City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, all right, seeing that we have a quorum, I would like to call to order the City of Kemah City Council and Kemah Public Facilities Corporation Workshop, July 15th, 2026 at 3.27 p.m. The first thing on the agenda is invitation to address council, and we did not have anyone sign up for that. the next is the discussion items which is our budget for uh 2026 july budget workshop july 15 2026 and you all have um budget in front of you with the cip draft with i think the cip has been rearranged for order of priorities and i do not know where caesar went he should be returning here in a minute

and i've

How many? Officers. That is not in there.

No, no. Two additional.

I know. Which makes a total of what?

Two additional requested. And the numbers, the reflection, just for clarification, because we admire each other. Wait a minute. I want to mention what he said. For all of us, yes, we request it. Yes, we can't do it. Yes, we're trying to grant it. But neither the match nor the amount should we not get the match are included in the numbers.

I understand. But, again, the contingency is that you will leave $42,000 if you don't get the waiver. And the mayor has asked the question, what's that number? Correct, Mayor?

If you get the two additional officers, what does that make the total officer number count?

We'll have 32 total.

So you have 30 right now, I'm assuming. I'm sorry.

I apologize. We have 20. I keep including our reserves. If we have 20, this would be 22. We have 20 full-time officers.

And how many reserves?

We have 12. We have 11 right now.

I'm just asking for education here. What constitutes community relations? Because there is, I'm seeing money today, year to date, but then it's eliminated

in fiscal... Yeah, that should be in the communications budget.

Okay, so just in the wrong spot?

Yes, ma'am, just in the wrong spot. That just needs to be cleaned up.

Okay, thank you so much. Then... Secretary, I need to put you on the spot here, but on 015118125... For fiscal year 2025, it was $4,500. It was budgeted in 26 for 25-2. It has nothing to do with software. That is an election expense. If we have a runoff election, it's going to be additional charges, or if we have to have some type of special election, it's to cover all of that. Let me try to answer my question a little differently. The money has not been used, and not on wood, we haven't had it around, but the money has not been used to that level. And all I'm asking is,

Yeah, it has not been used to that level. It's just in case we do need it, we just cap it at that every year, and then it goes back to the general fund if we do not use it.

Okay. Thank you. And then IT, and this is for education, this is not for education, but I'd rather say for fiscal 2026, we're talking $216 I'm getting roughly a 25% change in food. So I realize that you have, so I think that's going to be covering the first two items. I'll tell you, I'm mixing apples and oranges.

Well, I've been trying to consolidate all our softwares and everything under the IT budget, so some have been paid out of different departments. So I'm really trying to consolidate it in there. That's one reason for a little bit of a jump. It does have in there the plotter, the laptop desktop replacement. 15K for either the SharePoint or the mobile device management. Some of them are in there. Yes, ma'am.

Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you.

Is there any other council members that have any questions or discussion?

I have one go by. I'm sorry. I sent an extensive... treatment or case study to staff on the increase for kcdc funding that attributed to the city uh can you just tell me where again a question can you tell me where they're where that is because right now we're still uh projecting the current level

Do you want me to hit some highlights real quick, Cesar, and then you can hit that CIP list? I just wanted, the budget in front of you, I just want to kind of highlight a couple of the things that are actually in there already. There'll be a 3% COLA, one police vehicle, plotter, laptop, desktop replacement, 15K for either the SharePoint, migration or mobile device management, and And then what we're waiting on right now is the TML insurance. The hang-up is really the vehicle insurance because we've been warned that it could go up to as much as 30% for the vehicle insurance. And all the other numbers for the insurance, some actually went down a little bit, but all of them kind of stayed flat. The EMS services, that's the other one that's worrisome. So, but right now we're at a $36,000 surplus in revenues. So if we wanted to add a few of these CIP items into the budget that aren't in there already, I would suggest we got a big audit payment from sales tax this year of $250,000 thanks to one of our taxpayers here in the city. And I would suggest you use maybe like $50,000 of that $250,000 to maybe take some of these one time items off that list. ryan could you repeat that again you said there's a three percent cola in here yes the plotter the police vehicle and you're still waiting on some things but what were some other the other items included the laptop desktop replacement so uh they kind of do a rolling um replacement of computers that way we're not um running around on um crusty dinosaurs okay and uh And then I put in 15,000 for either the SharePoint migration or the mobile device management setup. And then that was it.

You want to say something?

Oh, I got a question. Go ahead. I'm getting started.

You're getting rolling.

Yeah, let me... change gears here sorry about that um first question i have is under admin i guess 8100 audit is 60 000 going to be enough to have it done by march of next year uh i sure hope so we put in some extra for bringing um some additional help during that there in that point in time to try to iron it out and make sure we get done quicker so and i think there's enough though i mean i know it would dissipate 250 000 additional to get theirs done What line item are you on? 510-8100.

And then there will be a little increase on the other side with KCDC's side too.

And then I see just below that, 8130, you've got an inspection fees at $180,000, but we're saying permits are going to go down to $200,000. So I know we don't make a ton of money on permits, but I think it will be more than $20,000. That number should come down relative to the revenue number. for inspection fees? Inspection fees is safe build, isn't it? Yeah, safe. So if we're only going to have 50 houses being built next year, that number's going to come down drastically, mathematically. So I mean, so I think y'all got some room there.

Okay.

And then on the inspection fee, the fire inspection fee just below that, you've got $20,000 revenue, but you've got $27,200 in expenses, so we're losing money doing fire inspections. I think we're making people pay before we do them, so... There's probably a little wiggle room right there.

What do you think that the inspection fee should go to with only 50 houses?

Well, I mean, I think it's a wash. I mean, it's 2020. I don't think we make any money off of it, honestly. I think we're pretty much paying Robert what we're charging him, maybe five or ten bucks, but we're not making any money. So it's more of a service that we're providing that we need to be providing to all our business providers.

I didn't mean fire inspection. I meant inspection.

Actually, yeah, I think the revenue should go up.

We're doing $200,000 is all we're doing. Last year we did $400,000, so that probably should be $110,000 instead of $180,000 if you did just a quick mathematical. Fire. I also think emergency services are going to come in higher than $300,000 because we go up 20% a year, so that's $325,000 is what my guess is going to be on that one. So, I mean, what we make up somewhere, we're probably going to give somewhere else.

Yeah.

We don't have those numbers.

And we will not know that number until the end of August.

End of August?

Is that what you said, Cesar?

I think the end of July. End of August.

Oh, the first week of August, okay.

Do they have, like, a preliminary budget? I mean, they've got to have something.

Well, I know, but is that number close?

I mean, that's what I'm asking. Well, I still think this board is going to have to come to some hard conclusions and figure out how long we go with emergency services because at this rate, it's going to put us out of business. We've got to find alternative methods or figure out how to charge for it, or we're going to have to figure out something. I'm not saying we've got to get all our money back, but there's got to be some give here somewhere. we can't raise taxes without everybody screaming that they can add two dollars to the water bill and nobody says a word and i still claim that that shouldn't be a city deal you got transferred over when we had a lot of money now we don't yes sir That's our contribution to the transit service.

Oh, Cesar, if you want to go over that CIP list.

And what number was that, 5-10-1?

5-10-1. Oh, okay.

Did it look good with the blue and the white?

Yeah. I'm sitting over here squinting, so I won't make fun of the big papers anymore.

So in any category, if the budget is not used, does that automatically go back to the general fund and real?

Yes, ma'am. It just goes into the general fund, the fund balance, and then. I'll use that the other year. Okay. Or we can do adjustments and knock off like.

Are we caught up in all our amendments, our budget amendments yet?

uh do you believe so i think uh we have one from last night from the kcdc um that i know of i don't think that even has to be a budget i mean in the system i mean i'm not saying yeah in the system and this traffic control for public works is that buying this stuff or is that still written in or what are we doing So what you're anticipating to spend to be completely, I mean, that's a lot of money.

Well, it's not just that. That's also any repairs that you're going to have as far as driving control. Repairs?

It's 015308470.

So you also have to remember we have some speed humps that we said we needed to repair that we haven't been done in the past couple of years. Those are at a cost of usually $1,000 a piece. We're having some emergency repairs in the past year, so that's why that's going to be a little higher. There's also some expenses there that we just had now for the ones that we just purchased for the last few past times and haven't been reconciled yet. You mean the cones? Oh, okay. So there's a need and desire to change

The capital outlay, what's that, $22,285? Pretty small number for capital outlay.

What were you getting there?

$2,200. Oh, that's two mowers. Right, oh.

That's a what? Two zero-turn mowers. I thought we bought four or five two years ago.

That's what he put down, so. He says two?

Yes, sir.

And that's 9,400, the capital outlay?

with the surplus of 30 the projected surplus for this current budget you have in front of you with 36 152 we know that that's not going to be enough to cover the big three that we're still missing your big three are still health insurance tml We expect all three of those to go up, and we don't have an exact number. Originally, if you remember where we were, we were hoping to be closer to 100,000 buffer for those, but we're not there yet. So for the final, you'll see some of these places where we have to cut specifically certain items. We'll have our own rendition of this workshop once we have the numbers with our staff to bring you that final where we're saying, hey, listen, we got to cut X amount to get it to this number. Also, if you remember last year, we said that for this year, we're going to look to try to do a larger COLA for the staff or maybe start introducing merit increases. We weren't able to do that in this one. That's why we had to go for 3%, which according to a lot of the cities around, Three to five is where most cities are gonna be at this year. Some cities reporting as high as 5% with a 3% merit. So add that up, it could be a total of eight. But we're bottom half of the pack, but not all the way at the bottom, if you will, compared to other cities right now. So that's kind of where we stand. The CIP item, obviously, stands now. We're not in a position to put very many of those things on. We're going to be aggressive, continue looking for grants to address these items. Because we didn't put them is not that we feel that we don't need them. It's just that we don't have the funding available to put them right now. As you remember, you asked for these to be in some type of priority order. Those were presented by the department. based on whatever's available, we're gonna try to address everybody's number one if we can, with the understanding that we're gonna prioritize those based on overall importance of items and critical need. notice the pump station stuff that's listed we know how much of an enormous need that is but we're also looking to try to get some grant funding for that as well so don't feel that if we skip for example for public works if we skip items one through four or one through five whatever whatever the order is it may not be that we don't think they're important it is that we might have another pocket of funding we can go after to try to attack that item that does not mean we don't need it um you notice a lot of the stuff for for pd was also addressed that way as well As we do every year around this time, we also reflect completely on what expenses we still need before the end of the year. And we do not a freeze of spending, but we do a very close monitoring of where we are, what we're going to need. Because almost every fiscal year, we like to start the year off with extremely light spending. Why? We need time to be able to close the books. And that's one of the things that we want to try to get a habit of. So you'll notice probably up until Thanksgiving, we're going to be very light on spending. Why? It's industry standard.

you need time to close the books and the less invoices are flying through the easier and faster that is based on the fact we are not going to get some of these numbers that we need which is health insurance cms and tml numbers maybe we do not have the next budget meeting prior to the regular city council meeting maybe we just regroup first meeting in august first meeting in august would be the next one since this is the second that's right this is the second so the second the second meeting in august which the later meeting because we won't get some of those numbers till the first week in august is everybody okay with that or do y'all feel a need to push forward after the next one okay thank you that that that'll give us some time to fine-tune this stuff and get a better idea

That would be more of a clarification question for us to have. So we'll find out as far as attendance and so forth. If anybody has any other pending absences that you guys know of ahead of time, obviously pre-scheduled, please let us know if you know about them ahead of time so we can try to arrange around them. Because obviously we want to make sure that we have the full attendance to be able to proceed.

And will you mark on the calendar to post it correctly if he can call in or be online? Yes, we can do that. Okay, that's what I mean. It just has to be posted a certain way. We didn't do that last time. I think it has a roll call. Any other questions or comments before we adjourn? I'll adjourn the workshop meeting at 3.54 p.m.