City Council - Regular Meeting

It is Thursday, August 6, 2026. I now call the city council meeting to order. The time is 6 o'clock PM. I ask that you please silence your cell phones, and Councilmember Troy Smith will give the invocation, and then we'll conduct the Pledge of Allegiance.

All right. If you'll all bow your heads. Dear Heavenly Father, God, we just want to thank you, God, for this wonderful day and for just blessing all of us throughout the day as you've been. intertwined in our lives as we live it, God. We ask, God, tonight that as we discuss city business and as we try to move this city forward in a positive direction, God, that you would just be the author of that and that you would just place it upon our hearts to make good decisions for the city, for the citizens of this town. And we ask these in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Now the Texas flag.

Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.

Okay, mayor announcements. At this time, I would like to call on Chief Kidd, Keene Police Department, to give a citizen recognition.

Good evening, council. Tonight I have with me Mr. Cody Ratto, and the reason why he's here today is July 15th, We had a young person that was attempted kidnapping here in our city. So Cody's driving around 2280. He sees this young person basically being assaulted in a battle with this other person, and he's trying to pull her into another vehicle or pull her towards another vehicle. He stopped. He confronted the suspect. The suspect ended up taking off. Well, Cody followed him, getting more information. During that same time, other citizens were arriving, taking care of the female, getting her safe to the location. With Cody's information that he provided, investigators were able to identify the suspect quickly. We were able to make an arrest and charges, and we charged him with attempted kidnapping and with robbery charges. So that's why I wanted to recognize him with an award tonight. So this is a perfect example that the security for our city and the safety of our city is a shared responsibility. So thank you for that. So Cody. So tonight, The Keene Police Department proudly presents the Civilian Valor Award to Cody Rado for exceptional courage and decisive action in coming to the aid of a juvenile during an attempted abduction on July 15th, 2026. Your willingness to act without regard for your own safety helped protect a member of our community and reflects the highest level of citizenship, courage, and public service. On behalf of the city of Keene and the Keene Police Department, thank you for your bravery, your compassion, and your commitment to helping others. So thank you for that. Here's your award. Well, this isn't possible with just Cody. He has amazing support from his family. I was able to form a relationship with Destiny, and I wanted to provide something for the family also.

So it's because of y'all .

Thank you. Thank you, Cody, that was very, very brave. Okay, council now has a presentation to make. Mira, for all of your long hours after hours trying to get our city straightened out in our financial department, council is very grateful. We want you to have this and our appreciation for everything that you've done and all the time you've spent on it. Some of you didn't get paid for, but just know we appreciated it anyway.

Thank you so much. If you cry, I'll cry.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Now, is Dr. Stevens here? He is not, okay. Go ahead and, okay. We would like to recognize Dr. Ricky Stevens, Keene ISD Superintendent for being selected as the 2026 Region 11 Superintendent of the Year, or Region Two. Anyway, the Superintendent of the Year Award is sponsored by the Texas Association of School Boards, honors outstanding Texas administrators for achievement and excellence in public school administration. As a regional winner of the 2026 award, Dr. Stevens will move on to compete at the state level with 19 other regional candidates. The winner of the state level award will be announced in October. We want to thank Dr. Stevens for all he does for our schools, the school district and residents. We wish him all the best in being recognized at the state level. And we hope he wins. And just a quick reminder that the deadline to file a place on the November 3rd ballot is Monday, August the 17th at 5 p.m. And does council have any other events that they would wish to announce? Okay. Okay. Any person in attendance who wishes to speak to the City Council on an item not posted on the agenda shall speak during this time. A speaker card should have already been filled out and given to the City Secretary before the meeting. Each speaker will be allotted three minutes. The Texas Open Meeting Act prohibits the City Council from deliberating or taking action on an item not listed on the agenda. City Council may, however, receive your comments, ask clarifying questions, respond with facts, and explain policy. Anyone who wishes to speak to the city council on an item that is posted on the agenda can speak when the item is discussed. We do have a yellow card from Jamie Jones. Jamie, would you come forward please? With the Johnson County Pioneer Reunion.

OK. Yes, ma'am. Mayor, city council. It's that time of year again. My name is Jamie Jones. I'm the VP of the Johnson County Pioneer and No Settlers Association. And I've got three minutes, so I've got to talk fast. This year, we kind of got pushed back a little bit. So instead of doing it Labor Day weekend, in order to keep our same carnival, which we absolutely love. They are held over in Fredericksburg. So we have been bumped to October. So October the 7th through the 10th. And we're really hoping it's a whole lot cooler by that time. But we'll start with our parade on the 7th at 6 o'clock. We'll go through downtown Alvarado, headed up to the reunion grounds. And then we'll pick out our parade winners. We'll then have our queen contestant show, I would say. So the winner of this will get a scholarship to college or vo-tech. So if you know someone that's in junior high, high school, or getting ready to graduate, Let's get them entered into the Queen contestants' file so that they have a chance to get that scholarship. Nowadays, school costs a lot of money. The next day, we will do the baby contest, which is absolutely always a lot of fun. So bring your grandkids, your great-grandkids, your great-great-greats, or whatever you want to bring in. I'll be there that night. Friday night, we've always done the fiddle contest. However, this year, we wanted to open it up a little bit, so we added strings. So if you've got banjo, fiddle, violin, guitar, we've opened that up to all strings. So y'all come on out. We want to listen to some good banjo music. Saturday. Saturday's always busy. This year we added in the shootout. We're gonna have a Cowboys shootout, and if you know anything about Johnson County history, Bickerstaff and Thompson was one of the two outlaws here in Johnson County that kinda got Anyway, so they're buried up in our bulk cemetery, and they're facing the wrong direction. So Johnson County put them where they wanted them to be. But we're going to have a couple of shootouts that day. Looking forward to a lot of fun. Then at 4 o'clock, I will do the first responder tributes again. So I'm asking all the chiefs of police and fire to send their nominations to me so that I can get those in. and we make the presentation at 4 p.m. on stage on Saturday the 10th. Then we open with Sonny and Jolie, we'll open up for our band. We're in negotiation with two different bands right now, Once we've made a decision, we can announce that big and bold. But right now, it's kind of like, OK, let's keep a secret. But they all start at 7 o'clock on Saturday night. The carnival is open Wednesday evening through Saturday evening. There will be vendors on the ground, all kinds of different things for the kids. So on the back of the packet is a sponsorship package. We offer lots and lots of different sponsorship packages. So if there's something in there that you're interested in, Give us a shout out. We'd love to talk to you about that. And so other than that, I appreciate your time. 134 years. I hadn't been there for all of them, but I've been there for a lot of them. So come on out, have a good time with us, and look me up when you get there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

OK, now for reports. A city manager's comments, key and director, Wins Award at State Conference Industrial Park Update, County Road 317 Construction Update, O'Reilly Auto Parts, TxDOT Road Project Updates, Canyon Development Sewer Line Contract, Canyon's Development Update, Sunset Ridge Development Update, Stonehurst Development Update, Ashton Home Place Development, Covington Acres Update, Alisa Carver Park and North Hill Estates Lighting IRS Audit, Chamber Lunch on August the 27th. Mr. Seitz, you want to give your report?

Three minutes. Three minutes, got it. I'm not a speed reader. I apologize. Actually, I don't apologize because this is good things. Again, the Lord has continued to bless this community, and I think it's important that you and all the wonderful people watching at home know it. So the last week of July, Sandra, our HR director, attended the TMRS. conference, and this year they started a new award. This is the first time, so Keene is the first, and they gave this award to a small city and a large city, and they gave it to a city that demonstrates outstanding leadership in employee retirement education, service, and innovation, and so this is the award right here that was presented to Ms. Overstreet and Super proud. Again, this continues to demonstrate that we're a city on the rise and we're working hard to stand out in a good way. So thank you to her, her efforts, to the team that supports her, and congratulations to our city for receiving this prestigious award.

That's awesome. Wow.

Hopefully many to come.

The second item, I'm just going to move it was kind of at the bottom and it really probably needs to go to the top because again as you all know our finance department continues to work hard to just get things in order and it it appears that the irs audit that started as a 2024 audit that they continued to audit all the way back to 2021 appears to be done and so uh thank you again We are slowly but surely, and I know it's hard for her to see because she's in the forest right now, but from my perspective, I tell her I see progress every day, and I'm very appreciative to her, Jacqueline, and Beatrice for all their hard work. All right, metal plate. If you haven't been over by the industrial park, you should go. They've got it mapped out for moving the gas lines. There's a lot of dirt moving over there. It's looking really good. And so we're hoping to break ground on that here officially pretty soon. But like I said, they're doing all the prep work right now. But it's looking really good. And as you know, we've got two more manufacturing facilities. When I came to Keene to go to college and graduated, my first job was in one of our manufacturing facilities, which is Southwestern Color Graphics. Of course, I was there until they closed their doors. And then, of course, Brandon Cabinets, you know, those two industries represented about 350, between 350 and 400 jobs. And with these four manufacturing facilities that we're looking to come in in the next five years, we're probably going to have 600 to 800 jobs. So super exciting times. The county road next to it, again, thanks to the EDC Type A board. We have our pre-construction meeting next week. so that will begin construction soon. So once again, I want to thank our Type A board for using the funds to better our city. We have an O'Reilly's auto parts store coming to this city. We have, you know, we've looked at the plans, and so we haven't, we don't know when they're breaking ground yet, but it's far enough along that I feel confident that we can announce that it's coming. So thank you to our permitting department, Maggie and Amber and Dawn, of course, for for getting this going. Westbound off-ramp, as far as TxDOT, again, we continue to have our meetings with them, which has been very helpful. I don't know if you all saw, but they patched that little dip by the three-way stop, as they promised they would. And anyway, so the off-ramp is mostly poured. Frontage Road is still scheduled for November completion. Everything still is on track. Canyon developed sewer line contract is in the mail and should be back to our engineers tomorrow, so we'll be getting that CIP that's been on the list for over 12 months going. Canyon development phase one, which is over there by our ISD, is almost built out. Phase two is ready for final inspection at the end of August, so the end of this month. Hopefully they'll get the green light to start building out phase two. Sunset Ridge, which is the one over there by valero that development has three builders silverleaf cheldan and biltmore with each of them having a few homes under construction so that one's going to begin stonehurst development which of course is the one right here by city hall has 15 approved permits with 11 already under construction and a few almost completed Ashton Home Place, which is the fourth one. Development phase one and two are almost built out. Phases three, A, B, C, and D civil plans are under review. So hopefully we'll be seeing streets and stuff poured over there soon. Covington Acres, the apartment complex. If you haven't driven by there, it is impressive. They were originally scheduled to open August of 2027. The last, you know, they have six buildings buildings with a clubhouse. That sixth building wasn't scheduled for completion until August of next year. Right now they said, you know, between the ground has been wonderful to work with. The weather has been cooperating. So right now it looks like they will have the whole thing done by the end of this year.

Wow.

So Alyssa Carver Park, Alyssa Carver Park will be getting parking lot lighting. The lights will be in, is it tomorrow? 14th. The lights will be in on the 14th, so there will be additional lighting for the parking lot and also for the basketball course because that second court is very dark at night. And that's, again, thanks to the Type B board, so thank you to them. North Hill Estates, which is kind of the bigger lot subdivision over here off 3048, that one is also getting a light in there. I know that's something they've been wanting, Don went and met with the resident. And they're OK with us putting the light pole in there. So kind of one of their main intersections will be against first light. If they like it, we can talk about adding more. Let's see. I already talked about the audit. And then lastly, did you have a question?

Just on the light. Yeah. Did we go solar or did we go?

We went with solar.

OK, good.

So we're testing these out. Again, these systems can also be all linked. So we can adjust when they dim. We can adjust where they light up for motion. There's a lot of different things rather than just off and on. So we're going to give it a try, and we're going to see. And again, if we like it, it's a lot easier to add solar lights. And again, there's also, I think, more exciting news for the next council, but I'll save that for that as far as grants concerned, things we're working on. And then the last one, I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but Paul Knott asked me to speak this month for the chamber luncheon. Would love to see you. Would love to see anyone from the community. And he asked me just to do kind of a state of the city where we're at. and more importantly, where we're going, because in a few months, I will be entering into my third year as city manager here. So time flies when you're having fun. I love this community. It makes just getting up and coming to work a real joy, and I love this community, and I hope the citizens know that. I hope you know that. Pray to God my team knows that. Anyway, and so just, again, thank you for the continued support, and good things are continuing to happen. God is leading in this community.

I have a quick question about the, did you address the ballparks? I saw construction going on over there. I just wanted to.

Well, when we put this out, again, it's really been a lot of fun because we're gaining momentum, you know, when a team really starts gelling and things are going. things just finally start taking off. And so B Board agreed to let us redo. Don was kind of going over there and a little bit here and there, kind of digging it up. So there's a company over there that is digging out all the bad dirt. They're putting in the French drain to connect to that CIP project that we did kind of last summer. And so I think in the next, what, week? Week or two, we should have our big baseball field back and going. And I'll tell you one more fun one, and this is not going to seem like a big deal probably to a lot of people, but to me it is. I also want to thank the team for getting the soccer nets on the soccer goals. They look so much better. I mean, when you're kicking a soccer ball and it's going through the net, that's not good. So again, thank you for that as well. Cool. Any more questions? Sorry.

No questions, okay.

But thank you for asking, Troy.

Okay, and now we go to the consent agenda. All items listed below have been previously discussed, require no deliberation.

Hold on, Samantha, sorry.

Okay.

Yeah, we have to receive the certified appraisal rates. We finally got those in. Okay. Reports B.

You want to take that?

That was the packet that was in there. And so as you as you remember, we kind of got an estimated certified. And so this is the official certified rates. And we will discuss this more in the in our revenue discussion this evening. But these this is the official certified tax roll for fiscal year 2027. Okay. Did anybody have any questions on that? Don't worry. I even brought things to help. So anyway, the report's there in front of you, and this will be the numbers that we officially build our next year around. Oh, the tax rate? You want to discuss that now? Okay. All right, well, this will take a little bit away from our presentation. Let me go to that here. So last year, here it is, here are the notes. Oh, wrong notes, here they are. All right, so our current tax rate is .828978. And with us needing to move forward with a no new revenue rate, and again, it's actually not a scary thing. It's actually a blessing in disguise. The no new revenue rate based on their numbers on CAD is 0.810641, which is a difference of almost two cents. It's 0.018337. And as you all know, my goal has been to decrease the tax rate. and initially I was a little bit worried, especially with numbers jumping around so much. At one point it was going to be three cents, four cents, you know, half a cent. And so 1.8 cents is, I would say, you know, good for the taxpayer, and I think what we'll present tonight, the city can make it work.

That's good.

So do we officially adopt this tax rate now then?

I think. No, I've been asking our attorneys and no, because we are required to adopt the no new revenue rate and we are not raising taxes, we do not have to adopt it now. And you can only adopt a tax rate after you adopt your budget.

There is, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been sitting in council for, well, out there and up here every year. You have a ceiling that you put in place, remember? I think that's probably what you're asking. We usually adopt a ceiling, which then gives you guys the leeway to go up to a certain amount. So we can make it 0.85% and then as long as we're still in, right? We did that last year.

You're correct, but here's the thing. I can see why cities that can love to adopt the no new revenue rate because it really simplifies a lot. But as I'll explain during our workshop portion, we are blessed that we got kind of required to do the no new revenue rate this year because Our city is growing. We've all known our city is growing for several years, but I'll give you a perfect example. The 380 agreement with the Canyons, this is the first year, it's taken three years because you're always dealing with the past, right? So even the things that we're doing in the industrial park right now and the O'Reillys, and we saw it with All Supps and Tractor Supply, it took a year. They were here for a year before we finally started realizing you know, the revenue portion of it. And so with the no new revenue rate, and again, because we looked at the no new revenue rate last year, that freaked me out because we knew the city was growing, but I wasn't seeing the kind of the benefits of it yet. Well, this is the first year, and you'll see in our presentation that this is the perfect time to kind of be forced to do this. And again, during a presentation, you'll see that it's forced us to kind of focus on other areas that need fixed. So yes, this year we don't have that luxury. Okay. Just checking. Councilman.

Okay, any other questions? Any questions? Okay. Wanna start on the agenda? Holly, would you like to read this?

Okay, all items listed below have been previously discussed, required no deliberation, or are routined by the city council and will be enacted with one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items. Items to be withdrawn from the consent agenda are separate discussion by city, or separate discussion by city council. If discussion is desired, the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. Otherwise, approval of consent agenda authorizes the city manager to implement each item in accordance with the staff's recommendation. A, consider approval of the minutes of the regular Keene City Council meeting held on July 2nd, 2026. B, consider approval of the minutes of the special called Keene City Council meeting held on July 16, 2026. C, consider approval of the minutes of the special called Keene City Council meeting held on July 28, 2026. D, consider approval of the minutes of the special called Keene City Council meeting held on July 30th, 2026. E, consider approval of the amendment to the communication system agreement between Johnson County and the Keene Police Department for fiscal year 2026, 2027. and F, consider approval of an ordinance calling for general election to elect the offices of mayor, a city council member for place one, a city council member for place three, and a city council member for Ward two, of which will take place on November 3rd, 2026. Okay.

I move that council approve the consent agenda items as presented.

I have been notified that the city secretary wishes to pull item C for discussion council. Do you wish to remove any other item for discussion, or is there a motion to approve all of it? All of it. OK. Remove C. OK. Remove C. Second.

For discussion. Holly? OK. Yes. He can amend his motion to approve A, B, and D through F. A, B, and D. OK.

I'll amend my motion to be approve A, B, D, E, and F as presented.

Second. Okay, I have a motion and a second to remove A, B, D, E and F, or to approve A, B, D, E and F. All those in favor?

Okay.

Okay, so on the minutes for July 28th, it was brought to my attention, or questioned on item 4A when we were discussing the MASA services, ambulatory services for residents. I had written in there that Medicare and Medicaid are not eligible for the service, so some council member asked me to verify that. I did go back and review the video, and I did call Mr. Dryden, who presented information and it is incorrect, so you have been presented with a revised draft, corrections in red, so that it reads, due to federal laws, Medicaid are not eligible, but those that are insured, have Medicare, or are uninsured are eligible to opt in to MASA. And that is the only change I have to those minutes for you to consider.

I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve item C with corrections. Second.

OK. I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes of the July 28 special council meeting with the presented corrections on item C. Seconded by Foster. OK. And all those approved? OK. It's carried. Next item is the budget workshop review. Revenue. Receive information to discuss revenue sources, demographic, and metrics regarding the fiscal year 2026 and 2027. Proposed budget including general fund and utility fund revenue. Mr. Seitz and Ms. Lamb will give this report.

Uh-oh. Good evening, Mayor, Council. Long-time supporter of Keene. Been in the area since 97. Actually, when I was doing the math, I realized it was 12 of the last, you know, however many years since 1997 I have been employed in Keene. And so that was kind of fun. So what I would like to do this evening... I'm sorry, Jonathan cites... So the reason I wanted to come down here is I want to be able to see you and I also wanted the community to be able to see what I'm doing a little bit easier. And I think all of us will feel a little bit better about the no new revenue rate once we really kind of understand it a little bit better. So I am a person that likes visual. So let me start by giving the definition of no new revenue rate. What is no new revenue? It is collecting the same pool of money from the same pool of properties as the previous year. What it isn't is my tax rate does not change. What it isn't is it does not mean the city does not receive any additional revenue. So what do I mean by this? So when you look at our certified rates, and just for the record, I am a horrible balloon animal maker. I've popped five balloons and finally just tied a knot in it. So what is our values made up of? It's made up of commercial values, homestead and non-homestead values, okay? So this section of the balloon right here represents the same pool of properties as last year. This little dangly thing over here represents the new growth. So the no new revenue rate is determined by comparing the values from the previous year in the same pool of properties, okay? Now, this year, so people, I don't want people to think that, oh, well, no new revenue rate means my taxes on my home is gonna stay the same. That is not true. What does that mean is if the values of homesteads go down, Okay, this occupies, and I squeeze that, meaning there's less air. That means commercial and non-homestead takes over that amount. So commercial values, and in our city, the homestead, which is what I'm squeezing right now, values did go down by 1.5%. So that means if you are not homesteaded, and if you are a commercial business, and you were in that pool last year, you will probably see a slight increase in your tax revenue rates. Now, once that rate is determined, which we talked about, this currently we're at .828978, and with the no new revenue rate, again, that is something that is dictated to us. We don't make that number up. city does not it's 0.810641 again that's 1.8 one almost two pennies okay well that tax rate that is determined by the no new revenue no new revenue rate here is then applied to the new growth in keene so you can see if a city is not growing no new revenue rate could be concerning especially if commercial is dying and everything else, that means property owners take on that burden. And this little thing over here, again, we'll get into this during our discussion. But this new growth represents 154,000 additional tax dollars to the city to help us run the city. And that's from the growth. And this is just going to continue to pick up and grow faster and faster. So I hope this is helpful to you because it was the first time that I went, oh, I actually get it now. I hope this is helpful to the people in the community. And, you know, those that are non-homestead and commercial, just keep an eye out. It shouldn't increase a lot. Values did not, you know, they stayed pretty steady. Everything stayed pretty steady year over year. So, which is a good thing, except for when there's inflation. So, but we'll be discussing that more shortly. Any questions? All right.

Just so I'm clear, so not everybody pays the same tax rate then?

It's based on your value of your home. What? It's the same tax rate.

Then why would commercial go up and non-homestead would go up if homestead goes down if they all pay the same tax rate?

It's their values get adjusted.

Well, that's where the adjustment is, is in the value, the home value.

The adjustment is in the value. OK, just wondering. Yeah, the rate stays the same. Yeah, everyone gets the same rate.

You said it would get squeezed here. It would go up over here. And I want to know if the tax rate went up or the evaluation went up.

Yeah, it's the value that gets adjusted.

And that's done by the CAD?

Mm-hmm. OK. Good question. Oh, sorry. There's my little balloon animals, as you can see. Cannot do that. No child is going to want to play with this. Anyway, and so then this just shows the same graph that we did last year. It just shows, you know, back in 2016, so 10 years ago, our tax rate was 0.912249. and we have steadily declined down to .810641, with the goal from the city standpoint, my standpoint, is to continue to find other avenues of revenue in sales tax revenue, jobs, commercial, that's my goal. But again, it's kinda like in sales, you have to have a pipeline. You just don't go out, as you know, Councilman Foster, you don't just go out you know, get a new account to replace that $500,000 you lost. It takes time, and so you constantly have to be filling that pipeline, and that's exactly what this team is doing. And as long as we can continue this momentum and this trend, the city should see a real, kind of a big change in, you know, three, four, five years. So with the work, the groundwork that's being laid. And with that, I would like to introduce our finance director, Amir Lamb.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. Thank you for my lovely flowers. You're welcome. I really appreciate that. Okay. Can you hear me? Okay, so we introduced this, we start with revenue. Oh, this is where we are. Revenue budget workshop. We introduced this slide last year. It's basically just to give you, I guess, a visual of how our taxes are divided. And if you remember last year, we said that ideally, like in a city, your property tax should make 60% of your income. and your sales tax needs to be 30%, and your other department income or other miscellaneous income, what people say, it should only be 10%. As you can see, we're kind of like toppled up, right? We were actually the other way around. Our property tax is at 49, which is not bad. We were like maybe like 10% away, but our sales tax is only 10%, whereas the rest of the other department, that is the yellow piece of the pie, That is 31%. So that part that's supposed to be sales is actually, well, for us, it's not. But we still want to praise God because we do actually have our own EMS ambulance services here. And that's how it's broken out. It's just a snapshot. Nothing's changed so much other than... The franchise tax, that's one, two, three from the left. If you see, GF just means general fund. Franchise tax is now 8%. Last year it was five, and the change is because council approved that as of last year, we started imposing the franchise fees for the utility fund, 5%, and that represents 179 for franchise fees for water, and 104 for sewer. Okay, and the sales tax is 10% because that is the calculation after the 25 cents to EDCA and after the other 25 cents for EDCB. So that represents 680, no, it represents 460, if I'm not mistaken, 761. You'll see in the next page. Any questions? Yes, sir.

Would you mind repeating? I was trying to write it down. Property tax should be 60%.

Sales is 30?

Sales is 30.

And then all the other departments that see that yellow piece, the big pie, that is supposed to be 10%. We just kind of like the other way around. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for that. Okay, so this is the property tax and how it's moved throughout the years. Okay, I need my notes. That's a snapshot of the property tax. If you wanna follow me, the first one I'm going to mention is the, oh Lord, is the black box, so it should be the farthest column on the right, and it's the black box with the white font. That is the taxable value of this year. So that's what we're working on. It's 513 million... I'm sorry, I can't see from here, $859,129, which is, compared to last year, is a 7% increase. And then the next one that I want you to look at is the, hold on, where is it? My bad, is the green box with the black font, which represents, 19,692,356, which is the new value. So if you look at, hold on a second. You look at your packet. The first number I mentioned, the 513,000 is right here. See that? So that's the whole taxable value. And then the one that I'm referring to now is down here is the $19 million that represents the new values that came in this year before January 1st, where it was last year, if you compare it, it was $13 million. So we had a $6 million jump, which represents about 5%. 5% growth. So thank you, city manager, Mr. Martin, and all your team. Good job. So they've done a lot. You can see $6 million jump year on year. And the last one I want you to look at is it's not going to be on your packet because this is calculated. is that light blue on the right with black font, and that represents our total budgeted M&O property tax. So that's 3.574 something. There you go. Sorry, I don't know why I can't see right now.

Stress.

So that's what it is. So that's the number that we're going to be working on to use for our budget. As you can see, last year was $3,320,354. So there is also a jump. You see that the blue last year and the blue this year, there's a considerable amount there. Any questions? Next. Okay, now the fun part. THE REVENUE PROJECTION COMPARISON. WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW FROM THE LEFT-HAND SIDE, THE COLUMNS, THE FIRST FOUR ON THE LEFT, SO THAT'S PROPERTY TAX, SALES TAX, FRANCHISE FEES, AND OTHER MISCELLANEOUS INCOME, IS WHAT WE CALL GENERAL FUND REVENUE. AND THE REST OF IT, OTHER THAN THAT, THE ADMINISTRATION ALL THE WAY DOWN TO NON-DEPARTMENTAL, is what we call other departments, well actually it's other miscellaneous income, but I just want you to know that's how it's broken out. And I'm gonna start talking about it, I guess line by line. Property tax, you can see compared to last year, there is a 8% increase from what we budgeted last year. Okay, budgeted last year. As you can see, it wasn't like that last year, but I mean, it's not 8%, but compared to what we budgeted last year, just the MNO, we increased by 8%. This is on NNRA. It's pretty good. And so as per the certified, so this is only MNO, only the maintenance and operations line. So if you look at your property tax, there are actually three lines. There's an MNO, there's delinquent, there's also penalties and interest. And penalties and interest makes about 53,000. As you see in my, I noted there actually, there are 53,000 budgeted for delinquent and penalties and interest not reflected here. I just, because I just wanna be able to compare it year to year. And the second one is sales tax is the increase is by 12%. My budget assumption is based on the metal plate punch operating by Q4, 2026, the main plant by Q quarter two, right? 2027 and O'Reilly's by the end of this year. Is that correct, Mr. Martin? Yes. And we are expecting growth from the two retailers that started last year. So it's 12%. Yes, sir.

We'll get O'Reilly's this year?

That's what was projected. We are projecting it to be operational by December 2026.

Will this be one of those things where we don't get any revenue for another 12 months, or is it going to be?

I don't think. Property tax-wise, it'll take a while.

but sales tax.

Just because people out there couldn't hear, Don, I just want to repeat that. So sales, property taxes, there's always a lag one to two years, but the sales tax revenue will be immediate it's just you know how it is when you open something it takes time to build that so but we we will start seeing sales tax revenue right i just didn't know if we'd done a 380 with them where they got 24 months of tax abatement or okay that's all no sir

Okay, so can I go next? I think the only other, not the only other mention, I'm sorry. There is a five, I'm just going to discuss the obvious big ones. There is a decrease in 5% for the other miscellaneous income. We are seeing a downtrend on our interest rate. We budgeted last year based on a 4% and this year is based on 3.66%. That's why it's going down. Okay, what else am I supposed to be talking about? The police department, reduce that to 50%, because that's really, the income is budgeted, mainly coming from the disposing, reselling assets, and it's not always, I think if it's not attainable year to year, we need to review it, so that's why I reduced it to what I think is more attainable, right sir? The other one I should probably mention is development. Development is projecting to be contributing up to half a million dollars this year. It was 600 last year and it decreased is because of the engineering services fees income. We are only budgeting 14,000 this year, whereas last year was the actual number I think was 129,000. And to my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Martin, all the engineering services fees we usually get two or three years prior to the development. So since everything else is already ongoing right now, the only three, right, the engineering services fees that we will get is probably from metal plate, Ashton, phase three, I can't remember the other one. The Gagnon's. So you're only budgeting a 14,000 just on that line and that's why you see the dip from 600 to 500 because last year they brought in 129,000 just on that and those and those fees. The last one is, I guess that needs to be mentioned, is the non-departmental. Last year, 242,000 was in non-departmental because of fleet, but because of GASB now, the 103, you have to report it by fund, so I have to now move fleet directly to fleet, and all we have left is Covington Acres, 45,000 on that line. Any question?

only question i have and you may have covered it under miscellaneous income yes sir says currently ot miscellaneous is 15 000 what is ot oh other other is um currently other miscellaneous income okay thank you yes yes sir and on the sales tax is that 6 680 there is that does that include all subs and tractor supply

Yes, ma'am. So this year is going to be $761,600, and that's including them. And that's the project?

Yes. And something when you're thinking about sales tax revenue, that's why I said, like I mentioned down there, you have to fill that pipeline because at some point they've shown a growth, but at some point they kind of plateau out, and so that levels off your budget. You can't just always go, hey, it's a 5% increase because they increased 5% last year. At some point they do cap out, And so that's why it's so vitally important that we continue to focus on bringing new businesses to keep that trend going up.

And I think I should also probably mention that we do do this more granular than most cities. You know, most cities we go, oh, 4%, just a 4% increase on everybody. But I think like this actually, we actually talk to different people in the city and say, hey, what are you guys bringing? And this is something that we do together. You know, there's a pipeline, there are things that needs to be, we look at, we even sometimes show you, well, in every quarter, I'll show you who are the shakers and movers of the sales taxpayers. So we budget very granular, like we actually look at taxpayers and how they're doing on a quarterly basis.

Next. Okay, and I have a question. Yes, ma'am. On conservative fire marshal potential revenue.

Oh, yes. So as you can see, the fire and rescue increase in revenue. So it's a conservative fire marshal potential revenue and increased ambulance revenue. Right now, this year, our ambulance revenue was budgeted at $380,000, and as it is now, it's $454,000. So right now, I am moving that needle and just getting an average of how much we actually receive from ambulance services. It's about anywhere between 52 and 56. And so I added, it's growing, so I have to move the budget. And Mr. City Manager, you wanna talk about the potential revenue of the fire marshal, please?

Yeah, I mean, It's not a lot in there, by the way. It's not a lot in there, but some of these positions that you add, ultimately, when I talk to other city managers and other people that have these type of things, the goal is always to positions like that cover themselves, so it doesn't increase the tax burden on the citizens. And because this is kind of new and starting out, we didn't put a lot in there, but... But that is a position that should generate revenue. I don't want us running around and just throwing fines everywhere. But at the same time, it's kind of like a police officer. He doesn't write a ticket in a year. Correct me if I'm wrong, Chief. You either have a perfect city or that policeman's probably not doing his job. Yeah, so.

Also, if you remember during the...

Let me say one more thing, too. When a business, which we are, invests and gives, you know, we invest in something. I mean, when we invest in people, there should be, whenever possible, a return on investment, right? And that's what this city has done. They have invested in this position, in this individual, and so there has to be some sort of return on investment. I don't know exactly what that is right now, but, you know,

No, it says fine. And there's also, I have to also consider the potential reimbursement. So four now of our firefighters and the fire marshal are reimbursed by ESD, and that is on a different line than expense. So the reimbursement's actually a revenue line to actually absorb the expense. And also, if you remember during council retraining, During council training, the city manager, I think even Chief Warner actually spoke about the potential reimbursements of, correct me if I'm wrong, Chief, I think it's 129,000 for equipment purchase and 192 for buildings, roof and, correct? So I'm not, I didn't put everything in there, by the way. I already know what we are trying to expense and that same expense that you will see in the expense line, I have to budget in the revenue because it's going to be reimbursed. Does that make sense?

And we'll talk about it a little bit more too, but again, I actually applaud our government for the new Gatsby 103, things that they put in place, because there's been so many cities that they've been audited in the past to receive a grade so they could get grants, okay? Well, what happens is those grants run out, they haven't accounted for it properly, and And they wake up one day and go, how do I have an A, but yet I'm bankrupt? Right? It's because they were not auditing and running their accounting department to show what the business is doing. And when grants run out, if it's not good, it'll eventually catch up to you. And so there are some things that we're going to discuss that they're in there right now that that it's looking like there's going to be grants and things to cover some of this. So just keep that in mind as we go on, too. Just because someone tells us we're going to get that doesn't mean we throw it in there. I want to prepare for worst-case scenario, and when the Lord blesses, then we give the glory to him, and we just thank him that there's more money in the bank.

Okay. Next? Okay, so this is government activities revenue projection in comparison to what the revenue is and what the expenses are per department. If you remember, a lot of these things are actually we've already done two weeks ago during the expense budget, sorry, yes, during the department expenses and CIP, but I need to show in comparison to where our revenue is the projected revenue is. So it's just the same thing all over again. So if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer. Basically, it's the same thing. that we noted the last time. I think with the only difference is the, I think I have now on there is the fleet transfer out of non-departmental. So fleet, you will see a better fleet picture in the next few slides. But from the government fund, how much we have to transfer to, wow, to cover fleet expense is $106,000, the share. That's the only thing that I didn't put, I think. And the other one is the step-up plan, which is the fifth step plan or something. What's the fifth step?

As we mentioned, we are, and I actually would like to comment right here, too. I had a really good meeting with the Fire Association just this week, and I just want to thank them for for bringing a lot of good data to me. These are things that we're going to have to, there are still things we have to fix. You know, the last few years, again, we did a good job of, you know, bringing, when Brent Battle was here, bringing those salaries up more. But if you don't continue to adjust, you find yourself behind again, and so then all of a sudden you do another big adjustment. So these are all things. So we did add the fifth plan just to, but they kind of really showed me kind of a better way. So again, we're going to continue tweaking, massaging, and hopefully, again, as revenues, like I told them, as revenues increase, then we can, you know, we can do more things. So, but yes. Thank you, Erin. Okay.

Next.

What's the 380 agreement with? The 50,000?

That's the canyons, I do believe.

Oh, okay.

So, and honestly, it was really good to see because as you know, you know, we've kind of just been paying that out of the general fund. Like this year, we finally, it took three years. Like I told you, it takes two to three years to catch up. But this year, we can finally start really kind of giving them good chunks back. And at this rate, we may have the 380 agreement paid back in one and a half to two years. And so, and at that point, by the time it gets to that point, you know, that should be 60, 70, $80,000 additional revenue coming to the city, so.

Okay. I just, before I go to the next line, I'm gonna see the next slide, I just wanna mention, I don't think I summarized my revenue, I'm so sorry. Long week, okay. Just want to summarize. At the end, if you see my total, we are budgeting 2% more than last year, and that equals to $114,267. That's a good thing. That is a good thing.

Exactly, especially, again, with the no new revenue. That's why I told you after tonight, hopefully you'll sleep a little easier because There were many sleepless nights with Mira and I while we were.

Okay, thanks. All right, no, we already did this one. So the next one. So this continues on just basically line by line what we budgeted This is what is in the budget book right now by department, what we're budgeting. I think we already spoke about the fire department. That's one new hire, the fire marshal that is going to be 75% reimbursed by ESD, so on and so forth. I think the only thing that you probably want me to talk about is the streets department, why it's less, the 13% less than what it was last year. This is because of GASB 103, again, We cannot put it there because it is for CIP, so I have moved it to Fund 800, which you will see later on in the CIP. I guess the only thing that I need to mention is that purple number over there. So if you remember, the revenue is budgeted at $7,449,101, sorry, $110, whereas our expenses right now as it is, is $7,565,163. So we are short by $116,047. That's a deficit. Any question? I'll move on. So this is the capital improvement. Again, you've seen this before a couple of weeks ago. This is just how it's broken out by department. You can see the police department is axon body worn cameras, and that is actually on a five-year payment plan. Right, Chief? Right, I think it's five years, right? I think yes, I'm very sure it's five years. And then fire department, that's a future ambulance that we want to start saving money, 150. And there is a request of six full set turnout gears that will cost us $48,538 and portable radio almost at $10,000. Now of course, there's the annual $100,000 in street that we, you know, every year that we want to put aside for the street rehab fund. So just remember that $116,000 in deficit includes all of this.

It includes everything. It includes everything.

It includes your personnel, it includes your benefit, the approved benefit, and the, well, it's the approved, whatever the personnel increase is, includes that so this includes CIP and fleet let me show you the fleet number so CIP is 318 so just remember that deficit or 116 thousand three hundred and eighteen sits I mean in there it's CIP the next one is fleet budget fleet is The total cost for Fleet this year is going to be $496,998. And how are we going to fund it? You know, the Lord works in mysterious ways. I just want to say thank you, Carrie, for taking over enterprise for me, for Fleet. It was driving me crazy. So anyway, if you remember last year, we were budgeted to receive $217,000 in equity resale. Well, you know what? That money we have not received. How many vehicles, Carrie, are going? So out of 11, right? Out of how many are we returning? Seven out of 14 is on its way. So we have not received any of the money that was budgeted last year, the 217. The Lord knew. It's budgeted this year. So this 217, The first line, if you see the second bottom, the bottom part, you see the fleet revenue funding source. The first line is fiscal year 2026 equity resale is 217,000. This year, we're only going to get equity by 34,000, I'm telling you. He is so good. So he says, let me just hold that check back so we can receive it in the right fiscal year. We don't make up these things, guys. So anyway, and then water and sewer transfer. So what this means is that out of all the $496,000 and fleet expense, water is 108 and sewer is $20,000. EDC A and B will contribute 5,291 each and 106 is going to be funded by general fund. Clear as mud?

The 106 is still gonna, it's coming out of the 116 deficit. It's part. Part of the deficit.

Yes, sir. It's part, the 106 and the 318 is part of that 116 deficit. Just to give you like, what's going on? No, no, no. 318 is CIP and 106 is fleet. Got it. Yeah, okay. May I move on? Questions? Discussion? Thank you. Okay, now enterprise.

Can I talk about fleet real quick too? speaking to the fact that God is good, our police department has literally been operating with basically five vehicles banded together, two which are completely out of commission, and the other two and three that are close, okay? And so just to put this in perspective, to just do kind of a minimal police car, okay, is $70,000, $80,000 with the outfitting and everything else, the city, if we would have just kicked the can down the road and waited for these things to break and all of a sudden have to fund, it wouldn't have been in the budget. And I can almost guarantee you that five vehicles over the course of the next year would have had to been replaced at $80,000 a piece with, can I just say, no equity resale coming in.

Also, didn't they tell us that we should budget $144,000 a year for the lease payments? Looks like we only have to pay 105, if I remember right. So, I mean, the guy projected a higher number.

I mean, lower than what was projected, yes.

Yes.

And that's good salesmanship right there, I might add.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I forgot to mention this. By the way, the $596,000 or almost $497,000 afforded us 28 vehicles. That's the second column from the left. That's how many new vehicles that we're going to get. So I forgot to mention that. So thank you, Kerry.

Yeah, five of them would have cost $400,000.

anyway so but anyway so 28 vehicles and edc a and b because i have a vehicle sorry i had to put it there no one said anything darn it so anyway okay next this is the utility fund this year we are budgeting 171 new homes 108 of which will have both water and sewer. And the other 63 will just have sewer only, correct? Mr. Martin? Yeah, okay. Okay, so that's, you're gonna have to jump in. Right, okay. Okay, next is the, so now we start talking about the water revenue.

This is not going to be as fun. But it is what it is. That's what it is.

All right, okay. So there are one, two, three, four, four, actually five, but the other one is not a revenue department. For revenue departments in water sewer, the administration, the first line is, I am so sorry, that's just, That's on me, sorry. The one, two, three, four, four is actually for this year. I still have 25, 26, my bad, that's on me. 131 is still need to reflect the interest income and the cutoff fee, the cutoff admin fee. And this is where it's gonna get really sticky. Water distribution. Water was budgeted like back in 2024 for 2.5 million. Last year, we budgeted for 2.6. This year, I'm only budgeting 2.5.

The city manager will give the explanation after I'm done.

And that is including 108 out of 171 new homes that will have water and sewer. The sewer department is also taking a dive where it was before at 1.5, I'm only budgeting 1.3. this year and that is including 63 out of the 171 new homes that will only have sewer. Sanitation department is going up by 38% and that is in the, that's just revenue. Okay. Yeah, yes, they all have sewer. I don't know why, I'm so sorry. Sewer only, sewer only. Yeah, sewer only. They all have sewer, but this is not, stop it. Sanitation is going to go up by 38%. This is estimation of the 171 homes and the increase rate as per Republic Services rate. I believe it's gone up $1.34 on the base rate. And then we also now, I don't know where we are with that, but we are now, as opposed to just putting a number in, we are moving towards a 3% admin fee rather than 84 cents 80 cents, I don't know where they got that from. So I don't know if you knew that, but our admin fee in the past has always been a number and not a percentage. And I just found out. And so I switched it and we looked around and see what is a good number, 3% to 5% is usually is the number that people would impose an admin fee. So we choose the conservative one, 3%, to calculate admin fee because in the past it's been I don't know where they got it from and it doesn't make sense to me so now we just changed it. And that increase is not because the admin fee, just to throw it out there, it's because Republic Services did increase their rate and then so we have to increase our rate. Remember we were committed to them for like eight years I think, right? The contract is for eight years.

Yeah.

Yeah and so basically each year we have to review Our rate, based on what they say, their increases. We're just reflecting their increases. Basically, that's what it is.

And we're going to talk about this a little bit more, too, because, again, in continuing to research and things like that. So in their agreement, if you remember, they can increase up to 5%. And so I went back and looked at the last 10 years and asked kind of what do they do. And their increase is always... always been based upon kind of that inflation and that consumer price index number, right? And so typically, there are years that we've seen 7, 8, 9% inflation thanks to COVID. But historically, inflation is usually between 2 and 4%. And so that's why they build that into their agreement, which is, you know, if we would have done this back in 2009 with the, when we did that big, huge water increase, right? and then just slowly done it, we wouldn't be kind of where we're at, which the numbers will show.

Okay, we're almost there. I have a question. Yes, please.

One question, sorry.

Of course, no.

Well, and it's really just more of a... So with the water distribution, water sewer... My thought process is last year's numbers might have been a little bit inflated, or maybe not inflated, but our projections were because of the way the water was being done and we were missing so much water revenue. Right, and so now we're capturing that because we replaced so many water meters. So I feel like maybe that number, well, that's what I'm thinking, right? Like now that the meters are fixed, I'm like, why is that number so low? Because now we should be on track to being capturing more revenue. So does that make sense? Was that factored into that?

Was that factored in? Can I do this first? Hold on a second. I, my thoughts, exactly. We budgeted 90 homes last year, and we're budgeting 171. Why is it going the other way? So I dug deep, and this is my finding. This is the revenue sources. It's just a revenue analysis. If you follow along, the revenue is broken down. This is just water, no sanitation, right? It's residential billing, commercial billing. These are our main revenue streams. and sewer billing, if you can see, from 2024 to 2026, it's taking a dive. I just put this in, I don't know, a couple of hours ago, because I looked at it and this doesn't make sense, and I can't narrate it, and I spoke to the city manager, I can't narrate this, I don't know what happened. So a total revenue loss of $1.2 million. just in water sewer.

Yes, sir. There's a difference in a budget and reality, though.

Yes, and so I can- You can put any number on a page you want to for a budget.

Oh, no, no. This is actual. What I'm saying is in the budget, though, I don't think we showed these numbers in the budget. You know what I'm saying? If you go back to the previous slide- Yes, that's correct. We budgeted far more inflated numbers- Yes. Rather than having actual data, and that's where the disparity comes in.

So last year, when I first start budgeting, I actually took this number and the actual FY2024 number and I added 90 homes. Not knowing, oh, I'm sorry, did I budget this one? Oh, sorry, it's the year to date. That's the one that I budgeted. So I look at 2025 and I added 90 homes. That would be the correct way to budget. You're existing. You look at, okay, this is the same trend. Then you assume, okay, 90%, 97% collection or whatever it is that we do, how much will it be? So last year's budget, that number, the one that we budgeted, is based on what it was before last year plus 90%. So it wasn't even, like for me, it wasn't even, what's the word I'm looking for? It wasn't aggressive, it was actually very conservative, because in reality, correct me if I'm wrong, we budgeted for 90 homes, and I believe Amber said that she is working on five more, right? And up to date, she processed 104 permits. And we only budgeted 90. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't know. I only see the numbers. I only see the dollars. I don't know what it looks like. So maybe this is a good time.

So to your point, and again, and you remember, we started talking about those meters probably about six months after I got here. And then, of course, there was, you know, we couldn't get the material, you know, things in, all the stuff, right? So again, now we're to a good point to where, Meters are going to continue to go out, but now they're being replaced as they go out, right? So we went back and looked, and I asked the water department to run me, it's called a harmony report. Harmony is what reports the actual usage, the amount of water that comes out. So right before the meters started going out, about the year before I got here, right? That's when they kind of started going out. If you look at the year over year, and again, I'm just going to kind of speak to it here, usage. At the end of the, you know, 2024, 2023, 2024, we did 12 months over 12 months, the city outputted 154 million, almost 155 million gallons of water, okay? The very next year, and again, understand, a city that's growing should be increasing, right? There was 140, almost 142 million gallons, which is 13 million gallons short, even though a city is growing. And then when you look at, you know, kind of this 25, 26, we're... If you look at kind of monthly comparisons, I'll give you a case in point. October two years ago, there was 16,000 gallons that, no, I'm sorry, 16 million gallons that went out. And if you look at October of this past October, there's 13 million gallons that went out. So as more and more registers continued to go out, that number just kept declining, declining, declining. And so now, just to give you an example, if you look at July of this year, compared to July of two years ago, because now the meters, we fixed the problem two years ago, July was 12 million gallons of water. This July, it was 14 million gallons of water, 2 million gallon increase that represents a city that's growing. I'm done.

You're done.

Were there any questions?

Okay.

I got one.

Do we monitor the amount of water we pump out of the wells and purchase from J-SUD?

Yes. Harmony is the system that reports out of our wells. And again, God's timing with this TWDB grant, he knew that we were going to need this. three, four years ago when it first started trying to get this a grant. Because I'm thankful for J-SED, I'm thankful for their partnership and all that kind of stuff. But we spend about $50,000 a month with J-SED water. And although we always want to have them as a backup with this TWDB grant, our goal is to drill two more wells. Because right there, that's $600,000 a year that could be helping our enterprise and the city and all the things.

So if we know how much water we've billed for in 2025, do we know how much water we have produced in 2025? And do those numbers equal each other?

With J-SUD?

No, with what we pump out of the wells and J-SUD.

Well, this is, I think, just ours.

Harmony is ours. I can tell you the movement for J-SED. So back in earlier this year, we were only using our bill to J-SED, it's only 20,000.

Right, but I'm looking at gallons.

I don't have those numbers.

And it goes to loss of water. If we're billing for 15 million gallons of water, but we're producing 20 gallons, 20 million gallons, we're losing five million gallons somewhere.

Oh, no, yeah, I see what you're saying. No, and that's exactly right, because this 13 million gallon difference, I'm sure that that was 13 million gallons that never got built and got used.

Would you want to mention that has to do with the new meters? Yes.

Yes.

So why are we just waiting until they go out?

Well, no, no, no, no. Well, you don't know to replace them until they go out. But again, when I first started, there was over 500 meters that were not working. And so what happens is you're only billing at the base instead of what they're actually using. And that's, you know, that's why the revenue has gone down.

And to just kind of touch on what you said too, yes, they do a daily well reading of how much each well site produces every day. So how many gallons went through that meter in a 24 hour period. So they do track how much we actually produce, but we got one, two, three, four, we probably have 6 million gallons worth of storage as well. So but that's going to fluctuate. Sure. You know, through time. Some of it was lost due to the meters. Some of it, you know, there's leaks. Some of it. I mean, we're required to flush X amount of gallons every month to keep the water fresh. Right.

So sounds good.

Yeah. But ultimately, we should have seen an increase with the town that's growing.

So yeah. And You know, just to kind of touch on the whole meter things going out, you know, it all kind of started, well, we started putting these meters in in 2017. They have about roughly a 10-year battery life, which we're almost there. But when the water tower was down for several months, We had a temporary antenna, but it wasn't as high. So those meters, the ones that were farther out, were constantly pinging. So it took a little bit of life off of those batteries.

The same thing when your cell phone's out of service. Exactly, yeah.

So I mean, that kind of started the problem. And then we had, you know, like he's mentioned many times, the turnover of all the directors and losing all these people. And we were losing people in finance and utility billing and public works. And so nobody was really on top of why we had so many blind meters.

And when we were trying to get on top of it, there was a shortage for having a hard time. I mean, it's one thing to ask for 100 meters. It's another thing to ask for 600 meters.

Yeah, you know, I was told, you're not going to get them for eight months. And I'm like, what? You know, it was just, you know, during COVID.

Now, all the new homes have the new meters, correct?

Oh yes. Whenever a new house gets in, we get a new meter and new register and goes into it brand new. We order it, you know, he orders like maybe 20 and then, you know, we build 15 houses. So those go in right away. Now we have close to 3000 accounts and we've only replaced, maybe 600 meters. So there's going to be more going out over time. But hopefully, if we can keep the manpower in our staffing, that we'll stay on top of it and replace them as they go with the supply and demand as well.

So how do you know when your meter is going out?

You can actually check it. Each person can go online to Harmony, and they can look at their daily usage. They can look at their monthly usage. You know, they also get a report every month, correct? That it'll just say no usage or blank meter or something like that.

It shows no usage. It takes back kind of like a weird number. It's like .99999, so they know that there's something wrong with it.

Right. Okay. So that's a good way for the citizens then to go in and check it all out.

Yeah. So, you know, they're all designed to read automatically. They ping the tower twice a day, I think it is. It's like one in the afternoon and one in the morning or something like that, and it reads your meter. you know, tracks the gallons, the usage, stuff like that. And then, you know, the month of the report comes out. So if there's, like, nothing, then, you know, they go to public works, say, hey, this meter's not working, or we didn't get a reading on it, and they've got no read, then they go out manual and they look. Sometimes they can do it with a laptop, but if you just open it up and you look at it, it's blank. You know, that means the battery probably went dead, so. Okay.

Yeah, and I do want to say, Derek and his team Alyssa, they've all done just a great job. There's a system now in place, like Don said, to address this so we don't find ourselves kind of in that same predicament. So.

That's good. Hopefully things will continue to.

And, you know, we've all heard it. I heard it as soon as I got here is, well, we need to have a plan for the water treatment. We need to have a plan. Well, you can't have a plan without good data. And so that's the motivation right now to let's figure out what the actual picture is and the story is so that we can make a plan otherwise you're just shooting in the dark.

Yeah. That's good.

So this is, this is also something that you've seen before. This is the total, uh, these are the expenses by department. Um, It's the same things that I had noted earlier. If you want to look at it and you have any questions, I'll be happy to address it. I mean, I'll be happy to try to answer it. But just to mention impact fees, there was impact fees in the previous year that's about $200,000 that we no longer have this year. It's not budgeted for this year. Or if there is, I think it's only $18,000. The water sewer admin expense is going up 24% because of the merchant fees and fleet, we spoke about that earlier, fleet is $100. and eight for water and 20,602 for sewer. It's on that line and there is a 33.7 increase, wow, I'm so sorry, 337% increase in utilities expenses and that is because Encore, not decided, but they have raised their rate and if I could go to the next slide. Okay. It actually, the total encore rate increase affected us by $411,000. So if you see at the end, that red is what we need to be concentrating on. So water, sewer, as it is, we are not making enough revenue to cover our expenses by $1.4 million. And the expenses are driven by, well, fleet cost is 129, and merchant fees, and of course that CIP, remember the sewer CIP is $608,000. And on top of that, there is the utility increase, the on-call rate, with financial impact of $411,000.

Those pump stations and wells.

And wells, electricity, and all that.

They run around the clock.

Oh, I thought you had a question. Oh. So that's where we are right now. Any questions?

Let's just say it a little louder for those listening online. The fleet's only 130.

Yes, 129 is actually rounding up, yep.

Of the 1.4 million. That's correct. Electricity is 400,000 more.

Yes.

And then the CIP is 600. So the electricity in the CIP is a million dollars.

That's correct.

The fleet's a drop.

And to speak kind of the CIP, again, you can only Band-Aid things for so long. And, you know, and I'm just going to say it. I'm human. You know, if they want to say it's because the new city manager is here, that's fine. Go ahead. Get rid of me. But the fact is, the problem is still going to be there. The problem was here before you got here.

It was here for years before you got here.

The problem is, and again, I just want to say I'm so thankful for all the hard work. the finance department has gone into. Because as I told you when I got here, I knew we had an A minus rating, but I couldn't see numbers. And when I got here, everybody wanted transparency. Well, as we have untangled the spaghetti mess, the transparency has come more and more. And I do want to publicly say this. When these numbers first started coming out, again, many sleepless nights. but I will say we're doing modeling right now. This is not, I am sleeping at night because we are beginning to formulate a plan, okay? And the plan is not to do what happened back in 2009, which was let's just raise all this. There is starting to be able to form, Waterworth is, And again, I'm thankful to our predecessors. They invested in this software years ago and just never used it. And we are meeting with them once, twice a month right now as they're starting to take this data, this clean data that we now have that we can give them for them to give us models back. So what I don't want is for citizens to, and Mira will speak more to, you know, how do we fund these things, right? Because there is more to come good news. there is a plan that's being formulated, and thankfully, thanks to the no new revenue rate, and thanks to God kind of forcing us, because as you remember last year, we're like, well, what about a penny? What about two pennies? You know, we're sitting here kind of talking about minuscule things. This has literally forced us to go, well, this is the rate we're stuck with, so now we can focus on water, and as the data started becoming more and more clear, and as there's a plan starting to formulate, which again, we will present when the time is when we're ready, I'm feeling good about it. And it's not something that should freak out our citizens. So everyone's wanting a plan for the water treatment plant and all these things. That plan is coming now that we have clean data.

Next, I just want to make sure, like everybody remembers, this is what the water sewer, the utility fund is requesting for CIP. The belt press with awning at sewer plant, that's 300,000. Old Betsy sewer line replacement, 200,000. Sun filters, almost $8,000. And the canyon sewer line relocation, 100. And that's a total of $607,980. So that's total, that's like Councilman Easley is saying CIP is 608 and electricity $411,000.

And so what can- But on this list, the only thing that we're really obligated for is the canyons, right? We could push everything else down the road if we have to.

Yes, sir. So,

We, the TCEQ, we've almost gotten in trouble with them a couple times, and this is part of what I'm saying. Kicking the can down the road is, we're kind of to a critical point at this point. So, but again, Mary will talk about how we can fund these things.

Okay, so these are options that we can do. Cost saving scenario one, CIP. no ambulance, we can save 150, and that will affect only the water sewer. If you remember, we were 116,000 in deficit. If we take out the CIP of no ambulance, everything will be great, and we'll make a little bit of money on that. We can fund some of the sewer CIP by grant. You wanna speak on that?

This is a grant that, again, been working on. I don't wanna speak to it yet, but it's looking very- It's a possibility. It's looking very strong that we will be getting this grant. And when we do, there's only certain things we can spend this grant on. And thankfully, one of the things is, this specific infrastructure. So I do believe that in the next month, I'll know, and again, it's looking very positive. So again, this will, I'm just gonna say it, it's gonna come out. I have faith.

So the total savings for utility fund, and there's the TWDB reimbursement. It's a grant that will support anything to do with water loss mitigation. So we can actually take out right now, there's a budget line for all the meters. It's 51,500 and we believe that we can reimburse that 100% through the grant. So we can save that. So the impact on the utility fund, we could actually save 250 out of the 1.4 out of this.

Sonia, when you say no ambulance, that doesn't mean you're Get rid of the ambulance.

No. If you remember in one of my CIP, it has future ambulance, and if I take that money out, which is like 150. Okay.

It's just like the road fund. The $100,000 is in there because we're trying to put money away so we can start fixing some of these roads. The same thing with the ambulance. The need is coming, and we can either kind of do what we've done historically, which is wait until it's on blocks and doesn't run anymore, and all of a sudden have to come up with $800,000, or we can start budgeting bite-sized pieces so that in three, four years, there will already be half a million dollars sitting there, and we get in that habit of, hey, there's $150,000, so instead of financing it and increasing the debt load on the city, pay for it.

That's good. Thank you. Next one. At least one. Cost savings scenario two, personnel cost. We budgeted 3% increase for our personnel cost, and that's the savings that if we negotiate and say, oh, we don't wanna do 3%, we wanna do 2%, it'll save us $72,000. If we wanna do 1% increase, it'll save us 130. If we wanna say no increase for the personnel cost, But keeping the new hires, we'll say 189. So that's another way to do that. I would like to also share that there is, where's my number? There is $2.4 million in the bank right now. I'm not worried about 116, just to let you know. We can fund it from fund balance. And just to be sure that Fund balance is communicated correctly. Fund balance is asset minus your liabilities equals to your fund balance. So your bank account is not your fund balance. Bank account is only your cash, right Mr. Chapman? It's only your cash. Then you have your account receivables and then of course your liabilities, you have your payables, right? And we still have 2.6, 2.4 cash right now. So we can safely fund our general fund deficit of 116 through our cash. Water sewer, there's also the option of touching the reserves. That is 2.1 million in the bank right now. Mr. City Manager, are we not requesting them to actually say which ones

Yeah, so this is where you get to discuss among yourselves because as you remember, you know, that we have these before we give the budget book so that when we can present to you a budget book, it's, you know, it kind of with all the stuff we've talked about.

So I think, may I?

Yeah.

So I think what we're trying to say is that with all the presentation that you see, We have ways to fund our deficit, and we would like to get your input to what you want to support. Out of the CIP, the fleet, we have to pay, and we can pay. Out of the CIP, which ones do you want to keep? Out of the personnel cost, are you still trying to give the employees 3%? Are you going to go to one? Are you going to go to two? Are we going to use the reserve for the capital improvement for water sewer because you said the sewer is necessary, right? I think last time Mr. Malone came up here and let us know what are the consequences of not getting all these things done. So I think this is what I need right now because I need to make sure when we do the budget book, we already know what you would like to keep, if that makes sense.

And again, your enterprise, an enterprise is supposed to... Business. Utility funding. It's a business. It's supposed to pay for itself. It's supposed to pay for its own capital improvements. And it is supposed to support the city a little bit, which right now we are not really focusing a lot on because right now we just need them to make sure they're covering themselves because I can't emphasize this enough. It is illegal. So even if we were to get rid of all those CIPs, the only CIPs that help are the ones that directly relate to the enterprise, to the sewer fund. You cannot take government money and prop up an enterprise, okay? And so, again, our primary focus is going to be to make sure because the second that happens, I mean, I'm just guessing here because I wasn't involved in government. I was more of a student back then. The reason there was a big hike was because they realized the department was not supporting itself. You don't just go and do a hike for the fun of it, okay? And again, you were here, you were more involved. I was probably still living in a dormitory. And so what we're trying to do right now, and here's the thing, again, we are going to present a plan to tackle this. And again, I'm... I'm feeling good about some of these models that are coming across right now that we're playing with, that it doesn't, collectively as a community, we can dig out of this, and thank God we found it now, because history was set to repeat itself in the next four to five years. So, yes, sir.

Go ahead.

I just wanna, if you'd mind going back to the CIP page, please. Sure. And just since we're in discussion, talking about- This one?

Which one, the general fund or the water sewer?

This one, this one, yeah. I'm not in favor of cutting our employees. We budgeted 3%. Thank you, sir. They all worked hard and if we could do more than that, I would say do, but that's, for me, I'm with 3% increase.

Thank you.

We're obligated, I think, to do the sewer. I know for the Canyon sewer, we have to do that. And we have to do the $300,000 belt press. If I had to go out of reserves to get that, I would be okay with that.

Yeah.

And I'd also, let's put the ambulance, no disrespect to our chief, but see if we can baby that thing down the road a little bit longer. So those are my thoughts.

I'd say do the ambulance at 30%, do 50 for it instead of 150. I would go 2% of the employees. Everybody's gotta tighten their belt. The citizens are doing it, I'm doing it. We have the water sewer fund has how much in it? 2.1 million.

Yeah, that's a reserve.

It's a reserve. And 300,000 is the belt press. That represents what percentage of 2.1 million? It's not even 20%.

No, of course it's not.

It's less than 20% of your reserve. I think that's what a reserve is for.

So I have to repeat that, I'm sorry. So we're keeping personnel, 3%, and we said we wanna do the canyons. And then we said we want to do the belt press, correct? And then we can hit old Betsy sewer line replacement with a grant.

Grant.

Hopefully, yes. God willing.

And then what about the sand filters? Is that another have to? Let's do that too. That's eight grand for coming out loud. We're already going, so.

We should.

And then did you say to not budget for the ambulance 150?

That's a revenue generating.

I feel like, again, I don't want us to end up in similar situations the city has historically found themselves in. You know, there's 116,000. And again, there is a fund balance with,

2.3, 2.4.

2.4 million fund balance, right?

So we have 2.4 million reserves in the bank after we've settled the dust.

So that would be less than 3%? We're just budgeting for it so that there's money in there. It doesn't mean we're spending $150,000 next year.

That is correct.

I would recommend let's keep that in there, OK? Let my team continue to focus on the growth, you know, the additional revenues, okay? And watch the Lord work and exceed.

We still have 2.4, we have 2,459,000. as of today, and in the next week or so, I'll have to pay, well, I, I'm in the city of Keene, needs to pay debt, 140,000, and payroll, another two or three, two months, and then fleet, we have money. Cash. I'm not worried. God, really.

So here's my thought on the ambulance. We've got the $2 million in the bank. If we gotta write a check for a million dollar ambulance, we can write a check for a million dollar ambulance. It's just the transfer of money. In my mind, it just looks better on the bottom line at the end of the day for bonds, that type of a thing, not to have that budget line in there. That's just my thought.

I think what Councilman Foster is trying to do is to create a balanced budget. A balanced budget sells better. It does. So I think that's what we're trying to do. Yes.

Yeah, I was just, like it's, If I'm, as a citizen, it's like inconceivable to be like, how are you upside down, right? Like you're like, well, how are you going to do that? You know, so, and then, you know, the genie in the bottle, he's like, as you wish, right? And you're just giving everything to the departments as needed, right? And so, so you're looking at all those, if you look at both of those factors, it's, it's it's hard being up here right now, right? Like you just like, here we are, we're, we're being forced to think about what the needs of the citizens are and, you know, but then also relying on God and, and, and that's, and that's, that's faith, right? That's, that's all faith driven. And we get that part too. Um, but I feel like trying to mitigate that $116,000 deficit is, I think it's gonna look a lot better if we try to do, if we try to get that zeroed out and at least put ourselves in a positive.

I think Councilman Smith is repeating the same thing as you were saying earlier. Yeah. You said it's a different way, that's right. So do not budget for ambulance basically.

So basically, that's what's going to balance it. Yes, ma'am.

And one other thing, too, is I think it just shows the citizens how effective and efficient our department heads are when we can go to a no new revenue rate and still have a balanced budget. I mean, that says a lot to every department head that's here. So if we can do that, hats off to you guys.

And with nearly $0.02 lower. That's pretty incredible.

That's God. So impossible is not man. That's it. That's all I got. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you, council.

Okay. Is there anything else that we need to discuss there? Okay, number seven, excuse me. We don't have to make a motion on anything here. We just go on to general business items to discuss. Review and discuss and take action on adoption of the Keene Economic Development Corporation type A board budget for fiscal year 2026 and 2027, FY27. Don Martin and Jonathan Seitz will give this report. Really.

Is there slides? No? No slides? I got to wing it? Wow. Let me get to the right spot. Basically, in your packet, you should have a budget that, what are we on? A board? B board? A board. was presented to them, if I can find the right page. Getting old stinks.

All right, I think I'm close now. There we go.

So kind of like as Mira likes to do, you can see their revenue and their projected sales tax revenue for 27 is $402,400. Correct? All right, thank you. And if you go down to their expenses, it shows $471,000. Wow. How did that happen? Well, you basically got it broke down to you got your personnel expenses, salaries, wages, payroll. That's that first one. So that's a small portion of it. You got training. We did eliminate some in the training budget. Some of those classes that they won't go to or they've never been gone to. So it's like, hey, let's take those out of the budget. So we took those out. Dues and subscription, we eliminated a few of those as well. So that should have dropped a little bit. We did have a slight increase in membership, right?

And you'll see like maintenance completely went away because again, everything goes into the fleet fund now.

Right.

Go ahead, Rob.

Okay. I've got a question. Sure. Let's bump back up to interest income.

Okay.

Okay, go ahead. No, so as you remember, the Type A board sold land. Their bank account is much, much higher right now.

Yeah. Yeah, they had a few hundred thousand in there, and then we had a lot more up to the sale, that big chunk of land, which is going to go away fairly soon in the part of the CIP expenses.

It's just napping.

Yeah, but it did collect a little more interest while we had that money in there. Okay, that's not where we're at. Next page, small office equipment didn't change. Attorney fees, we decreased that a little bit, especially for A boards, since how we may not have any more land left to sell out there at the industrial park. Hopefully soon. Secretary fees went up by slight 3%, and that's mainly with the The 3%, you know, what we were talking about for services. Advertising and promotions. This says there's a little bit of a change there. I'm just trying to see if anything jumps out at me. It looks like it all basically stayed the same. The parade, the business expo, miscellaneous advertising. Help with the flag program and the banquet. business retention. This is something that a board passed and I believe that went to council as well, as far as helping local businesses with a grant. They can come by and say, we pay so much and you pay so much and we can help them fix up their properties.

Don and I did go out the other day and visited local businesses to inform them of that grant. So hopefully we'll get some people returning some applications just to help them, help the city, help us.

Maintenance and industrial part, again, we don't have as much land out there to maintain and take care of, so we kind of decreased that a bit. Administration, what jumped up there? Oh, the agenda management suite, 416%. Wow.

This goes back to, again, us investing in software to automate things to, you know.

Yeah, make things run smoother and not have to get more manpower.

And it's been very helpful with reporting because now when we go to Don's team, or mainly Mira goes to Don's team, they can actually kick back actual data versus, well, let me go to a spreadsheet and count it. You had a question, Rob?

I was just wondering, Is the juice worth the squeeze on this? Do they really have that many entries and that much data that has to be gone over?

I don't know. Well, the agenda management suite, that's how we can kind of.

So the agenda management suite we use now, we've been informed it's going to be obsolete as of June next year. So we're switching to a company that pretty much does the exact same thing. But also a component of that is the live streaming. We have a program that was installed when all of this was set up and really can't be maintained. Well, we can get rid of that. The new agenda management software will handle the live streaming posting to YouTube and posting and embedding onto our website with the agenda next to it. But this fee also, it also includes the setup fee for this one year and 2,500, yeah, and it'll drop off the next couple of years and that rate will remain the same for about five years, I think it is. So it is a little high for the first year but then will drop down and is divided between both boards and city.

So water, sewer, and all the boards. And then the change in the annual audited service. I don't know if you want to touch on that.

If you switch over to the last page, sorry, page three of three, if you go flip over, I have actually narrated, there are budget notes on there and budget assumptions.

I forgot.

So the auditing fee, so this reflects the last year's audit fee, which was $69,000. $69,000. Yeah, and just to speak to that too,

With the steps, with the GASB 103, and again, these were things that we were already putting in place before the government said we had to. So again, we're ahead of the game. The other thing is that we've become so difficult to audit that costs went up. And now that we're transitioning to be audit ready all the time, that expense should drop down. So it's easy for people to look at an expense and go, oh, it's just inflation, or it's just going up. No, it was going up because it was so difficult. Even four of us said, They were basically thankful that we didn't ask them to audit again because it was getting to the point where it was just too difficult.

And that 74 is 10% of the total amount budgeted this year. So EDCA and B only absorbed 10% of the total 74,000 budgeted. I don't know if it's going to be that, but that's what it was last year, so I didn't. So anyway, yeah. So 74 is only because of 10%. But yeah, everything else is on the last page.

I got it now. Thank you. I forgot you did that, or we did that, or whatever.

I think the most important number on that last page is the $1.35 million in their bank account. And they're only over budget by $67,000. And they're doing good for the city.

Amen. Yeah, but a lot of that money is going right back out too, isn't it, to fix the road?

It's going to create the infrastructure for all the jobs that are coming to Keene. And again, I'd just love to point out that the Baptist Church there on 317, I'm just tickled that they prayed. They didn't realize that they were going to have the best street in Keene.

And they're very happy. They're really happy.

Any questions?

I know the capital improvement. Yeah, I'm over here. Right. He's looking at everybody. It says it's the 317 County Road. What exactly are they doing with that, with the $250,000 that's projected for next year?

Well, the $250,000 we had set aside just to do the storm drains, put new storm drain boxes, because we were going to try and fix that road in baby steps. So $250,000 was to just do the storm boxes. That was it. That's what we set aside out of this year's budget, I believe.

Yeah, this year's budget.

Yeah, this year's budget for that.

OK. So we didn't do that. So we're going to just put it on the next year's?

yeah it's going to go towards we had the sale of the land which i want to say was almost a million dollars roughly the total project 1.2 something million dollars to redo county road 317 all the way up to the church from highway 67 with a deceleration lane and acceleration lane 30 foot wide putting new driveways into the existing ones that are already there, and doing the storm drains, curb and gutter, storm, everything. So it'd be nice, eight inches of concrete, nice road.

We need to ask that church what to pray for next.

Yeah, I was just clarifying what was actually, because I know we're already doing stuff because of what's already being done. I just didn't know what that was for, so I didn't know if it was something extra.

Yeah, so we're leaving the 250 there because, you know, we only had a million dollars roughly from the sale of land, and now we're going to put 1.2 into the. The road, well, we're losing money, but, well, technically not, because we had already set aside $250,000 out of this year's budget.

So it's going to be kind of a wash. Is that sale of the land at $1.2 million in that $1.35 million? OK. So basically, they're going to go down to about $100,000.

Well, and again, it's like I explained to the board. There's always sales tax revenue that continues to come in while money goes out. So this year, with everything going on, we'll be in a building. And when we do our training in February, we will be presenting a plan to the A Board for ideas that we have to start investing. Again, instead of it sitting in a bank, let's invest it in property, land, that kind of thing. So we're working on that as well.

And it's gonna take probably, let's say three months to do that project. They're gonna get paid a certain amount, then they'll get paid another certain amount, then they'll get paid a certain amount. We keep 10% retainage until the thing is completely done and we sign off on it, then they get the final pay. In the meantime, we're getting how much, roughly a month in sales tax?

Well, a 12th.

No, I mean per month. How much does Aborn get a month?

One-twelfth of $400,000.

That's good math right there, folks.

Sure, okay. Hey, Don, do we get a good warranty on this deal?

On the street? On the street. We always get a two-year warranty on it. A two-year maintenance bond. Because we didn't on Oakdale's, I remember. Or Oakwood. Shady Oak. Shady Oak, yes. That was... It's in the name. Yeah, there was a bond on it. There was a bond for the entire price of the project, but it came down to... They were blaming the engineers. Engineers were, no, it was the contractor. And then we ended up going to arbitration and just said, you know what, let's do this. Because we could have went after them, and we would have probably lost money in court costs. Yes, so.

I want to make a motion that council adopt the Keene Economic Development Corporation type A board budget for fiscal year 2026, 2027. Second.

OK, I have a motion for council to adopt the Keene budget fiscal year 2026-2027 by Rob. Motion and Mr. Shaw? Oh, Chuck. OK, Chuck second. All those in favor?

I saw your hand moving.

You don't talk very loud, Chuck. OK. Next, review, discuss, and take action on adoption of the Keene Economic Development Corporation type B board budget for fiscal year 2026 and 2027. Don, I guess it's you again.

Hi there. I got the right page this time. Keen Economic Development Corporation, Type B, board discussed and reviewed their budget for the fiscal year 26-27. At the June-July regular meetings, the board approved their budget at their July 21st meeting and are submitting it to council for final approval and includes them into the city's fiscal year 27 budget book. Staff recommends approval of the budget. And you can see you have attachments there, just like we had for A board. So sales tax revenue is the same. And you look at the next one and you go expensive and you're like, holy moly. That's a lot. Those do include a lot of CIP projects that some were, you know, promised already from this last year. Yes, that will carry over. And they, I don't remember what they have in the bank. Is it? Oh, okay, well there you go. Look at that. Was that on the third page as well? Yes. In the notes?

Okay.

I skipped to the back.

All right, good job. Yeah, so it was basically the same thing with them. You know, I cut out some of those classes. Some of the fees did go up because of the council training. Some of it did go up because of the management suite software. And then I cut out some classes and some training. But the big ones, I guess, are on the next page. Let's see, that stayed the same. And as far as park maintenance goes, it basically stayed the same. That one talks about the mowing of Wallen Ridge, mowing of the community center, mowing of the pocket park, which is now called Los Arauzo. We control it to welcome signs. So that should pretty much stay the same. Uh, community projects, you know, we have Christmas market, which we, is there nothing there? Oh, cause it moved down to a different, different spot. Um, so you got the parade fireworks. They've always donated to movie in the park. We cut that down. We said three times a year. We're going to do that just twice a year. Parades, miscellaneous events, that went up a little bit. And mainly that's to cover the cost. Because in the past, we relied a lot on volunteers. I can't think of the committee. Celebration committee. Yes. Thank you. Sorry. So many things going on. We had a lot of volunteers that volunteered time, and they donated stuff for the bake sale and a lot of those things. Now it's like we've added more things to Starfest. We've added more things to our parks. So the board said, OK, let's go ahead and put a little bit more out, community development, and get the community engaged.

And as far as the Christmas market too, you'll see the movie in the park. If you remember, we kind of combined that. We had a movie out there Saturday evening. You know, some of these things are, they kind of work together, but.

When you get down to your capital expenditures, that's where they go up. Arousal park improvements, they set aside $50,000 for that. And so far, you know, some of that's going to go to, I had our engineers say, do some dirt work because we're going to put in a small playground. We've already ordered the swing set and ordered, what, six, eight weeks before we get that in. So we're going to get the dirt work done to kind of level that out a little bit and put a small sidewalk from the parking lot to where the swing set's going and maybe a little picnic area and then to put a fence around it just to keep people from going into the neighbors' yards while they're there. So all those things are kind of in the works already. Let's see, then we got engineering and sidewalks. They set aside $200,000 this year, but we're looking at spending some of that already. We've already done a small section. Well, trying to finish a small section on 4th Street, but they have a little sewer issue going across for the homeowner until that gets done. Hopefully that little section between Gale and Fairview will get poured tomorrow morning, I believe, other than the little section we're The plumber has to replace their sewer line. Then I'm looking at what they approved to do and then where to go next. What's the next block to go on? So those things are all still in the works. Skate park. They had set aside some for that. We got some bids back. We had three. They were all between $400,000 and $500,000. And we said, whoa, we don't quite have that much money. Let's knock it down to about three. And so we're waiting for those bids to come back, those changes to those bids. Let's see. Additional lighting at Eliza Carver Park. Knock it down to three. What is that? 300,000 instead of 400,000 or 500,000.

And it's not earmarked, but that's because it's kind of done in stages, like you've got to engineer and all that kind of stuff.

Right. So this year's budget, this actual year for them, was 300,000, right? That was the total, yeah. For the skate park. Right. Right. So then we're adding 100,000 ears, or does that fall off? because they didn't use it or do anything with it. So now we're going back to just 100? I'm more asking.

It's actually 50. So we decided that out of the 300,000 is a total Yes, it's a total project, and this year we're only budgeting 50,000 only for the work that we're going to do this year. So we're going to allow the 300,000, but we are recognizing that there's only one Don, he can't be split by 25 ways, so that's why we reduce it to 50,000. We think this is what it's going to cost this year, yeah?

I guess, I guess I'm asking that because if they proceed and do more than they would have to actually come back to us and we would have to approve that or amend their budget.

Yes.

So, okay. Yeah. And the skate park was one of those last, I don't want to say the last minute ones. It was on their radar. But at the time when they said, hey, $300,000 for a skate park, $400,000, they were hoping that we had sold that land on Wallen Ridge. Well, that fell through. So that kind of took that project kind of to a lower priority. OK.

Wheels came off the state park.

Right. Additional lighting. I'm trying to remember. I want to say it was about $170,000 to redo all the lights at Eliza Carver Park. That was all new lights on the walking trail with some ballard lights around the other part of the walking trail, the parking lot, and the basketball courts. But as Jonathan kind of mentioned, we went ahead and I want to say it's like $80,000. We just paid $40,000. We paid half of that. And then about $7,000 of that for that one street light is going to come out of the street department budget. So we got that down to 70,000-ish, 73,000. We didn't do all the lights. Until we look at them and see, they're supposed to have a, a 10-year warranty on the batteries. And they say when the battery goes out, it's like $800. So versus every street light we have now, it's anywhere from $11 to $15 per month per light that we pay. Plus, you've got to worry about, is there power? Does the power go out? You've got a trench underground. Hopefully, this newer technology will work out. Any questions so far?

I have one question, and you're already gonna know who's asking, but did we, do we go, when do we go out for a mowing contract? And I noticed that it's only 3% increase, but if I remember right, when he was standing at that podium, he talked about a 5% increase, if I'm not mistaken.

yeah i don't think it was five i think it was three he wasn't going to do any at all until somebody made him mad and i understand yeah yeah well but i i thought it was more than the three percent and that's why i'm trying to see if we need to go back and look at that i mean obviously that's minuscule it's less than two you know it's probably two percent difference which is nothing but but that was that was part of staying with him for a couple of years so it's at least another year if you wanted to or they wanted to go back out for bids again okay otherwise we're going to get into that well i'm going to go up three percent every year you know okay if that makes sense yeah sir what is the next line transfer to government activity oh the fleet

It's that half vehicle.

Well, I'd like to, if everybody else is cool, I'd like to just make a motion that we adopt the Keene Economic Development Type B budget for fiscal year 26-27. I'll second. Okay. Easy, boys. A lot of words there. Okay.

OK. And Bob, second? OK. So. OK.

I'm done. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

OK. Council, accepting the board budget for the fiscal year for 2026 and 2027 for the Type B board. All those in favor? It's carried.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

You're welcome.

And Mira and Carrie and Jonathan and Holly and Amber and Maggie and everybody else. Thank you, Don.

Okay. You're going to review and discuss and consider a resolution approving a negotiated settlement between the Atmos City Steering Committee, of which you see of Keene as a member and Atmos Energy regarding the company's 2026 rate review mechanism filing and adopting tariffs that reflect rate adjustments consistent with the negotiated settlement. And Ms. Holly Russell will give us that report.

Okay, so Atmos petitioned to raise our rates and then of course our ACSC, the steering committee, who we are a member of, pretty much fights it to bring it down. And so as a member to adopt what they are, what they have come to a settlement of a reduction of 30 million to the company's initial request, we just have to approve by resolution as because we are members. The ACSC attorneys provided a very huge report there that I put in your packet. Are there any questions?

Up or down? Did it go up or down?

Well, of course, they always ask for more. Well, I know. They were entitled to a $253.4 million increase, and it was decreased down by $30 million.

Okay, so it did go up a little bit.

It did go up, but not as much as they wanted.

Okay.

Yeah, the numbers that they show here are so confusing. It's like one page says five cents, and then another one says something else. It's like, good God.

Yes, some of those attachments that they sent over, I guess, are examples of what customers of Atmos Energy would see in their bills. Okay.

Council, are there any further questions, or do I have a motion on this item?

I make a motion to approve resolution number 2026-503, approving of a negotiated settlement between the Atmos City Steering Committee, which the city of Keene is a member, and Atmos Energy regarding the company's 2026 rate review mechanism filing and adopting tariffs that reflect rate adjustments consistent with the negotiated settlement.

I'll second.

Okay, I have a motion. Rob Foster and a second by Mr. Shaw. All those approving? Thank you. Okay, it carries. Okay, we do not have an executive session today. Do we have any requests for future agenda items? Council? I'm surprised. Okay. We'll adjourn the meeting at 8.20.

Thank you very much, counsel.