City Council - Regular Meeting

Seeing we have a quorum, I will call to order the City of Kemah, Kemah Public Facilities Corporation and City Council regular meeting, June 3rd at 4 o'clock p.m. First thing on the agenda is the pledges. Next thing on our agenda is a moment of silence. And the next thing on the agenda is invitation to address council. And the first one on the list is Cheryl Gonzalez.

Okay, it's green. Okay, Memorial Day weekend, most people would start their Memorial Day holiday on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Monday night they would be getting ready to go back home to work on Tuesday morning. Now, the short-term rental I have across the street from me, which we used to call them party houses on the beach, but this has been voted in all across the country, thinking you're going to get some... Of course, when you do get revenue, you spend it on going on trips to Indonesia. I hope that helped you. But anyway, at that time on that Monday night, trying to get wound down from the holiday weekend, we had 12 cars across from there. I really didn't know it because I have new windows in my house. Never even heard any of it until I went outside. But this involved four KEMA cop cars. They had to rouse those people out of there. They were still there. One cop car with his lights on. bar lights on until midnight. After that upset, then I couldn't sleep all night. If I had never stepped out of my house, I wouldn't have known all of this. Short-term rentals, bad news. You're bringing a motel room into residential areas even though we have no zoning. But a hotel has parking, they have security, they have a sign. It's all these people who come and stay in a hotel. Not poor people who have to bring their brother-in-law and their nephews, or these were party people. They didn't come in from out of town. They just came to party the last night of the holiday. Second question, I know you cannot answer. Back during the Super Bowl, when the Patriots came, Mayor Sylvester Turner swept all the traffickers, I'm using a polite word for the men, and the ladies that they trafficked and which they traffic them. It starts at dusk and it goes boom, boom, boom, boom, all the way till two in the morning. I saw that when I had to live at Repsdorf after I sold one of my houses before I moved back into my properties here. What are the plans that we're going to have here in Kima during this whole soccer, FIFA, of all these people who are going to be swept out of Houston and they gotta go somewhere. And last time, they came down here. And there was this one man, he had... X's up the back of his legs. And he paraded this girl up and down 10th Street, which is where I was living, Kipp Street, all the way around to Texaco and through the fire station. And that's what he was doing. He was showing her off. And this was some people that were overflowed that normally run the track over there in, what's the name of the street in Houston? Anyway, they run the track over there. But they sweep them out of here for the big events. Does the Kemah Police Department have some plans of these people? Because they're going to be here. Thank you.

Next, Mr. Glenn Gordy.

Hi. My family, I think you all know, owns the land across the highway here where these proposed facilities may go in. And I'm here speaking in favor of that because I see an excellent opportunity with that to depending upon how the review comes back, are providing a lot more sales tax for the city of Kemah from the other activities that will be brought into other businesses that would be encouraged to come into Kemah. And other places I know are putting these in, but they don't have what we have. They don't have a Kemah boardwalk or the boardwalk water park that is coming. That's just a natural synergy between two activities like that, especially for families, which would be the main activity out there. This is families, not bars, which I think would be a good thing for the city of Kemah. And also, as far as congestion, this property already has three access points, whereas down by the boardwalk, you've got one access point. And we can add another one in, straight from 146. I already have things set up to do that. So we have good access. So the concerns about congestion, I think, are not concerns that cannot be addressed easily. So I hope y'all will, depending upon how the review comes back, that the numbers all do make sense, that y'all will proceed with that. Thank you.

Thank you, Glenn. And next on the list is Michael, is it Benance? Could you spell it for me?

B-E-N-I-T-Z. Okay, thank you. Yes. So I own Mattress Pro Discounters over on Marina Bay Drive at 232 Marina Bay Drive. I've been having some challenges with my neighbors over there. And I received a letter from the city of Kemah recently that's game changer for me staying in business where I am. And I just wanted to come out and introduce myself. And I think the issues in the letter that I'm looking at, I don't think that it's almost like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I've met with several of the city officials, building officials, code enforcement, even some of the policemen. And I'm getting different answers and different issues that seem to be important from each person that tells me things. And one person says this issue is an issue, and the next person says it's not an issue. I wanted to invite each of you all to come out to my store. I'm there pretty much every day from 10 to 6. And I work the store seven days a week. And I'm at 232 Marina Bay Drive. I don't know if you all have like five or ten minutes. You got you all to come out. Each of you can come out all together. I don't care. And I could just kind of give you my side of of what I'm dealing with. And maybe we could kind of figure this all out. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Well, we do not have any proclamations, presentations and awards tonight. And next on the list is mayor's comments. It's been kind of slow since our last city council meeting. Not much going on, but the city staff has been participating in a strategic planning envisioning exercise. They are going or they have been discussing what the city faces over the next 15 years and how to best meet those needs of what the city what comes out of their feedback. Consultants met one on one with key personnel and before a joint meeting was conducted. And they're trying to review the strengths of our city, the weaknesses, the threats, and the opportunities moving forward. So we're excited to see what that strategic plan comes back with. There is also a new art installation in Kemah. It's a very large three-foot soccer ball that was installed in anticipation of the, is it FIFA? Okay, FIFA World Cup kicking off June the 11th. It's... a statuette that was painted by two of my students from college of the mainland marissa gomez and crystal hernandez and myself we all three painted on it and then it was installed down at the boardwalk and i think it's on the main uh entrance there at the boardwalk yeah um so next time you're down there check it out take your picture by it grab a bite to eat maybe watch a game Registration is also now open for anyone interested in riding in the City of Kemah's 4th of July parade. This year's theme is Let Freedom Ring Kemah Style. The staging of the parade will be at 10 a.m. in the parking lot and the parade will roll out at 11 a.m. there's more information on the website chema TX gov and also on the city's Facebook page and finally June 1 remember mark the beginning of hurricane season I just the city would like to remind all the residents and encourage them to have a plan in place gather the right documents the batteries whatever you think you need but mainly just get a plan in place and and there are also Galveston disaster guides online, and then we have some here in the lobby at City Hall for you to pick up. Next on the agenda are city council comments. Councilman O'Rourke, would you like to start tonight? I really don't have much to say. Is your microphone on?

That's okay. I don't have much to say except that I'm glad to be here and I'm enjoying the ride, so to speak.

Okay, well, great. Good. And Councilman Wallace, finally back from traveling.

I was going to say, unfortunately, I missed the swearing in. So I want to congratulate you two again and welcome you. And I know we're going to do good things together. And thanks, everyone, for showing up tonight. And that's pretty much it. Thank you.

Councilman Broaddus.

Same thing. I know I missed last meeting. Congratulations to both. I know last meeting, Cesar and I were in Vegas at ICSC. If you ever want to walk 35,000 to 40,000 steps in a day, it's a good exercise. I promise you that. But I will say that in the introduction of the event center businesses out there i've already had three that would like to have hard conversations and i've got two other appointments that want to have more discussions about the event center so it was very very positive with people that were wanting to come to chemo due to the event center so hopefully we can proceed forward with that project and i guess we shall see that's all i got councilman oliver uh thank you folks for coming out and those of you that spoke let's just get this show on the road and councilwoman thorne

I just want to echo on with what the mayor said, and I was happy to see that chemists a joint emergency preparedness session. That'll be June 20th. It'll be in League City at their community center, but it is a joint effort where KEMA's part of sponsoring. So if anyone needs any additional information, it's a great opportunity to meet with various organizations that are involved with preparedness for hurricanes.

Next, we will have our city administrators report.

Thank you.

Sorry. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, residents. Yes, it was mentioned that I, too, had some time out of the office. Both ICSC was very fruitful. I did have the benefit of being able to travel to the other side of the world to experience a different culture. It was not paid for by the city. It was indeed paid for through ICMA. I did that as an ambassador program, as an exchange program with the Indonesian students that we hosted. So I really had a chance to represent KEMA, be an ambassador, as far as a sister city kind of relationship, if you will. have expressed an interest in signing a sister city mou uh being that the the communities are very similar uh so i will consider that and bring that for you guys for you guys to review if you're so interested um it was a very um eye-opening experience to tell you the fact that we were able to help those folks the interns that came and visited with us and we're here also at no charge of the city uh really made an impression on what they learned here and they really had a time to be there. So I will be sharing some of that with you guys, so you guys share the experience. But it was an amazing opportunity to hear how thankful people were and how many people across the world know about a town that's two miles long with 2,000 residents. It was really, really astonishing. So for what it's worth, I thought it was a great opportunity for us to showcase ourselves on that national scale. That's all I have right now upon return, but I do look forward to having a great meeting. We would answer any questions anybody may have. Thank you.

Thank you. Next is reports from staff. We have a fire inspection report, and I believe our chief, Robert Sunigan, is here to present that.

Good afternoon. Everybody has the packet that

that I provided or no, if not, I'll just go over it.

That's OK. So so far we've had 128 inspection items, so that includes anything from short term rentals to annual inspections, fire protection inspections, hood and duct, special hazards complaints. 96% of all short-term rentals have been completed. That was our primary, we treat it as a target hazard being that they are, they present a unique you know hazard just because they they're treated like lodging but it's not a residential dwelling but you know so um that's even including the additional ones that were submitted after the first of the year um let's see we uh so far 19 annual inspections have been closed out there's another 12 that are remaining we had a total of 93 violations found over the past four months With 45% of those being resolved, a lot of those take 30, 60, 90 days sometimes to resolve. I'll make sure and get the full document sent to everybody. And then we've also had quite a few pre-planned development meetings, which included, but we're not limited to, the Dakota, Marina Bay Harbor, Kwik Kwik, and other boardwalk-related meetings.

um pre-plans or i'm sorry plan reviews which i think that's going to be the fireworks anybody have any questions any questions or comments for robert can we do this like once a quarter just to get an update exactly what i was going to say and if you would email it to um natasha she can include it in the package i just know it was emailed i just noticed it from our last meeting until now so it was in the last hour or so so i'll make sure it gets to natasha and everybody else okay super thanks for coming absolutely thank you all

I'll still send this.

Next is number 10, the consent agenda to approve the minutes of the 520-2060 council regular meeting. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. I have a motion by Councilman Lee Wallace, and I think a second by Councilman Darren Broaddus. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 11A, consideration of possible action to accept a nomination and approve a mayor pro tem and... I just want to remind everybody, especially for our new councilman, what this position would involve. Mayor Pro Tem is a member of council appointed to act as mayor if and when the mayor is absent, unavailable, or unable to perform their duties. On rare occasions that I would not be able to attend a meeting, the Mayor Pro Tem would step in to preside over the meeting, sign documents, or perform any ceremonial duties for that particular meeting. however one of the trade-offs of living in our lovely coastal community is the threat of hurricanes and severe weather events in the event of a natural disaster any of us could be displaced should i be unavailable unavailable to serve in my capacity as mayor it would fall upon the mayor pro tem to participate in emergency management operations including disaster declarations ordering evacuations and delivering information to the public. And we also have a backup with Chief and with Cesar there in that in all of those capacities as well. With all of that in mind, though, I would ask that council strongly consider nominating Councilman Broaddus as mayor pro tem as a long standing member of council and also as president of KCDC. I believe that Darren is most familiar with the processes and procedures for running the meetings and interacting with city staff in the event of my absence. So it's consideration of possible action to accept the nomination and approve the mayor pro tem position for the following year. Any comments? I cannot make a nomination. I was just making a suggestion.

I'll nominate. I'd like to nominate Councilman Darren Broadus as next mayor pro tem. Second.

So I have a motion by Councilman Lee Wallace, a second by Councilman Dustin Oliver. All those in favor? Aye.

Any opposed?

Does he have to accept the nomination, I guess? Is that the first time?

I told her this is as close to me as I ever want to be. He was kicking me under the table, but yes.

I think he has to make a speech now, doesn't he? Yeah, I know.

Well, thank you for taking that on here, and I really appreciate it. 11B and 11C are both AARP grants. They're $2,500 each. There is no match required on these. I think they have to happen between December 15th and the end of the fiscal year, so December 31st. The first one, 11B, AARP walkability grant agreement. If you have any questions, Cesar can answer them.

I'll make a motion to approve AALP.

Excuse me, I'd like to ask a question, please. I just want to know who's going to be the city contact for those because they tend to have reporting requirements, and is there a designated person for that?

It's in the packet that sees you as the contact person, so you'll be conducting that.

Well, I would be conducting the study. That's what the volunteer effort would be to follow.

But it's for anybody?

The coordination of it would come from our office and we would make sure that we work with volunteers. So and actually, if if I can have the floor quickly, the idea for 11 B would be to get some volunteers to help with the walkability audit and some to help with the bike ability audit as well. So there will be a call for volunteers to help as well. If anybody would like to lead that charge. I do know we have one council members already expressed an interest in helping with the walkability audit portion. If there's anybody out there or on council that would like to help with that as well. we'd be more than happy to do that. When it comes to the articulation of the paperwork and submission of those, those would come from our office.

Thank you. So we had the beginning of a motion by Councilman .

I make a motion to approve walkability grant agreement with AARP.

And do we have a second? Second. We have a second by Councilman Lee-Wallace. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 11C, AARP Bicability Grant Agreement.

Make a motion to approve the Bicability Grant Agreement with AARP. Second.

So we have a motion by Councilman Darren Broaddus, a second by Councilman Dustin Oliver. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 11D, Discussion of Possible Action Regarding Putting Visitor Center Out for Lease.

i put this on there because uh we have a tenant that was evicted we got kyle still on the phone but uh he told me we had the ability to put this out for our p or our q but i don't know which one i was getting backwards but um so right now we're thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars behind a ball on our budget because no one's made payments so it's my I would say we need to put this out. I know the tenant currently still has his stuff in there and I think that's being addressed as we speak, but we're not going to RFP RFQ out in the next couple of weeks. So I give him ample time to get his stuff removed from the facility. I think. Right. Kyle, can you hear me? Correct. Okay.

Yes.

So anybody's got any questions? Cause it's my understanding, but the tenant was in there till like mid March. still operating, but he did not pay October, November, December, January, February, or March.

May I chime in on the discussion for those that may not know? The visitor center has been on a monthly rental for the past few years, part of a contract, part of the original release that was done years ago. Now that that's not in place, the revenue that's being discussed is at a monthly payment rate. equating to $50,000 would be $50,000 for the course of the fiscal year. So it's the math, 4,188, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. The math, don't quote me. I didn't check that. But it's a monthly payment. Is it 4166? Sorry. I know it was two back-to-back numbers. But basically, it's a monthly payment, if you will, towards that that's payable every month. So that's revenue that was passed in the budget as expected potential revenue for the city. that said the reason why that number was brought is because that's what the numbers equate to that have not been paid for thus far the original contract end date for that lease was set to be april we're now beyond that so the decision is what does the council want to do with the visitor center essentially because regardless of what the situation is the lease is over so at this time that is a potential budget revenue shortfall that we may have depending on how everything encounters itself but it'll definitely be a line item shortfall for what expected revenue was supposed to happen for that particular expense or potential revenue line.

Any more questions or comments? We have a motion.

Make a motion to put the visitor center out for lease in RFP or RFQ?

It would be usually in RFP because there's proposals that would come back in, not for qualifications.

So we have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second?

Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Councilman Darren Brice. We have a second by Councilman Dustin Oliver. All of those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 11 E approval of creation and releasing a procurement for a hotel study of chemo to be paid for from hot account or hot funds. This would be an RFP to go out, wouldn't it?

This would be RFP or an RFQ, depending on the qualifications of whatever the responding members would be. If I may on this item quickly, obviously from speaking to a lot of hoteliers and in discussion one reason why we have airbnbs is because there is a shortage of places to come to stay here one of the things that a lot of the future hoteliers have asked is this is great we would love to be there give me some data that proves that i can come what cities often do in this case that we've learned is they have hotel studies done that would be the next step to do here what we're proposing is to put this out and to take it out of hot funds, which would be an appropriate expense to have since it would be generating more hot funds in the future.

Yeah, because when at ICSE, we have Placer AI at the KCDC level, and we can selectively show, I think, 38% leakage in our hotels currently. But every time when I talk to Extended Stay, Cobblestone, Hilton, Marriott, IHG, all of them, the first question out of their mouth was, do you have a hotel study? and we did not have one. So I still had conversations with them because the event center, because everybody's interested in that concept. But I think if we're gonna proceed forward with any more hotelers in town, we're gonna have to get the study so that we have concrete evidence to show them that we have a need for hotels.

Do you know what kind of study and how in-depth, what the price range is? I was talking in-house this week with Cesar about it, and he said it could range from, you know, what, $40,000 to $100,000, depending on what you get?

Give or take, that's what they roughly cost. The more in-depth we go, that will be tied to the RFP request, RFQ, excuse me. would be tied to what that would be. So the more in-depth you would go, similar to how when we did the strategic plan RP that we put out, it would be how many bells and whistles do we want to add, how deep do we want to go. The deeper, the best data we would go, but also the more expensive would be tied to it. So it's more market analysis to say, hey, does Cuma need more hotel rooms? Yes. What kind of hotel rooms? What brands would work best? What fits your demographics? So on and so forth would be what the study would include. So the more in-depth you get, then the more we would have to look at that.

And a perfect project for hotbeds.

I mean, it's intended. That's what its true intent would be, is to create more heads and beds, which is what one of the biggest losses are. We've got data that shows that people, even from the outside, are coming to KEMA and they're visiting and they're staying here for a little bit, but they're not sleeping here, right? And so that's been evident by that. Also evident by, as was made a comment earlier, that they're going to Airbnbs, which obviously may have a negative connotation in some places. So we understand that. We understand that that's the situation.

I would say from history and not traveling as much currently as I used to, but when I got to the hotel room, I did not leave a mile and a half, two miles from my hotel to go eat, do whatever I was going to do, because I wasn't familiar with the area. I would stay as close to that hotel walkable if possible. But I mean, that's just, I would think human nature, if a man's doing that, I'm sure women are doing that as well. Probably even closer, maybe eating in a hotel. So, I mean, so.

And that's the other part of the study. Like, do you want to know what amenities a hotel should have? Does it need a gym? Does it need a pool? Does it need a hotel, you know, rooms or whatever? All that type of stuff would be entered as to what types of hotel and levels of hotel and what flags, approximate flags or things to carry, who to market to, so on and so forth.

We'll have a chance to go over the proposals and figure out exactly what we need, and we can talk to Marriott and Hilton and see what their demands are, too, as far as what they're going to require in that interim, because we have those contacts from Vegas.

So do we have a motion on the floor by anyone?

I make a motion to approve the release of a procurement for the hotel study of chemo to be paid from hot tax account.

We have a second. Second.

Second.

So we have a motion by Councilman Darren Broaddus, a second by Councilman Dustin Oliver. All of those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 11F, discussion of possible action regarding a council policy outlining procedures for administrative reassignment, modification, or oversight of departmental functions, including requirements for notifying the city council of such changes. And although this is mayor and council, I believe Councilwoman Thorne is who put this on the agenda. That's correct. All right.

This item is not about personnel matters in terms of any specific person. This is so the council because we answer to the taxpayers, we answer to our voters for what happens and does not happen, staff obviously carries out that function. In the past, for instance, we've had council members who were police officers. One would not want, in my opinion, to have a council person saying, oh, I'm a police officer, so I'm gonna take over. the police force or put myself into the police force. The same for the other. A typical company does not decide that they're going to be their own finance director or personnel matters because there are many laws, because bottom line, we're responsible to the taxpayers for risk. And this item more is about risk avoidance and mitigating anything. It does not stop staff from doing things, but any major change, just as it says, reassignments, those types of things, just that we're notified as a city council If anyone has any other questions?

So I guess my question is, is this like an org? You're asking for org redone? I mean, because right now, Cesar sends us out anything that he does from his org chart, because he's the one that everybody answers to. And he sends us notification, I made these changes. Or he might have done it verbally a couple of times, because I was in the office. But he has notified us in the past of his changes or what he's trying to accomplish. So I mean, I don't know what we're trying to do here other than maybe put in a writing that yes because at the end of the day we hired that gentleman right there to run the office and he is our point of contact we don't need all the staff to need to have six bosses or five bosses or however we'll look at it in my opinion it needs to be he's the boss of staff and then we get our information from him because if not it could break down in a hurry um so i guess i just look confused as what we're trying to approve here and and if i could just ask a question because i know as part of like

My employment agreement, it's in that employment agreement. I also know it was a decision that was made prior. For example, I'll give an example, not because he's sitting next to me, but prior, the police chief structure of how they responded to was different. Activity was changed, and then they were responding to the city administrator. Are we saying a separate policy that just, I guess, for example, establishing a work chart? Is that like passing an order chart?

Passing an order chart. And at some point, and I'll be totally transparent here. I'm new on the block. And I was dismayed to find out that one of the departmental functions is now no longer with that department manager and is with another staff member. And I was floored by it. And maybe that was something that y'all already know about, and they kind of forgot to pass that on to us. We hire professionals at various levels. I am not negating anything that you decide to do, but we need to, in my opinion, need to be aware of it. I would not expect any corporate executive to go and decide they're going to arm me. I have an accounting degree, and I believe Mr. Broadus has an accounting degree as well. We shouldn't be going over deciding that we're going to take over finance.

Correct. That's fair. And just for the sake of that conversation, there's been no staff changes or changes in reporting since any changes of the election. So previous council was made aware, and I was hoping to make everybody aware when we have our one-on-ones. I know I've requested time from you. Mr. Rourke, I've got to schedule time with you as well to have our one-on-ones for certain discussions. I can bring you up to speed on that and other things. at that time, whenever your time allows, for us to have that conversation, that dialogue. But there's been no changes in staff assignments or anything else since the elections have taken place.

The election was only on the second. Correct. On the third. We're talking a month. So prior to that, was there a change?

There was, and council was notified before the change was made.

All right, then, then, then, then, then that's actually highly suggested by council, not me included, but it was highly suggested by council members that that change happened the way it did. So it was again, I really think I think the point I guess we should guess going forward is if next meeting you can bring an org chart where we stand today so we can share it with both the other council members. Absolutely. But it's the public. I mean, that's not a problem.

I think it was going to be part of the budget book. Ryan and I already discussed that, putting out this next budget book. budget process to do that to adopt one normally gets adopted every year during budget time and more you know bigger cities and so forth that's the time where you make any change and reflect any changes in your budget through your org if we can allow that same thing to happen now that's fair and again once i have one-on-ones i can have any further discussions

Would that be acceptable to you, Ms. Thorne? I mean, because I don't know that there's a motion here that really needs to be approved because it's been functioning correctly, in my opinion. So I know we're going through a transition phase currently.

Again, as I said, I'm the new person on the block, and I was dismayed to find out that a function had been removed from that manager.

There was a temporary function change, one that we hope to return soon, but just based on operational needs, that's a suggestion that came forward.

Well, a lot of employees in City Hall wear a lot of hats, and sometimes they're skewed one direction or the other for a time, depending on what's going on. You know, how busy is court or how busy is something else?

Well, the motion is on the floor, and I make the motion, obviously. If I don't get a second, it passes, but I'd like to go ahead and follow the Robert's Rules. And what is your motion? And my motion is, just as it is presented, that... council would be notified of any administrative reassignment modification of departmental functions and by notifying council of such change. And how is it you want them to be notified? They can be notified in a month of the report that the city manager gives to the city.

gift to give and that way there's transparency in my opinion just part of the city manager's report do we um have a second so we have a motion by councilwoman thorne a second by councilman rourke all those in favor hi any opposed What was your name? Nate. Motion does not pass. It was three to two. Natasha, did you get that? 11G, discussion of possible action to allow the citizens of Pima to vote either for or against the construction of a proposed city center project in consideration of suspending all financial expenditures and staff time committed to the project until after the voters decide whether or not to move forward with the city center proposal. Again, this is mayor and council, but I believe this was actually Councilman Wallace that put it on.

It was. And let me before I read my little bit here, I'm I'm on the fence with this with the city center. I know I know the tax taxes look great. The money coming in the whole business. It was explained to me over and over today till I finally understood it. But I'm also concerned with traffic. and congestion and everything on that side of 146. Since our neighborhood's back up to that area, I still have some concerns. But maybe I didn't word it right. After talking to Cesar about it, maybe I could've changed some things. But I just, I wanted to read a few little bullet points here, because I wanted to make sure I had them all down. A multimillion-dollar city center is a major long-term financial commitment that will impact citizens for years or decades. Citizens should have direct input before moving forward, and that does not necessarily mean a public vote per se. I'm not sure what that means. Let me move forward before I step on my tongue. Sharing info increases transparency and public trust by allowing residents to participate in a decision that affects the entire community. This information ensures the City Council has a clear mandate from residents before committing any more funds or any staff resources. Any information that we can spread helps avoid community division by providing a fair and democratic process rather than relying solely on us. I think it's a big decision to make. And without all the information, to me, it's hard to make that decision right at this point. And like I said earlier, the project could change the character, the traffic patterns, tourism activity, and overall development direction of KEMA, and especially over on our side of KEMA, KEMA Crossing and KEMA Oaks, were gonna be directly impacted. I think citizens deserve the opportunity to review projected cost, financing methods, maintenance expenses like you and I talked about, and economic assumptions before we even move forward. KEMA is not unlike any other city or town that I've lived in. It's hard to get participation from a majority of people. And I don't know what the dynamics of that are. I don't know why we can't get involvement with a town that's the size of Kemah. I don't know why we can't get more than 200 people to vote on something. But if we can share more information, the most we can share, maybe we'll get that involvement in something like this. It's big. And I love the looks. I love everything. Because I'm an athletics guy. And so all of that makes perfect sense to me. I would like to see us... present more information. to the citizens and just whether it be town hall meetings, mail outs, videos, everything that you and I discussed. And I know you enlightened me on this other little deal that the young lady that you were talking about.

Yeah, I asked others for how best they felt we needed to educate our community. I always ask for advice from other people just because best practice is having colleagues in different places. and um you know one of the things that i thought while i was away i had plenty of time to to think about um was maybe perhaps we need to come at this at a different angle and just say hey let's just have workshops let's just have community workshops i left that one out but yeah you know sorry i didn't mean to hear your thunder but perhaps it's going out to the neighborhoods and going to the hoa meetings and going out to meet people where they are and explaining what the project really feels and is and how it works Because there's a lot of misconceptions, and I can just tell by the way folks are saying things, and things that I've heard that are being said, it educates us to know that hey, we haven't done a good job of letting people know what the project really is. And so shame on us, shame on me. And that's something that we gotta work on. And so what I would suggest is allow us to educate the folks. know and i i think that that'll if at that point people want to just vote or whatever you want to do whatever direction council tells us hey no problem we'll we'll we'll definitely go from there but i think i think we need to do a better job of educating and also for the fact that i haven't even had a chance to have one-on-ones yet with our two new council members but to go over that one-on-one and explain to them what the project is and isn't because there's a lot of theories and thoughts out there and people you know when people don't know exactly what's going on. And I also invite, like I've invited other members of council that want to go see it, let's go take a ride and go look at one of these things. Let's go see what it really, really is and isn't. So if that's something that everybody would be willing to indulge and for us to do, and if the community would welcome that type of workshops, because a big component of this is every business owner in Kima doesn't live in Kima, but they would obviously benefit as then the city would benefit. So they don't get to vote. in this situation and also arguably half of the major benefits or one-third of the benefits in age group of this center potentially wouldn't benefit which are the kids who can't vote either so there's a lot of different intricacies and things for us to look at i think the best thing to do is just to educate everybody just do a full-blown education i welcome any comments ideas suggestions from from from council from the public the only and we'll go from there

I don't want to interrupt. I just want to say one more thing before I forget. We can't let Facebook dictate which direction we go. I agree. Unfortunately, Facebook and social media rules the information highway, and we can't let that happen. I mean, it can be good. Facebook, Instagram, all that, that's the best and worst of the Internet world, I think. I'm sorry, Dustin.

No, no, no. I just didn't want to cut you off. The only thing I would add that, you know, I agree, you know, workshopping it, getting ideas. I'm not opposed to that at all. I think my biggest concern with the item being right now is that, you know, we just spent $50,000 to have it reviewed and we don't exactly, you know, for me, the financial aspect of it is the most important for me. I understand the concept. I'm in the tourism space. I'm in the, you know, kind of hospitality space, the You don't have to sell me on all that, but I have to be able to sell the financial aspect of it, just like the rest of my colleagues up here. I'm all for, if you wanna schedule workshops and show them what it is and all that stuff, but I don't feel comfortable taking any more action on it as a council member until we get that review back. I mean, I can sit here and say, oh, I think it's a great idea, but I'd like people smarter than me, lawyers and accountants to show me, hey, everything you think it is, it's true. you know, true or not true, or is this, you know, blame me for being a skeptic, but that's the reason we went the way we went.

Because I mean, I've been working on this four and a half years or three and a half years, a long time, two city managers. I mean, and maybe Mr. Gordy actually even talked about this is that, you know, I'm trying to check all the boxes because we got two talented attorneys on both sides. They're writing these agreements. I'm not an attorney, never claimed to be one. We need a third party that is not associated with anybody to review the contract, to make sure we cross our T's dot our eyes and make sure everything's there. Same thing with the financial review. We've talked about 90,000 square feet. We've talked to 125,000 square feet. We don't know what that is because we don't know what we can pay for right now, and that's the part that we're trying to get back with hard numbers from people that are in that business, and that's what they do for a living. Because you went to the pavilion deal in Webster, and they're talking about, what, $5 billion over 20 years of economic impact? That's the numbers I want to see. If we can, at the end of 10 years, this city has an asset that's worth $10 to $20 million that we can sell to an independent investor and put that money in the bank or fix our roads or do whatever we need to do internally, that's a great investment for this town because all we're doing is setting up an SPE. We're filtering the money that's going to the state right now, and we're not getting any benefit from that 6.25%. We're bringing it back in, and we're refunding a developer. That's all we're doing. So do we want to all talk about grants and funding? So we're willing to walk away from anywhere from seven to $10 million a year in grant funding from the state. That's what it is for 10 years. We're going to walk away from that. It doesn't make any sense because that's all social media said was we may need to be looking for free money. Well, this is free money to put an asset in. the community that actually owner that's had the property for 120 years actually enjoys and likes the idea way more than apartments or more marriage homes because that's what we're going to end up having everybody keeps talking about the traffic if you look at apartments or homes going over there the traffic is going to be 365 days a year 750 cars where that's going to be thursday through saturday max or sunday you're talking about three or four days a week and most of the time it's if you look at the performance that's actually out there it's not that much traffic There's only like five weekends a year or six weekends a year that's going to be substantial.

There's a lot of things that you said that I totally agree with, and that's the kind of information that I'm— We don't have it yet. That's what I'm just saying. We don't have it. I'm still waiting for all that stuff. Yeah, but what you said and what Dustin said are what I'm talking about. I'm not saying we have to do something right now, but when we get that information— And what you just said is more than what—

a lot of people have heard right now yeah i can't really have those conversations because i don't know what i mean i don't know what it looks like actually because i've told them i'm a hard no if the numbers don't make sense i've been in these meetings and i said i am a hard no sitting here and i've been working on it for this long if it doesn't make sense for the city of kema i will not vote for this project i mean and i've had this conversation with all the developers so i mean i'm still not for it either i'm like i'm still in the bubble but i gotta see the numbers to make an a decision that we have not seen at this point. So that's why I would say table this item for right now. Let's get all stuff back. Let's have a conversation, figure out what this can look like, what it would look like in ten years, because I don't think the city should be in this business in ten years. We need to figure out a mechanism that the council sells us to a private investor and let them run with it. We do not be in the private sector. That's not what we do for a living.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry. I've got a question. I mean, I have just been hearing bits and pieces on both sides. And I was thinking like you, table it for now. But I've heard more here in this discussion than I've heard over the past couple of weeks. But I've got one question to ask. Has there been one specific property that we're saying is a veteran? No, it's right across the street. That's the one that's been chosen.

That's the landowner right there sitting in front of the man. I know that.

I'm just saying, I didn't know that it's been designated option A and nothing else.

Yes. I mean, a big picture thing is I have something that I can talk about. But when you start talking about cross your T's, dot your I's, I want to see everything, every line item. Why are we doing this? I mean, like me and Justin have talked about, do we really need a kitchen? As many good restaurants as we have in this town? Why don't we cater? and let our restaurants get some, you know, put PR into the facility if we build it.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I'd like to learn even more.

No, that's what I'm saying. Once we get these reports, then we can all sit, I mean, not all, because we have a walking courtroom, but we can sit down in small groups and have this conversation, because everybody needs to understand it from A to Z. I mean, I still have to understand from A to Z.

And just to comment on that, when the project originally started, there was multiple locations that were considered in the city. So there have been multiple considerations, and part of what this is is to look at multiple locations. It just so happens that we're zeroing in on this particular location right now because there's a developer that already has that parcel under contract that would be willing to participate in this actual bigger project.

The reason I was asking or trying to ask these questions is last thing I heard about it was there's the option over at the boardwalk. And then I also heard about the study about the traffic. And to be honest with you, it doesn't sound anywhere near feasible to me. To me, it would make a lot more sense. And I hope we can get that passed. My only concern is not knowing that we narrow the field, so to speak. Without knowing that, are we going to have a vote or, let's say, approve a vote to go put it before the people and say, go, OK, we've got A and we've got B? you decide whether you want it.

Right. Just to be full disclosure here, the way it's set up, I think we're setting ourselves up for a lawsuit, which Ms. Thorne is dead against us sitting in a lawsuit, but the way it's set up, it's a private investment. They're not taking a lien against the city itself. It's an SPE, which is a separate organization, and we can go through all the details once we have them all, but I'm just saying I don't think we even have the authorization to do this. I mean, I've have my legal in front of me, but I'm not going to go that far into it. But I mean, I just, I think we're setting ourselves up for litigation there because this is a private investment. All we're doing is facilitating the money back from the state, back to the investor. And that's what the way it's going to flow.

How would we set ourselves up for litigation? I'm not, I don't follow you on that. Just.

enlightenment because we just don't have the right to tell a private investor we're going to tell an apartment they can't go over there now i see what you're saying i mean yeah we can't dictate to a private investor other than variances right it's his property yeah that's what i'm saying he can do what he wants with this property we can't tell mr gordon i see that no that's what i understand and i was hoping kyle would share in some enlightenment actually argue about that but i mean i actually have my statues pulled up in front of me

I think he's here. I know he's got to leave here any second.

He looks stuck.

He's frozen. Is he frozen? He doesn't sit that long.

I know he said 450.

I thought it was hard stuff. Oh, no, he's frozen. Oh, there he is.

No, I've got one minute. Okay, this is a private party investment. It's on private property. Private properties, property, and it's the facility that will build that private property. All we're doing is facilitating that by once it qualifies via the state, then they will begin to remit to us the 6% to 4% interest that they would normally keep, and we will use that to assist in paying off the bonds, which will not be the total cost of building the center. That would be up to the developer to do. The city is not on the hook for anything financial other than the monies we're committed to spend on having it all reviewed by outside legal and outside financial people. Do this all the time.

I have a question. Again, new person on the block. The entity... and for lack of a better term, friends of KEMA or whatever, was tax dollars used to form that, whether it was actual applications or the legal work to develop it? That's my question, and it's a yes or no.

Yes, he paid me to do it and the filing fee was $50.

And I want to also clarify, Friends of Kima has nothing to do with this project. The process for KCDC's intent of having a Friends of Kima was to have a 501c3 that could allow us to go after 501c3 grants and sponsorship opportunities that the city cannot qualify for. So the Friends of Kima is a totally separate project. It has nothing to do with this project. It was more of like, hey, if Marathon's offering a sponsorship and we want to put it towards the park that the city can apply for, it would allow us a mechanism to do that. So I just want to clarify that because I got a couple questions on that.

It also gives us another mechanism. If we do have a hurricane, it gives us a mechanism for us to take donations from outside sources. Correct. As we learned after the floods in the hill country this summer. Correct. Some of those small communities didn't have a 5013C mechanism, so they were having a hard time taking donations and helping people get tax deductions on the other side of it. So it was twofold on that deal.

Having 5013s as a city entity is a very common thing, like Visit Galveston or the Parks Board in Galveston that has a separate 5013 that helps for fundraising arm to do separate things, separate from city grants or opportunities. So that was the purpose of putting that together. But again, totally separate from this project. Can we get back to the agenda item? Yeah, we're out of the agenda. We're out of topic. I'm sorry. We're getting off topic, though. Just for clarity, I'm sorry.

Again, it was done in- I'm going to log off.

Thank you. Thanks, Kyle. I think he's gone. So back to the original, what's everyone's thoughts on having a vote of some kind with the city.

I believe Councilwoman had a thought that she was trying to make before Kyle. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Kyle cut you off, Councilwoman.

In my opinion, again, new person on the block, a lot of this, in my opinion, and I could be wrong, was done in executive session and not necessarily, in my opinion, put out to the public, and I was on that other side, and I knew very little. So while we have addressed how we talk about this mechanism, in my opinion, doing these types of things in closed session invites skepticism from the public. That's all I wanted to say.

I guess my answer to Councilman Wallace's question was I would personally like to table this until we get our review back that we paid for so then we can have an educated conversation with the public. They deserve to see what that review is. They paid for it. They should see it. I feel like right now if we say we're going to a vote, we're telling them to go vote on something and they have zero information on it.

I agree with that.

I think we should get the information back that we paid for. Council can review it with Kyle and Darren and Cesar, however you all want to do that. know and then you put that out to the public here's here's the money part here's the brass tax of it this is what we can afford to rebate from the state you know we're not building something over the top you know we can answer all those questions right now if we went and talked to our neighbors you know we just don't we don't have answers yet and then this review may come back and it may not be true and it ain't gonna matter at all there's no conversation to be had correct we can just be done with it well i i just my opinion i don't know if

the intent right now is to vote on this item, to table it, or to amend it. Because if we're going to go for a workshop, and if that's what you want to do, in lieu of the vote, have a workshop, and later you want to vote on it, you can bring it back and do whatever, versus tabling it gets us into a time frame. And Cal logged off. We're not sure. Hopefully we'll have it in time for the next meeting. We can have a workshop before the next meeting if you want, after, however you want to do it. But perhaps if you want to just say, hey, we're having a workshop, then We'll have workshops if that's what you choose to do.

Well, that's what I'd like to do, but obviously I'm with Dustin on waiting until that information comes back. amend your your your i mean that's what you want to do put a motion and amend it to do that you can craft your motion any way you want you can table this till the meet the first meeting after the report comes back for a workshop that makes sense so uh yeah i'd like to table it until we get more information specifically the information from the financial review that we sent out or that we paid for As far as the consideration of suspending all financial expenditures, we can put that off as well. Does that make sense?

Did you get that, Natasha? The whole thing? Is that what you're saying? I think he's making a motion to wait for the review to come back and then schedule a workshop meeting in conjunction with the next city council meeting after that. And to not address the second half of this suspending expenditures.

She said it better than me.

Go ahead. Say it, Natasha. Well, it's on record now. Somebody recorded it. So we have a motion by Councilman Lee Wallace that I just sort of stated, and I have a second by Councilman Dustin Oliver. All of those in favor?

Motion to discuss. I beg your pardon? We've had a motion. Now I'm asking to discuss.

We have a motion to discuss. Do we have a second? It fails for a second. We'll go back to the other motion by Lee Wallace, second by Councilman Dustin Oliver. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I'm voting present. Did you get that? Okay. She voted present. So we have four in favor and one voting present. uh next is uh 12a um our budget kickoff meeting is this for you ryan or is this uh caesar ryan can take over this one okay so first off uh i have the budget calendar here if anyone in the audience uh needs one um everyone else has one right or y'all don't need confidence some of the abbreviations

Just in the future, if you put that calendar out, because you may have new votes. I know for a fact that there are new voters, and they don't necessarily know what some of these definitions are, some of the abbreviations.

Okay, I'll take those out. Thank you.

And this is the one we need to look at right here.

Yes, ma'am, the color-coded one.

It's on the back of that last page.

Basically, the calendar's kind of highlighting some dates. Basically, every meeting we're going to have a little budget workshop, kind of go over where we're at with the overall budget and the process and how it's looking. And then it has some extra dates, like when we've got to have our truth and taxation information to the Galveston County Tax Office, when we've got to get things in the newspaper and things like that, just so everyone's aware of... the hard deadlines that we have to hit. So I know Cesar and I also spoke about moving up the deadline, adopting our tax rate and our budget up two weeks, so we're not doing it on the last day. But all that's gonna depend on how the beginning of the process goes.

And, Cesar, we discussed having these workshops within the city council meetings since we're already meeting at 4.

Just doing them earlier.

And it's hard to schedule them afterwards. So do you want to – maybe I can get just a kind of how council feels about it. Do you want to do that in the beginning of the meeting, or do you want to wait until the end?

It depends on what council – what your desire is. Also on that point, I want you to notice that there's on August 19th, it just says a council meeting. So that is a not to discuss budget item necessarily. That's how we're proposing schedule now. But as Ryan mentioned, if everything else gets done in time and in a timely manner to get to that, you could essentially have your first reading on that date if you so wished, which would move the final reading up to September 2nd. That allows you a whole... three weeks before the deadline. So we're not rushed and kind of waiting last minute. But that will also, we built in a contingency just in case of anything else, any questions, any delays, anything that happens. So we did incorporate for that. But there is a chance for those items to move up. So I want everybody to know that just in case there's a situation where Well, why'd you do it on the second instead of the 19th? Well, it's because we were able to, we built a gap in just in case it still be before the deadline without having to try to schedule special meetings.

Did we do that last year?

Yes.

Well, when we were meeting later, we came in an hour early. Exactly, and that's what I was going to say. Yes, sir. just trying to make sure that the council is okay with doing the same thing and if there's any other comments on that to please let us know so we can plan accordingly i think we should just set aside the first maybe hour of the meeting um just to address that and then try to launch it to me well do we want to move it up an hour i'm not sure well that's that anybody make that that's up to y'all

here when everybody else will be here. We'll make it happen.

So could everyone, could all of council meet at 3 o'clock for a budget meeting prior to a 4 o'clock council meeting?

Works for me. If it works for everybody.

Okay. Well, maybe we plan on that then. Okay. All right. Yes, ma'am.

That work for you, Susan?

Yes, sir, absolutely. I think. Yeah, I'll be here.

Ryan's that I just wanted to let everyone know kind of like where we're at right now. We've been collecting um, capital improvement, um, requests or our items to, um, put it together. Um, CIP, um, oh my God, uh, not log, but, uh, plan, right? Correct. I'm sorry about that. And, um, and we've gotten, uh, the budget requests from departments. So, uh, we'll start, uh, compiling all those, all that data and, uh, kind of have our first rough draft, hopefully by, uh,

next meeting i know i'm working on revenue right now so uh i know i'll have that for the next meeting that we can go over so if you have it prior to the next meeting you can disseminate it to all of council before the meeting yes we'll meet at three and you'll have hard copies for all of us yes ma'am like like like last year i had all those right yes we'll print them bigger

i'm sure they'll still be warm from the printer yeah but um and then um i just kind of wanted to um see if y'all had thoughts of like maybe departments y'all would want us maybe to focus more funds to this upcoming year from the council and uh and things like that i'm gonna let you finish oh go ahead go ahead okay i'm gonna address the elephant in the room

And it's gonna be obvious that I, because this is my first time on council. In the press, there were allegations that the city has received a letter requiring us to have a no new tax revenue. So I'd like that either quashed or I'd like that addressed because that dictates how much the budget is. I was here last time on the other side when we did this evolution and they came back with three different budgets and that's time consuming. That's time consuming. So if we know Going forward, okay, it's gonna be no new revenue, or it's gonna be this. We can save staff a lot of time.

Yes, correct. We will be having the no new tax revenue. But we do have an option to go lower if some magic happens. But I know we flirted with the no new tax revenue actually last year, but we had some big expenditures, so that wasn't the case. I mean, we're less than one cent away from the no new tax revenue last year. So I think we'll be just fine this year with the no new tax revenue.

And I have one other thing and I'll stop. I would ask that obviously you've already done your budget, but I would ask that the police department consider because the I.T. is under the umbrella of the police department on the city side, I would ask that some consideration, again, we're talking just that office, that some type of stipend be added, if possible, to your budget because you, And my understanding is there's a stipend for someone that has a foreign language or something that is canine certified or those type of things. You get a stipend because from what I understand, the city as a whole is gonna be married to the police department because they have the overall IT. So just if that's possible in the budget. And again, it's for that position. It's regardless of who's holding it, but it's gonna be obviously a police officer. The other last thing is when looking at what KCDC actually pays for the administration that the city does, I think it's woefully inadequate because just from what I see, and I'm not even talking about looking at the numbers, We have finance involved, we have city administrator, probably even at times city secretary. Yet if you look at that amount, it has not changed from when it was first established. And I do not believe from a cost accounting standard that it reflects the amount of time that the staff spends on it that should be allocated to KCDC because they do have funds to to for their own operations. Just consider it, please.

Yeah, we raise it quite a bit this last year. So you got raised quite a bit. Yeah, it was like I think it was like 15 or was we raised $65,000. Yeah. Yeah.

So we just for the year for a year.

Yes, ma'am.

Every year.

So if I can to Today was the day that we're announcing budget requests from you guys, considerations, things like, hey, I think we should have a big flag outside, whatever, whatever all your wants are. What we challenged staff differently this year was to do an actual CIP, which stands for capital improvement plan for everybody to set their items that they think that they need and what they need them for and so on and so forth. So then we can sit together and prioritize those. So then we can pass an actual capital improvement plan aligned with the budget so they can be our financial roadmap. Like we're doing a strategic plan for operations. a financial roadmap that says, hey, if there's a grant that falls into this opportunity, or if you want to allocate certain budget funds to do this and this, these are the priorities. So for example, if it's fixing a sidewalk, fixing a street, fixing a pump station, something that's bigger than just your general maintenance, right? that's more equivalent to what needs to be done higher scale, then each department's being asked to prioritize those changes. Aligned with that, we'd like for the same to be done by all of council, but we also invite the public to also voice their opinion to those things, either to us as staff or to you, obviously, but we're here to take that on, to tell us what those priorities may be. Someone might say, hey, we have a need for a BMX track. Let's do public art classes at the communities. Whatever the needs are, the desires are that we would like to incorporate the possibility of having, this is that time. You could do it year round, obviously, but something to consider. Perfect example, a few, was it three months ago, I think it was, KCDC had a request of maybe redoing the pickleball courts or something over at one of the parks. They heeded that and it was told to be brought back during budget season. Well, now is the beginning. This is the kickoff to budget season. So now's the time. So if you could take some time between the last meeting to this one and let us know the things that you'd like for us to look at. Hey, I think we should add more stop signs on 8th Street. That's one of the things that we were asked for. Stop signs and speed humps. Well, that's been taken into consideration to do that as part of our traffic plan. So any consideration that the public or council may have, please get those to us so we can start incorporating those into a potential budget that we can bring back to you for review.

Like sidewalks. Sidewalks.

Sidewalks. Sidewalks and sidewalk repairs. Very hot topics. And we understand that they want to be considered. Well, we need to bring that back to you to say, hey, we estimate it's going to cost between this and this to put new sidewalks, between this and this for fixing the old ones. Tell us how you want to do it.

so between now and the next meeting they are all tasked to give you their wants and desires not only staff but city council again it's really year round but now it's like hey guys crunch times we can get this back to you in time please thank you any further discussion on that all right thanks for all that work i appreciate it we do not have an executive uh session tonight um if no one else has any comments or anything i'll adjourn the meeting I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion to adjourn 5-13.