's there's also a request to have one or two members join the Texas Economic Development Council because statewide they have webinars which we could attend now they have conferences three a year where we can benchmark with Abilene Buddha Houston Dallas Princeton all these other places that's it was never in the conversation is not intended to upset anyone yeah so Pam my point to that is is what's that cost It's right here in the blue. No, it's not. Yeah.

That's what I was asking. Where, where is the, where's the, where they want this money? This is public funds that are being spent. Right. As our lawyer indicated have to be used for the betterment of the city. Exactly. Exactly. So all I'm asking for is that underlying data to support the $9,000 and areas as well. It's in that it's in three line items sitting.

If you look at the off of the six or seven columns, there's notes on the side. the handout that I gave you so for one or two people to join EDC for brochures to be created because everything has to be done around a project and before we can do a project such as trying to recruit a commercial entity the goal is to try to create brochures maybe business cards if we can jump onto the city website great but there's also because at the last MDD meeting Sarah Ross graciously told us that she represents the city and other cities also have their own MDD and economic development attorney which we might want to have review the brochures or review negotiated projects that we want commercial entities to engage with us So the project numbers are here, exactly as Melissa put together, only it's only a sliver of the cost to carry to October 1st.

I'm going to take the mic for a second. Council, you vote however you want. I'm going to advise you to hold off, and I think next council meeting, this needs to be an agenda item, and it needs to be discussed in executive session.

I have a question, though, in regards to this.

But y'all vote either way you want. That's what I'm going to state on the topic.

The legal fees, so I'm assuming you are going to want to get your own attorney?

We're looking into it, yes. Because right now, she only represents the city. She doesn't represent us as well.

I don't think that's fully true, is it?

So I've advised them that I would need a separate engagement agreement. In all of our other cities that we are city attorney, we also represent the EDCs and the MDDs. But it needs a separate engagement agreement. So I'm happy to do that. I represent other EDCs and others in my firm represent MDDs. but I just need a separate engagement agreement they are more than welcome to contract with my firm for those services or they can put out an RFP or however they want to handle that but as of right now without an engagement agreement I can't represent them yeah yeah just need an agreement so what's the I've got a question go ahead website don't we have an item on the agenda about website tonight 4.6

Because I thought Lisa said we were going to be redoing the website in the MDD meeting so it's only like Jerika

I did a, I did the outreach for the agendas a minute software. Okay. And due to the company, I knew numerous other cities have utilized the same company for the website. So they went ahead and just gave me a quote and gave me like a demo, if you will, of how it all worked and showed me all the other cities that did it. And it did save us about three grand a year. So I went ahead and put it on there. because we do utilize our IT company now to do our website. They use a third party. So it's kind of, when it comes to redesign, there was just more costs associated with doing with the third and the fourth party than having one own company. And this one allowed you to, each department head can change their own website and layout. So I could give whoever wants to be in charge of the MDD, if city was a staff was okay with it, they could design their layout and add things as they wanted. So that's why I put it on there. And I'll talk more about that when we get to it.

No but I mean we were talking about website redesign so it's like this is not a shock to me because.

No. Agenda.

Okay.

I agree with you. I think we need to table this because I can't come up with the numbers and

We haven't presented in numbers yet because it's on our agenda and how it breaks down our agenda for our next meeting next Monday.

Did I not just get told it was sitting in the side comments and notes and that's what they were wanting to do?

I'm so sorry this is getting escalated. That's not the intent. If there's a miscommunication, let's try to fix it. The MDD board at the last meeting did approve the numbers that are in front of you. If you're not happy with those numbers, we can try to get them, the board can try to get them broken down further into further detail. the mdd meets once a month they are supposed to meet next monday there was a hope that there could be some action tonight to carry back to mdd for next monday if we need to table it if it's the will of the council that's fine um i i'm i'm sorry this is getting escalated it's not

Well, too, I know initially it was kind of like a quarterly thing to begin with. Your legal fees are tremendously high because you're meeting so much. I just want to make sure that it's necessary.

What legal fees would that be if she doesn't represent D&D? If Sarah doesn't represent D&D, what fees are you talking about?

You've got $2,400, or somebody put $2,400 a month in here for legal fees. That's 10 hours of lawyer fees that you've got in here alone. So you're looking at over $9,000. You're looking at almost, what, $4,800 in legal fees just for the next two months? Because that's all you've got is August and September before you get your full budget.

That's correct, but we haven't exposed anything. We haven't used any legal fees at this point in time. I don't know where that number came from.

Well, that was dividing out looking at the brochure.

Looking at the city attorney's fees?

Yeah, looking at interlocal agreement and reviewing documents.

Yeah, but we don't have an interlocal agreement with the city to use her. Hold on.

Step back for a second.

I'm not stepping back.

You got 10 hours in here per month for a single meeting. Are you going to go sit in a meeting for 10 hours with them?

Not for 10 hours, no. But I have been to the last two meetings. I'm just, once they have decided that they don't know if they're going to engage me or not, I will not be attending for their meetings unless they've been engaged.

Understood. How many hours was that? It wasn't 10, I'm sure. So why does the budget have 10 hours?

Melissa, did you come up with the budget?

Yes, I could.

And I itemize the bills every month. And yes, it's been just under $6,000 that has been charged to the city for MDD in the last three months.

And I may be off, but I think so far the city paying for it is reasonable because we were just getting it started. So I don't think we'd have issue for everything to date being paid by the city as far as legal expenses. It's just moving forward would be the question.

yeah and then not to include uh staff you know so staff time being there i mean that's if the mdd is holding meetings then um that should be coming out of mdd's budget not oh we plan to work out an ila with the city for staff payment for their services yes we do and that's coming up on monday All right, so.

I make a motion to table this until next meeting.

We have a motion to table.

I'll second that.

All right, we have a second to table it. Voting signs in favor, raise your right hand. Voting signs opposed, raise your right hand. How many right?

Three against. Okay.

I got one quick question. The part, if I remember this properly from watching the video, the staff fees were in part of this reserve. Was that correct or not? I just got to get, I mean.

The budget that got handed to you, I did not create this. The budget that is in my presentation, $64,000 for staff resources was removed, yes.

All right, motion's passed. Next item.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you. See you later.

Okay, we'll get back on the regular scheduled track. just make me an abstain we had three and that's quite frankly we had three years it was the one two three yeah just you're welcome okay so now 4.1 this is the monthly engineering report from Dunaway Jacob's here.

Yes, good evening, Mayor Council. Jacob Dupuy with Dunaway. Starting with status of ongoing development for Josephine. I mentioned last month that Wildflower should be getting started pretty soon. Still waiting on them to actually mobilize with Earthwork. I know they closed on the property with all of their various land holdings kind of at the end of June. So probably looking to push out that construction start.

Is that Wildflower?

Yes, ma'am, Wildflower.

It's going like gangbusters.

Do they get going on it?

It's been going for two or three weeks.

Okay, good. Wasn't quite sure when they had started on it, but I knew they were going soon. Go to Hunt County.

Go to Hunt County.

That's good to hear, so they're moving on that one. For the, let me see here. On FM 1777 Retail Center and 610 East Cook Street, there was a P&Z meeting last Monday where the site plans were reviewed, and I was just speaking with Miguel. We're looking to get the 1777 Retail Center get their construction plans approved so that way we can get to the next step of setting up a pre-con and they can start construction and then similarly on 610 East Cook Street there was the drainage and detention pond in the back that's also been reviewed and approved so looking to get that finalized so that way they can get that installed and all of their outstanding construction can be completed on that project.

I thought they were out there trying to start to dig that.

Are they? I think so. Okay.

Have you heard otherwise? News to me, but we'll set up a pre-construction meeting after the fact.

My husband said, hey, it looks like they're digging the detention pond. I just took his word for it.

They were getting ready to mobilize contractors. They're anxious to get started. They're aware that they cannot get the businesses to open until the drainage design is addressed because we want to protect the welfare of the neighboring properties.

They're working on the sidewalk in the back. Right.

Okay.

all right projects in various stages of engineering design or construction both the wastewater plants are still moving along we had a meeting with the magnolia wastewater plant contractor probably about a couple weeks ago they're moving right on schedule with their completion for this year and they were discussing with us how to start phasing some of those improvements to come online how is that going to look so we were talking through some of that with them and then the um i believe i mentioned it last month the north texas meter vault improvements that project is complete it's operational we're looking for one final walk through with north texas representatives to get all that closed out and then um on the ground storage tank project we are wrapping up our design for that hoping to get with garrett pretty soon my ideal scenario is i'd like to come back next month with bids in hand for recommendation of award if everything aligns with advertising, getting good local representatives, contractors to put their effort forward. If we don't feel that that's kind of progressing that way, we'll come to September meeting and present at that time to hopefully get it awarded and get construction started on it. Any questions?

I have a couple little questions. Yes, ma'am. The LOMR map, I think that was your agenda item, wasn't it?

No, no, no.

Revision for flood insurance, is that?

I believe you're talking about 4.5?

I thought it was under you, but that's okay. Let me ask another way. When you're going to the North Wastewater Treatment Plant, are you going over there anytime soon?

We have representatives that go out there every day from our company.

Every day? Okay. What do I need to do to take a tour of it? I'd like to take a tour of it. Should I go with you, go with you? What do I need to do?

We can certainly put that on the schedule. We want to make sure, obviously, minimal overhead things being lifted around, cranes and kind of stuff like that.

I could wear a hard hat.

No, no, no. It's definitely not just the safety features. Or a motorcycle helmet. But yes, we want to make sure. Obviously, we're not putting you or anybody else in extreme danger, but not messing with anything kind of going on. So let me get with our people and get a timeline for what things are looking like for the next... month or so i'd appreciate that yeah okay and the ground storage is that one going to be on hubbard or somewhere else that one's going to be um just next to hubbard yes um right what's the county road that goes north and south 642 yes yeah okay yes ma'am all right thank you any other questions

all right thank you i'll make a motion to approve the monthly engineering report from dunaway second go ahead all right we have a second right hands in favor all in favor next item is 4.3 since we already did 4.2 this is uh discuss consider an act to approve a professional service agreement

between the city of josephine and miles consulting llc as related to development review costs for hunt county municipal district number four um lisa you want to start this one off yes mayor and council this is a first step agreement as far as passing through costs when items go through our our engineers or other reviews so this is to determine how we could work together with miles consulting and how we might move forward possibly providing water sewer services all that's going to need review by our experts so this agreement would allow us to pass through those consultant costs to the developer yeah so let's just say pass the agreement Yes. So two months ago, council, um, wanted to move forward, indicated to move forward with this. Um, and then last month it was postponed. Uh, we were missing a couple of people.

We had a council member or two out, I think. All right, council. So, um, I do have Jeff miles. Jeff is here this evening.

Uh, he wasn't able to be present at the last meeting, but he is here if you wanted to ask him questions specifically about the project.

I have a couple questions. That'd be great.

There you are. How are you today? Jeff Miles, offices in Flower Mound, Texas. What questions can I ask or answer?

I believe at a previous meeting, there was a city council meeting, there was a question about the neighboring properties and the fact, how are you going to get all your equipment in there? Do you have permission from all of the neighboring property owners at this time to get yourself down there without a helicopter?

Yeah, I think what you're referring to is actually bring a water line down to the property. And there's two property owners that have both, I've talked to about easements and they're willing to grant easements or buy, have me buy easements from them if they want to charge for them. But that's a normal development type thing that we do. So I don't see any problems with that.

And the second one has to do with some public comments. Is there an opportunity for you to use a different attorney?

There is. I mean, if the city attorney doesn't want to interface with that firm for whatever reason, I don't. Personally, the attorney drafted it. I don't think he's involved in any of that stuff. But if there's a conflict somewhere that you guys feel like it's conflict, I'll use a different attorney. Yeah. Again, my relationship is with the property owner. I'm working for the property owner. He's my client. They're my client. And so my job is to get these agreements finished or to the finish line.

Are you allowed to say who that is?

Yeah, it's Double R Land Company. They buy lots of land and invest in land across Texas and other states in the United States.

With the Horton family?

They are. They're the Horton family. They're not related to the home building group. Their father was because their father's deceased. So these are the sons and the grandsons and granddaughters.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Okay, Royce City pulled out.

They did.

They could not service you.

No, the story, they could service water. They could not service sewer. Okay, but you have your own sewer plant. Yeah, we were working through an agreement to actually have them service water and we got a sewer discharge permit and we got to the 11th hour and they said, we don't want to serve you water either. Um, we'll just release you from our CCN.

Okay. So how's your sewer plant going to work?

Sewer plant's been permitted by the TCEQ, so that permit's in place. We will build an onsite sewer plant that will serve the development, and then if there's any other developments in the area that want to go to that sewer plant, there will have to be further sewer discharge expansion permits granted by the TCEQ.

And then you'll run the sewer plants?

Yes, the utility district, municipal utility district will run the sewer plant.

Okay. The roads that you're going to build are only going to be the roads around the subdivision?

Yes, that's correct.

So not coming up this way, which is fine with me.

No, we're going to build roads that are on our traffic impact analysis that says these are the roads that we need. Well, we're going to have two that go down to Highway 66. And then we are going to possibly have to build the road, the county road on the west side, just up to through our property. I think it's 2656, County Road 2656. But we were going to stop it and not take any further up into Josephine.

Okay, so the water line will just run down the dirt from Magnolia?

It will. It will be offset in planning for the future road at some point in the future. When Hunt County gets around to it. Or the property owners when they develop those properties.

Well, that's on the Hunt County Transportation Plan.

It is.

That's on their plan to build the road.

Yeah. Gary?

Did you know that the data center is going to be going in right across the road from that property?

You know, I don't know exactly where the data center is.

Right across the road from your property.

Jacob, and you said they were in Cache, Water Spark Corporation?

There's another one over there near .

Okay. They're all over the place now.

Okay. I'm not familiar where they're at.

It's right across the road.

Well, there's a data center going in all over the place nowadays.

I just wondered if you were aware of it, because I would hate to approve something that 400 people are going to be sitting next to a data center.

Gary, you got a question?

I do. Go ahead. I'm assuming you've looked at the agreement.

I have, and just to make sure that the council understands, I work with dozens and dozens of law firms all the time um i don't have an objection with working with any law firm and my duty is to protect the city so regardless who who's on the other side and who's drafting something if i'm reviewing it i'm reviewing it in your best interest okay and you don't see any problems with this agreement well the way it's written today no i don't okay any other questions is there an answer as to why israel and sudan and iran are in there

Actually, I'll defer to the attorneys. I think there's some requirement of state law or some sort of law that requires those statutes to be in these type of agreements. I'm not an attorney.

That is correct. Correct.

But we haven't seen it in an agreement before. That's why it was kind of puzzling.

I think we have some agreements with those in there.

It does. It's been in other agreements.

Anything recently. Okay, maybe I just missed it.

All right. Council?

I'd like to move that we approve the professional services agreement with a different attorney on your side.

And I will second that.

okay so we have a motion to approve it with a different attorney with a second voting signs in favor for the motion just just for my clarity so they're gonna bring bring back the second the same agreement assuming another attorney

I'm assuming we're approving the agreement tonight and correct me if I'm wrong we're approving this agreement tonight as written with the current lawyer no that was not my motion I'm voting no then I need to change my vote yeah my motion is to yes it could be cut and paste exactly the same with a different attorney that doesn't have the questions right now that are currently out there alright so we have a motion a motion and a second right hand in favor

All right. Right hand. Not in favor. Okay. That motion does not pass. Do we have any other motions?

I'll make a motion to move forward with the current agreement as stated and to request that they go with a different attorney with any future agreements towards the city of Josephine.

I'll second that. I'm sorry. I don't understand. Could you clarify that for me so I understand?

Basically, we're approving what's in front of us tonight, and if they come to us with any other agreements, that they come from a different law firm.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

I'll second.

Okay. We have a second. Voting signs in favor?

I'll vote for that one.

All in favor?

Thank you.

Thank you, Gary.

All right, next item, 4.4, this is a renewal of a contract for collection of delinquent taxes between the city of Josephine and Abernathy. Oh, I forgot to ask a question. Roeder, Boyd, Lisa, are you going to?

It's a renewal.

It's a renewal?

It expired and it's time to renew.

Okay.

And Tracy Pounders is on vacation. That's why he's not here.

And we've used them for... We've used them for... We've used them for a while.

As long as... Prior to the other law firm...

Any objections or questions, counsel? I have a little one.

Okay, here you go. It was wonderful, wonderful good news to see that the delinquency rate last year was very low. I think it was only about five grand. What was the success rate by the company and the percent of the owed that was collected? Does anybody know?

I have a, he sends a quarterly.

Okay. So wonderful news that the delinquency is low. They get paid on percentage, not just a regular fee, which is great. The budget at the end of the meeting says that the delinquency is expected to increase to $20,000, which is not a surprise. So that's why I wanted to know the success rate. But if we can't answer that tonight, that's fine. Thank you, Patty. I appreciate that.

Any other questions?

No, sir. I'll make a motion to accept the contract for the collection of delinquent taxes with Abernathy, Roeder, Boyd, and Hewlett, P.C. McKinney, Texas. Second.

Voting signs in favor?

All in favor?

All right. Item 4.5. So we'll receive a short introduction from Schaumburger and Polk regarding a possible future

yes mayor i'll ask them to come up and introduce themselves this is our one of our newer engineering firms we haven't had the chance to formally work with them on a city project other than the grant that we're working with with the texas water development board but we after looking at their credentials we thought they might be a good fit for one of our drainage projects that we already have funded we have Funding, we anticipated we'd fund three. So I've invited them to talk about possibly bringing a proposal for the drainage project, including the one located off County Road 640 near the High Meadow neighborhood. So they're here to introduce themselves and talk about a possibility of a proposal.

I have a question real quick before we get started. Is this to fix the problem that Brad was here talking about earlier? Yes, ma'am. Okay, perfect.

Among others, too.

Good evening, council. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

Thank you. Yes.

I'm Jeremy White with Schomburg & Polk, and today I got with me Jeff Thomas. He's one of our project managers here with us. I myself am a licensed professional engineer here in the state of Texas, and I am over our local Terrell, Texas office as an office manager and vice president with the company. but uh what we want to do today is just give you a introduction to ourselves who we are uh what schomburg and polk is and then kind of dive into the drainage discussion uh where jeff will kind of take over and let you uh know our thoughts but sbi We've been around since 1937, so almost hitting 90 years here this next year. And we started in Beaumont, Texas. We have seven offices throughout the state with our newest in Waco. We have two here locally in Richardson and Terrell, Texas. Both Jeff and myself are out of our Terrell, Texas office. We are an employee-owned company, so we... um strive to make sure that everything that we do for our clients is to the best of our ability because we know it will directly affect you and affect us working for you we have 90 employees company-wide but out of those seven offices we kind of operate as a small um you know group of individuals and know to kind of address those small town needs. We have 37 licensed professional engineers, 10 engineers in training, 10 design techs, and two surveyors that are in our Richardson office. And we've designed over a thousand municipal projects since 1937 throughout the state of Texas. Our commitment to our clients is all based on our values. And that is what we call our star values, our service, trust, accountability, and respect. Service, our goal is that we are committed to meeting our clients' needs. Trust is building those strong relationships with council and city staff to make sure we have reliable partnerships moving forward. And that all comes down to being accountable, making sure we're delivering our projects to you on time and on budget. and keeping you up to speed of any changes or dynamics that are occurring as a project unfolds. And lastly, respecting both the stakeholders in the community and all the different people that are involved. Engineering services we provide, pretty much the general ones. We do transportation, drainage, which we'll talk about today, our program management, all the way from capital improvement projects, Water treatment, storage distribution, same on the wastewater treatment side. Our surveying, lidar and mapping, construction management. So when it's out in the field getting built, we make sure it's being done right into the specs that we've prepared. Tank inspections, rehabilitation. And lastly, we do some, a little bit of land and site development, but our main bread and butter or those first eight that I talked about. So about 95% of what we do is working for municipalities, where the remaining five is light and sand development. Local clients, that's kind of a map there of our local clients that we serve in the area. And currently, we want to extend that to Josephine and help serve you guys to the best of our abilities. Lastly, what I'll talk about is a little bit about myself. Good looking picture of me, I think. But 18 years, I've been in the civil engineering business. Worked both on the consulting and the public sector. Prior to coming to SPI about four years ago, I served as the assistant city engineer for the city of Rockwall. So I kind of have a kinship, I would say, to different city staff and understanding what they've been through, what they've had to manage. And I take that and kind of implement it with my staff. that I have there to make sure that they're meeting those needs that I had to worry about back in the day. But probably the biggest notable program that I worked on was a $85 million bond project for the city, which incorporated reconstructing several different roadways and also replacing any drainage, water, and sewer that were in those corridors. I am a licensed professional engineer and also a certified floodplain manager. I understand the ins and outs of what's needed when we're worried about FEMA regulations and everything else. And then just a couple notable big projects that we got going on right now that I'm over in our office. But I'll kind of pass off to Jeff to kind of introduce himself as well. And he'll go into the projects that we'll be talking about today. Yes.

Hello, thank you again for having us. My name is Jeff Thomas. I'm a professional engineer and a certified floodplain manager. I've got over 33 years experience in the consulting and public sectors of civil engineering. I have a very broad expertise. I've worked in a lot of different things just over the years in order to stay employed. Anyway, I have experience in design, construction, and project management for stormwater transportation and general civil type projects. But my specialty is hydrologic and hydraulic modeling and drainage facility design. I am a fighting Texas Aggie class of 1993. And I'll hold it against Jeremy that he didn't go there. Anyway, I'm a losses PE and a certified floodplain manager. and some of my notable projects that are similar to some of the ones we're going to be discussing this evening locally here in Dallas and Fort Worth, and then also for TxDOT in various areas in East Texas. And these look familiar, I'm sure. We saw a video version of the County Road 640 flooding. These were provided to us by city staff. And so we just wanted to have that in the presentation. And so you can kind of tell, you know, what the gentleman up here was talking about, the citizen was talking about regarding the undersized crossing and the backwater effects that it is causing upstream. There we go, okay. And as you guys know, about two years ago, Kimley Horn put together a conceptual drainage improvement study for four analyzed locations. These were locations identified by the city as known flooding issues. The first one, of course, is County Road 640 at an unnamed tributary of Sabine Creek. Second one is Hubbard Road at Sabine Creek. Then we had Milton Street on the tributary number eight of Sabine Creek. And then County Road 1003 which is near the Brushy Creek Tributary 15. And so these were the four that were analyzed in their conceptual study. And so a little bit more about that study. It was intended as a first step, of course. You always have to start somewhere. And it accomplished several things. It led to the creation of detailed hydrologic and hydrologic models for existing and proposed conditions for the four locations. There weren't any For most of those locations, there were no pre-existing models, so that's a big help. It also led to the development of the conceptual drainage improvement options for each location. And in order to lead to a recommendation, they created a decision matrix for each location, a cost estimate versus a level of flood relief for each option. And then they had a Recommended alternative and this is just a quick table that was in and the executive summary of that report So the next steps the next steps Are actually getting these improvements designed and constructed so that they you know Make the best use of your money and provide the most benefit for your citizens. So the next steps we recommend a phased approach to implementing these improvements and And basically phase one is gonna be taking the KHA study and updating the models. There has been some development that have gone in these watersheds and along the creeks. The study is almost two years old, just over two years old. And so the idea is that we're gonna determine which locations can be improved within the city's available budget. For those locations, we develop a 30% schematic design plan. And I'll go into that in just a second. Phase two is the detailed design stage of planned specifications and estimates for the drainage improvements. And phase three is just the bidding and advertisement for construction. And phase four is the actual construction. So phase one, task overview. Just real quick, we'd like to conduct a topo and boundary survey right-of-way surveys for the selected locations. The preliminary utility locations, we call it to us subsurface utility engineering level D, which is record-drawing research at a minimum. But with the toposurvey, we can easily get level C. And with some coordination with franchise utilities, we'll get a level B out of that, which is a horizontal location. So we can get pretty good on that. Again, like I said, update the H&H models. to reflect the present conditions. Again, a lot has happened in two years. We want to make sure that the recommended alternatives are going to perform their intended function. And if they don't, we're going to modify it. Develop 30% schematic design phase. And the purpose of that is to get a proposed footprint for the project. And one of the reasons you want that, because you can identify right-of-way or drainage easement needs. It also helps you get the environmental permitting process going. We've taken a look at this and it's our feeling that the nationwide permit is the best approach with the Army Corps of Engineers. These are linear transportation projects. And if you meet the conditions of that nationwide permit, it's generally a much more streamlined process versus the individual. And then other jurisdictional requirements. Collin County, these are county roads. We wanna work with the Collin County Engineering Department. We wanna make sure that the improvements that we design are to their standards and that they are in concurrence with our proposed improvements. And then constructability constraints. We want to look at construction phasing, traffic control. Are we looking at potential road closures and detours? What would those routes be? And how would public outreach be handled for that to let everybody know what's going on? We want to update and refine the opinion of probable construction costs for each alternative. Like I said, those OPCCs are two years old. We'd like to update the unit bid prices to reflect what the construction market costs are going to be when this project goes to construction. We also want to include drainage easement and our right of way acquisition costs permitting, that sort of thing. And then possible FEMA submittal needs for letters of map provision. This may come into play generally when you're dealing with anything that has a regulatory floodway. If you have any work inside that floodway, that will trigger the need for a CLOMA, a CLOMA, conditional letter of map review in the FEMA review process. I apologize. Okay. I think I just, oh, there it is. God dang it. Okay, sorry about that. I want to also develop a schedule and scope for a detailed design for these projects, and that would be the phase two. And then just real quick for the task overview for that, this is the usual suspects with a set of plans. We want to have a cold work plan and profile sheets, bridge layout and construction sheets. We also have drainage calculations, erosion control plans, standard details, final quantities, any sort of water and sanitary sewer relocations that need to be done. We can include that in the plan set and then curate specifications bidding documents to get these projects actually to construction. I put the three milestones at middles. The usual ones were 60, 90, and 100% just standard practice for projects I've worked on, but we can accelerate that if we need to. My guess would be we could eliminate possibly the 90% submittal just to kind of streamline schedule and get these things underway as soon as we can. Of course, we're going to coordinate with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to attain approval and meet the permit conditions. And then franchise utility coordination, of course, is very important. We want to make sure that the utilities are clear prior to construction. And then, again, the Columbus Middle and FEMA review coordination, if needed. Okay, we have approximate project schedule, and this is just assuming phase one is awarded in August. So we basically have about six months for the 30% engineering to develop the 30% schematic designs. And then we would proceed to a phase two, which would be a separate contract. And then that would be approximately seven months. And, of course, during that time, once you have an approved schematic, you can begin right-of-way and easement acquisition if it's necessary. Hopefully it wouldn't be. Phase three, of course, bidding advertisement and awarding the bid, and then phase four is construction. We have that timed out at about a year. So that's all I have. Jeremy, you want to?

Yes, so again, we appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about this today. We've had good discussions with staff on these projects in this area. I know that County Road 40 Seem to rise to the top there We know kind of looking through everything that there's a budget that's been set off of that original orange study So we think that there's opportunity to start, you know Biting away at that of course Over time prices, you know do naturally increase. So we have a good feeling that probably Um, two of those three projects, uh, will probably ultimately fit in the budget. That's kind of our gut feeling, uh, looking at it right now. Um, but, uh, if, uh, given the opportunity, uh, we'd be glad to, uh, work with, uh, city staff and, uh, uh, mayor and council with, uh, you guys, um, on this project, if there's any, um, insight or, um, history that you guys have or know about those sites, we'd love to hear it. Uh, may not be appropriate here at this time, eating everyone's schedule. But the more data that we can gather, the better of a solution we can provide moving forward. So if there are any specific questions, we'd be glad to answer that, whether it be on SBI or our initial observations of this project.

Council is directly for them, or questions for them directly, council?

Yeah, thank you, Jason. I submitted a couple of photos from June 12th. So the ones that you got before Brad mentioned were several years old. There was a concern and still is a concern about the properties. I don't know if you can, yeah, go to the next. Yeah, so I drove by there. So that is, there was one piece of land that had, no standing water visible but on the other photo just you know a few feet away there was which is in that corner of the neighborhood near the drainage pipe and then the next slide and i'm happy for you to have these because they're recent from june 12th so again where this is at the edge of the neighborhood was as soon as the rain had stopped on june 12th and that whole month we got a little bit less than four inches i believe um but It had been cleaned out before, and Brad mentioned that was better. The drainage pipe, have you been by there? It's big enough for me to get through it. But I guess it needs to be cleaned out. And the utilities, we do have a drawing. We do have some recent work that was done with the utilities. and some easement discussions so there might be some documents to save a little time and money that are fairly fresh several months old right from the neighborhood to provide to you that hopefully will streamline some things and same thing with the utilities is my understanding there's some recent documentation that can be provided to you so thank you you got a question here

I'm actually super excited to see this on the agenda. I'm a little concerned with the timeline. That seems really long, but I know construction's slow. But County Road 640 has been a pain ever since that subdivision got put in the way it got put in. I'm sure you guys have looked at the history of it. And I really want this resolved. So I'm super excited.

Sounds good. Sounds like all staff is on board to direct staff then to move forward. We just need a motion.

Maybe a motion would be best to direct staff to move forward in obtaining a proposal from SDI?

Yeah.

I'll make a motion to staff to move forward with a proposal from Schomburg and Polk Company Consulting Engineering Group for the future proposal of drainage project located on County Road 640, the northeast side of High Meadow neighborhood followed by, yeah. Yeah.

I'll second. Go ahead. All right.

Voting signs in favor? All in favor? Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. We really appreciate it.

We tied.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

All right. 4.6. This is a discuss and receive information regarding potential new agenda and minutes software options. The city's current agenda minutes software cost is approximately $7,420 annually and the current website cost is approximately $6,800 annually.

Jerica has been working tirelessly to get as much information as we can to try to make your experience better with the Agenda software. So I'm going to turn this over to her, but I just did want to thank her and recognize her for all the work she put into this.

Okay, I didn't want to go much further because I didn't know where council's direction was really going to be other than doing a demo with the agenda software and getting, I called some of the cities that utilize the software and got their feedback prior to moving forward any further. That's all I really wanted to do. The cost savings for the agenda and minutes is going to be depending on what council wants. So the option that I have on there is the agenda and minutes management is for the list price of $5,300, that first line. And then the live meeting manager, which is y'all's electronic voting. So we would have to have that one for the 1700. And then the media, the civic plus media interaction, video and streaming, that would basically make it where as we're going along in meetings, I would be bookmarking everything and timestamping it. So when we're on the YouTube and everything, anyone that's alongside could easily click on which agenda item and go not have to fast forward or anything like that it would do that in the minutes as well it would tell you this time stamp of when um the item was discussed and for how long so if you want that that's the um for year one it would be the 2500 year two would be 3400 and then the other options listed on there are considered like the bundle deal that they wanted to go ahead and give us an overview um Like we've kind of heard a little bit about the website. The website has to be up to ADA compliant by next, I think it's either April of, I believe it's April of 26, or 27, sorry. Where we're at now, we don't meet those requirements. So we're working on fixing those with the current website and everything. This one very simplifies it. It changes all the backgrounds for everyone to make them the ADA compliant, allows them to change the language to whichever language they would like. It automatically, with the doc access, if we purchase that one, it would change any of our forms automatically, we wouldn't have to translate anything. It would automatically post it as English and do whatever language on there. And then what that also does that I thought was neat is If you were searching for a certain item, so let's say we were talking about agendas and minutes software, and you search that, like currently in our search on our website, does it detail everything? It doesn't always show up with everything. This would scan documents. It would scan everything and show you all of the listings of where those items would be found, not just the one header. that may be listed one exactly there and then it does contains not just exact wording so I thought that was interesting for the doc access for the PDFs and then the audio I was another portion of the website accessibility that They added in there. I don't remember too much about that one. It's not fresh on me. But I can ask more about that and get that one. The mass notifications was something they just wanted to include because I told them we didn't really have something as far as like a mass notification. This does it as far as say like a water main breaks. I can go on it easily and do a map and just circle the whole road and automatically sends out notifications just to those customers. Our billing software has a notification. but it's not that advanced. I physically have to type in every address. And this one, the mass notification, it allows them to opt in or out and sign that waiver basically agreeing that we're allowed to do that. The only thing it would bypass is if it was an emergency standpoint where it was like a water boil or something, it would push those out even if they've opted out just for mass notifications. And that's really all I have on that. The website, if you want to... The local cities I contacted was the first one just to see it. Rowlett has one, uses the same software, and Royce City has one, and Greenville were the top three. This is kind of the layout that they have, the template that they utilize. There's a more advanced, all three of the cities pay for an advanced package. I did not pay, I did not, Include that in the quote. So if we wanted that, that's a little different. What that includes is, for example, the Facebook, all these customization is an additional fee. But this is the layout. Everything looks like this for the most part. And here's Royce Cities just to see like you can kind of see the similarities just glancing. Customization is allowed within each department page, and the layout's super easy, user-friendly, it looked like, even getting the feedback from the staff. Each department head was able to do it, and then it has the information at the bottom, and then they would put the bottom portion to say the government website powered by Civic Plus. And then if there's any questions, or if y'all want to let me know if you want me to keep looking, Agenda Amendment Software's website, what's y'all's ideas and thoughts so I know where to go?

Thank you for the cities, because that was one of my questions, and thank you for putting this together. A lot of the cities that I'm seeing around Texas is actually incorporating more AI into their websites. Are they looking at that?

Yes, it does have that feature as well. I didn't go into too much detail on that. They did just let me know that that was part of their search capability and everything. They had advanced tutorials on, so say they're filling out, let's say, a reservation for the community center. I could pre-generate step-by-step instructions and they would know how to do it.

So this would actually help us out with city staff.

It's endless. You can add as many tablets as you want and then you can go in there and People won't have to call Public Works. I mean, you can have tabs and it works through Civic Plus for directing them to view works or whatever to, you know, if they got an issue or something. But they're all, I mean, you can add the tabs. You can do whatever you want. It's however much you want to pay.

I have a question on the minutes part of it. Yeah. Will it be like Diligent is? It just repeats the agenda? Or will it actually capture some of the conversation that goes on as minutes?

So I can show you what I have here is actually a quick, I'm not going to play the full video, but I just want to show you a snippet, or let me see if I can explain it. If it doesn't make sense, I'll play it. We can set up pre-templates when we're doing the minutes. So example, what's iMotion? We pretty much, that's the same thing, right? Plug in the agenda item, unless you'll make an exception. Those will be pre-generated, so I can be assisting Patty by doing that during the meeting. And then I can change it.

Okay.

So say if without the law firm or with, like, for example, that one, I could easily type that in and you would see that in the motion. It wouldn't stay the same anymore. But there is templates available for all different types. We can customize that on staff. Okay. And then if y'all wanted to say you don't like the way something is laid out, there's a little bit more customization and user-friendly on the staff side of it.

But it still integrates with YouTube? Or YouTube will still be, it won't replace YouTube, right?

No, it would not. They do have their own streaming. And that may have been what the audio eye is. I don't remember exactly. But we can keep, they did say we can keep our same software that we want. And that would still allow us to bookmark it and everything. Interesting. Patty was saying maybe that it was possible that it wouldn't timestamp if we didn't use their video. So I'll write that down and I'll follow up to be sure.

Okay. I mean, I think citizens are used to using YouTube right now. I didn't know if that would be better or worse for them. I'll confirm it. Which is kind of a question.

Rowlett has both features.

They do what?

Both features. both features yeah and they do you know if do they collaborate with the video software they have i'm not how it works but you can you can view it either way okay you don't you don't have you can go to the youtube but um they've they've kind of streamlined the civics plus because it's much better but they can do both and streamline them i think i guess my question on the um

whatever it's called, live meeting manager. Is it where, like a Zoom, if a citizen wanted to ask a question at a certain time or not?

It's still YouTube, so no, ma'am.

Pardon?

It's still YouTube, so no, ma'am.

Thank you, Joe. Jerrica, what companies did you look into besides Civic Plus? Any at all?

Yes, there was two other ones.

I looked at clerk minutes, eScribe, and audio codes, meeting insights. Of course, I'm not an expert at this.

eScribe was one of the ones I did look at. We actually got at, it was either at a Tyler Technologies conference, I met with them and everything, and their capabilities that I, this is my personal opinion, I just didn't feel like it did as much for the price that you're getting versus, for example, this software. I can look at other ones and at least show quotes if you want to if council wants to see other quotes I can do that too if you want me to look at other agenda ones I just did a deep dive on the how the voting portion worked and how the minutes that was mainly in the agenda building and less than 50,000 we don't have to bid anyway right it's not required does it allow multiple person how many is that correct am I right okay

How many access people can there be on this one? You know, some limit to like 10 meetings, 10 people. I just didn't know if there was an access limit.

Are you referring to like how many boards and commissions I can set up? There's zero. You're unlimited. So for this diligent that we currently have, I can only have, we're maxed out right now. I cannot add any more boards or commissions. Civic Plus is unlimited.

Unlimited.

And no additional fee after we get to a certain amount. It's, you get 400, 4,000 right when you start.

then if council wanted to upgrade in the future you could go to the streamline like the touch screen voting and you know you'd pay for that in the future i mean you could really make an advance through this system it's way more it has all that and it comes with it it's i don't know about touch screen yeah it's not you're not going to get the touch screen stuff for this this cost oh that's what i was like that would be more money we're not going to do that

you can request to speak so instead of like like you could dictate everything for the current software with those prices yeah and then it would like bullet point it like it was well if your mics are tied to it you can shut the mics off

Okay, so I mean, I'm saying you can you can turn that mic off.

So I have a couple questions. And then I'm done. So So thank you again, like Gary said, for all this work. It's helpful. The other question I have is, was this going to be the minutes like you said, or will this be a total revamp of the website? Right? That's what you're

These are two totally different things. I have a quote, I have a bundle right now with the agenda and minutes, the doc access and the website. But those prices individually, they may not be the exact same if we didn't do everything. They may, you know, because it's a bundle deal. But those are both separate.

So the $28,000 with a savings discount of six, the subscription bundled and the implementation services, what's the difference?

From what we're paying? So currently, is that what you're asking? What we're paying? The agenda software is almost 7,500 that we're paying right now. This one, if you, depends on which features, but you're looking at seven. And then if you add that integration, the streaming one, what they're meeting, it's the additional 3,500. So that's just for the agenda software. And then the website is about 6,800 is what we pay now. The website they're looking at charging us is a little under four. okay overall we're saving 67.98 if we went this route yeah that's what it looks like on the first year the second year is gonna be more right the second year there is a smaller increase but you're not paying the implementation right so it'll actually be cheaper year two because we're not yes yeah so it could be from like 18 to 20 maybe i mean we can't predict but i guess estimate it would go to about um Yeah, it would go from 28 to 18. And then with those two softwares, we're currently paying about almost 14, 15.

And you mentioned, if I heard you right, you mentioned that boards could be included. So planning and zoning would be included. MDD would be included.

Board of adjustment.

Anything else that would come up?

Every department that we want to create or tab could have the capability to be able to design.

For extra or for part of this bundle cost?

For a part of this cost.

Okay.

You're funny. There's an approval process too. I appreciate your humor. If you created something, it could have to run by X employee and then we improve it. It can be set up however we want. Thank you.

Council, any other questions? We have a motion.

Just going to get us a new website. Make a motion to go with civic plus.

I'll second it.

I want the new website to go with all the new agenda software.

Yeah, I want both too.

Yeah, okay, good.

Yeah, we need a direct staff first. You're going to direct them to bring us a formal agreement.

Oh, can we come look at it? That would be so cool. One last question. So does this mean that only one of you has to be at the meetings instead of two if a lot of this is automated?

No. Are you talking about Patty and I?

Yeah.

We would both still have to be here. Someone has to be controlling this and someone has to write it all down as we're doing it. It's too hard without both of us here.

I'm excited about the website enhancements where they don't have to call city staff for every single question and they can just answer it for them.

Yeah.

And then if you'll just direct us on if you want me to go with all of these items or if you want to include me out.

What was that about the data center case? You can't have AI without data centers.

Can't have it on. We need a motion. Do you make a motion to direct staff?

Can you repeat? Okay, I make a motion to direct staff to get more information on Civic Plus and bring back more information at the next meeting. Is that something?

And a proposal.

And a proposal.

I second. And agreement? Proposal and agreement?

Yeah.

More information you're referring to, like you want details? Because I have all like 300 slides after that that breaks out all of the software.

We want an agreement.

Yeah, we want an agreement.

I want to see 300 slides.

Can you clarify that in your motion?

okay can you clarify that i will clarify that we would like a proposal for civic plus bundle agreement for the next meeting second for everything all right voting sounds in favor all in favor thank you i was second yes absolutely okay i will get an agreement then for all of that

Alright, next item, 4.7. This is a monthly planning report from City Planner McGill.

Honorable Mayor, members of the City Council, McGill and Kline, for the record, it was a relatively quiet month. We saw the approval of two site plans for, as Jacob mentioned earlier, and we're looking to have those construction plans approved within the next week. We need retail, as has been the mandate from the community and the City Council, so we're trying to advance multiple projects. there is a uh plot that was submitted for approval for fm 1777 retail the purpose of this to create a two lots allow construction to to begin and also to get addressing from collin county a replat may be necessary down the road if easements change but otherwise we would be good to go And that plot is approved by the city engineer and the city secretary. So it's two lots. It wouldn't really need to come here before you. I'll touch on the zoning when that item comes up. I'm working to address the UDC comments that were received. As you know, we received several. There's a lot of EFFORT THAT WILL NEED TO GO INTO RESPONDING TO THEM, OR THAT IS GOING INTO RESPONDING TO THEM. NO UPDATES FROM UTD ON THEIR POLICY LAB PROJECT. I WILL BE ATTENDING TEXDOT'S PLANNING CONFERENCE STARTING WEDNESDAY IN SAN ANTONIO. IT'S THE FIRST TIME THEY DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS, SO IT WILL BE GOOD TO BECOME MORE FAMILIARIZED WITH THEIR PLANNING PROCESSES. The Collin County grant application was submitted. We expect to hear back from them sometime in October. We are going to continue discussions with UTA on the downtown plan. They found a new faculty person to, professor to lead the project. You will see that in the budget we submitted a request to fund that project. We believe it should be carried across to the finish line. No updates on regional planning, on economic development planning, not much really to report. The MDD is, as you see, working on a lot of initiatives, and any questions you might have, I'm happy to answer.

All right, Council.

Thank you, Jason. I have a couple questions. Yes. Regarding the fee schedule that you mentioned with UTD.

Yes.

We also have a fee schedule in tonight's agenda packet. Which fee schedule are you working on with UTD?

This is for development applications. We're still waiting on the faculty to refine the student's recommendations. If we need to come back and amend that fee schedule, it'll come later. I just don't want to put something on there that may change. So right now we're going under the current existing fee schedule, but this is only for development services. So zoning, plats, site plans, we're not messing with building permits or anything like that.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. That's very helpful. Regarding the EPS, That, you've been wonderful about explaining it all to us since April and gave us a staff report that was very detailed in April and for several months now there's been no report and now the semesters have changed, the students have changed. What's happening with the EPS policy lab and why are there no updates?

Oh, that project is standalone. Dr. Tony Love is leading that, our P&Z commissioner, he's leading that project. There will be a check-in sometime soon. I'm trying to recall the date, but I should have an update by next month prior to their final presentations. And that one was to talk about mud policy and police, public safety in muds. So that's not necessarily like a planning project per se.

Okay, so in April there was a statement about a list of research questions that were supposed to be finalized in May.

And it was in May.

I didn't remember. Okay. They were finalized. Yes. Okay.

It was just one, which was the public safety and mud issues that cities are facing across the state.

Okay. Thank you. Anyone else?

I'm good.

I'll entertain a motion to approve the...

I'll make a motion to accept the Planning and Development Monthly Council Report for June 2026.

I'll second.

I'll second. Voting signs in favor? All in favor? All right 4.8 receive report from our human resources manager regarding the review process for council appointed officials including city administrator fire chief and police chief and provide direction to staff.

Would y'all like me to read the report out loud or did y'all already see it?

I read it and I looked at the forms.

Well, just a little bit of background. So, y'all did request for me to review and provide information regarding the employee evaluation process for council appointed officials like the city administrator, city secretary, fire chief and police chief and present recommendations for evaluating on these processes. As a part of the review, I contacted several municipalities and compared evaluation processes too. Based on the research, no cities contacted indicated that the council conducts formal performance evaluations for a police chief or a fire chief. Several larger cities have city council conducting evaluations for the city secretary, not all. Nearly all the cities though have city council conducting the evaluation of the city administrator or city manager. with the process ranging from kind of informal to very formal. And also to note, many cities do conduct evaluations for their city attorney and municipal court judges, which we don't have any of that currently. So based on these findings, I suggest that we continue the annual performance evaluation for the city administrator and conducted by the city council in accordance to the agreement policy, which will be during the month of September. If you wanted to, also implementing annual evaluations for city attorneys or municipal judges, since we don't currently do anything of that nature. Continue to have the city council conduct annual performance evaluation, excuse me, continue to have the city administrator conduct annual performance evaluations for department heads and manager staff levels, including the police chief, fire chief, and the city secretary. If you wish to have input though on the evaluations for the police chief, fire chief, or city secretary, I recommend the council provide feedback as part of the annual evaluation while maintaining the city administrator as the official evaluator. As part of the process, it would be reasonable for the council to meet with the city secretary, the police chief, the fire chief, and the executive session as permitted by law as part of providing overall performance evaluation. This recommendation pertains only to the annual performance evaluations process and does not limit your city council authority to review the performance of or take action regarding its appointed officials. This council will retain the authority to appoint, discipline, or terminate the city administrator, city secretary, fire chief, and police chief in accordance with the city ordinance and applicable laws. I also included, I know you asked for blank ones, Mayor, of the different ones we've done. So I included kind of how we weren't doing any prior to 2023 when I got here. And I've kind of just took it a step further each year, trying to make them as objectable as possible each year. Any questions?

Thank you know this is really comprehensive and I really do appreciate it. I'm glad you're able to bring this out to us tonight. Looking at the recommendations, at least from my opinion, I think the way that the city is handling its day is appropriate. And then the City Council actually just looking at the city administrator position for annually and let the city administrator do the other evaluations is in my personal opinion is the way I'd like to see it continue.

I can agree with that. We'll start down on the end. You got questions?

Yeah, I just have a couple.

We'll start with Pam and then work our way.

Pam or Jane?

I mean Jane. Go ahead.

No, they confuse us a lot. You got the mic, Jane. I would just like to see the forms after they're reviewed. I mean, I don't want to sit in on a review. I would just like to review the forms. think it's uh i mean it's open record anyways just because they're officials i mean it's i know they're going to get evaluations but i still want to look at them yeah or we could do that individually i guess wouldn't have to be done in the council meeting yeah yeah i don't see an issue with that pam

Thank you. It looks like you're using a lot of ICMA's core principles and documents, and that's fine. And glad to see you're still with us today. Maybe you're not. A few more weeks. Okay. When I contacted Texas Municipal League, they indicated that some specific law enforcement and fire leadership performance reviews could be located probably with the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement and the Texas Commission of Fire Protection that might have specifics because although I appreciate ICMA leadership points on citizen service and inclusion and planning. There are situations where, around us, cities have had big, huge hiccups. One is Uvalde did a postmortem on their unfortunate situation and they reported the fitness of the officers was deficient. I've included a page on that. And it's not to say we're doing anything wrong. Please, I'm going to say that a hundred times. It's not to say we're doing anything wrong. My goal was simply to do a continuous quality improvement approach. because don't we want to be the best out there? Also, the Quinlan Fire Department was dismantled recently because of multiple situations. And again, it's not to say we're doing anything wrong, not to say anybody's done anything wrong, And for the administrators, you indicated you didn't find any benchmarks. I found Live Oak and I found Austin, which are included in here, which also allows city council to make comments for the city administrator. Again, I'm not saying anybody's done anything wrong. I'll say that over and over again. So I would love to see us continue to improve on the quality side. and improve and it should also help with maybe revealing some training needs, maybe reveal where some gaps can be filled as well as exemplifying excellence where it's there. So I do believe that police and fire are more specific than ICMA, in my opinion. ICMA may be okay for the administrator, but when a valid post-mortem was done, which is in your packet, and the Quinlan dismantling of the fire department, I think that we have some opportunities to be the best we can be. That's all.

Alright, cheers.

I partially agree and partially don't. So I think when it comes to evaluations, that needs to stay in-house. I think TECOL, they come up with their own mandates. I can't speak on behalf of the fire service, but they may come up with their own mandates of what peace officers are required to. And they push that through legislation. And so every agency has to meet those. And once they check that box, then they go about their business. But every agency is going to be different. And um just like every fire department is going to be different so they they've got to do what they can and have their own set of standards to attract or to have their own process to keep or retain people so i i think when it when it boils down to to this i think it just needs to be in-house as long as we're keeping up with a good standard um and that's my opinion i mean i agree with the mayor here in that regard

Gary. I'm going to echo exactly what Alex is saying just to address Pam's comment.

Do you have anything to add or do you want to speak? You're not quite that tall.

You're going to have to pull that mic down. I feel like if the city council had to do all of those things, first off, we would be here for a long time and we're already here a lot. This is not a job we get paid for. and I don't wanna get paid, so don't take that wrong. But like, let's say Joe, there's nobody named Joe in here, I don't think, but let's say- Fire chief. Then Jim, let's say Jim had a bad day, had a bad day at work and he did something that he wasn't supposed to do one time. He's worked here 10 years and he's never had a bad day and he does one thing wrong. Like, I don't think the council needs to know about all those things. I think his supervisor, you know, he's got 10 years of a great track record. As long as he didn't do anything that people did need to know about, like, I don't think that's something that I want to know. I don't want to find out that Jim, after one bad day, like,

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Council's not to be into day-to-day operations and all that. I understand what you're saying.

And I personally don't know how to do Miguel's job or Garrett's job or Joe's job or anybody else's. So unless I see something that is really bad, I would have to go to their supervisor. Like I...

don't know what their job is so therefore i wouldn't know how to grade them on that job you know all right well good point i like it i'm gonna i'm gonna speak on it and let council make a motion move forward but i see it as council yeah we ultimately picked fire chief picked police chief um but we'll be here a lot if we're doing all that and as a council as a whole we about we set policies and budgets and all those things for the staff to do the job and our when we evaluate the city administrator We're evaluating the city administrator, not on what she's doing. We're evaluating her on the entire city. So when we make those evaluations on the city administrator, then ultimately it falls on her. So when she's giving them the reviews, it's like, hey, this is what I expect because this is what council expects. So I think the way we've done it now until we become much bigger, it works great. I don't see the issue with it. That's my opinion.

I think, if I'm not mistaken, what Pam was bringing forward was just a little more detail on each one of these, like one more police-oriented, one more fire-oriented versus these.

I don't think that.

These are generic employee.

I don't think anybody would be opposed to that. I think that was the point.

You know, because these are just more generic HR corporate job descriptions. These are a little more in detail for the job itself.

I just want to be real straightforward here and just straight to the point. And this goes to council, citizens, and everybody. I don't think some people really understand how good josephine has it we have an outstanding staff you know that understands you know and we're in a real you look around a lot of other cities we're in a good we're in a good place you know um you can micromanage people to leave you know and that that's not where you want to go you don't want to you don't want to be micromanaged

I don't think that was the point.

I'm not saying that's his. I'm just putting that out there. This staff has, with the direction of the council, pushed the city in the direction that we've been in. I've been here 10 years and I've watched it. I've watched our staff. Patty, who does 50 jobs, that is not the city secretary's job. She helps me find my way around the website.

So does Jerrica.

And we just need to be careful what we're doing on the evaluation because they are public record. I mean, she mentioned fitness, but to my knowledge, Chief, I mean, does T. Cole have any mandate on a minimum standard for a peace officer to have like a specific level of fitness?

We have an issue with something we make. If we have concerns, there is a fit for duty that we can do.

What does TICO have?

The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement mandate a specific fitness standard for a peace officer to keep and maintain a peace officer license. No, they do not. There you go. And that standard is set where?

Within the department. Correct. There you go.

Where it should be.

Yeah.

And I assume that goes the same for the fire, correct? It's within the department. Like some police agencies are like, hey, beards and stuff are allowed, you know, tattoos or whatever. And there's still a few out there that it's not permitted, you know, within.

But we did do, there were internal reviews for the police officers. Since I've been here, I know the city wasn't doing them, but we were doing them internally before. But when this was created, we went to the way they were doing it.

Did you like yours better?

Ours was more police-oriented versus this-oriented. That was my point.

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

And I think there's nothing wrong, you know, departments having their say and saying, hey, this is not enough or we want to do this. And, you know, if they don't feel it's sufficient, then, you know, they can add to it. They can still do that one but also do the ones that they want.

And they should be empowered to be able to do it. Yeah, they have that authority. With, of course, HR's guidance.

Yeah.

but as far as you know doing their evaluations and all that and running their departments they they have that afford authority under the direction of the council so you know they they can do that i'm not saying y'all's are bad but yours are not for police or whatever so all right council i have one question when you're gone who's going to be doing hr

So we did hire the HR payroll specialist and so she'll be handling payroll portions of it to get by and then I do have, I do also have Melissa Stilwell who did it previously before me and she'll step in when needed and or Lisa first. Thank you.

So we hired a payroll specialist? An HR payroll specialist. Okay. Her title.

so and if i could summarize you guys correct me if i'm getting any of this wrong but what i'm hearing is that the direction is to allow hr to continue as as stated and empower the police chief and fire chief to provide input and they need to reevaluate anything on the evaluation form and yeah work with we work with hr correctness to develop something okay that's my understanding as well

Do we need a motion for that or just direction?

Direction works for me. I'm okay with that.

Make it so. There we go.

Thank you. All right, 4.9. This discuss and consider a change order for the Milton Street Road Improvement Project at a cost of $4,320 for asphalt overlay.

I'm going to ask, uh, Garrett and or Jacob to step in on that one so they can give you some more technical detail.

Okay.

Uh, yes. Good evening council, Jacob Dupuy with Dunaway. So specifically this is some extra work that was done right at the intersection with 5 47. Um, the original project that was put forth for bids. was 100% repairs from the sewer line project. And when we did the sewer line project, we stopped well outside of the work with 547 to stay outside of TxDOT's right of way. And we actually bored underneath 547. So we did not have any open excavation work in the TxDOT right-of-way leading up to 547 and simultaneously we knew TxDOT was coming through there working on 547 and we'd actually reached out to see if they would be finishing you know their aprons because sometimes they do sometimes they don't I think Barrett talked to them and ultimately it was decided to have our contractor finish it and actually have a much more drivable pathway getting up there because it wasn't quite rock but it wasn't as good as it should be with the remainder of the road so that's where this extra little bit of asphalt work kind of comes into play talking about on lane mm-hmm five four well yeah 547 right Main Street, just right here. It was just finishing up to the actual crown of basically 547, just right where the text dots were stopped with their overlay project.

I have a question. How deep did you bore? Because they're going to do, as they expand 547 in the future, is that going to have to be redone again?

It shouldn't have to be redone again. We're probably at least 10 feet deep. Oh, wow.

I'm impressed. Okay.

And what's the length of this that it's going to be? The width? No, the width is three inches.

They already did it. Yeah, they already finished it.

Oh, it's already done? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so we're not going to have people come and griping at us. What's the guarantee if it ends up like 69 Highway out there with the 100 degrees in 2021 when they all came and complained about the roads? Do you remember that? I just don't want to see that.

Everybody thinks it melted.

i have seen asphalt melt in front of my place out in celeste so it can't happen i i move we accept the report well since it's done and the and they amount we have a second i'll second all loading signs in favor

In favor? Motion passed.

Thank you.

I do have one question on that contract with that contractor. What was the maintenance and the warranty? It should be for two years.

Two years? It's their typical process.

Okay. See?

Warranty.

Okay.

So when is the maintenance, when is the contract in? July 1st of 2028? 28. Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Okay. So now we're at 4.11. We already did 4.10.

Let's go to a different meeting for that. Let's finish the rest.

this is discussed consider and provide direction to staff regarding preparation of the city of josephine's budget for fiscal year 2026-2027 i'm going to hold right here um we're going to take a recess for five minutes to take a bathroom break real quick everybody second that motion we need a motion Nobody wants to go?

Yes or no, I'm out of here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't hear you.

And then you just come out. This is a different world. This is a different world.

You good? What's that? good question

Well, I haven't built the park yet. On that one? No. No. Maybe the park is separate, like ongoing pledges. No. No. No.

The new track, no, I think I already wrote in my comments on the back, I put comments on the back here on all these, I said, you know, you can repair a track, but it's cheaper than you can buy a new one.

You already done? All right.

I didn't say that. He was in there. Lack my gavel. Never use it.

All right. We will reconvene after our five-minute recess.

Let's go. All right.

May we begin?

Draft budget. I hope everybody has had a chance to run through it. I'm very proud of the work that I put into it this year. We're just going to jump right off. First off, I want to thank all the employees, all the feedback, all the director levels that have helped me put this together. All employees, Josephine would not be Josephine without you guys. So, let's go back to the front and run through budget mission just being, I balance two priorities, protecting the taxpayers while making necessary investments in infrastructure, public services, and economic development. Next slide is a budget overview. If there are any questions on this slide, otherwise I'm going to move forward at a pretty fast speed. Next slide. Taxpayer impact statement, this is keeping the tax rate steady at .468097. That is unchanged from prior years. The only caveat is we do not have the certified tax totals from the county yet. We will not get those until the end of the month. My concern is voter approval rate could move upwards with no intent on expanding spending, but because values dipped. We will not know that until the end of the month, and I will bring that back to you guys as soon as I know. Next page. Just another, again, high-level budget. Again, this is just the basis. If there are any changes, we have time to do that. We can... lower the tax rate you cannot go up from the tax rate once you set it at the next meeting next page um this is just kind of ringing my own bell audit controls financial stewardship double a minus credit rating gofa gfoa distinguished budget award balanced budget every year very proud of all the statistics

Next page. Not to interrupt, but just when I think about when I got here and what Melissa has done with this budget over the last four or five years, it's absolutely amazing. And I don't want to interrupt her, too, but just breathe for a second. All this started probably three months ago. I mean, she works on it year round, but when she starts asking the budget questions, it really is a long process. And so every single employee she's talked to multiple times and everyone's had input. But I just have to say I'm just really impressed with the work that's gone in here this year. So go ahead now that you've had a chance to breathe.

This is a citywide revenue outlook. Our current year we are at almost 92% of revenue and we still have an entire quarter to go. So I'm very optimistic about the amount of money that's going to get added to the fund balance at the end of this year. And next slide. One of the big unknowns is the ESD and how that's going to affect the Mudd District. So again, it's just an unknown at this point. Next slide. is where every operating dollar goes this is just the general fund budget and it shows that typical cities are we are below on personnel services we are just at just over operating expense and below on capital outlay so we trend right along with the other cities Next slide. Benchmarking our growth. This is just showing the amount of employees that we have and the population that we serve in comparison to other fast growing Texas cities. Next slide. This is giving that more in-depth data. I looked at, me and Shannon both looked at community profiles, tried to get as much information back from other cities as we could. This is our projected utility billing accounts. We are already over. We right at or right over the projected for our current year. And next slide. And this is a human resources trends. This is all about Shannon and the work that she does and how much goes into onboarding, offboarding, everything that she does, the payroll process. Next slide. Love you, but next slide. This again is more statistics showing service orders increased almost 20% for year to date. Average fire calls are about right at 100 a month. Service calls for police have increased about 8%. And again, just showing more of the statistics for our employee workload. Next slide. We are, okay, so this one I need to talk about a little bit. Okay, this is our plan for the new year. Personnel changes are not across the board or excess. They are targeted tools for retention, recruitment, market competitive, and performance-based. Police and fire change, okay, that was on the next slide, I'm so sorry. personnel costs are allocated to the departments they serve. So the chart reflects the true cost of delivering services. And the requests, we have cut out four requests that we tried to accommodate, and we are going with 14 new employees in new positions. And that is to handle the workload. Next slide.

You got a question on that one?

I'll wait. Okay. This specific is about changing to an 8% TMRS rate. To focus on the recruitment efforts and retention reality, competing cities are already moving to stronger retirement benefits. Just a few of them in our local area, we've got Lucas, Lavon, Dallas PD and FD, Melissa, Cleburne and Canton. There are 56 cities that have moved to the 8%. It's something that smaller cities have the more ability to do because the budget, because it's a less budget to do it. Like if a large, a large employee, I know the city of Rockwall, I talked to them and they were very jealous that I was even presenting this because they wish they could present it. They cannot afford it. So this is an 8%, and on the next, oh, this also goes into some of the initiatives that we surveyed council about, licensing and certificate pay for police department laterals, top-out pay, and a new scale which incorporates a cost of living adjustment, and it supports the higher top-out scale to better align with competing police agencies. In fire department, it's going to be the same the 2.8% COLA, a 1.2% base increase. And we will be increasing the PTO, well we hope to increase the PTO, to 1.5% for all shift FD to align with cities. And all staff that is not PD or FD, 2.8% COLA as is aligned with the country. And between 2% and 5% merit increase based on performance evaluations. And on the next slide, Oh, a slide disappeared. Hmm. Okay. That's all right. I had a slide in there and I'm sure you saw it in your packet. It detailed what that 1% looks like over the life of an employee's career. all right and the next thing this is talking about a new software that tcp is actually here to present and ask if there are any questions specifically about there's that there's that slide okay okay okay All right. Josephine's workforce. Okay. And this is the TMRS plan study change. And this is something I will ask at the end of the presentation for advice on if we want to fully fund the unfunded portion in one year or if you want to spread that out across two years, which creates $285,000 extra in cash flow that we would not have to take. And this is the 1% investment that creates a lifetime and benefit over the lifetime of an employee's career. It's just a visual and the next slide. And this is where we're going to go into the TCP software. Uh, we'll talk about timekeeping, complex scheduling, FMLA tracking approvals, payroll integration with our current ERP software reporting and an audit trail. It would eliminate multiple current manual and disconnected methods, and it will reduce payroll errors, administrative workload and compliance risk. Just today, I was alerted to equity issues that are causing tension among employees. And that has to do with the multiple different ways that people are expected to clock in or clock out or record their time and how that affects everybody. And Sarah, if you have any questions about the software, Sarah is here to answer.

hi good evening my name is sarah salazar i'm a senior account executive for tcp software i've been with them for nine years so if you guys have any questions i've done everything from what it looks like for implementing a timekeeping solution i've been in support and implementation and now i'm here presenting to you guys so i love working for this company our old we're texas-based we're established built out of San Angelo, Texas. That's where I'm actually from. Uh, I actually live in Hazlet, which is why I'm here. I figured it'd be, we figured it'd be easier for me to come down versus bringing Courtney. Who's the original sales rep. Uh, that's been working with these ladies, um, and from Las Vegas. So here I am. So I'm ultimately the goal is to help streamline everything while still utilizing your current ERP system. Using Tyler tech we're not replacing them that's not the goal we're just here to do front end timekeeping and also scheduling for your first responders. As we see and have seen in the dfw area as your cities grow and need more staff, we need to be able to figure out how we're going to. front that, make sure that we're staying on top, making sure we're avoiding audits, making sure that we're not risking Department of Labor audits where it can potentially lead to fines for the city or even back pay for staff. Ultimately, the goal is to take care of your staff long term, whether it's now while we're still small, and moving into as we grow larger. So I'd love to answer any questions you guys might have.

I have two. What other cities do y'all work with and follow it up with? In those cities, are y'all integrated with police and fire in those cities as well or not?

Absolutely. So public is our bread and butter. That's where we sit, that's where we lay, that's where school districts, municipalities, counties, universities, you name it, that's what we do. We even have states that are working on getting onboarded. For instance, best one that I can think about, the best one we can think of, the best state in the United States, Texas, is actually working towards going through the process of purchasing Time Clock Plus to fund all of our state staff. So that's state troopers of everyone across the board. The state of Maryland, Oklahoma, they all use us. Cities, now I recently have been working with the city of San Benito County. DeWitt County down in Guero, Texas. They actually just reached out to me to add on another clock for their city. And so we have about 850 different I can't give too much information just because we are SOC 2 compliant and fed ramped. We have to be very cautious and cognizant of that on where we're reaching out and say, hey, call this person without actually doing a poll. Do we have your permission?

I'm more interested in the integration with police, fire, public works, administration.

Over 830 just in the state of Texas.

That all use the same in-house system? Yes, sir.

And it's a seamless integration between the two, so if the police department is using their system it builds its way into our time clock plus solution which also goes straight into the Tyler technology system so it's all seamless so it takes all this back and forth with different softwares having to remember okay so they could still use their same software and integrate it into yours no no no they don't Alladtech is our software, TCP software software, and it's built to integrate into Time Clock Plus. Time Clock Plus is the front end of timekeeping. Alladtech is going to be your scheduling portion to be able to handle, do we have enough people on shift for this route, for this timeframe? Or during 4th of July, we probably needed a lot more staff on hand. Do we have enough staff to fill those holes? That's how that functions. Um, and so they can clock in and out through a lab tech and that, that flows into time clock plus, which then in turn does that. But, um, we've had to learn how to incorporate our software, uh, because we're front end keeping we're standalone, um, with 800 plus different payroll softwares, because we don't want to cut it off at the neck and be like, okay, this is all we do. This is all we can do. And so these are our pieces of soft solution. to be able to help make a city function easier and more seamlessly, whether that's through your budget of labor or making sure that HR or payroll is getting everyone paid appropriately across the board.

I have a question. Yes, ma'am. I know you've worked with Melissa and Shannon specifically trying to find the best solution for our city. There's been some hesitation with public safety, and I understand it. Have you had other cities that had maybe hesitations, but then they decided it worked really well for public safety? Or have you had people say that it just does not work well on the public safety side?

More often than not, we do run into some hesitation with first responders because it's a change. It's human nature to not like change, and it's a change to everyday functionality. So utilizing a change that's going to help make life better as a whole is gonna take some time to incorporate. And I've run into that when I've done implementation and support as well. But it has been found over time, they're like, it ends up being adopted by these departments as well to be able to incorporate it into their cities, into their counties. Because you do find that overall, not only are we not having to resort to an Excel spreadsheet to make sure we have enough staff, or if say, Alex, decides to call in tomorrow, we need to be able to make sure we have staff there and it allows the system allows that alert to go out to the staff, whether that's by seniority or by whoever's able to based off of the amount of time that has been worked, the system can catalog all that and say, Hey, you know what? April and Gary are able to pick up the shift because they have enough time with preventing too much overtime. And so it ends up being easier for everyone all the way around. And then, you know, we can go watch our kids' soccer games and spend less time having to really focus on that and know that the city is taken care of as a whole.

So is this a key card and all that? Or what is the, is it like employee ID number? Or what are we looking at?

What you guys, what's selected right now is RFID card. That's your key card. Whatever existing cards can badge in and out. Okay. So that's all it is. Your existing card, you just log right in and out. Or say you forgot it that day, you can actually use your PIN.

Which usually you would go in the system. I'm sure you can put whatever pin and we could use and pull the ID number.

I always recommend the last four of the social because I'm not going to share my last four of social with you. And you're not going to share your last four of your social with me. So it's easier to maintain and ensure that your staff is not utilizing the system for buddy punching.

How does that work with on a shift where there might be some overlap with people coming off duty and people going on duty? Do you see like increases with overtime, you know, maybe that we wouldn't have had before because we weren't using that system?

You might see it because maybe someone wasn't accurately clocking in or clocking out appropriately as you see fit. Ultimately, the goal is to pay your employees if they are paid, right? And so if you do see a little bit of overlap, maybe that's just something that is going to need to be managed with the staff to make some adjustments. Hey, look, we're seeing that you're working a little bit more. What happened here? And there's reports that can be ran, okay, we're getting close to overtime. That can be ran at the end of the week. Every week you get it in your inbox, you're like, okay, we're approaching overtime. We need to really adjust this accordingly. And so ultimately, yes.

And I do want to give the chiefs an opportunity to, if they have concerns, I know sometimes it's just not real clean when someone is coming on duty and another person is going off duty and there may be a call or there may not be a call or maybe a report to finish up, things like that. So I want them to have an opportunity if they want to say something. I would like us to try this.

I want to see us move in this direction as a city. I mean,

What we're doing now is not working well. I'd like to see us try it, and I've asked the chiefs if they would give it a go, then we can reevaluate it at a later date.

She had me at no spreadsheets.

But I am also, I am also, you know, want to make sure that, you know, our chiefs are both under the you know for one they're on board but under the understanding that we realize if we do go this direction we may have hiccups or adjustments and you know but we want i want to know how y'all feel about it as well as as the city administrator said you know i know you haven't i don't know if you've used it or not or if you've used it but i i would like to hear your opinion Can you come up here for just a second? I do have another. I know you've been, and Jeff, we'll have you come up too, just real quick. What have you used in the past?

I don't know the name of it.

It don't have to be a name. I guess it don't have to be a name. But in your prior city, was it integrated with the city as well? How did it work?

That was the goal, to collect the hours. But we spent a lot of time making adjustments because legally they're allowed to shift swap. They're allowed to say, well, I'm going to leave and go to my daughter's soccer game room and come back while someone covers me. know there's a lot of those kind of things that go on yeah so and i know i i've used a lot of tech before but not as a time clock we would fill the schedule out and then the schedule would just import in it wasn't a punch in and punch out so but i have the first two program that does all this and it's but We only have one on duties right now, so I can pretty much do it.

But prior, prior, y'all's time was integrated with this with the city as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know in Rowlett it is too. You know, obviously there's that because like you say, the leave in or whatever. Yeah. But the other thing from my point of view is I don't want staff here working and not getting paid either. don't want overlaps you know because in the end that that leads to morale you know so but you know we want to make sure that if we're going to move forward something like this is it fits everybody to a certain degree and and we're all kind of on board so there's a great thing about the last check just to kind of i know it's a little bit worrisome to go to ask something different is that

your first responders have your own implementation set up. It's not in conjunction with the timekeeping. So Melissa and Karen will have their implementation time for the timekeeping piece, but y'all's rules and what y'all need This is completely different than what they need. And the only ones that are gonna know that and how that needs to function is you guys. And so you guys are the ones that would have, we always have our police chief and our fire chief on those calls with our lab tech implementation saying, okay, this is what our rotations look like. This is what we allow. This is what we don't allow. This is how this needs to function for the fire department. This is how this needs to function for the police department. Nobody is taking that over for them because we understand Their needs are going to be completely different than what the time clock plus need is. The only difference that you're going to see from here, because like you said, you've used a lot of tech before, is going to be there's an API integration in the background that sends everything over the time clock. So that way it makes it easy for Melissa and for Shannon to process payroll at the end of the day. Your scheduling is going to be completely separate from it. So it makes it easier for us.

Does it have the capability for paid time off that they can schedule in that and approvals and approvals, et cetera within that? Okay.

Well, uh, when I, when I was with the Highland park, we had over a hundred people within the public safety. We weren't, we weren't on time clocks ever at all there. Uh, I don't know how many total employees was with Highland park, but when I left there, we still didn't have the time clock. The supervisors handled everything. Now, when I was with Collin County, they tried it for about six months. It got to be very costly with comp time because where officers would come in early, they would clock in, and then at the end of their shifts, they would visit around and stuff like that, and then they would clock out. I know that personally myself, I got 200 hours of comp time very, very quickly when we went to the time clocks. And after six months, they pulled them out.

So you say they came in early and left basically late. So they're not working.

There was one deputy that He knew if he stayed at this certain minute of that time.

But that's controllable by our sergeants and lieutenants.

If they're there. But a lot of times.

Well, if they're not there, they can see it tomorrow, right? They can look at the time the next day. Correct.