City Council - workshop

I started podcasting

I use the mic on the computer. It tells me, your voice is low. Got to get up closer.

OK. That's ready. That's ready.

That's ready. OK.

I haven't eaten chorizo in a long time.

Okay, I've already started the recording because I can't stop it now. So I'll just leave it running and then when y'all get here, you get here.

Okay, bye-bye. And it just continues. I mean, the spread is crazy. And in Charlotte, it's the same thing.

What I love was I heard a question on the radio one time, which is going to come about first, all over Berlin Wall or the loop being finished? No one answered that.

I got a call from my daughter. last week and she had, she stopped into my groceries at Trader Joe's. My ex-wife and I lived in Northern Virginia for a while. And well, it was more like, one thing she wanted to get

Well, it's wine in a bottle shaped like a cat.

Oh, yeah, because I had all that TML stuff on there. Well, she said it was only at Trader Joe's. So, right, go pay my bill.

I got other stuff I got to get.

Yeah, y'all be seeing a chip to talk to me shortly.

South Shepard or something. I don't remember exactly where, but I was like, That's more than an hour, right? Yeah. Google said something about they're going to put Trader Joe's in League City.

More than that? Yeah. That's pretty amazing. What should we have in here? That's what I told Aaron a long time ago. I was like, we could leave England because they only have one in the whole world over here. Yeah.

I don't know how old they are, but I think we'll mark it.

Oh, yeah. Well, I like them too.

Yeah.

I would go back to the Trader Joe's.

Yeah. My ex-wife worshipped the ground the Trader Joe's was on.

Oh, my gosh. They have good snacks and stuff there, so I have to give them that.

My daughter was there, and her mission was to go buy this, what she called cat wine. Wine in a bottle that was shaped like cats.

Oh, my gosh. What the hell is that? It's your photo.

try this. My daughter lives in Virginia with her mother. She was coming to visit me, but she had to get... I found her a cheaper flight. Oh, no, I found a cheap flight. I said, whatever. She had to fly into Denver. And I had a seven-hour layover.

But she didn't go out of the airport.

Well, there's nothing out of the airport. You're nowhere.

I probably wouldn't have explored the airport twice over.

Hello.

Hello.

I think we're, did you talk to Cesar? You talked to Cesar this morning?

Yes, I did. He's on his way. He has problems.

I know. Ryan shares bacon with her all the time, so that's his best friend. I said Ryan gives her bacon all the time.

That's her real best friend. Did you get anybody last night to say anything about not being able to see the video?

Last night the live stream was acting up, but we do have a backup live stream on YouTube. So I told Devin to put out a Facebook blast to look at the YouTube. And then I finally got the other one up.

I tried all night. I was going to watch it online rather than walk over here. I could never get it done.

So, on future agendas, I'll put the backup link on there for YouTube, so if y'all can't see it on the live stream, you'll still be able to see the live stream of YouTube.

So, yeah.

Yeah, we were in the niest. That's why. We're fighting for life. So, I'm going to check with Granicus if we get out of here in a reasonable hour and see if they were down for maintenance or if something happened or whatever it was. Because you couldn't even open Granicus at all. So, No, I think this was a them thing because I tried it in Google Chrome and Edge and it was not pulling up. So it's something not us. We'll put it that way. So yeah, that's why we have the YouTube live stream as a backup. Anywho, yeah, if y'all, I guess we need to wait for Cesar to get here to do his presentation and stuff. And I guess we can start then. 830 to 9 was supposed to be the welcome and opening remarks.

So I don't know what that means exactly.

She didn't say she wasn't.

I think she said she would get here. She said she'd get here.

Beyond that, I'm not

or is there anything I need to cast on the screen?

Oh, thank you. Appreciate it. I will let you borrow my credit card. Okay. Okay. But H-E-B's one already went through, right? Okay. We should be okay. That's a big thing because Fabian's going to go pick up stuff. Can you handle that? Yeah, I'll text it. Okay.

Okay. Cheers.

Yay. Cut. Okay.

Just wait a little while for him to get here because this is his whole meeting. I don't know what any of this is about. I'm going to take the chair. And there's food in the conference room if y'all want to eat. Yeah, pretty much. We'll be doing lunch and everything later too.

We've got sandwiches, fruit trays, veggie trays, all kinds of stuff.

Whenever they start the lunch portion. I almost forgot about this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Is it like the bags that you fill with the water and stuff? Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Spread it everywhere.

Thank you. You know, do this year right at the end of it.

I have enough to eat. Where's your snicker at? You don't have a snicker. I need a snicker.

No, sir. Thank you. You did what? I'm sorry.

Oh, Brian. Because the blue carpet loves to get off his snickers. I know that.

That's where I got it from, actually.

I partially tore mine the one time.

What was the best part I answered in? Brian, forget it. Can you go back, please? Something funny this morning? Everybody going to have to eat?

Yes, sir. Did you eat anything?

No, I'm okay.

Do you want to eat?

No, I'm perfectly okay. I hope you guys have enough time for coffee and to eat and have to learn more about the challenges, life ways. season season season i wish you well on that i've partially torn my hotel at one time uh yeah i i'm waiting for the call tell me when you're ready and i'll bang the gavel

When did you do this injury?

Last Sunday.

Then he had a trip to Fort Worth. Then he had a trip to Fort Worth for the city for several days. Went up there anyway with it like that. Didn't even get seen about until Monday. Went a whole week with it, boogered out. before he got a diagnosis. She was alone all day yesterday.

Hey, Cesar, are you going to be doing presentations or anything like that? Like from your laptop?

Okay. Well, it doesn't look like we have pledges, so we don't have to get up. All right. I will call the meeting to order at 8.53 a.m., And we have a quorum. And there is no one signed up to address council. So we will move on to welcome and opening remarks. Do you have any, Cesar, or do you, anybody else have any? Well, I'll just say that I know this is asking a lot for a long day together and also budget and council tonight, but I appreciate everybody's efforts today, and hopefully we will have a positive outcome today. Would you like to go next, Councilman Boyd?

Well, I just want to say this workshop is going to be a first for me. I've always been this opinion, and this ain't an occasional doggy trick,

And a new councilwoman.

Well, I'm happy to be here and looking forward to learning what I need to learn.

Okay.

You're next, sir. Any opening comments?

Ready for a great day. Let's get this rolling.

Is that it? Okay.

All right.

Good morning.

You can take your mic, please.

Thank you, thank you very much. Testing, okay. All right, so I'll start asking the question as my computer starts to wake up. When was the last time that anybody knows this council or anybody having some type of retreat or setting like this? Typically, settings, this type of retreat would be tables, moving around, this type of thing at the dais, but we're going to get through that. When was the last time that we know of that this group?

Three years ago, KCDC and council did a joint venture.

Yeah, I think we did, and it was a big square table, a little bit more casual, and we had an oversight by, what's his name? He's from...

So a couple years ago. Well, just to go over, obviously we have breakfast. There will be a working lunch with us and KCDC. From 11 to 1, the consultants will be here. I wanted to get some form of continuity amongst this group and direction and get your direction as far as department priorities, as far as budget priorities, and where we are headed into the long run. Obviously in my tenure here, this is the first time that we get a chance to come together in this way where it's not, I don't want to call it, it's not a formal meeting, because it is, but it's a less formal, less driven meeting. I want there to be open dialogue as to what the priorities are. So as I mentioned to some of you when we've had our one-on-ones, and Ms. Taglin, we have not had a chance to have your one-on-one yet. I go over priorities as they were given to me by the council. So you guys operate as a body, providing policy, direction, and we go out and actually deliver as a staff. I want to make sure that there has been no changes in that direction or policy or direction that we're headed moving forward. So some of the priorities that I was given, and now I'm going back to technically three councils ago, was in relation in regards to where our area of focus was. So public safety was definitely number one. I'd like to know what the strategy or thought is going to be on public safety. We've taken on a different approach. I would call it a a guerrilla approach, if you will, similar to guerrilla marketing approach from the police department, where we're not waiting for things to happen, we're coming forward and trying to be preventive as much as we can. More proactive than reactive. Kima being as small as it is, incidents happen. So public safety was kind of that first centered approach that we had. After public safety, community development or community quality of life. It's evident in the fact that we are a tourist town. There's the boardwalk, there's the restaurants, there's the walkability and places that we'd like to get better. Obviously, nevis is on our parks with 57 acre park. We've got the guest center down the street. Kind of creating that synergy. So that's been kind of a 2nd focus and in no particular order. Right? And then 3rd has been a focus on the finance. trying to drive down cost, trying to drive up sales tax in order to hopefully get to a point where we can reduce the burden on the taxpayer. Those are the three lanes, if you will, that I was given when we started, also carrying over from the short time that I had with Aaron. That's where we kind of laid out a roadmap of how are we gonna tackle those three different things. At the time we had a couple of agencies in PD obviously the chief was hired vacancies were filled. Thankfully knock on wood we haven't had a vacancy if we have we've had somebody fill it pretty quickly because we have so many reserves on staff. That's been a very welcome sight for me being coming from different places where public safety sometimes it's hard to get those positions filled. I will tell you that there is a challenge with that. We are by far one of the lower paying police departments. So These officers are here because they want to be here. They're here because they want to be here. And I will give Chief his flowers. He does a very good job of making the officers feel wanted, appreciated, and he does a very good job with team building and getting them to be engaged and so forth. But police work is not, although it is a science, no two days are the same. Anything could happen, be derailed or anything else. So we know what that aspect of it is. That's been the aspect of PD and the public safety side. Another general direction that I was given when I got here was to try to reduce turnover in the city in general. I know that that was something near and dear to some of the council's heart when I started. Again, I say some of the council then compared to now because there's only two of you that were then here then that are here now. So turnover was something that we wanted to try to prevent. Yes, if you look at salary comparisons, I'll start there. They're very different from other cities. People are here because they want to be here. If you look at comparisons of benefits, I think we're getting much stronger. We took a very, very big step last year in the eight to one. Most cities are seven to one. If you don't know what that is, is we're involved in TMRS. where 7% is paid for by the employee and the city contributes and matches a two to one. The strength of our actual retirement plan is so strong that it's not a full two to one. It's actually a little bit less. I think last I checked, it was about 11% because of the strength of what the pool has. With that, we decided, we made the decision to go up to 8% because it was not gonna cost the city any extra money. So I think it was a very bold move by the city. We were one of the first in the regions to do that, and staff really appreciated it. They really, really did. I think it was something that a lot of folks didn't quite understand. So I'm giving you kind of a recap of what you've done from last year to this year and the emphasis of what it's been. We haven't added many positions, only the police officer position that we've added, as well as the One Public Works position. So the staff itself has stayed the same size for the most part. Not not not much growth. Your population is wrong. Years of responsibility have grown. We're doing more than we used to do. Arguably. Your public work staff used to be much larger. Some of the stuff we do is outsource some of the stuff we do in house. So there's that give and take, and we're always going to find whatever the efficiencies is. If it is more efficient for us to do it in-house, then we're going to do it in-house. If it's more efficient to do it out-of-house, we'll do it out-of-house. And we're going to constantly evaluate those things. I want to make sure that I still have your, let's say approval, but your vote of confidence to continue evaluating those things as we go. Because it's always ever-changing. Are there any comments on that part so far?

Has anyone done a comparison on pay on the other side of City Hall as far as administrative side?

What we followed is the HCAC study. I can tell you that if I go down the line, two-thirds of the staff is probably underpaid compared to other cities. Now, the problem is it's hard to match like-sized cities because if you match us to a smaller community of 2,000 people, then you're going to be like, well, we're overpaid.

That's what I've always found over the years is that because we're so atypical with all the visitors and wearing all the different hats, it's not apples to apples, in other words, when those numbers come in and we do compare. And it's usually a budget when we do that.

And I'll also tell you, it's a very unique situation in that you're a town of 2,000, but it feels like you're a town of 20,000. And I'll be honest in saying that. And sometimes it feels like more, depending on the day and the evening, the event or whatever else is going on. So hence why you have a town of 2,000 that has 20 officers, right? That's that push and pull, if you will.

Yeah, you look at Clear Lake Shores, they're about the same land mass, they're about the same constituent numbers or resident numbers, but yet they have five police officers. That's more typical

So for us, it's a little bit different. Obviously, we have different challenges than they do. Having said that, our productivity is up. For a while, we weren't running as efficient when it came to certain things. I walked in here, there was some challenges in certain departments and courts and so forth that we've turned around. The numbers show it. We still got challenges in other places. I think we could do a better job with parking. I think that that is a potential revenue stream unless there's a potential discussion of reducing the parking and so forth.

I want us to have a holistic approach as to how we're gonna address things in the long term moving forward.

Last night we had a KCDC meeting and we have two KCDC board members here that can probably provide a better recap than I can. But there needs to be alignment, in my opinion. And again, it's your decision between KCDC and the actual council. Two separate entities, but still similar in common goals. There's been suggestions. We took the suggestion that that was made about the management fee. That was discussed. A couple of the CIP projects were actually discussed, including even some sidewalk situations. And I'll go ahead and talk freely about that one. Let me talk about the city secretary's office first before I get to that. We've had a challenge with records, okay? We've had a challenge with records. And Natasha, if I speak out of turn in any which way, please correct me. So, The city's records being digitized are an ongoing challenge because no sooner that we start to digitize some, there's more coming. The pace and the staff that we have, I want you to understand that if you pull out PD, you pull out Public Works, you pull out Court Operations, you add Jeri into our mix because of the hats that she wears, we're running the entire city with normally seven positions. Okay, so that's kind of the challenge that we're dealing with. So there's not a whole lot of time to do this and do that. There's also not a lot of flexibility in the budget to just go really near the padding position. So we understand that. Is there a need? Yes, but can we add 10 hours here, 15 hours there, and so forth? That's why we rely so much on consultants. or part-time or what we're doing now, we're starting some internships. We've had three of them that are here about to start here within this next, two started yesterday and one hopefully the other one will be here this week. But going back to the city secretary's office, there's so much that goes on between the digitizing over 60 years of records, okay? If you go upstairs and you look at where our storage stuff is, there's plans up there that are not digitized, they're not. We are looking at getting a large enough scanner, or in this case we call it a plotter, that we'd be able to scan some of those documents, because I read something happens, a lot of those plans are right now not replaceable. When I tell you that's a challenge, Could we pay for a company to do that? Yes, but we don't have four or $500,000 to go get that done right now. We just don't. So we've been doing it in-house as much as possible. The goal is to have everything digital because we want to be as responsive as possible when folks have a question. whether it's through PIR, whether it's through a resident saying, hey, I want to do, I need this, I can't find my, whatever the situation may be, we want to make sure that we're responsive as possible. And having to dig through some of this stuff is a challenge sometimes. Okay? It's a challenge. So that is one of the biggest projects that the city secretary's office has handled, has started to handle. That's why when you go down our hallway, all those boxes are there. It's because that is a labor of love having to scan those boxes. And as many boxes as are there, there's probably two to three times that many upstairs that we have to go through the process as well. That's going to take us several years to accomplish. Now, I will give credit. Natasha's office has been handling that as much as possible and moving us over to Laserfish and to try to get us online. as much as possible so we can be as digital friendly as possible to stop using so much paper. Which is why sometimes we even ask for you guys if you don't need your stuff printed to allow us to give you a tablet so you can see it digitally. Because paper becomes just clutter and it's obviously we're trying to keep costs down. Not just the cost of papers gone up, the cost of toner, the cost of the copies, everything all included has gone up. But it's also time consuming. So we're trying to be as efficient and lean as possible. The use of AI, the use of all these things has made us as efficient as we possibly can be. Is there gonna be more room? Yeah, more than likely. But right now, I think the biggest challenge that the city secretary's office is having is having the tools needed in digitization to be responsive as possible to as many requests as come in. Again, it's not just PIR requests. It might be requests from a contractor. It might be, hey, where's our easement? Is it here or is it here? Those are challenges.

Those are challenges.

Did I miss anything on the digitization side? Please, this is open discussion.

We do have a big problem with PIRs, too. We do not have the staff to support processing PIRs. And it's about to exceed last year's numbers already. It's for calendar year.

How much time is spent on that?

It depends on what they're asking for. A lot of these requests, it's the quantity that they're asking for. They'll say any and all documents for a certain time period or all emails for a certain time period for all employees. And it just depends on what they're asking for, basically. So it could take eight hours. It could take three weeks, depending on what they're asking for. And if they pay for it, we have to process it.

And it's also, it's not just digging up the record, but then you have to go through the record and then redact the record.

You have to go through and redact. Yeah.

And that's the bigger challenge tied to that. And until we find another way to do that. You know what's helpful sometimes when we can pick up the phone and ask a request or look, help us help you. Can you narrow down the needle in the haystack a little bit? Because sometimes when it's, For example, I mean, this one happens all the time. I need any and all text messages from the city administrator's phone. I gotta go to Natasha's office. She's gotta download every single message. Then she's gotta go through and say, all right, what has to come out? Is there anything in here that has all the qualifying factors, date of birth, anything? Pretty much anything in there that needs to be taken out. That request comes in every couple of months. Any and all emails. Any and all emails between Jacqueline Wieland and Natasha Hinton. I mean, that may not be a lot, but it may be more. It may be a lot. And so that's kind of one of the biggest challenges. And then sometimes we get the same request over and over again. So you have to fulfill it in different ways.

Sometimes people don't get what they're looking for, and just ask for what you're looking for.

I think that would make things easier, but There's a process. People have that open ability to do that. And until as a system we find a better way to do that, there is no way to do it. There's nothing we can do but throw resources at it. There is no magic wand we can say, here's all of our stuff online. Because a lot of that stuff is what it is.

Wish we could do that. Wish we could just say, here it is.

Here's everything, right? But there's some stuff that can't be that way because it's redacted.

It has to be redacted. It wouldn't even be on anybody's plate, you know, but there's no way.

Yeah, but, Cesar, I think looking outside the box of not just KEMA, but, I mean, in talking to Natasha yesterday, I think we really need to look at, and I don't think it needs to be KEMA, I think it needs to be you and the mayor talking collectively as Galveston County and Harris County, talking to Bonham and that group before we go into session. I've called it about it. Because I think it needs to be collected, have a meeting and go over the concerns that these folks are having with the people are building their businesses off, which is off the taxpayers back, which is not right.

Can you elaborate on that comment? Please? You know, I don't necessarily elaborate. They're building their business. Can you elaborate?

Yeah, we have people that are doing the citations out of our police department to know who has to go through driving school to know who to solicit directly. So we're building their business.

They're getting their leads off of PIR.

We'll get questions like any and all permits issued in the last six months. Well, now somebody can now be a carpet cleaning company or whatever the case is, right? And go do that. And so it's a way of building leads without paying for leads if you And there's a lot of that. Well, yes.

They're not going to pay for it out of business. So, I mean, that's not what the intent of that was. I don't think if the lawmaker, and I don't know that they realize what's being done. I think if that was brought to their attention, I think there should be some corrections made to the current policies. To help not just chemo every city across Texas. I mean, I think it's something that needs to be had, but it needs to be had collectively. Not just chemo 3000 people writing about because we're not the only 1. I mean, you can call Aaron. No, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's everything you buy anywhere we call. It's just a matter of collectively put in a group, not an obvious group, but, you know, just a group of people are actually feeling to take advantage of mayor and council meeting the next one.

We have at least talking about it.

I just think we need to be. I don't know that they understand. I mean, they got so much of their plate. If you don't bring that to them and they understand the full effects of what it's. I think there's an opportunity for the next session to be some modifications, and I'm not trying to do anything with transparency. I'm just, you know, I don't think somebody should be able to build a business off my taxpayer dollars, and that's what they're doing.

Right, and it's very fair, and it's also funds that we can't use to go pick potholes and go pick sidewalks.

Councilman Rohrer?

And go...

I've got a, just for my, this is my ignorance on this. Is it possible to But isn't it possible to, when Councilman Lourdes talks about reintroducing or redefining what this TIRs are supposed to be, you talk about at a certain point you do charge. What if there was a way to develop a system that you would charge a minimal, like a rising scale?

Do you want to clarify that, Natasha? What is the overall aspect of the payment for one? I know a lot of people don't pay, but then some do.

Yeah, the state sets what we're allowed to charge depending on what they're asking for. If it hits a certain point, like a certain page count, or if it's over $40, we do a cost estimate letter. Or if there's manipulation of data, which would be redactions. It has to hit a certain threshold and we can only charge like $15 per hour to do redactions or 10 cents per page, depending on if they're doing paper copies. The state sets all of that. We have no control over it.

Also, when she says $15 an hour for redaction, both Natasha's hourly rate and the city attorney who would be doing redactions,

way more than that you know so we're going to hold on redactions at that point regardless of who's doing them um i just don't think our administration understands what has transformed in this arena i think the intent was right i just think it's blossomed and became a i don't know trying to be polite here um there's people using it in the wrong way that was not intended for in the original how it could blossom like this. So I think it's more of educating and just showing the heartburn and the pains that we're having and see if there's any relief to be had because I don't think this was their intent when they, I don't think that's transparency to me.

One of the terms that we've used is that PIRs have become weaponized. I mean, that's kind of the, that's, well, and the reason why I say that is because some folks have the true intent, right? Some folks have the true intent, but because the method exists the way that it does, it allows folks to skate that line and use it for things that may be nefarious. I mean, if, the public has the right to know what's going on. There's nothing to hide.

It's great for us to sit here and keep complaining about it because we've been complaining about it for three years and I've been sitting here. But I don't know that we've ever taken it to the next level because we have no jurisdiction over this. So we've got to start educating the people that do have the jurisdiction because Dennis Paul is a new senator, probably. Theoretically, he's going to win, and he's vocal. So I'm like, why don't we start sitting down and have education with these folks so that we can try to sponsor a bill into the left? There's got to be something going on there because we're not the only city that's complaining about this. There's no way.

Well, I think we're one of the only ones that's actually unafraid of being vocal about it. Some folks are just stammering and clamoring and not doing anything, but we were actually being vocal about it and trying to find solutions. One of the things that we've talked about doing was, is there a way to have, and we've asked the AG's office for opinion on this, is how to be able to do third-party charging. Natasha's got 40 hours. If she has no additional outside help, there's 40 hours. There's stuff that has to be done within those 40 hours that are tied to her responsibility.

So if all of a sudden, no, no, no.

What I'm saying is, is as we do this, well, my idea for the third party charging is to try to get this stuff done in a way where we can look at other ways of getting this done.

It's like I tell residents, sometimes there's issues in and we have a conversation, I don't have a problem researching it, trying to figure out the best path forward because I'm not aware of it. I mean, I can't be everywhere all the time and not in every community on a daily basis. So if there's something out there, I hope they do come talk to me because I don't mind putting in the time and researching it. I've been back to 1963, I think, in records for chemo, working on issues. We've corrected stuff since the 1970s. So, I mean, it's not like we're scared to go do the work. I mean, we've been doing the work. So, I mean, I can only fix what I'm aware of. Okay.

Well, let's go ahead. I'll be brief because I know we want to stay on schedule. As far as there are tools for auto redaction, number two, and I don't know, the city secretary is going to have to give me the proper term, but there are records retention, and this is at a state level, as far as records being retained. So that, and then my big, and again, this is purely my opinion. We talk about being proactive, not only looking at open records requests, but what is the, it's open record requests are, in my opinion, a symptom of the public be it the public, the press, not knowing what's going on. And just try it to be as much as legally possible to be forthright in announcing that information, passing that information. Oh, well, there it is. So now I know. That's all I want to say.

No, no. And that's a fair argument. And I think we've done a pretty good job of be more forthcoming and transparent because a lot of folks in other cities keep everything tight to the chest and so forth. There's other cities that do stuff that we don't do. We do things that other people don't do. But when we're constantly being asked any and all emails, that's not searching for transparency. That's searching for something or trying to create something or to write a narrative of something that maybe to turn it in any which way for someone's gain or for someone's way of trying to manipulate whatever the story is. And like I've told everybody since I got here, there's nothing to hide here, right? There's nothing to hide here. And if anybody wants to come in and spend time with me in the office, sit in with meetings on me, I have no problem with that. And I think that's always been open to folks. On the next subject, if it's okay. Anything else that you'd like to comment on?

The only thing I would like to add is when you do talk to Dr. Greg Bonin or whoever you need to speak with, if they could suggest longer time frames to respond to open records for smaller cities, because we are held at the same standards as larger cities with more staff, and it's kind of not fair. because we still have the same 10 business days to respond as a larger city with five to 10 staff members to process these records. And we are a staff of one and a half.

Good point. All right, let's go to PD.

I guess could you see here as, I mean, I want to ask another question because, I mean, this is something we've got to address. Could you reach out to the other city managers in Galveston County or maybe the mayor, reach out to the mayors and maybe get a dialogue of what Santa Fe, Hitchcock, what everybody else is feeling as well, and maybe we can do a comparison to, what are we, we already did some surpass last year and August of this year on PIRs, so they're increasing dramatically year after year. Is everybody else feeling the same effects or are we just, no, and we're just compounded.

I've had those discussions and there's an ebb and a flow. A lot of it is tied to the politics of the individual city. So depending on political differences or political involvement or lack thereof, sometimes that will navigate.

But that might give us a direction to have a conversation with Bonham and Dennis, since Paul, how people are victimizing people sitting in these seats, not just KEMA, I'm talking about just across the board because you see it on social media everywhere. They're using this as a tool to attack people and people need to realize there's people sitting on the other side of this deal. They're trying to make the right, most of us are trying to make the right decision. I'm not saying it's like Flock. I don't think 99.9% of police officers are probably doing it the right way and that 0.1% that's causing social media blitz over clock. It's the same way probably in city council is most people are trying to do the right thing. I'm not saying a hundred percent because there's bad apples in everything that you do in life. So, but I mean, I think it gets directed that, you know, it's just like McKinney. I don't know if anybody's watched McKinney, but the city council is getting pounded up there and they did everything right. They did everything that they swore an oath to just because your religion belief might be different, but your oath says you're going to do what's right. And that's what they did. And then now they're just I don't know if y'all kept up with that, but that's just crazy what that council's going through right now, and old mayors and everybody else, because they actually did what was right. I'm like, you might not believe, I mean, say I have the same beliefs as what the issue might have been, but I mean, they did everything right.

Well, I think with every, and perfect segue to go into PD, because the flock camera is something that I wanted to talk about here, as far as direction. PD obviously being that we have four state roads that intersect through here. There's 96, 518, 2094, and 146. They all intersect in arguably less than a two mile space, right? That is a large traffic count going to and from. All right you got upwards of forty six forty seven thousand vehicles that are on one forty six alone every day. We are a prime location for all types of nefarious activity. Because of how transient we are you can be in and out of here in no time. My understanding of flock and I'll just I will try not to say the name block of the psych using. saying cigarettes in Al Marborough, right, or saying fast food and saying McDonald's, right, because VLOC is just a brand. But LPR cameras themselves are a license plate reading, sorry, I try to get away from acronyms sometimes, but these LPR cameras exist to be able to scan these licenses and try to come back with information. So now, through driving records, you can find out if somebody might be nefarious. If somebody is driving without an actual driver's license or driving without a valid registration, or if there's an amber alert or a silver alert tied to that vehicle. That was the intent and the focus. And you said point one. I would say it's point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, one. Because, no, and it's sad that some folks have used that in a way that shouldn't have been used. But the idea is it is a force multiplier because we can't do that. I'll go ahead and talk about something that happened in South Florida while I was there. The whole red light camera thing, right? I don't know how that affected Texas or not, but red light cameras, you don't know. There was a camera, certain red lights that would get ran. It would take a picture of the license plate and they would record you and it was... We seem to work great, I got a couple of myself, you know tickets mailed to your house, you click on the video, it's kind of hard to deny, you know, and you just had to pay the ticket well apparently. As as the folklore goes a certain somebody who was at some type of state office was caught in a vehicle with somebody they were supposed to be with and it was shown on that camera. That's what ended up being allegedly the root of the end of red light cameras. Folks felt that it was an invasion of privacy in that sense. All it was is we can't have a police officer at every single red light, right? Try to pull people over because they pull and they actually run the actual red light. That's a safety thing. The intent of these LPRs is a safety thing. It's a force multiplier. It allows us to have more in different locations. We've been lucky enough to get some grant funding to pay for these flock cameras that allowed them to be forceful suppliers. So you've got a situation now where some folks in a residential neighborhood, which we had a meeting with, we met with them and they said, hey, you know, please come talk to us about these flock cameras. We understood that there was a concern. We went out there. If there's a concern and folks want the cameras removed, we could oblige to that. But we need communication.

Well, I think we need to go back in the history because I don't know that anybody, well, Robin would be and probably Dustin, but Um, this actually originated this actually was brought to us by 12. To be honest, they're the ones that brought this topic up and they actually split it with the city 5050 originally. Uh, not only do they want the security of it, but they also wanted odds on some critical assets of this town. because uh as people probably aren't aware is we're a single source water source and if somebody was to contaminate that water at the main source theoretically could kill the whole town um so i mean there were some issues there that they were trying to rectify on emergency response i guess so that's how that originated um so that's what got us started and then of course the police department has taken to the next level and grant funding added more because we saw the results it's all the the benefits of what this could do for the town as far as, and Hakeem Oak's thing has brought up the attention in this town and it was their HOA that brought it to us. That they wanted. And if we could find a way of doing it, could we put them at their entrances? And that was their HOA that came to us and asked for help. And we did provide that help, which we put the camera in the wrong place. I'm not going to disagree with that. It shouldn't have been on the other side of the sidewalk. And that's what caused the controversy. But that was just a, a one. SOMEBODY'S PART. BUT I MEAN, I'VE HAD SEVERAL PEOPLE IN TOWN CALL ME ABOUT THIS ISSUE AND MY FIRST COMMENT IS WHEN YOU GET RID OF YOUR CELL PHONE AND YOU NO LONGER DRIVE A VEHICLE, I'LL HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOU BECAUSE EVERYTHING TRACKS YOU.

NEW SPEAKER Right. EVERYTHING WE DO ACROSS COMPUTERS, PHONES EVERY DAY NOW IS BEING TRACKED AND WE UNDERSTAND THAT. MY PERSPECTIVE THAT I WANTED YOU GUYS TO KNOW IS WHAT THE LPR CAMERAS ARE, HOW THEY WORK, HOW THEY ARE FOR SUPPLIER. to be honest with you, we don't have enough throughout the city. There's a couple of spots that I feel like we could probably add more to add another set of eyes and to be able to afford to have that many. Yes, ma'am.

No, I want to let you finish.

No, no, that was a pause.

All right. Allegedly, the city of Kama has 40 LPR cameras. I would like that. In my opinion, I believe that there might be... coding issues at the vendor source. Because if we have 40 cameras, which I don't believe is actually the case, that's an issue. And I'm talking, I'm the accountant, so I'm talking on the money side. And it's wonderful that we have those grant funding, but grant funding runs out. And look at the long-term costs of utilizing that, as Chief Garibay says, in the toolbox.

So one of the things that's contingent about the current set of grant-funded cameras that we have is if the money dries up, they go away. We have the decision if we want to pay for it on our own, but we're not contractually obligated beyond any of those terms. That's one thing that I'm not going to sign off on something or recommend something to this council that we're going to be in that type of predicament. So we do what we can in that situation. The bells and whistles are very nice, but at the end of the day, I grew up on a Cinderella situation, right? When it's midnight, what happens? What worst case scenario, what happens? So with that mindset, we have to be prepared in case that happens.

Let me inject into that though, because I think people don't look at the intangibles. Maybe I'm crazy in what way I think, but since I've set up here, to my knowledge, we've actually reduced officers. and we have due to technology. So yes, our budget has stayed almost relatively sane the whole time I've said here, but our populations increase, the demands increase, but at the same time, we've leaned on technology to assist us because you had an officer on days and officer on nights, that's $250,000 in the city by the time you equipped everything. So paying for a lease on a flock camera needs to be looked at, okay, if we eliminate that, then we're gonna have to probably add an officer provide the same services that we're providing today, and what is that cost? So make sure we're looking at the total cost, not just what's on paper today.

And I'm not looking at in terms of eliminating the system. I want to be clear on that. What I am saying is the number and placement.

Sure. No, and I appreciate that. So there are We do have the funding for up to 40. The locations, I could get you a whole printout as far as where they are, but I also want to be cognizant of the fact that these things also serve as deterrents, which is, to me, I think, the biggest factor. Folks are usually less likely to maybe, you know, conduct themselves in a certain way if they notice that there's a camera. They might not take that route. They might go a different route or do something different if that's the case. So I wanted to offer us that opportunity or that leniency to be able to have that leeway that we may be rotating them. We may be moving them from a different location. If we see one that's not catching something, then we might need to move it to a spot that is more needed. That's the beauty of it. I will say, They are property, and they actually are considered state property since they are funded through state funds. We had one cut down the other day. We had one cut down. I can't go into the charges of it, but that might be an actual state offense. And that's something for us to consider when folks are out here doing that. There's other ways of voicing your opinion or telling us something different than to just go out there and vandalize, because that's what that is. That is vandalism. That's no different if somebody would have hit a police car or done something of that nature. It's no different. It is a piece of equipment, but it is a set of eyes, and it does provide us information that we do keep people safe with, regardless of what it is. That's the intent. We go above and beyond on making sure that our officers are pretty much read the riot act. You will be charged if you violate those policies within our city. There will be consequences. It's not a slap in the face, a slap in the hand. It is some very, very serious consequences that I feel very comfortable in leading in that. And we do plenty of audits in that to make sure. We had a situation where somebody pulled a certain plate a certain amount of times. I'm not going to get into details. But that person was brought in and questioned why. And they had the reason why. This is what it was. Here's what I saw. Here's what I didn't see. Here's a pattern. Here's so on and so forth. We're out here doing police work too. And some of the stuff that happens behind the scenes is the stuff people don't want to talk about because it is what keeps people up at night. But it's what the work that is done. So one of our latest arrests that we had was picked up due to a clock camera. It is what it is. There's numerous cases. The pros outweigh the cons in that situation when it comes to public safety. Do some people have issues and act nefarious? Yeah, but they can do that with a shopping cart at Walmart. It's just the truth and reality we live in. But whatever this body's will is, that's what we will go with. We did go to that meeting. We did tell the folks in Kima Oaks, and we let them know that if there was a desire for those flock cameras to be removed from that neighborhood, to please let us know in writing, and we would act accordingly.

Cesar, I think he started when you said the first priority that you were given was safety. Yes. And then if you look at managing cost, which is part of the budget cycle, it's what do we do as a body to make sure there's integrity and alignment? in supporting public safety. And then you mentioned that we have officers who want to be here, but they are not paid at the same levels that other towns do.

Yes, ma'am.

And so if you look at the impact of that, I think that's the harder question. How do we make sure that we continue focused on public safety? And I would say officer safety, community safety. And then how are we making decisions to support that alignment?

One thing I can tell you, and they're in the room and I would speak the same if they were not in the room, you've got a good leadership team within your police department. They are not afraid to come tell me when there's an issue. They're not going to hold back. And that's a relationship that I think we've built from day one being together. When they need something, they're going to ask for it. They're not going to over-ask. If there's a way to incentivize or to keep morale up or anything else that we're going to do with our department, that's what we're going to do. we don't control the budget, if you will, when it comes to that. So as was mentioned, a police officer right now, a police car is at least 100,000 bucks. That's just for a car.

When you add- That's all equipped, correct?

Correct. That'd be equipped. And certain cars with certain bells and whistles may cost a little bit more, a little bit less, but right about figure about 100K.

Is that about right?

So, and that number changes every day. These cars are equipped with a lot of, state-of-the-art equipment okay and if you've been to the police Academy citizens police Academy if you haven't please do so you'll you'll you'll you'll gain quite a bit of experience and learn more about these vehicles have. But that priority of having the tools that they need when we got here. There were ballistic vests that were out of out of out of commission we we've we've attained grant funding for that there were tasers that were obsolete, we were able to receive grant funding for that to get that replaced. You had, not only were you low paid, but you also had equipment that wasn't where it was. There was police cars that were 15 years old at some point. We've slowly started to flip those vehicles here and there. We're trying to get two per year. That's why in the budget you have that request. So you can keep your fleet somewhat new and active. And we're not afraid to go ask. We're not afraid to go write grants. I mean, we started working with grants and under Chief's leadership, they've been very active. We don't get all of them, but we're trying to do whatever we can with as much free money as possible. So that, I think, allows us to do more with less. We just wrote a COPS grant that would allow us to, for two officers, that would allow us to have essentially 50% of their salary paid over those three years and after that you have to keep them for at least a year at your actual salary and then you can decide what to do after that. But we're doing everything we can to do more with less. The intent with that is once we reshuffle things is we'll do what we can to make sure that those are self-sufficient because we've noticed different areas where we could do more, whether it be CID or criminal investigation side of things or your detective side of things. There's a lot of other crimes that are not happening in broad daylight. that we can't get to as much because it's not just your office on the street that deal with those. So I think that the biggest challenge coming up against is it's going to be pay here in the horizon. I think it's something that we're going to have to address here sooner than later because it is an arms race. You've got people, you have office, you have offices around us that are hiring for substantial bonuses.

Yeah.

Go see this $5,000.

We had a discussion about it.

We just want to stay competitive, not the best. And I talk to this guy all the time, these two for sure. We talk about this all the time, that we're just trying to compete. There's a sergeant I'm fixing to lose, and it's only because of the money. He loves it here, loves chemo, loves working for them, not me. Let's just say them. but I'm gonna lose a good guy that's very proactive, leading in arrest, leading in DWIs as a sergeant, wants to be here, but in the end, what are we getting? I said, if we're blessed, we're getting 3%, right? And he puts the numbers together and that's compared to Harris County Precinct 8 where he's applying, I can't give them that money, but can I make as much as Seabrook? Can I make as much as Kerr Lake Shores? That's what we're asking. Can we at least compete with Lamarck? You know, those kind of places, right? I can't compete with Harris County.

What's the delta? Like when you look at Seabrook pay to our pay, what's the gap that we're experiencing?

You're probably talking about 10%, somewhere in there, 8% to 10%. Yeah, somewhere in that area. And again, because of the great things that you guys allow them to do here and the morale, that makes up, you can make up some of that difference, but 3% at a time makes it kind of hard. I mean, you saw Harris County. Of course, we're not them. They had a 21%. We can't do that, right? Now they're excited and they're happy in HPD. I'm not competing with them. You're going to HPD, you're gone. I understand that. I just want to keep up. close to what they're, but we're very blessed. You don't see us advertising that we need officers. You know why? Because they want to work here. They're having to get $5,000 bonus to sign on and I'll say it is what it is. Things must be going right here. Now, how do we find a way to keep him, and it's about the dollar. These younger officers, he could tell him, I'm giving you 10% of your retirement and only giving seven. What does that mean by the hour? These younger guys just want to know what they're taking home every two weeks, not what they're going to take home in 20 years. Does that make sense? I want to clarify something on the flock cameras real quick. We have 40 cameras, but understand that's not at 40 locations. I think the public needs to know that. There's only 17 that are stationed at locations. The other... 24, right?

They're actually 24 physical LPR cameras that are stationary. The rest are on security surveillance trailers.

We saw that the other day and said, hey, there's not 40 cameras on every. That's not the case here. The other remaining are on traders that we move around for special events. Sixth Street, Walmart. It's over at Ulta now. One's going to Ulta. The city parking lot. Those things come in real handy when we need them. And I can only fight for them as much as I can fight for them. But when you have a smaller department and 4 million visitors visiting this city, those are additional eyes. And I think we looked the other day, you might be averaging one search per day that we're using. That's what it averages out to, 30. That's one a day that we're looking. We're not HV, we're not Harris County, we're not LaPorte, we're not Deer Park. We're not looking 30 searches a day. It's one on average a day. And he monitors that. He's kind of... He's rough around the edges when it comes to that kind of stuff. He doesn't play that stuff, and they know it. And we constantly remind people this won't be tolerated, you know. So I hope you guys continue to support that because if we can't do it with additional officers, let's talk about the tasers. Before I got here, we had to give up two or three officers.

Two and a half positions, Chief.

Two and a half positions would be correct because we didn't have the money and the budget, but you all also knew we needed these officers, I mean these tasers. So we gave up those two and a half positions to get tasers. That was three years ago, four years ago? Correct. We did not replace those officers. I get it, okay? But don't take away these other security measures we have. These officers that are standing on every other intersection that are eyes for us, if something goes down, we can get to it quickly. I promise you no one's abusing them. I'll say it out loud in public. They will be fired. I promise that man right there in the dark blue shirt, when he went to a meeting with us, they will be fired and they know that. Can't do that. But we have access to so many other things, running registrations, that's not even related to flock. Drivers, we get in trouble for that too. It's the same thing, same thing applies. So again, I know you guys, Only have so much to work with.

I mean, just so everybody's aware, too. I mean, KCDC put cameras at the 57 acre park and they're tied into PD as well. Yes, sir. So we have eyes on the 57 acre park one for vandalism and two, just in case something happens in the park. And we have it where it can expand the whole 57 acres. Yes, sir. Process was designed so that as the park grows, the camera system can grow with it. Yes, sir. So, I mean. We're going to call the ESB and everything else to service a 57-acre park, because if somebody has a heart attack and mill that park, you've got to get them out of there. You're going to have to have the apparatus and equipment as a city.

The minute someone calls in from the park, dispatch starts dispatching. She automatically gets into the system and starts marching and tell them, hey, the guy in the red shirt, whatever, maybe he's on a dirt bike, whatever the call is, he just went into the wood area. Those are eyes for us, because we, you're not going to, I don't know if y'all know how many officers we have on the street sometimes, y'all. And trust me, we need to have those additional forces out there for us to assist us.

Chief, do you mind if I interject for a second? Also, 1 thing I want to address, and this was addressed at the meeting we had with the chemo. It was put out online that the cameras and 57 acre park are have facial recognition. They are bought cameras. They are not that was established and clarified October 2025 before they went in. So there's no facial recognition on whatsoever on any of our cameras here in the city.

I mean, people, hey, they're going to look and see is it me leaving at two in the morning, whatever it is.

That's not what this is.

But it's not going to see who was in the vehicle, you know, so that that's not true. But I get it. There's other things going on throughout the county and the state and the country. Now, all I can tell you is and just do as much as I can to reassure you, it's not happening in Kemah, Texas. That I can tell you. Thank you so much.

Yes, ma'am. I saw you got a new car in the fleet out there.

So that is, I'll talk about that real quick. My wife and I bought that vehicle 20 years ago, 25 years ago when I was a passing police officer. It was my dream to make it a classic vehicle. It never happened. I become the chief in Freeport. We donated free ports. People put some money into it while it was there. They decided after I left not to continue deploying it. It went backwards. It started rusting out and all this and that. Anybody listen? All the wonderful people that donated money as much as we could. We raised about $7,000 and we were able to get it. Not the best paint job, but we got some of the rust spots fixed. The rims had rusted. New rims on it. The interior had been done. They're going to put the graphics on it probably later today. And now I've got a gentleman on Anders, probably down the road from you, that does classic vehicles. And he's going to give us a deal. Some of that we can find in the budget very light. But now it has a motor in it. It actually runs. But the fuel pumps. But it's going to be beautiful. It just, that kind of vehicle tells you what KEMA is about. When we see that one at the boardwalk that everybody loves, now we'll still have that one there. Now we're going to have one that will actually be in some parades around. So we're moving around the city and show it off some. Yep, we're excited for that next project that we got going.

So I'd like to use that to transition as while PD is here to talk about the crime rate. Historically, and this is something we don't run from or hide from. Historically, Kemah has had one of the highest crime rates in the state. And a lot of people don't notice that and don't realize that. So when you see that come out, please don't be alarmed. That is a normal thing. It is not uncommon for us to be in the top 10 of crime rates for the state of Texas. But why is that? It's tied to our population. You have one or two incidents happen and all of a sudden it just goes out of control. Obviously, violent crime versus property crime are two different types of crimes, but understand that those things influence the crime rate. It is not a reflection on whether we're safe or not. One or two incidents throw that thing out of haywire. We're working on doing everything we can to drop that as much as possible. Now, there has been a problem, and they can tell you better than I can, on what's happened with the League City Consortium. You're gonna hear that, Motorola, League City Consortium, the data collection, what have you. That's who controls the stats for most of the cities in this general area. there's been some challenges, is the best way I can describe it, in that. Do you guys want to touch on that? Because we have not been able to get apples to apples comparison of crime rates, and it's not just us, it's a lot of us in the city that are being affected.

Okay, as you all know, March of, March of this year, we actually transitioned from OSSI, which is an old legacy system, to a new system for Motorola. With that current change, and this is happening region-wide, everybody's having issues with certain categories and stats that they're capturing, as well as we're kind of fessing the system out because it is a brand new system. So they're still working the bugs out of it. It may take maybe two years before it actually gets to where it needs to be. But weekly, we have meetings for project managers as well as for League City, and we're consistently working on smoothing those out.

We actually just had a meeting with them about four months ago, all the agencies in the county, and they all expressed, we're not the only ones, they all expressed their concerns about the consortium, but just let me touch on that. I still feel very proud that we are one of the safest cities in Collison County. When I say that, if you have one robbery in a town of our size, and you have had no robberies for the last two years, it's gonna go up for the one. We're not having 10 robberies, 10 ag assaults. I'm very proud of, and you also have a proactive police department now, So they're generating their own crime stats because they're out there looking for people to throw in jail. You know, they got a tip the other day on someone doing something wrong. They found the guy and the guy went to jail. We got a call to Walmart the other day that someone was possibly using the phone to get under people's skirts, and my sergeant went over there just to investigate and found out that the guy was still there and had just done it 30 minutes, and he put him in jail. So those are stats going up. I'll take those stats all day long. taking a perv off the street for doing what he did. We have a great police department, guys. I mean, I say that proudly. I'm good because of my team. They're the ones that make me look good, I promise you. They're out there working every moment, slowing people down on the spy pass. I got complained yesterday because an officer stopped somebody on 518. That's what the citizens expect. They want you to slow people down on 518. We're speeding 15 miles over the speed limit. It's too fast. So anyway, I don't want to keep you too long, but thank you all for your continued support. Huh? That was a cricket. What's cricket? Oh, man. It was a joke. They asked me to do a taste thing. I didn't know. They gave me two things to eat, and I ate them. And the last thing... I thought it was a cockroach. And I said, is that a cockroach? They said, it's a cricket. I never did that. Thanks for bringing that up in an open forum. I appreciate that. I can always count on you to help me out. Thank you all so much for what you all do for us.

We really appreciate it.

Are there any questions for PD directly while they're here and available before we move on to the next department? Thank you all for what you all do.

Thank you, sir.

The general direction.

It's also like they're greeting with the kids in chemo and the elderly and the positive side. I mean, the warm, fuzzy stuff too. They're keeping peace, they're protecting, but they're also

We're headed over to Coffee with Cops, Leche Con Cafe over at Cuban Cafe. I got to be there in 10 minutes. It's what we're doing. And again, all my officers have bought into this deal, you know. They go crime fight, and we go put on a costume for the kids. We're going to go help the kids fold the flag. They're going to source them on the way down there to teach them how to fold the flag so they can raise it at the front of the school. That's what we do. That lady gives me a counter.

Yeah, but I'm going to say.

It's still Keema borderline. Maybe the kitchen's in the Keema area. But all of our kids go there. We're going to continue doing community policing. We've taken it, our social media. Councilman, I give you credit. We're working on it. We're getting views of 28 million views on one of our posts 15 million views on one of our 8 million views in the little town of Kemah. So we're doing something right. Now we're going to try to see if we can, we're working on it so we can monetize, maybe make a little extra money for some of these community projects that way we can lessen on our budget. We can use some of this money for other things. maybe the police car, things like that. The classic car. But we're trying, we're always open to hear anything. We went with the seniors. Councilman won. I asked him to give the prize back and he refused. He kept it. No, we had a good time. We did a bingo with them and we had a great time with them. So we're going to continue doing what we're doing. But again, we can't do it without your support.

So thank you all. I will just ask one thing. You got to go. Yes, I can. Well, I mean, if whoever's got to stay, if there's ever a conversation that needs to be had about anything having to do with PD or the approach or anything else, it's not just a community, regular standard of community policing. It's not a reactive, it's not a proactive. We call this a morph of kind of all those. And that's the approach that this leadership has decided to take, and that's one that we've supported. So I think that's the consensus we have. If that's changed, then we need to know. Okay, any discussion on that?

Okay, great. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Do we need a break or are we good? We're good? Okay, all right. Quickly, let's go to, Devin's here, we can go ahead and talk about communications. This is an area that I think there's a lot of potential for KEMA, between communications and tourism. We are driven by tourism. We are driven by sales tax, whether in the form of regular local tourism or whether it's visitors that are coming. Either which way, folks are coming to Kemah. Folks enjoy coming to Kemah. We've got the data to prove it. We have a lot of people that are coming to come visit and eat and drink and partake in Kemah. However, the numbers are still down when it comes to that. whether it's inflation, price increases, whatever, have kept the numbers somewhat steady. But in some facets, anywhere between 5% and 7% is where we've seen there would be some type of downfall. We've looked at different marketing tactics to try to get that back up. But as a whole, KEMA has never been big on marketing, has never been big on that approach. That's historically, I can tell you, a lot of folks know KEMA because they've been here. But our folks have been to Disney World. If you don't see commercials about Disney World, you're not going to think about going back. So I'd like to know the approach and the thought process of how we feel about marketing and communications in general. We've tried segments of keeping it key to keep the locals informed, but we're also doing different things like the videos that we've done to try to breed tourism. What are our thoughts on that? Do you like the direction that we're trying to shift to to try to bring more folks in? Obviously, that's going to come with dollars behind it or some type of campaigns behind it, but what's the general consensus?

I think over the years, I would agree with you that the general consensus of this board was not to pour a lot of money into marketing and advertising, although they have over the years, but we We've tried a lot of different things. And again, I think we're unique in that a lot of times the overall feeling up here is, well, we're already getting a fairly big bang for no bucks because the boardwalk mentions KEMA every time they advertise anything typically. It's not like we're not known out there and they're still... Their advertising comes with just that alliance regardless. And we used to have a CBB or we had a tourism. So we've tried several different things. The last time we went with a marketing agency, I think the purpose they fulfilled, it was to create some branding and graphics for KCBC. And CDR kind of already had that established into KCBC. separate those two. One is a come visit and have fun in Kima, tourism type site. And then one is more, you know, the city purpose and, you know, separate those two out and brand them differently, which we did. It just, it was a large ticket item. And at that time, I think we had to make decisions on where that where the money and the budget went then. Do you still remain active with the chamber and the this and the that and and things like that? Or do you, because there's only X amount of dollars to move around there. And then when Peg came on board, she kind of changed the focus. We rolled off of MDR and she put that money that MDR was using for, certain things to use in different places around the state in magazines. And Devon can probably speak to where she decided to put a lot of that better than I can specifically. So we've tried a lot of things over the years that I've been up here.

I guess I'll jump in on this one.

Yeah, you would have a lot of insight on this.

Marketing. I think all of that is an accurate statement from both the mayor and Cesar. one thing I'll kind of recommend to this body is understanding that, you know, when we focus on marketing dollars, the ROI of marketing isn't the same, isn't measured the same as the ROI of a capital expenditure that, you know, you're going to, you know, write off in 10, 12, 15 years or the case may be, or, you know, a new building or a new park, that stuff, you know, Marketing is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier and it's a long and slow process. It's expensive upfront. You may not get, you know, people in town historically and previous council members that I've spoken to when they see marketing dollars spent and then they see tourism is flat, they go, see, you wasted money. Like, well... it's not exactly how it works. You know, it takes two or three cycles to really get somebody to plan a trip here, you know, and get the messaging out there and repeat it and repeat it in a valuable way that stays top of mind that, you know, and then the other piece of that, you know, is where, when people see the marketing or the billboard or the social media posts or the video, um, they're going to go to social media and figure out what's chemo about, you know? And I think this town, you know, from a business standpoint, um, in that some businesses are better than others at marketing their own business. Some people, some business owners are all about it. Some business owners think the city should do all of it. There's some business owners that wish the city would just get out of the way, you know? And then there's some, there's plenty of people in the middle that would just take whatever help we can give them. But if you search social media posts on KEMA, you're going to find posts bashing the city. You're going to find posts bashing the boardwalk. That's just part of it. And so people see it and they go, oh, the marketing didn't work. Well, you've got to give it more than one marketing cycle. It's going to take more than one budget cycle. And I feel like we've struggled as a city to decide whether we're going to spend money in marketing or not. And it goes with the turnover on council. And that's just part of it. It's a challenge, it's a battle, it is what it is. My main concern is marketing is a big task and a big ask for one person. And my concern is, does staff have the bandwidth to execute the marketing plan and not only execute it, but also the bandwidth to do it long enough? This body needs to be willing to commit And probably commit for a budget or two or three to really make that make sense. Because if we're just going to do it for one year and go, ah, that didn't work, well, then it's never going to work. And we might as well just abandon it and put the dollars elsewhere to work for the taxpayers. That just ain't going to cut it.

And I think that's exactly what is happening. And when it didn't work in one cycle, it was like, oh, well, let's not do that anymore. Or that money wasn't well spent.

So what I would add to what Robin and Dustin are talking about from a marketing is, and I think the strategic plan will help with this, but it's getting clarity on what category do you want to brand Kima in? And so there's the boardwalk, but then you're also talking about KEMA as a city or a destination. And that's where the consistency of the brand and the category. And then if you're using the different mediums, so whether it's TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and every different thing that you're using, those all require different formats and they require different digital formats. pieces that you've got to decide, in my opinion, you're going to either go all in. And I think it's a three-year commitment because it takes at least a year to get momentum and recognition and then have that category where you start to have category ownership that when people search it, you're coming up and that's what they're recognizing.

Well, and one of the things is too is as a city we may not be large enough to do it on our own so i'm going to segue to my next question if that's okay if it's tied to this i understand the cvb did not work here before it did not work in the way that it was my question is is regionally what would it take for keema to participate in some type of regional destination marketing effort you need to get every city around the lake to commit and stick to their commitment

and start with Webster because they're sitting on a boatload of cash to do it and they refuse.

Is there an appetite from CUMA to play a role in that?

I won't speak for the whole board, but I would recommend it as someone who works in the tourism and marketing space. It's a way to multiply dollars. We're never going to have enough money in a single budget cycle to do everything we want to do from a marketing standpoint and get everything else done. And honestly, marketing shouldn't be the number one priority of this body when it comes to everything else to run in the city or any city, in my personal opinion, you know, but league city, you know, has visitors, but, you know, see their own little in-house version of that Webster, you know, they all have EDCs. They all have some version of a tourism and marketing budget. Um, why the cities around the lake historically struggle to come together and pull their dollars. You know, the order of magnitude that $3 million would go to is way more than what a million will go to. People think a million dollars is a lot of money. In marketing, I could throw a million dollars into the wind in 10 minutes. You give it to me, you know, and you ain't going to see that money again. It's just going to be gone. So, you know, there are towns around the lake that have the resources to do it. we just need to figure out what levers to pull to get them to collaborate and chip in and everybody stick to those commitments. And a lot of it has to do with the turnover of their leadership and council and staff and all that. You know, cause some years you'll get Seabrook on board and want to do it. And next, the next year they're like, Nope, nevermind, not a priority. And they're gone. And you'd wait a couple of cycles and then maybe Nassau Bay comes back. Maybe leak city comes back. You know, I know the chamber's trying to get a CVB kind of, they've explored what that looks like to bring back, or at least not necessarily prop up on their own, but figure out how to solve that. And I think that's gonna be the key to really driving a real value to the taxpayer is every city needs on the lake that wants to drive tourism needs to drive tourism. They need to commit to it. And if they're not willing to commit to it, then we'll never have enough in the budget to do what we need to do here. It just isn't gonna happen.

Yes, sir.

I just got to agree with you on what you're saying. I think one thing that would probably unite a message is we need the right message to put it up. Like, okay, I'm going to say this. I've got my own website. Through AI, I came up with voicing the Gulf Coast spirit. Why couldn't we say chemo, voicing the Gulf Coast spirit, and then start building from there? I'm saying it makes sense. Part of my college degree was in filmmaking. So I understand the idea of the spin, the presentation. If we just start talking about the Gulf Coast spirit and talk about like one of the things from those that were born on Galveston Island, I'm a BOI. Why can't we say in Canaan, we're part of the coast. We're coasting.

Right. And I think that's the city's moniker has been gateway to the bay. I think that's been the city's moniker kind of for a while. I just every council that changes going back to what was said is I have to gauge the appetite as to what we're going to do. And then there's that push and pull. I know Devin wants to make a comment. But before we get to Devin. Is there anybody else's pulse on how you feel about that so we can drive this direction? Because for a city like us that depends on sales tax, every additional bump is helpful, right? Whether it's through special events, whether it's through marketing campaigns, whether it's through certain things, those things are important. So I'd like to kind of get the pulse on, it sounds to me like Dustin would be in support of it, sounds to me like Mishra, you'd be in support of it. Is everybody kind of in support? Am I getting kind of, no. Darren says no. Okay, so what's the...

In concept, I'm definitely supportive and agree with Dustin 100%, but I sat on that board for several years. It was difficult because of the cycles and because of the politics all around the lake to get everybody on board and get a large enough haul of money to make an impact. It was like fighting an uphill battle constantly. so if i'm going to be physically responsible to the city now it's probably not such a great idea unless there's an entity that that you knew the money was going to go there in other words it's Okay, for example, I see the boardwalk tearing down two restaurants, reinvesting in Pima and putting in a water park of sorts and new rides. I see that as a bigger problem. blessing for us as a city overall than us trying to chase a cbb that was dysfunctional at many times not not because the people on the board were not good or capable or whatever but because the cities were so up and down and volatile about Who could make that decision to put money in it every year? The budget was so all over the road. You'd have a budget and you'd start to try to do things and then the budget would be gone in a few months or a year. And it was a very, very tough organization to run and pull off, pulling those cities, as he says, around the lake. They didn't all buy into it all the time.

If I could get some input from Councilman Rodgers and Councilwoman Thornton.

Well, I can say you've been sitting up here for five years and all that was pre-Darren because I don't remember any of those days because I got here after COVID and everything shut down. But I have looked at this body and I'm the one that recommended SafeBuild. I'm the one that recommended IT be third-party. I see the inefficiencies because I own my own business and I try to be as efficient as possible because it comes out of my pocket. And that's why we have gone out for... a VA at the KCDC and I'll tell you my reasoning behind that is I have seen this board right here change and the thought process of this board change, which is fine because the people vote and different people come up here with different ideas and I think it's great for local communities. I don't have a problem with that at all. At the same time, I've seen KCDC have that same turnover and you just don't have any consistency. And as the president of KCDC, I went out and created Keema Food and Fun and played with it for like a month on the social media platform And I think with Eculent, I ended up with 2.6 million views and a couple other ones I ended up with over a million views. So it's out there. I know it's out there. It's just a matter of who, we don't have the staff to do it. I know that. So how could we, that's when I, we started having conversations about virtual assistants because a lot of us are using them in our personal businesses because they do make you way more effective and I got several friends that wake up to a calendar every day on what they're supposed to do at 8 o'clock and what they're supposed to do at 9.30 and when they're going to eat lunch. I'm like, that's just what the virtual assistant does for them. And I think that's the consistency piece that KCDC and the city needs because names and faces change on both bodies so quickly. There's no consistency. If we could get some consistency and stay with it, and I've done the research on the state level, we can't. individually look at businesses on a personal basis. But me and Devin were talking about it yesterday. We can put them in groups and then spotlight a business. So we can do like all the breakfast places, Patron's, Tormento, Art of Coffee. And then once a day or once a week, we do a spotlight. And then we would be within the guidelines and the VA wouldn't get us in trouble because we were advertising, kind of like they do at the Crawford box. Okay. boardwalk one actually puts me into that virtual assistant virtual assistant he's got all of the all of his institutions are setting up with their i mean it's same concept just just do it where but we got to have that consistency at one point we're going to have to stay consistent for advertising to be effective because it we just keep throwing money away because we're never consistent with the same idea or same concept long enough like they've said to be effective because i used to own car dealerships i used to spend a half million dollars a year But we were consistent. I mean, it was always consistent and see results. Like they said, the first year usually took 18 months to 24 months when you change your true campaign to really see the effects of it. So, I mean, these bodies change too fast. I mean, the initiatives change. There's a road that needs to be done. So there's two million dollars that gets slung to a road and we don't want to have, you know, marketing money. So, I mean, and I think you see that around the lake, too. They don't see it. the benefits of it, and that new body doesn't see the benefits of it, so they trash it. And then you have to wait for the next cycle, and the next group says, yeah, we'll jump back on board. I'm like, I think we're never going to get there collectively as a group because there's just too many hands in the basket.

One way, and Devin, you can certainly lean into this, but if you thought of the marketing strategy and the consistency, and if getting people around the lake is the challenge, then what part of that could we own? And if you integrate AI and you had your editorial calendar, and then we had the video clips and talking about the work on KCDC with the business alliance. So if we pulled in different aspects of what we've been working on, and you can certainly speak to this, I think there's a way to utilize, whether it's Claude or Anthropic or Chat, and we might need to pay a higher subscription, but creating those files and then having your editorial calendar that's triggering those different platforms. Now, we may need to get someone in the Philippines or somewhere to be the one doing that and have a virtual assistant who's helping on that. But there is a way to make that not so cost heavy and to go the distance and decide strategically. It's a three-year commitment, and this is the theme and the category and the focus. So, I mean, I do think it's worth looking into. I don't think we need to go broke doing it. And if we're having to talk people into playing with us, and that's where the pain point

the inconsistency is then i'm like let's figure out how to do it for us okay i like to stay in my wheelhouse so when we start talking about the numbers i'm all in it but i defer to those that have the expertise in there but the mayor new councilwoman will that's all i have to say all right

I want to keep us on task as we're starting strap plan of 11.

Devin? Just really quickly, I guess just to offer a little bit of my insight and what I've been seeing so far. Just for those that aren't familiar, my background is economic development. And so economic development marketing is a little different than tourism marketing. And then I've been accused of being a new age economic developer. But my philosophy is that everything is economic development and economic development is everything. And I think you take that approach when you apply it to tourism, especially with KEMA. If you look at KCDC and HOT. HOT, you can spend on nine specific things. KCDC, you get a little broader. But KEMA's in a unique situation where you start to look at it as what is one of our primary industry sectors? It's tourism. One of the things that Cesar and I bonded over when we first met at a conference a couple years ago is, and I've been railing against this for a long time, is I've worked for some of the other cities on the lake and in the region. I don't think there's enough marrying of the tourism aspect and the economic development aspect. There's not enough that I feel is done to market Kima or the area for, what's the word I'm looking for? We do a lot of marketing to attract visitors, but we don't do a lot of tourism marketing to attract tourism amenities. So, you know, amenities. So, you know, you have this situation where, you know, Can we use hot funds to market opportunities for tourism development in Kemah? Then that's something that serves KCDC. Alternatively, is there something that KCDC can fund locally like a restaurant week or a shop local campaign or a handful of small events a year that populate a calendar that then we can market that calendar around to show that there are things going on when you come to town? I have kind of drafted a marketing plan that I've kind of bounced off a couple of people but the the idea is instead of casting this broad net that I think we've done in the past of We'll do some stuff with MDR. We'll do some stuff in USA Today. We'll do some stuff in Texas highways Print and blah blah blah. It's it's almost like you pick your campaigns and you basically lean into it So if we do do a fall campaign to start trying to boost, you know offseason numbers There's a company, AJR, that's very similar to MDR. They've reached out. They would basically handle the nuts and bolts of the marketing. We dictate the content, the theming, et cetera. But they're the ones kind of doing that on our behalf. It's a consultant. It's a marketing firm. But then there's other platforms that I've found where you can basically submit an RFP for influencers and say, hey, we're doing this fall theme on blank. We're looking for people that have this kind of tone, this kind of demographics for their following. And then we bring them in to participate in the events that we're doing the campaign for. And then we kind of build into it. So instead of doing the shotgun approach, it's basically picking two to three campaigns a year and really honing in on you know um let's say we decided to do a chemo food and wine festival um we campaign that we have all these opportunities to do that but then we also have someone come in and participate in that festival and then generate a bunch of content that gets us exposure after the festival but then provides marketing materials for us to market the next year's festival So that's just kind of the approach that I'm kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? It's kind of like my instinct when I look at all the things that we've got going on here is you can kind of marry some of the funding streams here where we can use tourism marketing to help attract new businesses for KCDC. We can use KCDC to help establish campaigns that benefit marketing, but just tying it all together.

I have never seen that in five years I've been sitting up here. I've never seen the true, you know, what are they targeting? I mean, the 21 to 45, is it family-oriented? I mean, we all make assumptions, but truly, what is the business? They shouldn't be so bad, the demographics. Because I think we have push and pull a little bit because I think you have, in my opinion, you have the board of doctors, family-oriented, and then we have the entertainment district, which is very young,

Probably don't have a family yet, for the most part.

So, I mean, we have a completely different contrast in what we're trying to attract and different times stamps as far as times of the day as well. So I'm saying, I mean, that's true of the marketing plan. I mean, who eats at fish and chips? I don't know. I mean, is it? I do. I mean, what is the true demographics of a fish and chip? Or Mona Lisa? I'm like, is it 45 and up? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't know what the demographics is. I think we need to address that issue from the city level. We're going to start anticipating and trying to help these businesses. They at least know what we're trying to get. What's your demographics? Where's your sweet spot? Because everybody has a sweet spot.

NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER.

NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER.

NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. I'LL GO BACKWARDS, I GUESS. WE'VE GOT PANCAKES WITH SANTA. WE'VE GOT LIGHTING IN THE CHRISTMAS TREE. WE HAVE THE HALLOWEEN EVENT. WE HAVE NATIONAL NIGHT OUT. WE HAVE FOURTH OF JULY AND EASTER. FRANKLY, FOURTH OF JULY, EASTER.

NEW SPEAKER Yeah, Mardi Gras parade.

NEW SPEAKER RIGHT. SO AS WE'RE DOING THAT, THOSE ARE OUR CORE EVENTS, NOT INCLUDING THE ONES THAT WE SPONSOR OR ARE HELD IN THE CITY BY OTHER ENTITIES OR WHATEVER THE CASE IS. HOW DO WE FEEL ABOUT EVENTS? more or less focus more on some less on others what's the overall direction on that because it's almost been like well we've always done this way and we kind of try to morph it and make it better whatever the case is it ties to communication events and marketing that's why i think it's a segment i think some of the events that some of the events that the city should do there's a few legacy events i think

should stay and I think there's some that should, this body should really listen to staff of whether it's worth doing or not as a city. It doesn't mean we can't sponsor it. It doesn't mean we can't help an organizer do it. I think the Easter eggs with the kids is a great event. I also know that it is an incredibly heavy lift for staff to pull off every year on top of everything else.

So when you talk staff, It's me. I'm the one that does it.

I'm one person. You know, so, you know, I think we need to figure out ways that if we're going to do them to lighten the load a little bit on staff, you know, whether it's, you know, and the Lions Club is incredibly involved. Don't get me wrong. I'm not, you know, we have a partnership with them. But, you know, I think we need to find more help. for some of these events and I don't wanna cancel events. That's not what I'm advocating. I just, I think some of them might not be worth the lift doing it as city staff. That's all I got for now. And we should probably do the 4th of July parade at a different time, but that's gonna get me absolutely eviscerated, but there you go. It's on the record.

The only thing I would like to say is that, and I do appreciate, I've been volunteering like with Easter Egg, I think from day one when you came to the city. Figure some way to really move the needle on that volunteer committee.

So we do have Deanna now. She helps as much as she can, but still when you have Me and Devin is trying to help too. When we're the only two that ever volunteer to do anything out of all the employees.

I'm talking about citizens. I'm not talking about.

We've tried it with citizens. You know, I've tried it with citizens. I've put it out there. They're all gung ho. And when it comes down to it, it's a ghost town. You have shown up. Miss Sylvie has shown up. Every now and then I can get some of the Lions Club, you know, they'll try and show up. But we need the youth to get out there and help us. Fourth of July, I'm not supposed to be in the heat, but I'm out there every year, Fourth of July, helping. I had several, Cesar sent me several people that wanted to help. I'd email them back, oh, we're going to be there. Nobody showed. And they all have, and it's good intentions. But you also got to realize, Fourth of July, they have their own family with plants. And a lot of that is not wanting to go out there and So it's just we have 40 employees. It's not like we're Texas City or Friendswood or Webster where you have in Lake City all these employees that can help.

So along those lines, you know, we've had some discussions on events here and there. If we were to consolidate or to merge some of those, which ones do you think would be the ones that we'd be eyeing to merge? Because we have some thoughts, but I'd like to get

Y'all's input on that.

You first.

Thank you.

Okay. I might go down the rabbit hole with you, but you first.

No, go ahead. Well, let's go in order. Easter is very, very popular. It is a labor of love. It is a long, long day. A lot of moving parts. I think it'd be hard because It's hard to eliminate a event where there isn't another one around it. So I would say the two that are closest to each other, and throw things at me, Ms. Jerry, if you want, you've got Halloween and National Night Out are within a short timeframe of each other. Fourth of July is Fourth of July. That's what it is. But I think it's probably that Pancake with Santa and Lighting of the Christmas Tree. I think those are the two that are probably the biggest challenge because they're within, what, days of each other? And I think what we did last year with lighting the Christmas tree was kind of neat with closing the street and the bleachers and whatnot. I think that's probably the biggest challenge is those. I think the pancakes with Santa is nice, but I think sometimes the parents think it's more for them than it is for the kids. But I wish there was a way we could maybe morph those two. I don't know if that's... situation because the kids and before they go on Christmas break and the carolers and being a weeknight, not a weekend, because you're never going to get the carolers out there on that time. So we're open to suggestions on that.

Well, if you combine the two, the pancakes with Santa and the lighting of the Christmas tree, it doesn't have to be pancakes with Santa. It could be cookie making with Santa and lighting of the Christmas tree. So this year, Devin sent me a person's phone number. I called him yesterday. They do I have snow every year for pancakes with Santa. They can actually go out there and do the snowballs. Kids love it. But there's also a company out there now that it actually looks like snow falling. So you'd have to have both. But if you combined the both and have it as like a winter wonderland, you would still have the effect of the kids would have the snow. We'd still be doing the lighting of the Christmas tree. It would all start around four or five in the evening. And it would work up to the big finale would be the lighting of the Christmas tree. We would still have the elementary schools here singing. I have to get quotes this year because we've got to have chairs out there because people just standing out there. That was a lot of complaints last year. The parents, where are we supposed to sit? Because you realize I had 86 students, 86 students. If they at least had two parents there. And then if the parents were divorced, that made four separate parents and then siblings and the grandmas and aunts. We had a big event last year. And I think if we combined the two, I think it would really turn into something. Plus, we have the market out there also.

I think you could combine those. And maybe it's not even an activity anymore. Maybe it's, here's cookies and hot chocolate under this tent for the kids. And you can go sit on Santa's lap for these hours, form a line, take a picture type thing. I think we could definitely combine those and take a little stress and relieve staff a bit.

And I think also, for me, I'm always going to think about budget-wise, it's also we can probably put more money into one and then not the other and still be a saving. So I think it allows us that opportunity to be able to actually do that. So I would appreciate looking at that. And here's the beauty of it. That's what we'll do for 2026. But if it doesn't work, we don't like it, we can change it. Go back and change something different. But I think it allows us to be able to do some different stuff.

I think it's a conversation you need to have with the Lions Club, too, though, because they are a big supporter of Pancakes with Santa. Yes. But they also do the cookies for the lightning of the Christmas tree. I know it's a big fundraiser, well, not fundraiser, but one of their big pushes for the year is volunteer because they've got so many hours they're supposed to do as an organization.

Absolutely. This would be a much longer conversation. We want to get a pulse from you guys to try to have that conversation with them next and go for the season. Plans are already being made for Pancake for Santa this year, so it may not be able to be done for this year. So we'll see what we do. Sorry about that.

Going back to the National Night Out. Yes. Okay, I'm new to this council, but what did the city do with it?

Oh, man. It was big. Arguably, you could argue it was probably one of our biggest events.

Yeah, it's one of the bigger events. It's been handled several different ways, all in one location versus the police going to different entities around the city.

Well, the other reason I'm asking is my new department manager is saying she's going to handle everything, and one thing she mentioned was National Night Out.

So we could do National Night Out in several different ways, but basically what it is is it's a way for public service and specifically police to have an evening or some time with the residents in a very neutral, calm, fun setting. This past year, we converted the city parking lot into a huge interactive location, we had a market, we had handouts and we had the vehicles out there and kids could come out and partake and we had popcorn and bubbles. It was huge. You name it. It was something where it allows people to come out and have that partnership with PD in a nice neutral setting. I will say one of the things we talked about doing was combining it with a night that we had the actual meals or what was it we called it with Kima that we talked about doing with Tony Where all the restaurants had the samples?

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Taste of Keema. So we had a taste of Keema, if you will. It was the intent to have a taste of Keema the same night. So now you're getting the restaurants to come out and partake in that environment where you can get the word out for them. So we talk about marketing, finding your demographics. Well, come out and come meet the community as well. Come to the community and see the community coming to you. So those are the type of things that are also kind of a KCDC initiative because we're getting the businesses out as well. And it was a way of doing kind of two-for-one, if you will. But that's what we did last year. That seemed to work pretty well. I was used to the old way of, all right, we're going to hop in a caravan, and we're going to go visit Kima Oaks HOA, and we're going to go visit Kima Crossing HOA, and we're going to go visit the Huntington, and we're going to go – off of Bay and whatever those locations would be. And we're going to go have that conversation. But there's also smaller ones. You know, previous city, we did garage gaps where we just said, hey, first Tuesday of the month, we're going to go meet in someone's garage and we're going to rotate that amongst places. Hey, neighbors, come invite people to your house to do those. It doesn't have to be these bigger, different things. We call those garage gaps because we brought government to the residents. So a lot of things we could do.

I'm going to get absolutely flamed for this. Ms. Sylvia may show up and slap me when she finds out I said it. That's okay. I really, really think staff needs to explore moving the 4th of July parade to a different day, to like the day before. It's not that unheard of. There are places that do it. There are going to be people that abs, I don't know. They may come egg my house, but that's fine.

Every time we have tried to move that parade, it is. Gone viral.

In opposition. Yeah, I know. I'm going to get it for saying it. There's just not very many. I don't think most of the residents understand just how grueling that day is for staff. I mean, I get paid by my day job to stand out there all day, so that just is what it is. I can't escape it, but I think asking staff to be there at the crack of dawn to then deal with the chaos of the parade and the route and the timing. And we fight about that every year to get them out of the way because it's the busiest day of the year. And then you're there all night doing all the worst traffic day of the year, arguably, you know, some New Year's Eve's are worse, but I just really think it needs to be explored. So it's hard getting, it's hard for me to want, I don't like asking staff to do that. I just really don't. And they do it and they put a smile on their face and they suffer through it with us and the businesses in the district. But I just, I think there's a more efficient way to go about it.

When I lived in Alexander, we had a little old gentleman who ran an Irish pub and he broadcast to the world that his St. Patty's Day parade the first in the country so every first weekend in march he would be the grand leprechaun so to speak and he'd be riding in the parade just enjoying it up in the morning until you know like that and we he got help from the different neighbors or the different organizations around the businesses and he got by with it he did it did a lot of broadcasting his restaurant contributed I had a radio show every Saturday. We could possibly do something like that, but in a more organized way. I understand what you're saying, because I have another obligation on the board. But the idea is it can be done.

Well, this year is one of those years that we might want to institute that. Fourth of July this year, this next year is going to be on a Sunday. So that's going to make things interesting and maybe also a lower turnout. It's not going to be the 250th. it's a sunday which is usually church time in the morning is going to conflict with that so maybe this would be the year that we attempt to do that we could try that and i think it's a fair shot to do that so it sounds to me like there's a pulse to possibly try to do that i will i will still hopefully use my i'm still new here i didn't know uh uh uh i think it really needs to be

conglomerate with Clear Lake Shores because people do put a lot of effort and I think people would put even more effort if it was a bigger thing that you actually participated in. And I think you can make it an all day affair. You know, they did the scavenger hunt from Jackie's and they had, I think a hundred participants, a lot of golf carts. So, I mean, I think the appetite is there between the Island and here. It's just a matter of somebody organizing that and making it fun for everybody on the Island. It could be, you know, kind of like East, West, like shores water wars, maybe it's the golf cart wars between the two or decorating or some sort of competitive. Because both cities are very competitive. So, I mean, I think you'd see a lot more effort put into it because there's a few of us that do a lot. I mean, it takes hours to do it. It's not like you just go out there and put a couple of balloons on it. So, I mean, and I think more people would be more interested in it if it was a bigger event and lasted a little longer than 30 minutes. And then you go home and take all the stuff off the golf cart. And I'm like, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to go all out elaborately for just... you know, half a mile. I'm not being rude, but that's kind of where we stand. That would be something for both cities to talk about.

I'm going to throw this out here, out there. I think this is something we need to get Deanne to do. Because there's no way the staff can do that. So maybe get her involved in the parade.

Let her take the lead on that.

I've been to their Christmas and their Fourth of July. It's really nice to go all the way around the lake. It takes longer. They have the hoo-ha at Christmas where you pull up. They have a golf cart parade at Christmas. You can make a deal out of it. You can make a deal out of it.

Then West side, West Kemah would actually have some sort of an event. So if they want to participate, you could do it down a certain road. We don't ever do anything in West Kemah. Uh, cause like, I look at it like the fire department, WCA 12, they do the whole district. They don't just do chemo. They do the whole district when they do the Santa deal. So, I mean, you could use that golf carts to go 12 to 15 miles on batteries and then gas and go 40 miles. So I'm like, so it's not like it's a, a push for all these golf carts to actually make that trip. So, and I think people would enjoy it if we figured out a way to tie it in, because you're talking two or 300 golf carts, probably between the two entities. So most of those people come over here. So I'm like,

participate in the chemo well when jackie was doing that golf cart run um it was extremely popular a lot of participation um oh i didn't know that that's what they had about 100 participants i know they had the accident and i started to say the accident is what is it is it fairly easy to get from chemo to clear lake shores and back oh yeah under the boat by the boat

Would it be worth doing something like one night we do chemo, one night we do Clear Lake Shores, and almost doing like a cruise on the coast, but it's just golf carts?

It definitely could be something. It's just something where people, I think, would decorate the golf carts if you had something to do with them. Because we come over here for an hour, and then we go home and take it all off.

Well, that's what the fire department had to do this year, if I'm not mistaken. They had to go out two nights for their Santa excursion because of the new addition and population we have.

Well, Jerry, Devin, it sounds like we've been challenged. So we will, as in the spirit of what we always do, we will definitely step up to the challenge. Real quick, I want to go over just a few of the departments. Devin, thank you. Jerry, you guys are always welcome to stick around.

Thank you for the efforts on the website. You've been very responsive. I'm doing my best.

Thank you. Real quick, permitting. We have streamlined our efficiency with permitting. I think we're doing better at the point that some folks have even said that other cities should do some of the things that we do. Our pre-development meetings that we have consistently are a pretty big hit. And it has turned out to people getting their permits faster. So that is something that I'm proud of. So for NOLA and the contractor that she works with, so we're happy about that. There's a lot of dust throughout the city, guys. There's a lot. You got every corner of the city. There's literally every corner of the city between the boardwalk with the water slide or park. You got the hotel going on down the street. You got Dakota on that end. You got the Marine on the other end. So every corner of the city and in between, you got the car wash and things going up. There's things that are happening. So exciting times for us.

But on permitting, that's pretty much all I have.

We talked about events, we talked about everything that we're pushing for, and we want to continue that spirit moving forward. KCDC had some great discussion. I'd like to go over that if we have time, maybe after lunch, to kind of go over the direction with them here as to what we're doing together.

But real quick, public works.

There is a lot of space. that this team maintains. Last night when we went to the KCDC board, we went to the board and even requested a possibility of adding more staff or half a staff member halfway through the year. I see the look in the guy's eyes at this time of year and they're just like, they're just trying to pull through until the heat kind of wears down a little bit. But they've taken on a very, very big project with this tree project. I'm happy to report that all but two of the trees that we were planning are planted. And as we speak, I've been talking to contractors before getting here all morning. There's 18 additional very, very large trees that are going in between yesterday, today, tomorrow, and hopefully will be done by Thursday. So the tree project will be done last night. And then tonight, obviously, with your action, we'll move forward with the rest of that project. So that project is moving swiftly. So kudos to our public works. The equipment is being used. We're getting the county to help us with some of these drainage projects, but the pump station is still a challenge. We're probably going to look into that robotic mower here soon. But I think at some point there's only certain efficiency you can have. Autonomous would be probably the next most efficient thing that we could look to add here in the future and see if we could accompany that with what we pay for mowing versus doing some of that in-house and whatever the case is. So that's going to be the study and the focus of that department for this year to see what we can do to bring forward in the next year. Uh, definitely made a lot of strides, increased efficiency and the city overall looks good. There's some spots that we've taken over from tech dot that need a little help. And we need to hold text to a certain extent. I'm going to say this. I'm going to. Like you said a 2nd ago, someone's going to throw something at me, but holding text that accountable is difficult. But exciting things happening, you've got your, your boat ramp is going to be. Letting in January so your ecotourism is in is almost in full effect between the guest or center 57 acre Park your linear Park and then coming over at the boat ramp you're going to have a total different look and feel to the city where it's not just a boardwalk right ecotourism is a real thing and I think we're going to be the epicenter of that for the entire region with all the things that we're going to have to offer so. EXCITED ABOUT THAT, EXCITED ABOUT THE WORK THAT THE TEAM IS DOING AND WHAT PUBLIC WORKS IS DOING ON THAT END. TO THAT EXTENT, SPEAKING OF PUBLIC WORKS, WE HAVE HAD A MEMBER OF OUR PUBLIC WORKS TEAM GO THROUGH SOME CODE ENFORCEMENT TRAINING. WE ARE TRYING TO EASE THE BURDEN ON THE EXPENSES THAT WE HAVE WITH CODE ENFORCEMENT BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY WE'RE ONLY BUDGETED TO HAVE THEM ONLY A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF TIME. So we're increasing our efficiency in that and getting to some code things we haven't gotten to in a while. I want to praise. There's been some residents that have brought some things to us that want things that we had noticed, things that they thought we had not noticed. And when we went on a ride along, we had fixed and things that just need to be fixed. So we're working on them and we're excited about that. You've got some places that have been negligent for a while that have been addressed and some others that are going to be addressed soon. So I know that that was Aaron's number one task that he left me when he left was code enforcement, I guess, was the number one priority at the time for the drive of the council. So we're excited to see what we're going to do moving forward. We're excited as to what that could mean for the betterment of the team. and what it is that we want to see from that perspective from Public Works. Between Hurricane Preparedness, the service that Dairy's office did with Public Works staff, PD, and Fire took part in, we're excited that direction that we're going in as far as Public Works is concerned. A lot of training is taking place, so we're being as efficient as we possibly can right now on that side of things.

Looking at the time, the only other one that I have is budget before we break.

this year and you know we'll talk about it more during budget workshop so that's not too much of a need to go through here but i want to find out if there's still the appetite to continue dropping property tax it's important for me to know if that's what we're still driving towards i get the sentiment that it is but anytime that one goes down the other one has to go up otherwise we're going to just cut the budget and that's a different story so um we've talked about um councilman thorne brought up the the the roads uh uh um Initiative, I guess that's the best way that we can place that. There are a few roads in our city that we do have to address. We are aggressively going after grant funding. I had a ride along with somebody yesterday looking at some possibilities of some grants, so we are attacking these things. We are attacking the CIP, but budget wise is the drive in the intent still and I don't want to take the Thunder wave from what Ryan's worked on for this afternoon. Is there still an intent for us to continue dropping property tax?

I just have a question and being new to this. I don't understand the drive to drop property tax when we have costs going up and we have a police force that's not paid at a competitive level. So just from an intellectual standpoint, I don't understand how we're going to make that work at some point.

So great question and very fair. We have not had our one on one yet, but property tax has historically been something where the state itself is on a mission or an approach to eliminate property tax. That is something that the state has been very adamant about. We are luckily in a better shape than other cities are because our sales tax is so much more than our property tax.

We have other cities that it's the other way around.

So for us, we're an advantage when it comes to that. The drive is because of how expensive things have become. So that's where the tear happens, right? There's staff pay, and we need this, and this hasn't been repaired in forever, and the building's falling apart, and whatever the case is, versus, hey, we're all hurting. The economy's hurting. It is what it is. So that's the tug and pull that we have. And that's why I need direction.

It's a bigger picture, though. And I think you got to look at it from a way 300 mile up umbrella approach, because that's what I look at is because we've been adding residents at a record pace for our size of our town. So there's a lot of mechanisms to what's going on. We still have the Dakotas that are going to come on board. That's going to bring another 250, probably 400 people to town, 230 rooms, let's say so. And if you figure it out, that's going to end up being $50 a person mathematically to our budget. Indirectly, probably there's more than that per person at a national level. But I mean, someone's going to go to Lake City because of H-E-B and Kroger being right down the street. We're not going to capture 100% of the sales tax that's generated at that complex. But that's coming to a halt. I'm like, the water board has run out of water and we don't have water, so my development's done. So this might be the last time we see property tax decreases because we've seen growth and that growth's coming to an end because we don't have water. And that's just something I can't control on the side of the board. We have the capacity, but it's stuck at 517. They can't push it this forward and they don't have the pump station to push the pressure to it. So I have developers calling me and then I'm just telling them until I can figure out my water issue, I can't do anything for you. So in essence, yes, we do have capacity, but we don't have it in town where it's needed. So until the Water Board figures out their problems, then we're probably gonna see a tax increase moving forward in my opinion, The growth of Meritage, Akema Crossing, it's coming to an end. You're going to see Dakota in this next year. I mean, I think they're going to start pre-leasing in October. So we'll start seeing the effects in this next budget and then the following year. But I mean, after that, we don't have anything on the drawing board to start gravitating to start reducing taxes. I mean, that's just what I foresee. It's probably going to be another board that has to deal with it. But, I mean, at the same time, everybody needs to be aware of what's coming down the road because we've been very blessed with the growth that we've had, and it's allowed us to do what we've done. But at the same time, that's stopping. Stop that train. I mean, I look at it like League City. League City keeps growing. They reduce taxes or say they're going to reduce taxes this budget cycle. But you go to Oak Ridge on the north side of Houston, they have no growth. And with what the state did when changing laws and regulations, they're talking about a 9% increase in taxes. Same size cities, pretty much, but they don't have any growth. They don't have anywhere to grow that business. So they're having to raise taxes. So you're either growing or you're going to be raising your tax base because nothing's getting cheaper.

And we're the, unless I'm mistaken, the third lowest tax rate in the county. It's a pretty good-sized county. And I agree. I see a lot of that coming more to a slowdown or an end over there. And I just, I don't think that we continue, you know.

Well, definitely tough decisions ahead. But I wanted to equate, again, having a smaller budget and so much help from sales tax for the sake of, let's call it a penny, okay? Last year we were at $19,999, so call it $0.20. The approximate cost of a penny was $80,000. So if we would have gone up or down a penny, it would have affected the bottom line of the budget by $80,000. So when you think about that in respect to a $7 million budget, the cost of a penny last year was about $80,000. We haven't calculated that this year because we're not done yet and we're not final. Hopefully by this afternoon when we have our budget workshop, we will be. But just so you kind of have a perspective of what that penny is.

My concern just from when I did the initial overview and looking at it, it just doesn't make sense to me that we're not going up on property tax. And part of that is when you look at reserve, there's not –

a lot there and so if something happens and there's a need whether it's a road repair or anything there's just not that cushion another ike you know just annihilated this town and thank goodness somebody put a restaurant in 90 days you know after that happened and kind of gave hope to the whole environment um here in the city it People are just trying to recover, and they see that, and they're like, oh, we will survive this. And we did. But another one of those, and it will happen. I don't know whose lifetime or how long, but it is. And reserves have always been important to me. And when they're not there, it's kind of scary.

Well, you've got sound finances in the fact that you have no debt. You've got, you know, that's not common.

Six months reserves. I mean, we're financially as healthy as probably, we're probably in the 95 percentile top in Texas.

I would agree with Darren.

With no debt and having the ability to pay our bills for six months with no income coming at all. Right. And you know. The time the city's sitting in the position we're sitting in.

When we were talking earlier. that their equipment needed updating and their vehicles to get council some years ago. And I want to, you were here four or five years ago when this happened to go to leasing vehicles. It was a major, you know, because all councils prior to that was you pay cash for everything. And then when you, when you took the maintenance bills on all those vehicles and just continue to try to fix them when they're live vehicles, their better life quality is already passed. It just didn't make any sense anymore. But I remember the night council decided to do that in that budget cycle, I was like, wow, we have maintenance with these vehicles. They can get replaced and cycled out and the officers will be safer. They can give more value to the entire safety of the public at this point. It was a domino effect in my opinion. That was a huge, huge stepping stone for council at that time. It had been unheard of in this town to finance anything.

Councilman Thornton, you had a comment?

It would be great to please consider using that data as far as that key, I call it key productivity indicator, that we do have six months in reserve. I don't think that that's a common knowledge. And those are opportunities for, I believe, the city to talk to the citizens and businesses about the soundness of chemo. That's all.

That's a good point. Well, I do want us to have a moment to have a break to transition to grab a bite. I see two members of KCDC have already arrived. What I'd like to do is kind of change the setting a little bit. I think the folks will be here soon, so we'll get this going and get this thing started. And if we could take a break, if that's okay.

Okay. Jeff, I need a girl. I want to kind of make it more interactive. So what I'm thinking is put a chair here and a chair there.

I think there's only going to be five, six, two.

How many people are coming is what I'm trying to get to. Yeah, I'm trying to find out how many people are coming from KCBC so I can get the chairs.

We're asking him, and he's asking himself.

I'm asking myself. I'm talking out loud. I'm sorry. Don't mind me, guys. I'm on zero sleep. Hey, how are you? Yeah, we can sit on either side. We have some folks sitting here. I'd like to have KCBC sitting here so we can have almost like a round table type thing. Could you put these two chairs, one on this side, one on that side? Yeah, I think that's a good idea.

Thank you, Mark.

there we go and then help no i what i need is some food or some time i need some food or some time do you have time yeah i got some yeah what happened huh i wish i was skiing i wish i had a good enough excuse like that oh hey where are you guys comfortable sitting what's your what's your standing or wherever you want to do things Okay, so there's a spot next to my, on my left. I could also move. I have no problem moving, so there's a spot to my right. So these two seats are open. There's a seat that, well, Jerry's sitting there, so we'll make do, wherever you guys are coming in.

Natasha is the city secretary.

She's sitting there.

Let's make sure we get everybody a chance to get their food and get situated. I think we got enough food for you guys. So if you guys want to come back, we'll have a working lunch. Right there. Can we do a chair right here on this end? Yeah. And then, yeah. Hey, there you go. You thought you were getting out of court. There you go. I want you guys to have enough space.

Hey, what I was going to say was, do you need an easel?

I have a dry erase board. What do you need?

An easel would be great.

Okay, I will grab that. Hey, Devin? Yes? Could you grab the easel from the back in the conference room? Do you want dry erase too or no?

We've got a these.

Okay, I'm saying I have a dry erase board. So if you just grab, there's an easel that has some of this paper on it, if I grab that. I have plenty of markers if you need more colors markers. Okay, I got it. I will grab it.

good actually well she's and she's not going and i mean she's talking to people and i'm not saying she wouldn't be just those no no she's she's she's active she wants to okay i would love that i would have never thought she would do it though We're having dinner with them tonight.

They must have like five feet or strip or something like that. You didn't even like help them.

This is your week of dry and they can dry.

I've got dinner and I've got to cook here.

It's the, are you going to guess one? You have to guess one.

Yeah, and then it's Beth City, the McAffelty faculty, 2024.

I don't know how much .

No, we'll make it work.

Sorry.

I'm not a good speaker, but I'm a pretty good speaker. I wouldn't have been so far away as to be able to see God.

Okay. What's the Dallas Cowboys? I have a shirt. I have a shirt.

There's a young man that actually passed away at 46. Good young man. He would have been 50 a few days ago. He was at my house on a Friday night and he passed away on Monday. One of the local residents bought it. He had it at one of the restaurants here in town and bought it and had it placed in here because it was too big for his house. But no, he would have been 50 last week. This week, right? This week.

Not for me anyway. Thank you.

Let's pick driving. He was at my house right now. He came over like 11 o'clock.

Typical Brandon. We were all sitting there and he came over 11 o'clock to have a drink with us.

He was. Oh, he's in good mood. Man hated politics. outlet like plug-in Natasha is there a plug-in over here okay

We have a resident . Excuse me, how do we do that? Almost poodle-like. OK. .

Thank you.

Does Martini get a vote?

look at me oh look at you guys appreciate it sorry I'm gonna stand for a little bit that's okay all right thank you I know we had other people coming from KCDC I hope that they can make it here soon In the meantime, I wanted to talk about a joint KCDC project that we have, obviously with the city's support, to launch a strategic plan. The idea is to make it a 2040 plan because you have to have enough of a runway to try to make these things possible, being that we try to start this in 2025. The general idea, put out an RFP, Collaborate was selected, They've already met with staff, gotten staff notes on that. Next step was to meet with these two bodies, so we want to be as efficient as possible, also because it allows for idea sharing to occur between both entities. But then after that, we will start the public side of this thing, which is having the public meetings to get their input as well. So I would like to yield this time for this joint meeting to take place, and then we can go from there. Who's taking the lead? Thank you all for your time. My name is... Hold on one second. Do we have to open up KCDC? It's a joint workshop. Do we have to open up KCDC separate? I don't think so. Yeah, Todd.

Just push the button.

It's on already. Oh.

Thank you all for your time. My name is Kaveh Massoum. I'm the architectural practice leader and principal at Collaborate Architects. Happy to be here today to give this presentation on the strategic plan. My colleagues, Dwayne Mollard and Miguel is here, project manager and project planner with Collaborate Architects. And Duane will be giving the bulk of the presentation, but I wanted to say that we're grateful to be here and it's nice to meet you all in person. Finally, I've been kept the prize of the project internally between Chris and Duane and Miguel, and I'm excited to go over this analysis with you guys today.

Next slide. So as Cesar said, we've met with your staff before and with Cesar to gather notes and gather information, as you can see there. The picture on there is Richard, who took us through some of the maintenance and public works issues. what we wanna do today, and we've also been collecting information. So what we wanna do today is just go through this and see if y'all have any additional comments or if you have additional information that we can incorporate into the presentation. So as Cesar was saying, the next steps will be, today we're meeting with y'all to go over this, to just, again, get your feedback. But then from here, at some point down the line, a few weeks, we'll be having public meetings, town hall work sessions that get input from the public so that we can incorporate that, make sure that we've got all the information input from the entire, as much of the town and the city as we can. Then eventually what that'll lead to is for us to developing a report and you'll be getting an interim draft DRAFT OR DRAFTS OF THE REPORT SO THAT YOU CAN SEE THE PROGRESS AND EVENTUALLY THERE'LL BE A FINAL DRAFT REPORT AND THEN FOR Y'ALL TO REVIEW AND INCORPORATE ANY COMMENTS AND THEN WE'LL PRODUCE THE FINAL REPORT AND SO THAT'S WHERE WE ARE THERE SO As you know, a lot of this you all already know, but what we see here, the things that really stood out to us, this boardwalk, obviously with all the entertainment that goes with that, the Lighthouse District, which was basically places for people to come and for retail and restaurants. And then information that I was not aware of is that before we started this, is that KEMA is the boating capital of Texas because of the size of the marina and the number of recreational vehicles here. All the things are listed on the right-hand side. You already know. The only one that I'm going to mention is the second one. I've brought my daughter down here several times, and it seems like that's the one thing she always loves to do when we come down here when she was younger. So I've written that down. that bullet several times. So I've gotten bumped around, gotten a few bruises on that thing. So if you can go to the next slide. So this is hard to read, but it's a conceptual idea for the city of Kima. The thing that jumps out at us is that you've got State Highway 146 that runs down the middle. that right now could be a barrier to any sort of development, but what we're seeing it as as an opportunity to develop into a linear park so that it connects all of these nodes. Rather than there being all these nodes that are occurring within this city without any sort of connection, we see that as an opportunity to connect into that linear park that's running north and south along State Highway 146. So we're talking about the and then as far south as the new proposed sound centers. Next slide. So what we're gonna go through today is a SWOT analysis. I don't know if y'all have ever heard of that before, but essentially it's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We're gonna go through what we see in each one of those, and we'd love to get y'all's feedback on those. So the first thing is the strengths. Kima has a unique character. It started out as a fishing town. It's become a place where there's a waterfront area where there's plenty of entertainment. And the other thing that we saw is that it's part of a strategic regional location. It's amongst a bunch of towns that are growing and that there's a connection Under the economics, what the strengths we see is that you have a base that a few cities have, and that is the boardwalk, Very rare. As you can see from the information on the right-hand side, there's a little over three to four million visits per year. That's to be compared to the San Antonio Riverwalk. They have 13 million. However, the Alamo has a little less than a million. So y'all have quite a number of people that come to your boardwalk every year. And then looking at actually the income per person or per household, you can see it's pretty high. It's 136 for the region, which includes Seabrook, Leeds City, Nassau Bay, and San Leon. So specifically in HEMA, it's $85,000 or a little bit more. But however, that is a little bit of a decrease than what it was previously. However, one of the things I wanted to compare it to also was the city of Houston, which is $65,000. So there is affluence here that will help support any sort of growth. Then there is the balance tax base that you have between the boardwalk, the entertainment density, and the waterfront properties. There is income that you get from those taxes. And there has been a growth in year-over-year job growth for the area as well. As far as the weaknesses are concerned, there are some vulnerabilities that we were saying that you have a great base with this entertainment component, but it's also there's tendency to have too much reliance on that so we need to diversify one of the other things that could be best could be a good thing for the for the city which is not here now it's extended stay that if there is opportunities for that especially as you get to the Convention Center here and being able to build around more of the tourism that could occur where you have conventions here. You need places for people to stay. And then also there's limited civic amenities. For instance, there's no hospital, there's no library, there's no urgent care here. So one of the things that you're relying on the other cities around the area to take care of that. Then there also are some physical constraints where there's limited developable land. There's only eight parcels right now that are actively marketed for commercial development. But also the other thing as far as the fiscal constraint, but again, it can be an opportunity is State Highway 146 as it divides the two parts of the city. And then next there is the infrastructure constraints um the water uh isn't under the control of the city and it is that capacity right now the other thing is that there is uh poor internal connectivity that you're you can see from that score that walking score there that it's 35 over 54 over 100 which means that most of the areas that are run have to be done by a car. So, which adds to the congestion of the city. Not only do you have the visitors, but you have people getting out. So again, we look for opportunities, especially along that State Highway 146 opportunity to develop a linear park that people can connect from one place to the other safely, either by a golf cart or by walking. Under the opportunities, We have to look for, again, as we talked about, as far as the economics is concerned, we have to look beyond the tourism that we've got to be able to provide. You've got to be able to provide additional opportunities other than just what is on the boardwalk. And then, again, diversify the economic sectors, the connectivity, AGAIN, LOOKING FOR WAYS OF CONNECTING THE CITY RATHER THAN IT BEING A SERIES OF NOTES BEING ABLE TO CONNECT THE DIFFERENT PARTS SO THAT YOU CAN MOVE FROM ONE TO THE OTHER. THE OTHER THING THAT WE LOOKED AT WAS THE REGIONAL COLLABORATION, THAT THE MORE THAT CONNECTIVITY COULD OCCUR, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE A GOLF PARK COMMUNITY, IS THERE A WAY TO USE GOLF PARTS TO GET TO SOME OF THE OTHER CITIES AS WELL SO THAT, AGAIN, YOU'RE NOT getting out on the road in your car, and if you can develop this series of pathways and sidewalks that are safe, getting from one to the other, then you have less use or need for your car. The other thing is the drainage and the water. Those are things that are gonna have to be developed in order to make chemo more self-sufficient. The other thing that always comes as far as safety is concerned, you've got to improve all the lighting, especially along the freeway, so that people feel safe here, and also improve wayfinding so that it's very easy to get around from one place to the next. Now, as far as the threats are concerned, obviously there is the flood vulnerability. There is a number of properties that are at risk. They increase. They are increasing. There's also, again, the transit congestion, not only from cars and people coming into the town, but also within the town as well. The other thing that what we wanna emphasize is that under housing, there is affordable housing that needs to be taking hold here in town so that you can supply affordable housing for workers so that it's not just high income housing that you provide. And then again, there's no additional water capacity. The other thing that I wanted to emphasize is that the water, the fire department, and the EMS are not under control of the city. Those, somehow or another, we need to get that back into control of the city or at least have more input so that you're not left without service. So that basically, very quickly, is our presentation on the SWOT analysis. And so what we want to do is do a series of questions with you so that we get your input. The first question is, does this SWOT reflect the chemo you know? What's missing?

I'm not starting to know. I'm just turning my mic on so I don't forget. Because I'll forget once I get started.

The purpose of this next step now is, to paraphrase what was just said, you know what KEMA is, you know what KEMA isn't. The question is, what do we want to be when we grow up? And that's the input that we need right now. What are the areas of focus? To chime in on some things that were kind of mentioned and kind of to pick up on that, some things that we've done. Obviously, there's been a big focus on tourism There's a big focus on ecotourism, the parks, quality of life, talking about the linear park and things like that. This is where we now roll our sleeves up and say, hey, we want this. Hey, we want that. This is that component of time where you get to draw on a black sheet of paper what each one of you sees or would like KEMA to be. We're searching out a plan of where we want to be in 2040. What are the things that we want? What opportunities do we want to go after? Do we want to go chase a professional team? That's kind of out the realm. But do we want to set ourselves up to be the place that has the first flying drones delivering groceries? Oh, wait. We did that already. Where do we want to go next? That's what the objective is.

So to just jump on to what Cesar just said, that last sentence, basically, that's what we're working for.

It would seem we would want water access.

Can I jump in here? Go for it.

Is it?

Well, first of all, on the A, when you look at does SWAT reflect Akema, you know, I think you know a lot of it. But one of the things is I didn't see if there was some threat. Our biggest threat is really becoming irrelevant. You know, no water, no infrastructure development in downtown Akema. Not a nice place to walk around and hang out. So now you're looking at competition. What about Webster? What about what they're doing with the 12,500 seat shed? What about all of the attractions they're making? What about Seabrook? What about Galveston? We I mean, if we don't take action to be what we want to be, we're going to be irrelevant. And really, I think we all struggle with as a town. We want to have the best quality of life for our citizens. We also want to be a destination. We need to balance that as best as possible. But if you look at the investments that are being made in these areas, we're not tracking any of that. And so, when you look at our downtown infrastructure, you know, what do we want to be? We just want to be a better version of where we're at. We'd like to be able to see people with baby characters is not dry, dodging traffic on 6th street. You know, we want to make sure we've got more event space, like the gateway park, and maybe putting a shed over 6th street. We got to just, you know, when we, a couple of years ago, when I came on, we had a. urban planning consultants that came in. One of the first things I did was got an interview with her on the phone, and she said, you know, when you look at these towns, vintage shopping areas, you know, so many towns want to be another Round Top or they want to be a Fredericksburg or whatever, but they don't have anything to anchor it because you guys have so many anchors here. You just got to make them better. You know, Downtown Lighthouse District, she goes, that's a gem. I mean, cities would kill for what you have, but it's It hasn't been invested in. It's not a great place to hang out. You know, when you look at the boat ramp and you look at the opportunity for Gateway Park, great people spaces, great event spaces, great quality of life spaces, great ways to generate revenue. We just got to invest in what we already have and make it better. One of the things we talked about last night was the Kima Digital Project. You know, the consultant said you got 11 million people coming down 146 every year. Are you talking to them? or you tell them about your restaurants, you tell them about your shopping areas, you're making this a destination. So I think fundamentally we have what we need. We just need to invest in what we already have and just make and still, and I think we can achieve that quality as a really great destination and be a place where they drive through Webster to get here and still have a great environment for our citizens. So, I mean, I think you're pretty much right on with what you did, but we've got to realize that we can't take for granted what we have. We need to invest in it.

Those are good points. One of the things that, as you're going through this, the whole area, the whole region is developing. And so, yes, there is competition between the different cities to draw people in, whether it's for entertainment or whether it's for living there. One of the things that out there to think about are there ways of doing more of a collaboration between the different entities within this region so that y'all work together so everybody benefits together and you build all of yourselves up dealing with some of this because what would be nice is if there's people in, let's say, Lee City or wherever it is, but some where they live in another town, make it easier for them to get to Ward Walk so that they don't find it coming over easily getting there and through the connections or pathways to dine there for an evening and then go home. So we're also looking for ways how can we work together in this region to make everybody better.

So, Dwight, I love the idea of a golf cart community and the linear park piece. And from the standpoint of, if we said 2040, if there were a ferry service from Seabrook to Kima that went back and forth and there was a collaboration in that way where you had some shared attraction, if we're saying we're pulling people to the area, that could be an interesting concept of working together or where there's more access in that format. You know, if we're spitballing out into the future of how to make that. I think from the standpoint of the connectivity of the golf cart, there's a lot of things that we can do in shared communities, whether it's Clear Lake Shores and HEMA are different places, but you need to have paths to get there. I think that's also an attractive aspect. And you mentioned extended stay where people are coming here and that's part of their rental opportunity. I think that makes it an opportunity. Tom talks about, we have this downtown. I travel a lot, and one of the things I enjoy when I'm in different places is when it has a high-end look that is cohesive and there's continuity. And that does require business owners investing, and it requires people who hold land and property wanting to do improvement as opposed to just letting it be.

And then I see, I mean, I agree with you, and I see a problem because I'm from Galveston, and for the longest while, we hear how perfect Corpus was, and that Galveston was just a tourist trap. And I felt resentful toward that, and I see where the old Jack Tar used to be. They have a hotel, a restaurant area, and they've got an airplane that looked like it had crashed through. I just... I wanna say, yeah, we need to have the right spin, right image, and develop that image. We don't need a plane crashing through the lighthouse, so to speak, but we need something to bring them here, like the water park that I've been hearing about. That's a positive thing. I just think that something being family-oriented, something being the taste of the coast, so to speak, and the feel of the coast, the coast spirit, I guess you call it. I think that's what we should look for. And yeah, the golf cart community, that makes a lot of sense.

Tell me again, I missed that. I wasn't quite following. You said you were from Galveston and you resented something.

I resented being called a tourist trap.

Oh, in Galveston?

Yes, the Galveston way I heard about how perfect Corpus was. how better they were. And cities like Galveston were considered tourist traps.

So what was the difference between Corpus and Galveston? Why did they say it was a tourist trap in Galveston and it wasn't in Corpus?

Well, one, the parking on the boulevard has always been a pain in the backside. Two, I remember this so distinctly because there was a Chevron station on the corner of 61st and Stewart. One guy came pushing past everybody, trying to pay for gas, and he was griping about he had to use the women's restroom to go to his business. And the woman behind the counter said, if it wasn't for you tourists coming in and sipping a beer can down the toilet, you wouldn't have to be using it. And And I'm thinking, like, that's what they think about us? They're tourists. They can come and go. I used to joke about on the causeway, get to the top of it, there's one speed sign that says 55 or 50 and then 55 or 50 going out. Going in 55, coming out 50. I mean the reverse, I'm sorry. And so now they're just like, come on in, enjoy yourself, and get the hell out of town.

So? I may be paraphrasing this wrong, but it sounded like you don't like to be used and abused and then thrown away.

Yeah, and I don't want to see chema go like that.

Yeah. So what do you think? I see what you're saying. Part of it is respect from the people who come here to visit. That's part of it. I hear what you're saying about that. So what is it that will help them respect you as well as being respected. How do you think that, how does that work?

Basically, like I have a friend who's a very drastic different opinion of mine politically. I said, okay, if you want to talk about politics issues, I said, you respect me and I'll respect you and your point of view. I said, I just want, if you want to have a good conversation, respect each other. He stopped talking to me. But the point is we need better communication with people out there. I think we need to start with a proper spin on what KEMA's all about.

there was nice places to go, there was everything, convention centers, there was local restaurants, all these types of things, and then as soon as they started over-commercializing it, putting hotels as close to the water as they could get them, all of that, like the text on there, it said, There's no restaurant spot, no Heights restaurant type spots on Washington and things like that. Around this area, that could easily be us because we have everything it takes to add that flavor. If we have a destination for everyone, area of that part of Biloxi, all of a sudden, the bigger businesses started to move from the casino area on the beach to that area because there was a ton of foot traffic, but it was day and night. It was different for those businesses, basically. And so, you know, they have the convention center, which is a sports center back in 2013 or something like that. It's a blue-down place. All of a sudden, museums started moving there that belonged to others that came with them. You know, it wasn't just events. It was for restaurants.

So, Dwight, are you wanting us to tell you what we don't want? Are you wanting us to talk about a vision 14 years from now in 240? so that we can prioritize.

I think both.

You brought up a really good point on Galveston. It's almost a tale of two cities. My daughter lives on 10th and Seawall. If you want touristy attractions, they're right there. Low end restaurants. I shouldn't say low end, but not high end stuff. But then we went to the other side of the island, went to the Avia area, which is a new development in Galveston. And I mean, they've invested. I mean, the shops are great. The retail environment is great. So they have better retailers. So if we're looking at, hey, we want to bring in better retails, better restaurants, higher end retail, make this more of a destination, then we've got to invest in the infrastructure because otherwise it looks like seawall. We have a choice, the via or seawall or somewhere in between. But it's really a question of, are we prepared to make the investment to create a better retail environment to bring in better vendors? Sorry, go ahead.

It's been a lot of talk about driving revenues and tourism and some other quality of life stuff. One thing that was in your analysis talking about services that aren't owned by the taxpayer, specifically taxpayers in the city of Missikima directly under the control of kind of city hall and this body and the staff. People in this town don't realize how fragile their fire department is. You kind of identified that not only from a no water standpoint, but from, you know, I consider fire apparatuses and fire trucks infrastructure as well. I mean, it's part of the total package and mechanism of safety and quality of life. There are a lot of residents in this town that I can guarantee you don't understand how close they are to not having a fire truck. Any given day in this town, if there's a wreck on 146 and your house catches on fire, well, you sadly need to pray that your house catches on fire first because that fire truck's not coming, because there's only one of them. You know, it's a sad place to be in, and it is what it is historically, how we got here, whatever. You know, it needs to be addressed in the future. I mean, there's only one ambulance in the town. If that ambulance is busy, Seabrook doesn't come over the bridge. League City's not coming. The next ambulance is in San Leon and Baycliff. That's the next out ambulance. And it's the busiest ambulance in Galveston County's coverage area. So it is often not available. And eventually Seabrook will show up. eventually League City will show up if it's critical enough. But you know, we're a family in this town is one 911 call away from not getting help unless it's the police department. And we I don't think we emphasize that enough. And it's not to scare people. It just the reality of what it is. It has not happened yet. But like last week, I mean, we have two fire trucks that can respond to fires. One of them is on the last third of its 20-year life run. The ladder truck is much more life left in it. But the ladder truck runs great. The other truck has engine problems. It's going in and out of the shop. We also have a lot of motor vehicle accidents because we have nothing but state roads in this town that people haul up and down. We've had trucks get hit. We don't have a blocker type truck. Like our trucks, the apparatuses that we have are it. We have to use the ladder to block traffic because it's the only thing we got. And if it gets hit, it's out. And you can look at the news and go on the internet and see how long it takes to get a fire truck repaired, how long it takes to get a fire truck replaced, much less the price has almost tripled since pre-COVID. And it's kind of under the control of the water board. Two days ago, they pissed away a $300,000 grant to get one while one of the trucks was in the shop and just said, nah, screw it. So, you know.

I think what I'm, the word that I think I'm hearing from you, correct me if I'm wrong, but by 2040, it would be good if chemo were self-sufficient.

Yes.

So that's something that we need to work toward in some of the thinking that we're doing, the planning that we're doing is self-sufficiency.

I will just caution, I mean obviously this is open forum in whatever the case is, but I will caution that that may be turned into a political football. And I'll just be outright and say that. Not that I agree or disagree with that, I'm just letting everybody know so we understand that if that's something that we're setting out as a vision, it comes with being a target, expect the arrows to start flying. And it's part of the game of what we play, right? That's why we hold the seats in the position that we do. But just keep that in mind as we're doing that. Not to say that it's wrong.

I mean, it's something that ultimately the voters would have to decide, but right now they don't have any information on it. They don't know that there's an issue. And, you know, they can decide how political they want to make it, you know, whatever. But, you know, they need to understand that they expect their tax dollars to deliver services. And there is a portion of that that we can't control. city council that is going to impact somebody's livelihood, their home, their investment, their family, you know, so.

But what you're talking about is very important and that's what y'all are responsible for is life safety. That if you're not, don't have EMS services, if you don't have fire department services, if you don't have sufficient water, those are life safety issues where people could perish because of that.

Councilman Thornton had a comment to make.

Just briefly, the Emergency Service Board, we actually have two members, if I'm correct, two members of this council on that board. It may be just a starting point, not a solution, but a starting point of educating not only the council and the public. We often have speakers come in to city council, and that would be, I think, an opportunity to do so on those types of things. And what I wanted to hope that we would add to, because... your analysis is the eco tourism part because it has to be something because we can't do what we can't do everything so picking a priority and i feel the eco tourism is something that's more accessible more close to what we can control And that's all I wanted to say.

Can you tell me what your definition of ecotourism is? I feel like there's broad definitions across different jurisdictions, but what is it for you?

My definition of ecotourism is not with the city, so I'll defer to the city administrator on what his vision, having come from a Parks and Recreation background, because it's different from my personal definition, but it definitely was something that was brought up even earlier in our day of this retreat.

Do you want my definition or hers?

Yes. Do you want mine?

Well, I refer to the assets that we have. So ecotourism can mean a lot of different things, but we have a 57 acre nature facility that is being developed. We have the Gesser Center that is available right down the street that Galveston Bay Foundation calls its home right here in Kima. Eventually the walkability of the linear park leading to the boat ramp. I think I'll call that a T. If you look at that on a map, that T would be our ecotourism sector. but also connectivity to other parcels in different areas. Lake City has some pockets. There's obviously a lot of fishing and boating available here. But as you connect that, even going down to Armand Bayou, we can serve as that focal point of that nature ecotourism connectivity point, if you will, for the entire region. Not to take away from the things that are in Galveston or in Hitchcock or in different places, and even sectors like of Lamarck with their park space and stuff that they have. But I think together we can market that a little bit better. But going back to what you said, like a regional approach towards doing that, towards ecoterrorism could be fine. It's funny because before you got here, we kind of had a conversation about that, about a destination marketing organization or some visitors bureau of some sort. That's my definition based on the assets that we own. I mean, we can go into much greater depth if we go into snorkeling and different things like that and scuba diving and things of that nature.

Maintaining access to the water for the public. Absolutely.

I like how you went big. Did we get a protein in here? Letting my architectural mind go crazy right now. I'm thinking, are you trying to capture boats? that are obviously coming through from Bear Lake all the way out to the Bay. You could do a, I'm just making this up now, a drive-in for sailboats.

Yeah. No, and that's kind of the... No, it's not crazy. I think that's what makes us unique, right? I mean, I think we all grew up on the idea of drive-ins, but how neat would it be to have an event where we did drive-ins with boats? And again, this is the type of thing that we want to try to venture off and be different and partake in. So I appreciate you bringing that up. For the sake of the fact that we've got about 75 minutes or so left, a little bit less than that, I do want to focus on these. Is this the last slide? Yes, it is. I want to focus on these four questions because if we could break this down into kind of 15-minute clusters, if you will. What are we missing in this SWOT? What have we not mentioned? I'll mention a couple of things that we didn't say, because a lot of it is the KCDC component.

What was mentioned but wasn't completed, in my opinion, and what I have set up here to try to accomplish is zero taxes to our residents. And you just mentioned we have eight parcels of land left. And to create what I need to be done, I've got to generate $94 million in sales on those eight parcels of land. So I've got to reduplicate the boardwalk in Walmart again, to accomplish that goal. So we're down to very limited properties and that to get to a zero property tax that you're talking about. And I'm only figuring one and a half percent, a half percent going to KCDC, but in my mind, it dissolves KCDC at that point. And that becomes road and maintenance and takes care of Mr. Thorne's issue with the road and maintenance part of it. So that's kind of my ultimate goal. It was my goal for 2032, 2031, originally 2032 now, but not having water, I mean, it's just, we're not gonna ever get there that much. It's just one of those things we can't do.

I do wanna just comment on that specific thing because obviously the component of what KCDC does, and like I said last night, it was really refreshing to have that meeting last night with everybody and to not only sit down and go over the CIP priorities, whether the ones that were selected or we're gonna try to figure out a way to do, and we have four members here. but also to add a responsibility to each one of those by person, because what we called it last night was identifying a champion for each one of them, which is important to me because I think it gives ownership to that. And so I wanted to comment that. I also wanted to comment on the fact that maybe there's something different. Right. What is it we're not doing? So some of the things that that. we've encountered so far. Besides the ones that the Gessner Center just put in, we don't have a single EV station in the city except for those that they're in the process of putting in. And I know that in the Houston area, the South Texas area, that EVs are kind of taboo and so forth, but there isn't that. We signed... I thought you said Walmart. Walmart's trying to implement it. We're working on those in the permitting process to see if...

there's nothing online showing that Galveston Bay has theirs. I don't know if they're open for the public. I don't think they're active at all because neither one of them were aware that they were there.

I will follow up with their leadership, but I think that they're there, but I don't think that they're active.

Yeah, they're there. It's publicized because we do have people with EVs in town that are asking. I did tell them about Galveston Bay.

You said there's two?

There's two at the Kipfer.

Two at the Kipfer. Okay, great. Well, thank you.

Well, obviously, inside the gate.

Inside the gate, so they're not public, but yes. Along those lines, right, we've talked about some things that we were able to do. We went out and got SoSmart certified. The idea with that is to start incorporating some type of solar energy, to try to incorporate that into our own fleet of EVs maybe so we can save money on gas and or power in the future with solar, but also providing solar co-ops to our residents. There's more than one way to provide our residents some type of help. So if we're able to do that through a co-op program, that's what that program is for. Scenic City, I mean, we've exploited that probably to the fullest extent with all these trees that we've got donated, several hundred thousand dollars worth of trees that have been planted or in the process of being planted as we speak. are tourism friendly. Being that we were a tourist location, not having had that certification was a challenge that we were given by this council shortly after my arrival. And hopefully we've got that, but there's more to come. I mean, we're going after music friendly, digital media friendly, film friendly, and something that near and dear to our hearts we came up with the idea of going to be sensory friendly. And we took that to the governor's office, and it's a pilot program that we're working on. And I went out there and asked a question. I said, why are we involved in all these other friendlies, but there's nothing for autism or PTSD or anything like that? And so they said, that's a great idea. I was like, well, what have you done about that? I was like, well, we're doing mandatory training for our police officers, and we've worked with a boardwalk on some quiet days or whatever. situation where they open up a little bit earlier and don't have the music, you don't have all the lights and stuff on, and some of the restaurants are doing some of this neat stuff, and like, you know what, that sounds amazing. Great job. Now you're going to be in charge of this task force. So can't do what you wish for, but we have been, and you guys have supported that, and now we're at the next phase. There's bills going into this next session. We're trying to make it mandatory for the state to have mandatory autism or sensory training for the police, for all the police officers, you're being part of change that is gonna be replicated throughout the entire state and possibly the nation. Little Pima is doing that. And so as we do that, that's what I'm asking. What are we missing? We mentioned water, we mentioned, you know, conservation. Maybe we need to have a more robust recycling program. I've had a couple folks ask about recycling. We've talked about emergency management. What can we do that's different? I've heard about our kids don't have anywhere to go. Again, we have parks, but what other things can we do that are going to bring that together? So what is missing? You guys have visited different towns, different cities. One that we haven't touched on very much that we've kind of started doing, but haven't owned completely is the arts. You know, we've got a mural park. Maybe it's exposing the arts more. Maybe it's, we're going to become a full, you know, a tree city USA and we're going to have trees everywhere you go. And maybe what are we going to be that's going to be that next thing? Or what are we missing and what would we like?

That sort of thing, we kind of mentioned it a little bit on that one slide, but that would be a great thing on that linear park to have some of that artwork, at least some of it displayed so that people, as they pass by, can see it. And then it's just invigorates the city itself.

We actually have some of those concepts. I believe one of the KCDC members brought a presentation where along 146. right that was part of it and believe it or not and the mayor can correct me if i'm incorrect in this there is a architectural concept drawing for connecting the uh waterways that that ferry that that bridge it's somewhere But it's just that it's there, so they don't have to start. If it's continued, they don't have to start from ground zero if they can find anything.

That might have come down to funding. I don't know where that ended up.

But I remember seeing them.

So those...

So, um, no, we have no, um, personal to, and Adrian Garcia's office has agreed to fund the dusting off of that, of that project. And actually the tourism committee that we have through Bay. Um, that, that, that we chair, um, is, is, is kind of taking that project on as its lead. So. Another thing that we do.

As you know, there's funding available for art projects in cities. The state of Texas is trying to promote that. So there is a source of income through that or a source of funding. I think a source of funding through that.

I think as we're looking forward, there's an opportunity to look at zoning if we're talking about continuity and the image we want. And I also think there's an opportunity to look at shared services in more aggressive ways. And we've talked about that at different times.

You were talking maybe about people saying there's no place for our kids to go. ourselves. whether they agree or not, I think that's something that would make people, you know, at least listen to what you're doing there. It's just another source of coming.

Sure. And I think that we'll touch on that here in a little bit towards the end of this presentation.

Tell me what your definition of third space is, just so that we all understand.

because that's something you have to think about. Here, nowadays, But nobody gets in, nobody is sitting on their couch at 6.30 and is like, hey, I'm forward.

What I hear you saying, the image I got in my head when you were talking is the St. Mark's Plaza in Venice where everybody congregates there. And the question is, is there a space like that that's large enough to hold a number of people? But there's also things like restaurants and coffee shops that feed off of those where people come to see and be seen type of situations. Is that what you were talking about specifically?

Very, very similar. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. It takes balance because that's going to come into, you know, we're not just talking about space. We're talking about synergy businesses. Obviously, we have a large amount of business coming in. We're running out of space. And so, you know, I think that has to be balanced with what are we going to put into

it's not so much a tourism issue that's more of a you know an internal issue that we can plant that seed and it's there also well it may help also diversify the congregating spaces that you have now that if there's one specifically more towards that's more family oriented versus the the bars and the shops and all at the opportunities to develop other places for people to congregate. Maybe it's more than one, but having at least one where families can get together, but fireworks or whatever the case may be.

I think someone that's doing a really good job of just kind of like a micro level of a green space right now is the big community green area that's at Babe Ruth Mall with all the restaurants. My wife and I have two young children and that is the focal point. We go there and we let what we do there dictate the rest of our stay there. So, you know, we might go there and spend the entire time throwing a ball around with other kids and then leave, or we might end up going to Dave and Buster's or grabbing a bite to eat or walking around the rest of the mall. But something that I don't know, and I know we're going to get to this later, but something that I don't know has it been explained clearly with the sports center project i think the sports center project would fill the need of a green space but i think the sports center project also has the ability to attract development that will generate a third space alongside it if that makes sense

Well, also to your point, it's also gonna be able to support itself by drawing people in and then you need those spaces for people, the housing, the temporary housing, the short-term housing, so that they can have tutoring or whatever it is that they're doing and then leave and the next group comes in. So that's a good point.

So there's also the fact, kind of closing in on A, Cuba is a transient town, the fact that it's between the plants, between the ports, between that transient space. We know what's coming to the Galveston area in general between all the developments going on at NASA and the shipbuilding and the new plants being built and the expansions and the desalination. You're gonna change, industry is gonna change the general region down here. You're gonna have more of that transient group of folks down here. Don't get me started on what's happening on Port of Galveston with adding more cruise ships and so forth. You're gonna become more of a tourist trap or you're gonna become more of a destination and so on and so forth with tourism. It's gonna expand even more, which is why all these homes are being built in League City and Texas City and here and everything else and everything in between. What Kima offers that's different is someone may not want to stay in an obscure hotel off of 146 or I-45 that doesn't have anything around it. People would want to stay somewhere like Kima, which is between, and offers you so much more to do while you're here. That offers a natural third place when you are traveling, which adds to that weekday travel and weekday business that we want to capitalize on that we're currently not doing enough of. So I think when we say that's what's missing, that's one thing that I was hoping that somebody else was going to maybe mention, but I went ahead and just mentioned it because I feel like that's something that's missing. We have the other things. Touching a little bit on the community center and event center, A lot of these places are built in obscure places that don't have any attractions or restaurants or anything around them. I can't tell you some of the places that I've been to where you drive past it three times, you don't even know that you're there. And it's the middle of a warehouse, and I'm standing up, sitting in the corner, and it's just uncomfortable, and I'm there for four hours eating bags of chips and hot sodas. So it really ends up being part of that. We are different in the fact that we have the destination already and the attraction method comes from there. So the things that can happen from that is different, but I want to go back to talk about the community center component of it. The nucleus of this building or this attraction, whatever we end up building, if we end up doing it or not, is that community center because that's what's going to be used 70% of the time. Right, we've got a large home school population in the area that don't have anywhere to go. We have no after school programming, nothing against our school system, nothing against it. There is absolutely almost zero after school programming unless you're going to the private sector and going to the karate classes or the mathnasiums or the Kumans or anything else. There's just no after school programming and almost no summer camp programming. Our kids deserve that. And I think it's a voice that has been silenced or muzzled in this entire thing because we haven't been able to ask that question. And again, they don't get to vote. So that's a little bit different. But I'll get off that soapbox for a second. Is there anything else before we move on to B that you feel that the SWAT and was presented today in discussion that we've had that we have not touched on? Dan, I know you turned your mic on.

Well, I think one thing, and this is going to be beyond my years, but I think something that this board needs to look at is We have, what, 4 million or what, 6 million people cruising out of Galveston now on an annual basis. I know in my bouncing around Kemal on Friday afternoons or evenings, I'm amazed at how many people I meet that are traveling to Galveston. And I don't know that we even market to that because once you cruise once in Galveston, do the strand, you've done the strand. So if you're coming back the next time, if we figure out how to interconnect because we're only 25, 30 minutes away, Catching that Friday night traffic of that 4 million or 6 million people there, you don't have to catch a whole lot of it, but I mean, there's traffic to be had there. It's coming right down either 146 or 45 and looking at Placer AI, I mean, Dustin had done some analysis. We were really and truly shocked at the number of people coming from Dallas-Fort Worth. to this market, but I think a lot of them are coming to go to the cruise lines. I mean, that's what's bringing them down here is the cruise lines, but I mean, they're bringing them south. And the other thing I would say from an economic development, because this is, you know, I've learned in the last three years, Texas talks about the triangle from Dallas to San Antonio to Houston, the big triangle of Texas. One thing I've pitched, because one thing you'll run in the economics here is if you do a five mile circle around chemo, You know, two thirds of it's water. So we don't have the population, but we have the traffic counts. So you gotta go sell the story. So the story that I've been selling and having some traction with is the West Adelaide City, Mount Bellevue and Kima. If you look at it, it's a triangle and you capture 25 mile drive, you capture a market. They can't go east of us because it's water. So they have to come through Kima. So, I mean, it's gaining traction because they want to be about 25 miles apart. everybody says oh 45 is right down the road well anybody that lives here doesn't go to 45 unless you have to i mean because i can do it at 15 12 to 15 minutes right now at five o'clock it takes me 30 minutes to go from here to 45. i mean you might as well just shoot me i don't want to do that so um So, yeah, I mean, I think that's things that, you know, future councils and KCDC board members really need to look at because there is a triangle there. And I think that's where you can gain some traction because there's a huge population. People are still coming. I mean, Santa Fe is talking about 6,000 more homes talking to the mayor the other day. I'm like, Galveston County is blowing up. So, I mean, that's the things we got to capitalize on. I think a lot of our businesses don't look at our local markets. I think they... Forget about the Marbella's. It's not chemo. It's right across the street from the golf cart. A lot of people have golf carts coming to chemo off Marbella because I partake with them. And I think they miss that concept of focusing on its local ways. I think that's what we got to do for our local businesses is really because we got some extremely cool restaurants. Probably off the charts when you look at the number of restaurants. And a lot of that has transpired because the chains haven't come here other than the boardwalk. because they can't do the five-mile circle and they can't check the box. And if it doesn't make it, they lose their job. We've learned that. We've had enough conversations. So, I mean, that's why we've ended up with all these very unique restaurants that are very good. It's made us very unique. And I agree the dining experience ought to be one of the top things that we're pushing out to the market because we do have Italian food, Mexican food. We got Eculent, which is almost a five-star Michelin sitting right here that nobody even knows here. We've got T-Bone Tom's. I mean, you just got to go down the list. Tookies with hamburgers. I mean, just keep going down the list of very unique places that actually hit top 10 in the state of Texas. Bar and coffee. I mean, all the things, but I mean, our flower shops in the top 10 in the state of Texas. I mean, we just have a lot of unique things that I think we've got to do a better job of marketing. And we're working at it, but I mean, future council's got to continue to work on it because it's not just to put a band-aid on and fix it. It's going to be something that's going to have to be continually just to be part of this plan to 2040. this is where we want to go this is where we're rolling the ball and we're going to keep the ball going because these spaces up here change i've seen it too many times i mean i'm five years and i'm senior up here on council so i mean faces change do we have any billboards for people that are coming in saying hey come to chemo this is what we have i think we're working on the blue boards with text dot i mean we're working on some things Now that construction's over, we can gain some traction, even like the welcome signs.

Have we found out when this sign's going to be raised out here?

I talked to him about that when it came for a hurricane kickoff, and he was going to go look into it. He vaguely did remember that they were supposed to do that, so we probably need to follow up with him.

Yeah, because like Cesar said, this is a drive-through city, so we need them to stop.

Does that mean we have some access to that sign that we're probably not utilizing, so KCDC maybe can utilize it? We have so many.

And I don't think in recent time it's been used at all.

Well, we used to use it better, but it has to be a city event. We can't promote a restaurant or a band or something like that. It has to be a city event. In the past, to speak to what Darren was saying, I think not being able to check that box has worked to our advantage and given us unique, great, wonderful things that are different enough that people will make that a destination restaurant or outing rather than going to the chains. Some years ago, a lot of The cruise lines went out here out of, I don't know if it was LaPorte, Baytown, or what. Maybe Dustin knows. But they would have buses bring those people over here because they'd come in the night before. So I know there was an attempt at capturing them, but they don't go out of here anymore. So it's a little bit different way to capture them now. But I think that he's completely right. They drive that direction from here to Gogamba. They come this way. We just need to encourage them to come back this way, you know, to do what we have to do over here, whether it's boating or whatever.

I mean, there's avenues where we might be able to tap into that. Parking's a disaster down there. I mean, we go down there for Mardi Gras, and it's holy smokes.

Well, you go in your golf cart, so you don't have to park.

I thought we were going to go. We went down there for Mardi Gras to do on the floor.

Oh, that's crazy.

Market bus or something. That signage that you're talking about, is that... TechSign has like on the 45, the blue signs.

Blue signs program.

Big blue signs where you have to advertise. It shows you the gas and the lodging and the restaurants.

Well, okay.

There are some businesses working on bringing billboards back around. It used to be that my employer used to have 40 billboards for different properties around the state and up and down 45 that

I'm sorry, bring him back as an ownership or as in leasing?

Sure.

Well, you don't want to be considered something that's, billboards aren't all of that aesthetic In Houston, that's one of the things we're trying to get rid of as much as possible is some of the billboards. But my question is, is there a way of getting a sign to address your point about advertising that tells what's going on so it's constantly changing that you can change from that?

working on digital marketing so that's i mean that's great and even have big enough images and things like that and this sign up right in front of city hall it has not been raised since the road but they're supposed to raise that sign and you have some access to that sign okay and we've talked about the top of the community center if you drive north on 146 the third floor or fourth floor of the community center is bird's eye view for 10 seconds I mean, because I do it every morning. So, I mean, and we're trying to talk about maybe just trying to figure out some way of cleaning what's our space. But you're trying to make it something where we start advertising to the people that, hey, Kima's right here. Because if you just fly over every day, you're not really going through Kima. I mean, you're just hitting a flyover and you're flying back over and back. You're not ever hitting our base. You've got two freeways now.

They also help define where you are, too. You go down Highway 3 and going from one city to the other, you don't know

Well, it's not even finished. That's what I'm saying.

When we need to put the entry sign, they're still doing the road. Yeah. So, I mean, we've been waiting. It's been talked about. I've actually got the land from the landowner permission. I've already got all that in place, but I don't want to put something up in Texas. Well, if you come up with a design, I would love to have that conversation. It's like Port Arthur. They've got the new signs coming into Port Arthur, Texas, which grabs your attention. I'm like something unique for chemo where we can have it all entry points. It doesn't have to be huge and elaborate, but something to get your attention.

Yeah, really cool graphics, that sort of thing, going from either way, from the north or the south, that you see those and it automatically makes you realize where you are in the city.

Well, if they come out with some sort of design or somebody comes out with a design, I would love to see people's ideas on what that looks like on the entry. I don't think it needs to be huge, because Port Augustine is pretty

Yeah, well, I like the idea of changing. So from day to day, y'all can make it change.

That's in the lower traffic. And I think that's the people that actually gravitate to our town. People are on top. They're just going to work. Well, but that's why I say we're just grabbing the key. Because you forget about it. I mean, obviously, it's just OK. You said on this traffic, I mean, at 5 o'clock, you're going to sit on top of that bridge for 30 minutes. Yeah, people hate it. It's getting worse because they're going down to one money. And then we can show now they're getting, they're getting the structure we had for 5 years.

When that gets finished, it'll be a lot better, but it'll take a while.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So last night recalls wake up. I'm like, I don't want to tell you just get ready.

actual project, I created an outline for us incorporating digital signage along the lower part of a part of 146. One of the things that's interesting, we look at TxDOT, you got 11 million people going over 146 every year. And when we first talked to those consultants, they're like, Why aren't you talking to these guys? And so that's what we're planning on doing. So we just got that started. We got a good outline. And more importantly, we were through the Kima Business Alliance. We're looking at partnering with all of our businesses in KBA for them to cost share with us and doing YouTube style six, seven second bumper ads that we can do on this. And the idea being that you pay for part of it and you pay for subscription. but maybe you have to do it through a team of business lines which allows us to control it but our goal is in the first year to have at least 30 of these done and up on these signs to tell people who we are what we do and and come see us and spend money here but i think Well, the first one we propose is to replace, obviously, the one on 2094 and 146, the one right outside the community center. It's very dull and it's almost dead, so that needs to go first. Second would be on the southeast corner of 6th Street and 146, where that little cops trees is right now that's city-owned property now you know when you think about four million people that are coming to chemo every year most of them are making a turn on the sixth street so we have an opportunity to talk to them there as well one of the things i mentioned last night was the issue that when you have a vintage shopping area it's great because you don't it's an alternative to all of the chains right but also the the drawback is that some of these places are hidden Kind of creamery is the best ice cream within 50 miles here, but unless, you know, it's here, you don't know what's here. So. And but when you're coming in we need when you're coming in to came when you tell you cool cow Mona Lisa fish and chips Whatever it is, you know the steak house people forget about even people who live here forget about this, right? So the idea is let people know what's going on not just about the business guys But we have came up general tourism messaging. We've got emergency messaging anything We also we want to do another issue talked about in terms of destination having the monitor we're kind of trying to incorporate the entry and exit monuments into the Kima Digital Project to make it sort of contiguous, you know, and symbiotic throughout your path through Kima. But the idea is we want to let them know what's going on, but you also want to let them know you're at the destination. So one of the options we had in the and Gateway Park, which is now the name of the linear park, is when you look at our pylons that hold up the freeway, they're perfectly segmented just like our lighthouses. So we could do those in blue and white. We can do a lot of things with what's already here to let people know you're here. But there's lots of opportunities to do exactly what he's talking about. But first and foremost is, you know, when you go talk to our business owners that are over there in Lighthouse District, you get the big eye. Because it's everything they got. And they're all in on this. And they're just wondering, how are we helping them? You know, and you realize we just need to get their profile raised and let them know, you know, that we're here supporting you guys. So this process should go a long way to getting started there.

So. I'm I'm playing timekeeper there, but I really comment you want to make time. I'm sorry for cutting you off, but but I I do want to go to be. Which were kind of segue to that already beyond the boardwalk, but I do want to stop at the boardwalk a second and I don't think there's something we didn't do a good enough job of boasting testing. You're here. We can go ahead and talk about the boardwalk a second, but we've got the second best rated boardwalk. In the in the entire country. It was in the top 10. Final voting came out. We finished at number two, correct? Somewhere in New Jersey. What was it, Wildwood? Just south of Wildwood. Yeah, they're all together. I think we don't do enough to boast that. I think we talked about what makes us special. I think it'd be hard to deny that the boardwalk is one of those things. and even the excitement of what could be with different segments and things that we could do with the boardwalk, making that downtown area more walkable. I think that there's a lot of synergy that's available to that, but we talked about being a foodie town. We've talked about ecotourism. And you sprinkle that with a little industry. You know, there's a little industry happening here in Kemah. That Anders Road, there's a little bit of industry going on there and kind of down 518 and certain corridors. So it's happening in little tidbits. We are becoming our own little metropolis of our own, if you will, with some of the things that are sprinkled in. I'll take away from also we talked about some of the actual development. You talk about workforce housing. Dakota Apartments is gonna hopefully fill some of that need. But you talk about the marina. There's 300 valet boat slips coming in. That's 300 potential folks of clientele that are gonna be coming in here and being within the city limits that we wanna try to capitalize and market with them. So we've talked to them about some co-marketing so that when they come, If they're going to go on the boat, are they going to queue or anything? Are they going to, where are you going to go afterwards? Where are you going to go to before? Are you going to stop by Walmart because you want to get some, you know, slippers or some sunscreen? So those are things that we want to try to focus on a little bit more. So I think those are some of the opportunities that we have coming up in the very near future. So I'm mentioning B with C here. But what else are we missing? What else makes KEMA special? We mentioned the cool cows and the trattoria and the fish and chips. I think that's the uniqueness. I think the art is something that we're missing that we could probably capitalize more. When someone asks me, tell me what Kima is, and I kind of summarize it like my elevator pitch is saying, it's Austin meets Key West with some golf carts. And everybody goes, okay, I get that. Is that our identity? Is that what we're going to be? And that's the question that I want to kind of help get answered here amongst everybody here, because we're going to have such an eclectic, I mean, we have, how many residents live at the Huntington?

144 apartments.

144 apartments. So if I had to guess, that's maybe 180 residents to 200? Yeah. you've got 10% of the community lives right there in that building, or I mean like within that actual complex. We've got such opportunity where we've got a mix of a, I don't want to call it senior housing, but it could be, right, for the most part. You told me that a lot of folks that live there, but you've got new families moving into the Dakota apartments, and you've got established families in the Kemah Oaks, and you have semi-pre-retirement families sometimes moving into the Kemah Crossing. You've got such a mix of folks here, but you have golf carts, and you've got water, and you've got great restaurants, and you've got a boardwalk, and you've got the Gessner Center. I mean, you... I don't think we prioritize enough of how unique we are, how awesome we are, and what makes us special. But am I missing something? Because I'm one of the newest people here in the room. So what have we missed? Is there anything else? Because if that's it, that's a great list to have.

I mean, I personally would love to see more art here. I think the mural park is beautiful. I've tried several times to get the trash art in here. And rather than renting theirs for a time, I would like to see our own constructed that stay like the soccer ball, whatever, you know, and paint the poles. And I was in Mexico about a year ago and went on a bike ride on something that looked very similar to the linear park. It was longer and larger than what we have here. But even scaling it back, it could be very nice. I would love the walkability or rideability to go in a big circle around Clear Lake Shores and under the bridge and over here and down park and look at stuff while I'm doing it or stop. Like the bike ride I was on, you could stop and work out on some equipment. You could stop at another area where you could let your kids run around and play. And they played on little bitty equipment type thing. I don't know that we have that much room, but even if it's just beautiful zero landscaping that you're walking by, it's still nice, you know, nicer than nothing.

Sure. Cesar, I think you brought up a lot of different assets that Kima has, and yet there's not a feeling of connection. in the sense that you've got Kima Crossing, you've got Kima Oaks, you've got the Lighthouse District, you've got the Boardwalk, and if you're, you know, I've lived here almost three years, there's not a natural connectivity. So there's a lot of stuff, and yet it feels disjointed.

The plan was, though, for the parks to all be connected eventually. That was the overall plan, which there would be a way provided that you could walk. Well, I think that's the opportunity. It'd be nice if there were wayfinding signs and, you know, things painted to make it look more cohesive, as you were talking about earlier. Sometimes when I go out of town, I gauge a place by, would I want to live here? It's usually my first thing. I spend a weekend there or whatever. I'm like, could I live here? Would I want to live here? Do I like it enough to live here? And Those are few and far between for me because I do love it here so much. Although we've grown by the seat of our pants and there's no zoning and we can't put that toothpaste back in the tube now probably and that kind of thing, it's still a very unique, wonderful place that I like. I don't maybe like it in August, you know, it's hot. But some of those other places I name that I do like, they have a similar thing. They have a rainy month or this or that. I mean, everybody's got something, you know.

Do y'all have, are there a lot of artists that live in the area? Well, yeah, you said more like it. Well, yes.

I would say from Galveston to Houston, there's any amount of them in any platform or media that you could dream up.

So that is a resource that you can pull upon. I'm just saying, okay, you could even almost maybe have an artist colony or something like that where people come down here, maybe just stay for a few days, and maybe there's a zen component of it or there's a painting component of it or whatever. So it could be a place where you can come down and just relax and get in touch with different parts

I thought you two brought up a really good point. I mean, to me, you know, having been immersed in that linear gateway park planning, you know, since it goes all the way from Bell, you know, all the way to the water, there's a unique opportunity, and we've been really actively working on this, to create that visual connection, right, from end to end, right, that you know you're in chemo. it's tight you know even if you like painting the pilings as part of that you know you're somewhere right so that to me gives a great opportunity to provide that visual connection but the mixed use path also gives us opportunity to provide a physical connection now ronnie had brought that up a couple years ago that there was a tech stop plan to widen the sidewalks on 2094 and 518 and possibly 96 that would allow you to come out of your neighborhood get on your golf cart and come down and And then connect to the mix. She's path at that point. You're wherever you want to go. They already do it like shorts because come down 3rd street and they're in there and I'm like, man, this would be great if all neighbors had access and now you've got your golf cart neighborhood. So, I think we have an opportunity to kill a couple of birds with that 1 stone, like, about 3 birds with that 1 stone. Make that four, excuse me. Because we do, you know, we did talk about a while back about, you know, pickleball courts or workout areas. And most of that linear park is too dangerous to do that. But 6th Street on the west side, they're just south of where we want to do the big exhibit space or is perfect for the, you know, outdoor workout facilities and things like that. So we have lots of opportunities to do exactly what you're talking about. And I think visually and physically, we're going to be able to provide that connection. And that kind of leads me into C&D because I think those are the two the same. When you say what opportunity should be prioritized and what do you want to see KEMA? When I see talk about KEMA, you know, I want people at 2040 to go, man, it's not Christmas unless you've been to KEMA, went to the Christmas festival. You know, it's not, you didn't have crawfish unless you went to the KEMA. down there in Gateway Park. It's crazy. You know, you want to be known for something where we're a destination where you have to go once or twice a year. But in order for us to do that, we've got to make those infrastructure investments. We've got to finish Gateway Park. We've got to finish the boat ramp. We've got to create that outdoor all-weather space. We've got to create additional parking in downtown. We've got to get rid of the direct parking. We've got to create walking spaces. We should put a shed over 6th Street, create the people spaces we want. We're

create that vibrancy we need but without the infrastructure investments we're be here five years talking the same thing well tom that's the challenge i mean and you're speaking to it it's what do we want to prioritize that we're willing to complete right right and not and that's what you guys have talked it's like with the change of leadership things so there's all these great ideas

Well, that's like my meeting last night. I mean, I was looking for champions. I'll back any project if we have a champion on KCVC, but nobody's going to champion a project, and there's not enough interest in that board for us to even... Explore that idea. And we can all think about 850,000 due to lost grants. So we have XX ability. If I got a board that's willing to work, I want us to put forth that effort. Because if you don't have a champion in town, it will never be successful. I've watched it too many times. Somebody's got to be responsible. If the staff's too short, they get pulled 10 different directions. If somebody's not leading that charge and making sure it stays on the rails and never gets done and nothing against Cesar or any of the staff. It's just they get pulled in 16,000 different directions. Right. And somebody's got to keep them, you know, make sure it stays on top of that list or stays on the list, let's put it that way, so that it keeps going the right direction.

Well, prior to COVID, there was a lot of dress shops and gift shops on 16th. in restaurants and there was a lady that lived here at the time and she was a champion of Christmas in Pima and she made that happen. She organized it, worked hard, but she had a, it wasn't a pub crawl. You took something around and got it stamped at each, you know, place. You got hot chocolate here and wassail there and whatever. But she drove business to several businesses, you know, because you, I don't know, you got your ticket and a drawing at the end and get some great prize or whatever. Christmas and chemo was a huge, huge, huge thing because of that one individual predominantly and her organization skills and pre-planning. But COVID ruined all that because the boutiques couldn't stay in business and they all became bar.

Right.

And it's not a family friendly at that point, whereas it was before.

And they're struggling to bring in the kind of retailers you're talking about. And again, we want better retailers. We need a better retail environment.

I do miss that aspect of that area, though, because I bought all gifts, cards, things, unique gifts down there, clothing, everything. I was a proponent of shopping local, and I don't have that option anymore, really. Not like we used to. There's many of them, several of them.

That is... Good segue to help us prioritize what are the things we're focusing on in the next one to three years. I want to mention that we have applied to be an opportunity zone in the 2.0. I think that that could drive potential development. We've had some preliminary discussions on some facade programming to help some of the businesses along our major corridors. Obviously, business retention is a very big deal. The economy, the way it is right now, is something that we're dealing with challenges. We want to make sure we retain the businesses that are here. Any loss of any business could be detrimental to us because we rely so much on them. Resiliency when it comes to drainage and things of that nature, we're very focused on. Finishing a lot of these open projects, I hate having plans on the shelf. I would be remiss, there's two members that are not here, but they did both send me messages, both Megan and Jacob, about their support for certain things, and I'd like to share that, if it's possible, of what they both said. Megan says she in support of the boat ramp. The schematic design for Gateway Park, which is that next step that was recommended through KCDC last night. And any other of the smaller projects we can tackle this year, along with the possibility of 6th Street, depending on what happens with that situation. Jacob talked about walkability in the Lighthouse District. As you know, we were funded for that HCAC Livable Centers Grant. I'm waiting for the last confirmation so we can kind of get that kick-started. But that's going to kind of change that corridor down there and the walkability of that corridor. But this is going to be tied to drainage because in order to add sidewalks, we're going to have to close some of those DRAINS AND CURB AND GUTTER AND FRENCH DRAINS AND SO ON AND SO FORTH. SO THAT MIGHT BE A LITTLE BIT CHALLENGING BUT THAT'S SOME OF THE ASPECTS WE COULD ADD. BUT DEFINITELY PRO CONNECTING HOTELS, SMALL BUSINESSES AND THE BOARDWALK. PRO THE CONFERENCE CENTER, THE SPORTS FACILITY, COMPLETING 57 ACRE PARK, GATEWAY PARK. THOSE ARE PRIORITIES AND DRIVING MORE SALES TAX TO FEED FUTURE PROJECTS. SO THOSE ARE THEIR TWO COMPONENTS THAT I WANTED TO FILL IN SINCE YOU HAVE TWO MEMBERS HERE AND TWO MEMBERS THAT COULD NOT BE HERE, COULD NOT MAKE IT. BUT AS WE CONTINUE WITH THAT OPPORTUNITY ZONE, ASSUMING THAT WE'RE ABLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL, THAT COULD BE A GAME CHANGER FOR US. OBVIOUSLY BRINGING IN HOTELS, WE HAVE ONE HOTEL THAT'S HERE NOW AND THE POSSIBILITY OF RECRUITING SOME OTHERS HERE SOON. AS WAS MENTIONED, A LOT OF FOLKS ARE COMING TO KEMA BUT NOT STAYING IN KEMA SO OTHER CITIES AROUND US ARE BENEFITING FROM THAT BECAUSE THEY'LL COME TO VISIT BUT THEY WON'T STAY HERE. SO WE'RE LOOKING AT THAT, AND DEVON'S HELPING ME WITH THE HOTEL STUDY R.P. THAT WE'RE GOING TO PUT OUT HERE SOON. BUILDING ON SOME INDUSTRY TO KEEP PEOPLE HERE DURING THE DAYTIME, BEATING TO MORE OF THAT TRANSIENT CROWD, HAVING PRIORITIES IN PLACE. I'VE HEARD MORE ART. I'VE HEARD THAT AS A COMPONENT. SEEMS TO ME LIKE WE WANT TO BE BETTER AT THE THINGS THAT WE ARE. already good at in 2040 is what it sounds like. We want to be better at tourism. We want to be better at being restaurants, better at ecotourism, better at telling the world what we're good at. And I think those are the things that we need to address internally from our end, but we need Pied Pipers as well. And I think those things are going to make us better, but the walkability seems to be like the biggest component of what we need to do. And also already the next one to three years is going to be closing out some of these projects. I think once we get that done and then close them out and then start some of these other ones, I think that'll be the greatest success from my perspective of what I see so far. But if we could touch a little bit on the community center and the event center component on that just for a second. As far as the potential economic driver, but also community drive that the entire project could have. The intent is for it to be a community center first. Okay, and could we have marketed better? Yes, so on and so forth, I get it. We do not want to be in the business of operating that building. We're not going to be in the business of operating that building. We don't have the capacity to. We don't have the budget to. We don't have it in many capacities. The beauty of it is, is another component that we have now, we could still offer that community center perspective without having to pay for it because it'll be paid for through some of the events and so forth that would take place during different times. We want to make sure that whatever happens with that, if it does come into fruition or not, as we know with the eight parcels that we have available, something's going to go in these eight parcels eventually, right? Whenever the water situation gets fixed, something's going to go there. What that is, if they don't come to us for variance requests, we don't really have a say because we don't have zoning. So whatever, not in that part, I'm talking about all the parcels. Is zoning something that you want to... Mayor, you mentioned about putting the toothpaste back into the... Thank you, because it's not... I'm sorry. When I heard that, I was like, I just got the visual and it was just like, I get it. Okay. Is that something you want to try to tackle? Are we going to try to get into sectors of how we're going to try to get stuff done? That's the tail end of what these questions need to be because the boat ramp's letting in January. 57-acre park is rolling. Assuming that you guys approve whatever's being proposed in KCD's budget, this linear park's going to get started. Construction's going to end at some point on TxDOT. So some of these projects are, yeah, well, maybe not ever end, but... Well, it's going to end eventually before it starts again. It's going to end before the beginning, I'm sure.

It's very likely, but all in all, I think that...

what else do we want to see accomplished and driven through this? And what should we take to the community next? But right now, obviously this group's going to take what they got from staff and staff's pros, cons, needs, wants. We're going to take your Those cons needs wants, and then we're going to encapsulate that from the residents and we're going to need some help. So I think some of you might live in the chemo crossing area.

I mean, I think we're extremely park heavy for small as we are. And how do we consolidate maybe 1 of the parks into the 57 acre park and not get rid of any of the amenities, but. Making 57 acre park the flagship of this town because it is. you know, a large piece of property. I just don't know why we have so many parks and the maintenance of all these parks. And there's a lot to it. And we don't do a very good job of maintaining the parks and our budgets conducive to handle all these parks. And KCDC from the get-go has made the commitment to take care of the 57-acre park. So that gets it off the city's back moving forward so that we're not in the park business. I mean, that's just my... thoughts and process i mean i know people use the other parks and uh maybe they're necessary but i just i know we're very park heavy and well you're you're about to technically add two more when you think about the linear gateway park and the boat rap what's what those are different We go back to demographics again, though, because, I mean, we were talking about children. Are we talking about adult usage? So, I mean, well, that's what I'm saying. But you're talking about the CN Park was a skate park, I think, and basketball and tennis is what it originated as. I know we're trying to figure out what that looks like, but I'm just saying, is there enough, I mean, 80% of our population backs up to the 57th Park. So I mean, that park has, should be the flagship of this town. And we're trying to make sure that it proceeds that way.

And we don't have that many children, smaller children on this side of 146. It tends to be an older population without children. Most of the children here are in the new area. in Meritage or Oaks or maybe in the village.

Stonehenge, I think is called.

Yeah, well, that's true.

Because there'd be 25, 30 kids get off that bus on 10th Street. It opens your mind when you see something like that because I think the same thing you do.

I see those kids when school starts again, too. I just remember.

Yes, there's an apartment complex over there that's older that's just out of sight, out of mind, but there's a lot of kids that live in that apartment complex. Most people don't even know it's there.

I think you've made a really good point because what it made me think of is quality of life issues. And if you're developing so much for the visitors and then not enough for the residents, like the local parks could be more of a quality of life issue versus the bigger parks. But what you're saying is as part of a priority is quality of life for residents is critical as well as developing these other things. Did I hear that correctly or am I wrong?

balancing acts we've tried to do as boards sitting up here for years is what all the locals wanted to stay and what all of the visitors wanted to be. For example, when I was raising my children and the boardwalk went in and they had all that water fountain out in the middle of the plaza, boy, I took my kids down there all the time. I didn't have a swimming pool, but they'd run around and get all tired and go home and go night-night. rest like crazy. But I wasn't gonna go down there on a Friday or Saturday. I went on Tuesday or Wednesday when none of the local, none of the visitors were there. But I could do that.

One thing on the eco side that I think don't forget about because it's there and it's not talked about much in this town is the birding in the 57-acre park. I mean, we're residents to some bald eagles now. The Mexican eagles migrate through here. there's guys out there with probably 30 or 40 thousand dollar cameras out there taking pictures of birds that are aware of the park and we're going to leave as natural as possible because we do have a wildlife still in this area that's getting pushed out because of development uh i mean we're seeing i'm seeing deer where i've never seen before in the last couple weeks um because it's just the developments is pushing them out of their home uh so we're hoping that 57 acre park can gravitate to some of that i mean it's not built may take all of it but how long does that season last the burning season well i mean the bald eagles are residents consistently right now i've seen them three or four times in the park i don't ever advertise it because i'm always freaking out they actually flew over out of the lake in the south side i mean it's fun on my lake twice just flown directly i actually caught a fish out of our lake uh not too long ago so i'm like uh so i mean they're here so i mean just have something

I would say it's year-round. Laporte and Seabrook have to watch on it. And then right at Pirates Beach, right down the road from Pirates Beach, there's a huge birding park down there. What was that gentleman's name? They have ramps and all kinds of things to walk out of and watch for birds and take pictures of them.

I'll get Caesar. Do you sell that brochure, Robert Mayne? Robert, one of the residents of Cayman Oaks has passed away, but he made a brochure of all the birds that he- Well, I have one at the house too, but he did an analysis of their detention pond right down the street from me, but it's right backs up to the park. So he has a list of all the most common birds that he had encountered in the area. So it's got some very unique, I'll get it to you. As I say, I got it at the house, but it was something that was done by a local gentleman and he actually just did a brochure on it and But I mean, there's a lot more than just that. That was the most common, I guess, gravitational birds or transient birds, but there's pretty cool birds that migrate through here as well. So it's a lot bigger thing than people realize.

Well, our time has almost come to a close. I'd like to bring this in to finish this discussion because obviously this group has a lot to take from these notes. And obviously you guys both, both boards play a pivotal role in whatever's going to happen next as they prepare. synopsis of this and then look at the synopsis of what staff has said and put together and then obviously get community input as to what are the things that we need to drive next and what are the things that you would like? Our thoughts are to go to Kemah Oaks, Huntington, to Kemah Crossing, There's any other groups or clusters? I mean, we don't exactly have...

I would just challenge this board in reaching out to people, because, like, you did the AARP grant last night, and I've already got you eight contacts that run and walk this town on a daily or weekly basis. For us to start reaching out to people and get their input, I mean, we need people to... They keep saying we're not listening to them, but you got to show up and tell me what you want. I can't true. Imaginary figure out what you want if you don't show up and tell us. So I would. Hope that this board would do a really good job of trying to reach out as many people as possible, make them aware. And try to get as many people in attendance, so we can get feedback and get some data that actually people are.

We might be learned something that we didn't know. I had a resident email me out of the blue and say that they thought that we should push for the event center and we should add an ice rink to it. I was like, an ice rink? I didn't see that. I didn't think. He's like, yeah, there's a big... skating market down here, and an ice rink market, and an ice hockey market. Yeah, and I was like, and then I started doing some research on it, and sure enough, there's discussion of, you know, Houston getting an NHL team in the future. So we talked about attracting pro sports. Maybe it's not a pro sport. Maybe it's a semi-pro, or a you know, a G league or whatever the G league is for hockey, whatever it is. I mean, there's, there's a lot of opportunity things for us to do to add to the identity and to who we are. And, and, and again, who we want to be when we grow up. I want us to think that 2040 is when we've grown to the next phase and and that that's where we're going far ahead. A lot of these strap plans are done as five-year plans. We wanted to cast a little bit further so we could have more of a runway to get there. Because there's a lot of things right now. There's a lot of different ideas. And we talked about changes in people and changes in boards and volunteers and people moving and moving away and staff changes and so forth. So I think we're headed in the right direction. This is the direction that I think we needed. I think you guys got what you needed, I'm assuming. Did you get the feedback? Any other questions you'd like to ask?

I'll just give you some more details. Even in Costa Rica, they did a deal in Coco, where I reside most of the time, hopefully. They brought in 30 artists with spray paint artwork and did, like, entryways and did, like, seven locations where you entered the beach and stuff where the walls that were deteriorating and stuff and did artwork. It's really nice. I'll send you some pictures and try to get some more details when I'm done with this next week. That'd be great.

What you can do is... I can bring my hand. So the artist... filling in places that are designated for artwork and give them either a theme or whatever the case may be.

It turned out really nice, honestly. I was kind of surprised, actually. But yeah, it was very nice. And then we were done. Like four or five days, there were spray painting artists. But there's probably 30 of them, seven different groups, that were just spray painting either side of buildings or side of walls. It brought a nice, bright color to a lot of places where it was just going and running down. I hate to say that, but it's just great.

Well, I was in Asheville, North Carolina, two weekends ago. And one day, my girlfriend, who I was visiting, asked me where I would do it. I said, I just want to drop around.

There is so much artwork everywhere in this city. There are so many murals.

And of course, I had to go to the famous Dolly Parton mural and take my picture there. But I mean, almost every other side of the building had a mural on it. I was amazed. I usually see that only in large towns. Well, Asheville's pretty big, but... Very warm and inviting and beautiful.

We're doing some work, also working with Wharton, and they're really big into the murals on the sides of buildings. Yeah, I love it.

I love it. It's like, I don't know, it just makes the, you can even, it's almost wayfinding. You know, the one with the big eagle on it down there. Or the, you know, whatever.

Where's the Walmart? Well, it's over there.

But it also allows you to introduce some history of FEMA into that people can walk around and see.

You know, when I drive behind Walmart, I'm just looking at all of that over there going, I could paint that whole wall. I could paint that wall.

So we do have an intern. We do have an intern starting. Mayor Collins knows Elise Wagner. One of the tasks that I gave her that she was super excited about, it was almost more her idea than mine, is she's gonna make an inventory of all of the spaces in town that would be suitable for murals, sculptures, et cetera. And so we'll have basically an inventory of this would be a great spot for a mural, this would be a great spot for a sculpture, this would be a great spot for signage. And that's one of the things that, Walmart was what generated that idea.

AND ALONG THAT LINE, SINCE WE TALK ABOUT IDENTITY, AND I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS A PROJECT, KCDC, OR WE WANT TO DO AS A CITY OR EVEN HOT, GALVANSON HAS THE TURTLES. DICKINSON HAS THE SEA GULLS. OR IS IT THE PELICANS? OKAY. HERONS. HELP ME OUT HERE. SEABROOK HAS THE PELICANS. DO WE WANT TO HAVE SOMETHING? DO WE WANT TO BE THE LIGHTHOUSES? DO WE WANT TO BE THE SAILBOATS? We want to have something like that that we put in front of the businesses because, again, people will gravitate to say that, hey, there's a sponsorship of that. There's a lot of community service stuff that we're doing, like the Adopt a Tree program, the Adopt a Drain program that we're trying to roll out. We really want to get more of that sense of community to, again, get the folks, the residents that are living here to get more involved. BUT ALSO TO GET THAT SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND THAT VIBRANCY BACK. SO IS THAT SOMETHING THAT WE WANT TO TRY TO TACKLE IN THE FUTURE? SOME TYPE OF IDENTITY PROJECT THAT WAY? DO WE WANT TO THINK OF SOMETHING? COULD IT BE MANY LIGHTHOUSES IN FRONT OF DIFFERENT BUSINESSES OR SOMETHING? I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S LIGHTHOUSES.

NEW SPEAKER I WANT TO SEE THE BIG HUGE MURALS. I THINK THERE'S MORE IMPACT. NEW SPEAKER OR BOTH.

that yeah because there's a piece of that where if there's you're talking about consistency if there's even if it's just a piece of the artwork or a piece of the science that's consistent from one to the other then you start seeing that as being one of a whole yeah it's a story yeah another thing right over there on the wall that might make a good mural somewhere

But what does it have? Cell boats and lighthouses. So combine a boat together.

Yeah.

Yeah, sorry. It's 1 o'clock on Wednesday. That means that's our test generator. That means we are right on time. Any closing comments? Y'all?

If y'all think of anything, please let Cesar know and he'll let Miguel know just so... I'm thinking something later on because I'm usually that way where, oh, I wish I was there. Just let Cesar know so he can pass it on to Miguel.

Can we go around the room, Sean? You got anything?

No, thank you.

Tom?

What?

Do you have anything?

Oh, hey, obviously I'm an infrastructure guy. That's where I think you build it and they will come. And that's really where, that's probably the genesis of everything I think about for the city. Councilman Thornton?

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for your input. This is very exciting to hear all of y'all. Because y'all, you can see the excitement and hear the excitement in your voices as we're talking. And the urgency to some degree. All right.

It is 102.

We'll take a break. MS. DAGE IS HERE. WE'LL GO INTO THE NEXT SEGMENT OF THE AGENDA. WE'LL ALLOW THE FOLKS WE'RE NOT DONE YET. WE'RE JUST TAKING A POTTY BREAK WHILE WE REDO THE ROOM. WE'RE DONE AT 2, BUT WE MIGHT NOT GO UNTIL 2. WE'RE ALMOST DONE.

IS THERE A TOTAL BREAK?

YES. THERE'S A WHOLE BREAK FROM 2 TO 3. RIGHT NOW THERE'S A CHANGE OVER, TAKE THE STUFF DOWN, PUT THE MARKERS AWAY, AND THEN GET READY FOR THE NEXT SEGMENT AND WE'LL GO FROM THERE.

No, this is just a break. We're just on a break.

Yes.

Okay. She's so cute.

Yeah, we got a pretty clear correction as to what you guys wanted. There's some homework we got to do on it before final presentation.

What exactly did you do?

Ruptured patella. I'll know hopefully by tomorrow. But I know for sure it's surgery.

I just don't know if that's all the damage. I don't think that's all the damage. It hurts too much to just be done.

So I know it's surgery in six weeks, keeping my legs straight. That I know for a fact, but... Don't know the rest. Too soon to know the rest. Good luck. Thanks. Thank you very much. I can't sit for too long.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey.

Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you. I've been through two left knee ACLs. It'll be all right.

Yeah, no. I've had two ACLs.

I've had an MCL.

Yeah. I'm ready for it. Good to meet you.