City Council - Regular Meeting

Mic check, mic check, test.

So here's one. Oh, okay. You didn't carry at least one. How's it going? Whatever gave you that idea?

Thank you.

Well, I think I got an idea.

Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Astros. Astros. Second, third, no house, can't score. I don't mind your way.

SEEING WE HAVE A QUORUM, I WILL CALL TO ORDER THE CITY OF KEMA CITY COUNCIL AND KEMA PUBLIC FACILITIES CORPORATION REGULAR MEETING AUGUST 5TH, 2026 AT 4 P.M. AND THE FIRST THING ON THE AGENDA IS OUR PLEDGES. Next on the agenda is a moment of silence. And next on the agenda is invitation to address council.

Natasha, do you want to do the comments first? Yes. We have one from Daniel Conrad who opposes the sports facility citing financial risk and taxpayer exposure. That is a summarized version. And the citizens' complete written comments were provided to the city council at the diocese this evening and will be included with the official minutes of this meeting. And that's all we have.

I make a motion to move item 13 on the agenda to head of item after the consent agenda, up to nine.

Is there a second? Yeah.

All those in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Nay. Nay. I'll break the vote and say no. Moving on to invitation to address council, Ms. Sylvia Streeter. Yes, ma'am, and please make sure the mic is green illuminated. Just punch the button if it's not already. Probably, but maybe pull it up closer to you.

Yeah, perfect. I have a green light now. Okay, green go. I'm here to thank you, council and mayor, for your service I realize all the time that you spend and I appreciate it as a citizen of our little city and I'm also here to thank you as a council for our use of the community center for our chemo cronies and I usually don't ask for much help except for Richard but I had to make some calls on Tuesday because I encountered a problem at the community center. And thank you mayor for answering my call and listening to me. And, uh, the other calls that I made, I'm sorry that Caesar is not here.

He's on his way.

Okay. I'll hold off on him though, but I want to, uh, personally thank you for this leadership of this chief. and the leadership that Cesar brought to us. The problem, Cesar came in, brought part of his staff. Chief showed up with half of the police department, I think, and they cleared the community center because we had all of our food from the food drive in there. We had all the tables set up for the crony meeting. And they were very gracious. Everybody worked real hard. And within minutes, the community center was cleared. And all of my little tables and everything were set up in the small room for our cronies. So thank you, especially for their leadership. We need to hang on to those young men. They're good for our community. The thing that I say to you is it was a wonderful experience to see the community working together. And I so appreciate that. We haven't had that in a while. And it was very appreciated. And everybody that I've told that story to say you're lucky to be living in Kemah, which I know I am. And that's why I continue to volunteer here when I do. I would ask you the one thing that I felt like that scared me the most is that we – We don't ever as a city want to put money as a priority over our citizens. So when you make decisions, just be careful. I know we need money. I served when we didn't have anything. We didn't have the boardwalk. We didn't have Walmart. So just be careful. And again, thank you all for your service. I do appreciate you.

Thank you, Ms. Sylvia. We don't have anyone else on the list. Oh, Cheryl, I'm sorry. Did you want to sign in? I'll just write your name in if that's okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Great. I just wanted to throw my hat in the ring to fill the position of the outgoing city councilman, Cheryl Gonzalez.

I live right over here on Leawood Circle. Thank you.

Next on the agenda is mayor's comments and not much going on since our last meeting, except for the heat. Um, but first of all, I want to offer, um, a sincere gratitude and well wishes to our exiting councilman Lee Wallace. He submitted a letter of resignation in July due to health issues. And we wish him a speedy recovery and, um, His presence on council was much appreciated. I'd also like to thank everyone who attended and participated last week at the Park Fest up at the 57-acre park. We really had a great turnout, even though it is hot outside. But up on the berm, we had a nice gentle breeze, and it was nice. It was a wonderful way to cap off national parks and rec month. And a special thanks to KTX Events and Fundamentally Awesome and then everyone else who helped make that event possible. If you did visit the 57-acre nature facility, maybe you noticed all the new trees that are up there. The Boy Scouts planted some of them, but KEMA received 125 donated trees, and most of the larger ones were planted by our Public Works team, and we want to thank them for that. And then Scenic City, Texas is also holding their 2026 People's Choice Award, and as a recognized community, KEMA has been nominated. So if you would go to scenictexas.org and vote for the city for their nomination, that would be great. You'll find the instructions on how to vote by just scrolling down on that homepage, and that's scenictexas.org. Next on the agenda are council member comments. Councilman Roark, would you like to go first tonight?

Well, yeah, I just want to say thank you to the police chief for coming to the Huntington. On the 21st, it was an interesting event and to actually see a seven foot tall officer. A lot of the short women did get their pictures taken. And I just want to say again, thank you. Councilman Broaddus.

Yeah, thank you for coming out tonight. Huge thank you to Walmart and our police department as well for sponsoring the Give More Foundation. I think in March we got about 1,100 pounds of food and this July 25th I think was a little over 1,300 pounds. So it should give them enough food to make it hopefully to the end of the year. So much appreciated. Definitely a shout out to Walmart for their generosity in helping with that event and allowing us to take donations at both their front doors during the time that we're collecting food. So just want to make sure we recognize them. So thank you.

Okay. Councilman Oliver, sorry about that.

I'll echo thanks to the staff for all the hard work you've done this summer, all the events. It makes for long, hot days out there. So thank you all for stepping up and helping outside of your normal office duties, keeping the city running, police department as well. It's hot. So thank you everybody that volunteered to fill the vacancy. Thank you for your willingness to serve the community and thank you for showing up tonight. That's all I got.

Councilwoman Doran.

I'd like to echo my fellow councilman's gratitude for all the people that applied and The agenda is the agenda. I would also like to remind people that school will be starting. So please slow down. And you've been going through school zones because you're probably not accustomed to the flashing lights again. And that's a mean way to get a ticket. So please, please. In addition to that, this is tax-free weekend. So for school supplies, even computers, things that, anything that is below $100, check with the city, excuse me, the state comptrollers, and they'll have a list of items. And typically, Walmart also has a list of items that are available for tax-free, and that includes clothes and backpacks. So please take advantage of it in these economic times. Every little bit helps. Thank you.

I've got one thing to add, Mayor, sorry. Somebody I forgot to thank is the Kima Lions Club hosted a group of students from all over the place a few weeks ago. The students chose Kima as a destination on their tour. They got to eat around town, got an escort from the police department and meet some officers. And at our Lions Club meeting in League City last night, it was talk of the town how well Kima represented with all the students. Kudos to the Lions Club. And if you don't know who your current Lions Club members are, I encourage you to get out there and meet them and support them any way you can. Now I'm caught up.

Okay. He doesn't have, Cesar does not have a report, actually, and we have staff reports. Jerry, did you want to go over yours or anything? Okay.

Well. I would have just mentioned on 8C, I think we probably need to bring it back, but, I mean, there's a, in the Lombard report, there's like $17,000, I think, for people that are deceased with no estate and I don't think we're ever gonna collect the money. I think it says to see no estate or beyond claim $17,754 DEC status. So I think probably a good accounting practice for us to officially write that off since we have no claim and there's no family claim. So we probably need to talk about the rest of them as well as far as where we stand on the $2.8 million, it's outstanding so. come in and have a conversation with us.

Okay. Be sure the mic's on.

So once they send me the report of the deceased people, then we can actually get that off the books, but I can't do anything until somebody gives me the names. Another thing we need to remember, we're a pass-through city and a tourist city. And I did show the mayor this morning where the biggest parts of our warrants are, which are not local. So it's a little bit harder for us to get out there and get them. So we are doing what we can to get them in. September, we're going to have another warrant resolution. So we're trying, we are a small city and we don't have that many officers. So we do have to rely on other cities that have time to help us with these warrant resolutions to try and get it know taken care of i believe next year we had spoke with the judge we're going to go through some of the old ones that are over seven years old and start getting rid of those because a lot of them are not local we have a lot in louisiana like i showed the mayor and when they're out of state we're just not going to collect that so that's what we're hoping to do to start cleaning that up so it looks a little bit better

They were all over the United States, even Puerto Rico. So I was kind of blown away at looking.

Yeah. Ron Berger has a real good, it's called MAPTIV, and it will pinpoint where everybody lives periodically. They go through and they do, it's like a skip trace for new addresses form. So, you know, we're getting, they're getting the letters sent out to them and stuff. It's just getting them in here.

Any questions or comments for Jerry? Yes, I really appreciate because I'm looking at the percentage and I've checked a few other cities. We actually have a pretty good collection percentage, so it's definitely doing well.

And Cesar, no comments.

Actually, I do have one comment. Centerpoint is here. If I could ask him to please come forward. Mr. Ron Dugan is here from Centerpoint. We had a Can I call it a small storm? Or was it a small unexpected storm that we got? Not the one that we were expecting when the storm was actually coming. And there was some damage. There were some folks with some power outages. There was some concerns raised by, I think, one or two residents. And I asked Mr. Dugan to please come forward and share what he's been able to accomplish. concerning that?

Yeah, so it was a similar remnants of Tropical Swamp Bertha that came through brought a 80 mile per hour plus winds came through. I'm sure everyone had blinking lights when that occurred. It kind of went all the way from Baytown all the way down through Kima all the way down to Santa Fe and then out towards Lake Jackson. This is something that we contend with. Mother Nature seems to want to throw everything it possibly can towards us. But as far as the resiliency and reliability for the city of Kima, the majority of individuals saw, you know, blinking lights as that occurred, but not significant outages. Kima 5 did go out. There was a tree branch that had fallen outside of the easement into the power lines. we rectified that very quickly the customer in particular miss palmius i did speak with her she had not spoken to anybody at centerpoint energy prior to sending out her long email to everyone informing them of the outages i did thank her for informing us of what she is going through it is my determination that any outage is not a good outage doesn't matter what it is and we will do and continue to do everything we can to make this the most resilient uh electrical system possible down here Uh, the city of chemo itself after going through a brief period from hurricane barrel to today. Uh, for the most part, most citizens have only seen three sustained outages and very few momentary outages. Sustained outage is anything longer than a minute with the majority of it. On average, most chemo citizens have only seen about 45 minutes worth of an outage. So that is a very good, reliable track record. So kudos to KEMA, kudos to allowing us to continue to do the things that we need to do to make this system resilient. Part of it is vegetation. That was the thing that was mostly affecting Ms. Pamias. There were some individuals back in 2022 that did not want us on their property to do proper tree trimming. That is okay. We have rectified that with them. We notified them ahead of time. We made sure that the crews were available when they were available. and they have concluded the tree trimming along that line fuse that comes off of Kemah 5. Kemah 5 is also the circuit that directly impacts City Hall, so she is on a great circuit. The other thing that she didn't understand was how her neighbors in the same apartment complex had lights while she did not. It's because they are fed from two different scenarios. One is fed off a line fuse. The other one is fed directly off of the circuit. The problem is that was built 55 years ago. So unless the apartment complex would like to change their location of service, there's not much I can do there. However, we are going to continue to do a couple more things along that lateral fuse, including some pole change out. and some wildlife protection that should increase the reliability and resiliency for that line fuse. If y'all have any questions for me?

Any questions or comments? Since it's not an only agenda item, I would think it would be inappropriate.

If any questions you persist, you can follow up with me and I'll be more than happy to work with CenterPoint on that. But I do want to take a moment to thank Mr. Dugan's team also for coming forward and having their Open session that they had over at the community center for hurricane preparedness specific to center point as well as for some of the vegetation efforts that are going on throughout the city. You remember we asked them to do that a couple about a year and a half ago now to set that up as far as last year's preparation. They've continued doing that through this year's preparation as well as his team's efforts to get it all over lights change out to led. So I'd like to take a moment to thank Mr Dugan for his efforts for that. and his entire team. It was not on the agenda because we weren't ready to present yet, but I will say that part of that was because of the email that came in and getting on the agenda after it was posted. We want to make sure that he still had a chance at this meeting as prompt as possible. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, next on the agenda is the consent agenda, 9A, to approve the minutes of the 7-15-2026 City Council Workshop. And 9B, to approve the minutes of the 7-15-26 City Council regular meeting. Do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion by Councilman Broaddus and I think a second by Councilwoman Thorne. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? The consent agenda. Agenda items pass unanimously. 10, a consideration and possible action to approve Resolution 2026-28, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Kemah, Texas, to accept the formal resignation of a council member and to appoint a person to fill a vacancy on the City Council and providing for an effective date.

I make a motion to approve resolution 2026-28 and appoint Jacqueline Whelan on effective, what's today, August 4th? August 5th? Yes. At 419.

Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion by Councilman Darren Broaddus, a second by Councilman Dustin Oliver. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I oppose. I will break the tie and vote affirmatively. Congratulations, Jacqueline. We will now adjourn the meeting at 421 to go to executive session.

Thank you. Thank you.

I'm glad it was a lot longer. A lot of people thought it was wrong because so many people were working.

I said, well, those of us that don't work, I have Bible study in my house, so I couldn't come to counseling.

Yeah, they changed it.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Or maybe it was Jake. Yeah. We're very happy about that. We get to go home. We're happy to go home and come back. you know, if they couldn't come.

Yeah.

It's all kind of work in progress. We're trying to get it all situated.

And like it says, if you want to know something about chemo or the chemo curve, I don't know.

I don't know what it is either. Like I say, I'm not good with a computer, but I do like to know what's going on. And...

Whenever you go, let me see if I can go back to our room. Okay, on our webpage, Agendas.

Yeah, I can do all that, but I'm saying it came to me automatically.

I didn't have to do them. Oh, okay.

Yeah, so for public comment, if you want to caution, or if you want to say anything.

Alright, that was my problem because I don't know my password. Yeah, so you might have to just re-sign up.

But you go in there and either sign in there and you can checkmark all the little things that you want to sign up for.

But I have to have my password. Yeah.

So I would just come up with my own password for the city. Yeah, I feel that all that, but it just, when it came to that, that's where I didn't have it. Oh, okay. Oh, you know what it probably was?

Yeah. Well that was easy.

So it would be October or something. They're always in there with people. They would still go out to the bakery. Yeah, because we fed them back the ladies. Yeah, the ladies.

These are my things out here.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

.

.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

um

yeah

I don't know.

yes yes

you

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. . . . .

.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. yeah yeah It's a choice.

now is Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

How many pounds here?

Maybe you're doing it so dark. All right.

Thank you.

I want to show you this and you can help it out. This is the house where I live. It's in Seabrook, by the ballparks. That's what's left of the giant wall. There's water on it.

That's what hurt the girl. And a young man.

And I saw her.

Thank you. one day. Thank you. God bless you. I was only willing to sign that thing. I didn't know you were an elementary school teacher. Yeah, I am. I got out of college in Crete, but not high. So I get to live with you. I'll say it right there.

Thank you.

And I went to the old school. The building that's there. And then I went to the new brick school. And then I went to the portable buildings and taught there. And then I got to teach at the new school. So total of how many? 30?

I'm sort of like the wife of the teacher in the state of Texas.

6th grade through 12th grade. Well, I could teach kindergarten through college. I don't think that at all. Or when I was in search life, they were giving the lifetime certificate.

Yeah.

Sometimes I still think about it. I'm going to go over there and put in my name.

You know, I think more so. I like having my own kids.

you spend your time And so every principal that we've had up here, I go in and I say, I got to tell you something from my old principal.

Do you remember the time when he was running and they made him kind of leave him?

Yeah. That's where he was and all. What's the word? Just do. Don't think. At the time that he was writing in, he was talking about things from the future. Of course, now I talk to him. I hope there's nothing bad to you. Don't worry. I hope nothing bad's happening back there. In the back. At the conference. Something to do with that. Something to do with that. Caesar. Oh, yeah. People are hired to do one job. Yes, so they're complaining for labor. And then they possibly put them to do something to get their spot in there. And so they do it because they're troopers.

And we've seen the same thing.

I walked in and heard them say that for the King of Qatar isolation. And when I walked in, it was the first time I saw them. I mean, we're talking about what you say, 700 years ago. It's wonderful to see that much

I don't think there are social needs to put a business out of business, but they're fixing to. See Tom Cruise sign?

I'll call the meeting back to order at 5.17 p.m. We do not have any action items from executive session. The next on the agenda is 13A, discussion on filling city council vacancy. Communication has been received on interested parties in filling the vacant position. Out of the hope for transparency, I believe a frank discussion in open session is needed to discuss the process of name selection.

I put this item on the agenda because the state law is clear in the sense that the council, and it certainly happened according to state law. I do not dispute that. The mayor can only vote if there's a tie, which there were, and it was her decision, and it perfectly within state law. I believe, again, in my opinion, that the process should have been to give the applicants an opportunity to speak. And because there is no process. And that's not to say this won't happen again. And I would like to consider and going forward and looking at a process to fill vacancies. That's all I have to say.

Do we have any other comments or questions? And Councilwoman Thorne, I think our city attorney has already drafted a process and I did as well. We looked at them from other cities the last time this happened. I've been up here a very long time and it's happened very infrequently. I don't think any sitting council ever felt the need to have this process because it did happen so infrequently. But it has happened several times lately. So you may be right that we need to consider a process or procedure. But going into budget season when we have a lot of roll call votes, I felt like we needed to stick with state statute tonight and place an appointment there in that it usually takes several meetings to get a process or procedure approved.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Do we have any other comments? I'll make a motion to adjourn. We have a second? We have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor? Aye. adjourned at 520. Oh, by the way, if anyone wants to hang around, we are going to swear in our new city council person.