City Council - Regular Meeting

Items. Let's just go through our few items. So consent. First one, considerable minutes will be Tuesday, 04/07/2026, regular city council meeting. Second item, under f two, consider resolution approving the proposal for Yeehaw Tractor Guys LLC out of Denton, and that is for the contractual services relating to the 2026 Public Works mowing services for right of ways, water sites, drainage drainage channels, and other city owned properties for public works department for five year term.

Any questions on that contract? Third item, consider resolution approving a supplement to the public highway act rate crossing agreement with Union Pacific Railroad Company, and that is for the Keller Hicks Road Improvements Project for Public Works. Any questions on this one?

Yeah. Quick question, mister mayor. Mhmm. It's like a $104,000 overage. What's the cost of yeah. Besides engineering, like, what's the reason for all the Conceptual. State of conceptual reason?

Let me get Alonzo on that. It is also that is Union Pacific, and they determine the cost. And Yeah. They said that was their initial and what they ultimately end up paying, but I'll get them to clarify that.

And and the terms of

the contract just basically said any overage we're responsible for? Yes. Yeah. So what happens if we don't agree?

We'll be in breach. Yeah. I don't

think that's an option to give us the

It's an option to breach a contract. What happened if we Yeah. Use the contract.

What's cheaper?

Yeah. Depends on how much the overage is. Yeah.

It'll stand stand your own. Right? Yeah.

Should be. Let me double check

with Sean.

It's okay. Sean.

We'll come back to that one.

Yeah. We'll pull it

out if

we need to.

Something we would need to go on the executive board.

It might be. Whenever we get Stan, we can ask him.

That would definitely be an exec.

But we'll do it for now. No old business. H one, new business considered ordinance amending the city color code of ordinances by amending section six dash 100. That is the adoption of the international fire code. And section six one one zero reserve of chapter six fire prevention and adopting new sections as listed on the agenda. Any questions on that item? Okay.

Alrighty. We don't have executive. Okay.

But right now, if we need a pool, we can do that. Are texting him? Okay. Cool. Alright. Let's just then go through

the work session. Oh, he's on?

D one, budget strategic planning, budget priorities. Yep.

Good evening. Hello. Hello. Alright. Let me get this set up.

So, this is our second, workshop, work session item this year for the 2627 budget, outlook, on the council priorities. I'll do the first half of it with the numbers, and I'll pass it on to Marsha so you don't have to listen to me speak on and on about this all night. So just as a reminder, this is a bar chart showing our FY '26 adopted budget of $111,300,000 with a $47,000,000 general fund budget. And then you can see all the other funds on there as well. Also, just a quick reminder, these are the six council strategic goals that have been discussed last year.

We will have a strategic session with council scheduled for Friday, June 19. So these may change at your discretion. But number one, elevate family life. Two, track vibrant development, demonstrate physical discipline, improve and maintain sound infrastructure, put people first, and last but not least, expand citizen engagement. So those were the strategic goals that the FY '26 budget was built on and what we are starting with as we get started on the FY '27 budget.

So strategy 3.2 was strive to ensure the Keller's taxpayers do not pay more city tax dollars on a year to year basis. We adopted the new revenue rate last year, minimal change on property tax value. We can do a conservative estimate on sales tax growth, try and keep that flat or based upon our year end projections. I'm sorry. We we will continue to monitor other general revenues.

And for the f y twenty seven budget, we will be implementing the first full year of Sportspark user fees. And as a reminder, next council meeting, May 5, we will present the, citizen survey that we just had completed. Just a chart showing the average home value and levy going back to FY eighteen. As you can see, the market values have been trending up since then, taxable values trending up. That green line is our average levy, and that's actually come ever so slightly down since FY '19, really highlighting the tax mitigation efforts over the years.

So for the city of Keller, our citizens are are paying to the city pretty much very flat maybe ever. So a little bit down going back to FY19. Thanks to council's efforts for tax mitigation.

Do you have a slide in here talking about the proportion of sales tax versus ad valorem?

There is.

Over the same timeline?

No. There's not a slide in here in this presentation for that, but we can certainly create one. We know roughly what it is.

For the total tax bill?

Yeah. Because one of the goals is obviously to reduce reliance on property taxes. So I was just curious, I know you've seen an uptick in sales tax, I didn't know in terms of our proportional revenue, like what percentage?

If we get Power BI, that's easy

to Yeah.

It's just not the Yeah.

We will

we will

get that number for you.

Yeah. It's what sells that for you.

We can get that for you.

Yeah. Just over time from like that same time frame.

Same time

frame. Okay. Yep. Yeah.

Awesome. Thanks. Alright.

Some of our expenditure guiding principles strategy 3.1, maintain fiscally conservative budgets that prioritize spending where it matters most. Public safety, streets, sidewalks, parks, trails, the the items that our citizens are really gonna kinda interact with on a day to day basis.

We're gonna

maintain our five year CIP program. So our major projects in there, Old Town Keller, Mount Gilead, Road, Johnson Road Park, some of our other projects. Strategy 3.3, want to protect taxpayers' interests. We're gonna propose an operationally balanced budget by like we do every year, operationally being those ongoing year to year expenditures and maintain our base funding and current service levels, limit staffing increases to only where they're just fine or based on workload and priority analysis. Gonna look to leverage different items to help us with that, such as software, AI, kind of look into look into that.

Strategy 5.3, recruit, recognize, and reward quality city staff. Staff are our most important asset here at the city. So we're gonna work to sort of salary adjustments for them, maintain the self insurance program that's been really good to the city over the years. So we want to strive to continue with that. And then finally, a chart showing the general fund growth here.

You can see overall it kind of fluctuates somewhat. That's due to that red part at the top. Those are our one time expenditures that are going to keep rolling over from here to here. You see the blue the blue bars are, you know, just barely ticking up each year. That's where we're really keeping those ongoing operational expenses that increase to minimum.

So over the last few years, that's averaged about a 4% increase. So we're really sticking within our means doing what we can to continue our service levels and providing the best value as we can to our citizens. And finally for me, just reminder, this is what the FY twenty six general fund breakdown looks like for various expenditure categories. You can see the biggest piece of that pie there is personnel. That that is pretty pretty standard for general fund, about two thirds of the cost going to per personnel for for cities like us.

But we don't pay personnel out of anything else still. Correct? The crime prevention Just that one?

Just the one. Just

the one. Yeah.

Yeah. That's it. Everything else is under GF?

Utility fund has Does it cost you? Has salaries. Okay. Yeah. Most of our personnel here in the general fund, I said two thirds is percentage. Yeah. We

employees with the utility fund and the drainage fund.

What are CIP transfers?

So that's like the one time transfers to cash fund capital projects. I will pass the the rest of this on to to Marsha, but if you have any other questions for me, just feel free to ask away.

Okay. So next we'll be talking about the council strategic goals. On the left, we have the current goals that we're working on this current fiscal year. Some of them have already been completed such as the sports part and the others we're still working on or continue to work on as part of our strategic efforts. And on the right side, we have the goals that staff had identified for FY '27. However, we are aware that this may change once we have our strategic planning session in July or June. Me. As you can tell, the completion of the sports part was a big one. Our one of our goals for this next fiscal year is to optimize the sports and arts renovations. We'll continue our trail system expansion, our special events, promoting Bay Streets Park.

Under number two, attract vibrant development. We'll continue the Elm Street construction, focus on family entertainment for economic development, and then maintain our incentives and facade grants. Moving on to the next two council goals under demonstrate this goal discipline. We'll make all the efforts to continue tax mitigation, maintain our replacement funds, and review a five year forecast in CIP. You will see some major changes under number four, improve and maintain sound infrastructure.

We were able to complete a follow those programs there. The ARPA funds are going to be used by the end of this year and projects complete as well as swift. We began the Mount Gilead reconstruction project and of course implemented a lot of famous software that we all know about and love. And and then also one of our big projects this year internally is to upgrade our city telephone system, which should be done by the end of the fiscal year. Moving on to for next year, we do have the the traffic signal preemption system that we talked about a few meetings ago.

If you haven't heard our town of Hall Patio Foundation is in need of a lot of work back there. So that will be a big project that we'll be planning to fund next year. We're currently working on updating our ADA transition plan and hope to have that finalized as well next year. And then another big project is to start our phase two renovations at the Keller Police Department, which includes the net comm section dispatch.

On the street sidewalk maintenance, remind me, maybe it's the sidewalk that I'm thinking off hand, but what's the multiplier every budget cycle we

We've done 10% per year.

Okay. And that's on the sidewalk or

is It's

on the sidewalk. Okay. And so where would that put us for this cycle?

Do you

have any? No. And we can go on. So, I was curious.

What's up? Quick question on this. What's the fiscal impact for this telephone system? I think it's the first time I heard of that. Mean, it kind of a small number or is it a big number? What kind of endeavor is that?

Do you have those numbers?

Give me a second, let pull

it up.

Know a lot of it. We're upgrading it but it'll be the same Or most of the fees that we're currently paying right now.

Yeah. There was a slide last year, but I forgot what it was.

Yeah. I don't remember.

Our phone system VoIP?

I'm not sure.

Should be in some you said the Internet? Yes.

We have VoIP.

Good question. It's yeah. I'm sorry.

I know that the new phone system that we're planning to get does have a lot of new technology, like availability of text.

Boys are bandwidth, I'm assuming.

Yes. Yes. And a lot a lot of new features that we don't have currently. Sean was here. He's not here. Right? He's probably behind closed doors getting everything.

Well, now

the council Muali's question, was kinda wondering are we switching systems or are we like, you know, pulling phone cords out of the wall? Like, what are we what are we actually doing?

No. It's not an actual pulling phone cords. It's an actual system. The software is being replaced. From what I understand, there's two options John's looking at. One of them, they can still use the same phones that we have right now, the hardware. Another one is require a new actual phone set. So he's looking at two right now. He hopes to have that finalized by by this week, I believe. So we'll have more information that we can provide to you all.

Okay. And if you have

anything on the

estimate I won't pull up the the costiers.

Yeah. Okay.

And it it would

be something where if you call our office phone, we could have it routed directly to our cell phone, but it would be our office phone number. Yep. We get visual voice mail or voice mail emailed to us and transcribe it for us automatically.

And also the availability to fax from our desktop is gonna be very, very nice and convenient too.

Thanks.

You can go on. Yeah.

I was moving on to the last two goals, put people first. Of course, we want to maintain our self insurance program. As mentioned during our our last council meeting, we do have some some high claims this year, so we're closely monitoring that. And with that said, we will continue our wellness initiatives, looking at salary adjustments. We've had a few meetings with our personnel committee already this fiscal year, so we're we're working on that.

And then any positions that we would add have to be justified, of course. In addition to that, you may also recall the fire department presenting the medical control vehicle program, and that is another program that we plan to launch and maximize this next year. As far as citizen expanded citizen engagement, if you recall, council member W. Presented a citizens award program a few meetings ago. That's one of our our action items as well. We will have some updates to our city website this next fiscal year and also add live captioning for our council important meetings that are streamed.

Is live captioning something people have requested?

It's actually part of the ADA requirements that came out of this last legislative session. So we're trying to get ahead of it and get it done soon even though those deadlines were were extended for us. That's awesome. Yeah. We're excited about that. That'll a lot of folks. And then as far as projects that were completed for last year, of course, the citizen survey, which you'll have information on this next meeting. And then we implemented the city app, and that was a huge endeavor as well and installed all the information signs.

Busy here?

Yeah. Very much so. So just a reminder on our preparation for our budget. We've already kicked it off last month almost to the day. Departments are currently working on their budgets and I will be meeting with them soon as well as the city manager will be meeting with the department heads.

As mentioned, the compensation committee has already met a few times. I'm sure we'll have several more meetings before we finalize any decisions. And then we have the public hearings for KCCPD and KDC that will be scheduled. This is the same slide that I showed last meeting that shows the the budget presentations in in mini sessions if you will. So our next session is on economic development and sales tax next month, and then we have a few more throughout summer until August. Is that gonna be a

good time to show the profit that Rosslyn Mall was requesting that sales tax?

Yes, ma'am. Compare it. Very good point. And make sure to add that.

Well, if it looks great, I need to know now for some reason. But if it's flat, just say it till May 5.

Joking. And

then a few more updates for you on the adoption items that we'll be bringing to council. Any questions?

When's the last time we did a council strategic? Was it two years ago, three years ago?

So good question. So, it was three years ago. So we have a tentatively scheduled one for June 19. It's been sent out to council members. I know need to check with a cup availability. So we have that scheduled for June 19. So even the things you're seeing up here will likely be modified and changed as needed, with both the new mayor and council coming in.

Good deal. Yeah. Because we've got a good number of folks coming in, so that's good. And then, just a couple of things. So so I'm sure that council will discuss it.

But Northeast Park, I know that part of the reason we had kinda put that decision off was we wanna make sure we get past the Keller Sports Park. So with the ribbon cutting right around the corner, I do think that might be something worth exploring with this Northeast part and try to make a decision what we wanna do there. And then we had discussed, and I don't know, it might be something either for next council or for staff to kinda poke around, but Bates Festival Park or Festival Street. We had talked about possibly partnering with the Farmers Market once a month for them to do something there in the evening. So I know that we're trying to bolster that.

So I don't know if we've had any follow-up conversations with them, but that might be something as we kinda progress to kinda reach back out and see if there's any interest there to kinda Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Alright. And then I think on the sidewalk, do you remember? It's like over, like, half 1,000,000 or So right now,

both of So for the current year, we're at 358,000. Next year, it'll be increased to $3.94.

Okay. Alright.

Do you ever find

the number in the telephone?

That's what I'm working on next.

Okay. So

I think for counsel, you guys it's kinda like kinda weird because I won't be here probably very much longer. The but that's something you guys might wanna start looking into the sidewalk. That number's gonna start creeping up. And so the policy is 10% every year. So, yeah, for you guys. Yeah. Yeah. You guys we'll see what happens over here on this side of the aisle. But that's I mean, pretty soon it's thirty, forty, fifty, sixty

We just got Kalichi out there.

Yeah. No. I'm just saying so. Just keep that in mind because I know that when we put that in place, it it was I mean, it's a great endeavor, but there's also a fiscal element that you guys wanna start considering.

So it's 10% of

Every year.

Projects?

No. Of the budget. So we have what you said, 350,000, 360,000. That was last fiscal year. So this next budget, you're looking close to 400,000 that's gonna be dedicated to that. So next year, $4.40, and then you can start doing the math from

there. Yeah.

It's gonna

Do we do we have any idea per linear foot because we're doing a a four foot sidewalk. Right? 5. 5.

5. It's my favorite number.

5. 5.

Yeah. Senator, how many did you

I I do. The new standard is five. Okay. So do we have any idea? Tell me how much it costs per linear foot? So, like, what what does 364,000

It dollars

it is $15 per square foot at a five foot sidewalk. That gives us whatever

that math is. Right. That alright. $15 a square foot.

Right? 15 per square foot is our

wrong every time. Yeah. So 75 on linear foot. Correct. So if you take the math, that that doesn't give you a whole lot of sidewalk for 354,000. Right.

And there's a lot of street we need to do too. Yeah. Wow.

Wow.

Any other questions? Yeah.

Let me confirm that.

I'll leave it there.

Comes out to about 5,800 square linear feet.

Plus, that's not I'm not It's not that funky.

The backlog is still smaller since we wiped out the six year backlog.

So that's That's correct. And part of that need to also include that it's not just sidewalk, but it could be the ramps as well, and that eats it up rather quickly at $2,500 a

pair. Yep.

Okay. Speaking of projects, you wanna go into d two? Capital improvement. I think we might need to go to Executive. Stan, are you on?

Park 1, Spector. Yeah. Oh,

there he

is. Yeah.

Alright. Thanks, Dan. We might ask you some questions in executive if you wanna just hang around. Thanks. Yeah. Alright. You too. Hello.

Good evening. This is our capital improvements update for the month, and those were sent out earlier this afternoon. I'm looking around for head nods. Did everybody got

that okay?

They did.

Thank you. Yeah.

My apologies for arriving late with a watch, a phone, three screens, and a wall clock, and I look at the only one that ran out of the battery. So my apologies. As a result, I ran out without that list, and we're gonna do it by memory. The top of the PDF, I appreciate that. The top of the PDF is, is by compilation of needs that are coming up for this this next, budget cycle.

Not all of them will be programmed yet. That'll be a budget discussion as we go through. But as we continue through these, summaries, I'll continue to add projects that we know our needs or emerging needs that we're aware of. Next up are the designs that are just getting underway. They're pretty straightforward between the zero to thirty and thirty to 95.

We've added no new ones at this time. The, the only items that are up for discussion tonight is gonna be our mowing contract and our Union Pacific payment. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Those that are bid ready, but you'll be seen soon, is the Union Church Waterline, but we're waiting for Southlake. Until they're done with all of their work on Union Church, we're not going to go in and do any any road closures or construction to overlap them. The sports park screening. It's a good a time as any to talk about Union Pacific because what let me back up. Working with the railroad is like working with a boulder. It doesn't move for you. Yeah.

The way the railroad sees the world is roads and cities exist because they were there first and we get to go over the railroad, not the other way around. As a result, anytime we interact with them, we are always negotiating from a point of weakness. And we just we don't have a hammer over that. The item that's up for later this evening is a payment. And the way that process goes is we enter into a, an agreement with Union Pacific.

They estimate what they believe something will cost. In this case, I think it's about 57,058 thousand dollars or something like that. For the Keller Hicks Road, it's for conduit that goes in or for wiring that goes in between the traffic signal and the new railroad signal. If they go in there and determine that they need to do more than what they thought, they'll do what they need to do. And they've got to keep it working and safe.

However, we don't know that until they get into it. And while the number is stated in our agreement, it's actual cost that we end up paying for. In this case, it was estimated to have conduit that goes from the I'm sorry, wiring from the, traffic signal to the railroad, signal. When they got into it, it required more. And the way conduit and wiring works is that if there's not enough conductors, wires in the in the, conduit, you can't just pull another one through because what you'll end up doing is creating friction and pulling the insulation or rubbing the insulation off of it.

So because there wasn't enough conductors, usable conductors or room, that had to be abandoned and replaced. So now it's the cost of a conduit and all of the conductors go through it, not just the two or three conductors that we thought were available. All of that to say is this cost goes up. We have no leverage to say, yes, we're only going to pay for the two or three wires we're using because that we just don't have that leverage. And that's why the 54,000 I'm trying to get that from memory, goes up to $104,000 for the work that was actually done.

So 100%.

So that's the that is an example of what negotiations and interactions with the, Union Pacific is. And it's not unusual. The same happens with Burlington Northern or any other rail line that we happen to come across. The reason that's salient to the update is that in the process of doing the material wall, and it was blown and gone, we were ready to go, the contractor hit a communication line for Union Pacific.

Oh, so

Oh, ironic. How how ironic. Yeah.

Well, it

was next to the railroad. Go figure. Yeah. We don't know how much that's gonna cost yet because they had to go in, do an emergency connection because it it connected the rail signals both at Bear Creek and at Golden Triangle. So we don't know where that's going end up yet. My hope, and we're still in discussions, is that this is going to go back to the designer. You know, that's why we do the subsurface investigations that suit, surveys. That's why we have surveyors, research, land ownership, any kind of deeds and everything that's happened. Something was missed up front in the design and we'll, we'll get with the engineers. Somebody not us is going to pay for this.

They'll call 611 or whatever

it is. No before you take. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, like I said, it's while we are the owners of the project, we hire people that are required to carry insurance for this very reason. Other items that are currently underway is the new project is the Davis Mediums. You may have seen that, started. I'd like to make sure that everybody gets this information, which is one of the concerns was the exiting out of Lynnhurst Way. I'm sorry, Volterra Way.

Lynnhurst is to the North, Volterra is to the South. The challenge was that it's tough to come out now across three lanes plus the center lane, plus another three lanes, trying to gauge seven lanes of traffic to come out. And so we've been working with the state and we've confirmed that there is gonna be a center refuge for vehicles coming out of Volterra Way to turn north and sit in the middle while they're waiting to negotiate the the traffic going north. It it was originally planned to just be a full median, and you hit all four or five lanes at once. And so this is, exactly what we hope to see, and that, I've confirmed that that's part of the plan.

We do have some requests for traffic signals at both Volterra and Lyndhurst. We will eventually push that forward to TxDOT. What we want to do is wait till after the medium project is done, volumes have equalized, and then we can have some real data to approach TxDOT with.

Aren't those kind of close together? Did you really have

We have requests for both. After we do the numbers, we'll see which one makes most sense. My guess is it'll be Lyndhurst, but I don't know that for sure. So, please, two. So

what you're saying makes sense, but I wanna test kind of your hypothesis there because

the whole reason they're doing

the medians is based on data. And we've, you know, explained to residents that that that is, you know, we can rely on it and it's valid. Correct. So can we use that same dataset to project traffic flow and get a head start on the signal discussion?

Like, why I guess it's be able to.

Put another way, why would we the only reason to, I guess, get a newer dataset would be is if the current dataset that's being used to justify the median project is unreliable or

less reliable.

So it's

not unreliable so much as it is aged beyond reliability. So it's whenever there's a project like this, it will change some traffic patterns. And even if we waited till the end of this year, that puts us three to four years from when those numbers were taken. Most designs will only go back two years to use traffic counts because everything changes, whether it's a new assisted living that gets put in on North Richland Hills to something, a new vet or something. There's some kind of development that will change it.

You got

to clean this up in Austin. So we're using old data to build current projects and justifying the project with old data.

The next project is the sidewalk program. Thank you. Hands out too quickly.

I think it would be good to I forget. I don't know if you already had a discussion with Taxot about pushing the street signal discussion? Or do you are you

pretty They are aware of it. But, until we have until the project's current construction is done, it's not gonna be. No one's gonna put their seal on it yet. Okay. Next up is the Elm Street project, which continues to progress. More and more of the underground is being done. The waterline is now complete. Sewer sanitary sewer is underway. The storm sewer is done on the West Side. And we are approaching, getting ready for the bridge.

That's still about a month away, a little over a month away. But it continues to move, and I continue to ask for your patience and everybody else's. This is the slowest part because much of the progress is just not seen. But once the underground is done, it's going to turn around and start going. I would remind, the discussions that continue with the city market or the Keller Market that, this project is not anticipated to be completed until early twenty eight.

And so while we may have discussions about the market in 'twenty seven, it probably isn't going to be ready until 'twenty eight to actually have that kind of activity. The sidewalk construction is blowing and going. You may have seen the new sidewalk on Bluebonnet. There's a couple of modifications that we're still going to do, not the least of which we were doing sidewalk work. But it wasn't until we did the sidewalk work that became a lot more apparent that there was some standing water at the intersections.

We're going to go back, clean up those intersections so that Joe Pedestrian doesn't have to walk through the puddles just to use this new facility built. That was supposed to start this week, but the rain postponed that. But that'll be done as soon as the weather allows. Right after that, we'll head north to the middle school and around the Baptist Church area and fill in some blanks there. So again, our goal is not to have a sidewalk on both sides of every street, but at least one side of as many as we can get. And that's what we're, doing in the Keller Middle School area.

I remember getting some drainage feedback back in the when he brought up the sidewalk on Bluebonnet and there were some public comments about flooding in that area. So what are y'all gonna be doing to address?

We're gonna be essentially reconstructing that portion of the street that's in between the sidewalk ramps so that the water will flow

the other

direction. Isn't it right there right by that big drainage thing? Or

Yeah. There's there's a couple of them like

that. Yes.

It's kind of behind that office, don't cry a little bit.

Yeah. There's three or four spots that are like that and that's just going to be addressed. I just want to make sure that this body knows that, it's not unnoticed and we'll we'll address that.

I'd be

happy to take any questions that you have regarding, the rest of the list.

This might be a coding question, but any update on the 17 o nine medians? So, I mean, it's progressing. It looks It's progressing. Looks good, but any idea when they'll be completed?

They think within the next two to three months, they're they're moving faster than originally thought because I thought they typically, they wait until, September to do the plantings. They take August off.

Thank you very much. But

they're really at that last stage now of work before they put plants.

Okay. But they're okay. Because that was that was why I was curious if because now is the perfect time to do it. You can do it with all the rain. Right. If not, then hold, I guess. Right? Right. So that their their intention is to hold till after summer?

I don't know. Their intention is to plant before summer. Oh, really? They're they're ahead of schedule based on Oh, so they're planning projects. Yeah. So they'll they'll have it done before summer.

Oh, wow. Okay. Well, it's looking good. So and I like the fact that you guys preserve the trees and

we had some that were Yeah. That were hit during.

I don't if it

was done by contractors or vehicles or what, but they'll get those replaced.

Yeah. That's right.

They'll do

all the plantings at

once. Yeah. Good job. Any other questions?

Are the bathrooms at Tunnel almost finished?

They're getting Slowly but surely. 1st Floor is done, and one of these is done. So now they're on the second phase. I anticipate another one for those. For bathroom? Oh, wow. To be completely done.

Any update on 377 with our friends at forget what they're called now. Morris? Morris? Mister Morris. The guy over with

Oh, the NCT cop. You mean the guy who just retired?

Did he say that? So who's our new friend?

They they are in the process of recruiting. Okay. Right now, a lot of those discussions are are in limbo. We continue to work with our a third party consultant, Baird Hatchner Brown. We have received a scope and an estimated fee for that. We're refining that. What we'd like to do and what I believe is consistent with what I heard this body say is we may need to help prime the pump by doing some of the upfront work analysis of these are the options, here's what we could do so that we can start to pare this down to something that's manageable in individual steps. Plus we can always if grants or other grant opportunities come up, we can always put this forward as part of our local match.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, Sounds it like you've got it. Just don't forget about that one. That's a big Right. For those folks. And I think now there's some partners that we we can if there's a new guy that's overseeing it. So that's

Well, the there's also a Okay. Another effort, a North Tarrant flood effort to identify these type of concerns. And that's part of that list. And so not just an effort from the municipal side, but the county is also looking at problem spots, and that's on their radar.

Okay. Alright. Okay. Any other questions? CFP stuff? Thanks, sir. No.

I do have questions about the

executive session questions. So let's go ahead and, if there's no other questions here, we'll go ahead and break off to the executive under five five one point o seven one, and that is to consult with the attorney regarding items plus our agents. It's Tuesday, 04/21/2026. I wanna thank you all for being here. We've got a very short agenda, but we always start every meeting with an invocation.

And to help us, it will be our chaplain of Keller Public Safety, and that is Mr. Brian Hamlin. How are you doing, sir? Good. Good to

see you.

I was a scout master. These guys got to address everybody, so I thought, well, that's pretty cool. That is way cool.

Love You wanna tell us your age and your school, mister Hamwood? I

was a scout master many, many years ago in a land far away. Well, you know, really in seventy three days, we're gonna celebrate our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary as a nation, which is absolutely really just beyond imagination that we've we've done it. When you look at history, we don't find anybody who has been able to do that. But it took fourteen years before our constitution was actually ratified by all 13 colonies. So it is a process.

And as I was thinking about that, I I thought that all of that is built on principles, and it's built on privilege, and it's built on purpose. And America did not become what it is today anymore than Keller, as we were talking with these young scouts earlier, became possible without that same commitment of having that that privilege to serve, that purpose in mind based on principles. Made me think of the apostle Paul and Silas were in a a city named Thessalonica, and they were not well received. And so when they moved on, they got to a city named Berea, and what made things work well with the citizens in Berea was the fact that scripture tells us that they that the Bereans received the word with all readiness of mind, and they searched the scriptures daily. Made me think about the work that you men and women do on a daily basis when you serve the city of Keller.

You have a readiness of mind to hear and to to make adjustment and to do the things that need to be done, and you search out how do we get it done. So while those are not those are in two categories quite obviously, but the principles are there, are they not? And so I would just wanna say with with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary coming up, thank you men and women and our city staff and our citizens, and let's celebrate together the two hundred and fiftieth in seventy three days. Let's look to the lord in prayer. Father, I thank you for these men and women who have volunteered to serve.

They they serve with a purpose and they serve with principles and they serve with privilege. We thank you for them and we just ask that you would continue to give them insight and wisdom And as we are in an election process, may we not ever have people vote in regards to popularity, but always to principle, you know, with a purpose and realize the privilege to serve. We'll thank you for these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. Thank you, chaplain. Awesome. And next item, we've got it is the pledge of allegiance. We've got a group of folks that we wanna recognize first. So if y'all don't come don't mind, come on up. We just met these folks at pre council, Scout Pack nineteen ten. And go ahead and go to the microphone real quick, guys. And if you don't mind just kind of I know we just did it, but for those who are watching, give us your name and then the school that you go to if it's alright. Okay? Go ahead.

Hello. My name is Asher Williams.

Asher, thank you, sir. Next up.

Hello. My name is Henry Redding.

Thank you. My

name is Wyatt, and I go to Birdville ISD School.

And, Henry, you go to Florence. Right? Yes. Okay.

Hello. My name is Russell, and I go to Keller Harville.

K.

My name is Morgan, and I go to Shady Grove Elementary. My name is Oliver, and I go to Ridgeview Elementary School.

Very good.

My name is Elida. I go to Calvert Elementary School. Okay. There

you go.

My name is Cheryl, and I go to Calvert Harvill.

Okay. Perfect. Awesome. Who's gonna help us lead with the US flag? We'll do it together.

Does that work? Okay. You guys ready? Awesome. Well, thank you, guys.

Come on up. If you don't mind, we're gonna take a group photo. Parents, that'd be that work? Yeah. And we'll do it we'll do it up here. What we'll do is scatter around. Scatter

Yeah. I'm like, get in

here. Alright. You guys make sure you're in the front. Here, we'll move the chairs in the top. Mayor pro tems me. She'll take a photo. Sure. Okay.

I'll email pictures to whoever reached out.

Yeah. Right here.

Hey, you guys are in? Okay. We got everyone? You

you go.

Look at the cameras. Head down.

Take

care. Of course. Well, thank you all. Thanks for what you do, by the way, to help our community. And and and and we're looking forward to seeing you guys grow and continue to serve. So if there's anything that we can do, by the way, as a council to help in your projects, let us know because we love to get involved if we can. So but thank you for helping Keller. Of course. Yeah. Thank you all. Take care. Bye bye. Alright. Next item, it is item e, persons to be heard. This is a time for the public to address city council on any subject.

However, the Texas Open Meetings Act prohibits city council from discussing issues which the public has not been given three business days notice. Issues raised may be referred to city staff for research, possible future action. Each speaker is allowed three minutes to speak. Do we have anyone here that wishes to speak? Seeing none, then we'll, consider the, consent items.

We're gonna go ahead and pull the last item, which is item F three, but F one is consider approval of the minutes for the Tuesday, 04/07/2026, City Council meeting. F two consider resolution approving the proposal for Meehaw Tractor Guys LLC out of Denton, and that is for the contractual services relating to the 2026 public works mowing services for rights away, water sites, drainage channels, and other city owned properties, and that is for the public works department. Mayor pro tem? Thank you,

mister mayor. Motion to approve consent items f one and f two.

Thank you, sir. Councilman Will? I second. Alright. Got a motion and a second. We'll take a vote. All right. So the consent items are approved unanimously. Item F3, that is a considered resolution approving a supplement to the public highway crossing agreement with Union Pacific Railroad Company for the Keller Hicks Road Improvements Project for public works. Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you, mister mayor. Motion to table item f three. Thank you, sir. Councilman Will? I second. Alright. Got a motion to second. Any discussion? We'll take a vote. Alrighty.

So the third item's tabled. There is no old business. And then our loan, new business item, item H1, that is to consider an ordinance amending the city code of ordinances by amending section six dash one zero zero, adoption of the international fire code and section six dash one one zero reserved of chapter six fire prevention, and adopting new sections as listed on the agenda. How are you?

Hello. Good evening. Good evening. Right. So we'll start on some background.

This is regarding our current fire code and hopefully what we end up adopting tonight. The International Code Council updates fire codes every three years, and the 2024 edition of the International one, twenty one, one, New local amendments are recommended to enhance life safety for the citizens of Keller and to ensure consistency with the NTCOG and our neighboring cities. In February '22, the city council adopted the 2021 edition of the fire code with the local amendments and to maintain our public protection class rating through the international and the insurance services offices so that as what helps lower some of our insurance rates in Keller. Staff recommends adopting the 2024 edition of the International Fire Code with these local amendments. So some of the key changes for the 2024 Fire Code from coming from the 2021 Fire Code.

This is going to look at some of our emerging technology risks, so new and expanded requirements for lithium ion batteries and energy storage systems. Expanded fire protection requirements, broader sprinkler and detection requirements tied to these modern hazards. And then there's new sections and some reorganization. The new sections are for battery storage, micro mobility devices, and then administrative updates improving code official authority and interpretation consistency. This also allows for appeals processes if someone disagrees with our interpretation, and kind of puts it on a broader scale for other people to decide on.

Operational and enforcement enhancements, increased emphasis on hazard mitigation in commercial and industrial occupancies. For our local amendments, some of the key changes that have been made our regional consistency and alignment with our neighboring municipalities and the COG. We're encouraging responsible development with updates to our previous code amendments. This also will improve firefighter safety during emergency response. So some of these emerging hazards, one of them that's pretty big is electric vehicle charging stations.

We're seeing these pop up all over the place. So this new section would give some places that the installation of the charging stations would be prohibited. So inside of commercial structures, except for parking garages. Multifamily buildings, we allow chargers in these buildings that have their own garages with the caveat that heat detectors are required to be connected to their fire alarm systems. For one to two family dwellings, we've got a lot of EV chargers being installed, so we give a lot of safety guidance to install these heat detectors.

And then emergency disconnects, these are gonna be for the charging stations themselves. This gives firefighters the ability to shut off power completely without having to be right up on these vehicles. Micro mobility devices, so our e scooters, e bikes, everything that we are seeing all over the place. We do have some storage and charging prohibited in certain places, so egress pathways in common areas of schools, our multifamily occupancies, and our City of Keller buildings. Some infrastructure reliability updates is FireLane continuity and cross access.

This is going to require that new multifamily occupancies and commercial developments require a fire lane to continue between two adjacent lots. This increases apparatus access to the commercial buildings, their space for our vehicle staging and it minimizes apparatus backing out onto main thoroughfares. It also will improve traffic flow on our main roads. The access from adjacent lot is something that's added on there to create a requirement to record the fire lane easement on each property's plat. This will avoid any issues with responsibility of that easement, maintaining it and everything else over time.

Here is an example. We've got 1301 To 1491 Keller Parkway. This has the fire lane continuity. We see two major access points into here, but each of those buildings you can see are connected by one. It looks like just one parking lot, but it's all fire lane throughout. Below is what we currently have a lot of. Our apparatus have to go out onto Keller Parkway to get to the next building over. That can create a problem just with the amount of apparatus we can fit in those parking lots. It also slows down traffic when we have that for people trying to turn into those areas. So the FireLine continuity will help a lot with that.

Remote power is a new update as well. This is kind of with the EV charging stations, it's the same type of box right here, but this will also be installed on newer remodeled constructions of buildings over 6,000 square feet, so those are our buildings we already have fire building systems in, our sprinklers and alarms. And we will require them for high occupancies. What this does, it gives fire personnel the ability to remotely access and operate a shunt trip for the building's main power supply. Instead of having to enter an occupancy, look for their main breakers, they can do this from the exterior.

It's safer for our firefighters. It reduces the damage that can occur with utility control of pulling meters, and it's also faster to restore electricity should we not have an incident or anything else. We can restore power within that same day, that same incident. Incident. Residential sprinkler requirements, there's been a few changes to that.

The requirement for two separate water meters has been removed. This reduces the cost significantly for our residential fire sprinklers without compromising any life safety. Single access residential subdivisions, our requirement went from 600 feet to that maximum dead end to seven fifty feet. Over seven fifty feet from that single access point, we'll need a fire marshal approval with some additional requirements. So we may require sprinkler systems on all the houses, approved turnarounds, intermediate turnarounds, or wider street widths.

A lot of that's going to be case by case because each site plan looks a little bit differently, so there's some different things we can kind of work with to see what's going to be the best for these developers and for the residents themselves. This is intended for new residential developments. We don't require that sprinklers be put into existing developments if they're not over 6,000 square feet. Senior retirement communities, some of the changes we've made here is for emergency planning. This is mirroring what's going through legislator right now in the state.

It's where our senior retirement communities are going to be required to make emergency response plans. They get updated annually and they are shared with not just the fire department, but with the residents and their families themselves. This helps us with our response to these places, and it creates a good partnership between us and these facilities to also kind of be proactive about some of our common calls. Things like fall prevention plans will help with making sure if we're seeing a lot of falls, can make sure that we've got the installation of grab bars or anything else. We also are going to require one to two family dwelling developments that are for the 55 plus communities, that each house will be required to have a residential sprinkler system.

Now, this is just to help with our egress times, it takes a little bit longer for them to get out sometimes, so we're buying up some time with these systems. Open burning, some changes to open burning. Open burning will be allowed with an approved permit for silvicultural, agriculture, range, or wildlife management. These are all measures that we can take to reduce wildfire risk. Going over portable fire pits, fireplaces, and recreational fires, we have clarified some of our requirements.

It's prohibited on balconies and covered patios of commercial and multifamily occupancies, but portable fire pits, these fireplaces are allowed outdoors of one to two family dwellings. They just must be located 15 feet from the structure and used according to the manufacturer's recommendations. Recreational fires are allowed without a permit, we do provide safety guidelines about when is appropriate, distances, things that are allowed to be burned by TCEQ requirements and everything else. Mobile food vendors, this is a big change, new legislation from the state takes effect July 1. That legislation states that the State Department of Health will permit all mobile food vendors, so our food trucks.

They must have a valid fire inspection that was done within the year, and this inspection can be issued by any fire department or inspection entity in the state. The vendors are still required to follow our planning and zoning and our fire codes. So for us, we will have these mobile food vendors register. There's no fee. They just provide us their fire their fire inspection that they got, the state license that they have, and that they're accepting receipt of the zoning and fire requirements, so we know that they're following the rules in Keller.

If vendors do need an inspection, we will provide those inspections, that's good for a year, They can use those wherever they go. And that's the only thing that we'll be charging on. Any questions?

Thanks, Stephanie. Any questions?

Mayor Pro Tem? Like we heard in your presentation and work session, just wanna commend you for, you know, how you provide the information, the local amendments, and really just the overall quality of the work you're doing. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And councilwoman or I'm sorry. Councilman Wally?

Yes, sir, mister mayor. Thank you very much for everything you do. I'm doing the motion to approve agenda item h one.

Thank you, sir. Councilwoman Brennan.

Yeah. And I also appreciate this because it, some of these things were brought up in some earlier meetings that we now have resolved and shouldn't come up again. So I second the motion.

Alright. We got a motion to second. Any discussion? Alright, we'll take a vote. Thanks Stephanie, appreciate it.

Thank you.

There is no action to be taken in executive session, so we'll need a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Alright, We're adjourned.