City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It is now 3 p.m. We'll call this meeting to order. We will have note that all council members are present and we'll have our invocation by Dr. Don Koster from Karis Church, Killeen, and we'll have our invocation by Chief, excuse me, by Councilmember Kimball. Congratulations, Chief Kimball.

Amen. Let's bow our heads. Heavenly Father, we come to you today with gratitude and humility. Lord, we honor you and acknowledge your presence in this place and throughout the city of Killeen. We thank you for this council and for this gathering of leaders who have been entrusted with the responsibility of helping guide the future of our city. Lord, we recognize you as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Your word declares that the government rests upon your shoulders and as we look to you, As the source of wisdom and justice and righteous leadership, we acknowledge you as the Lord over this city. And we thank you for your hand that has been upon Colleen through every season. Today we lift up our mayor, Mayor Joseph Solomon before you. Grant him wisdom, discernment, strength and grace as he serves this community. We also pray for the elected council members, Jessica Gonzalez, Charles Nimble, David Bass, Anthony Kendrick, Miss Debbie Nash King, Melissa Brown, and Beverly Ann Williams. Bless them with the unity of purpose, clarity of mind, hearts committed to serving the people of this city well. Give them grace to govern and courage to lead, the wisdom to make decisions that promote the well-being of all who call Colleen home. Your word tells us that when the righteous lead, people flourish and dwell in peace. Therefore, we pray, Lord, that your peace to rest upon these leaders as they begin this new term of service, guide their decisions, direct their conversations, and help them govern with integrity. humility, and wisdom. Father, we thank you for this season of growth and opportunity before the city of Killeen. We declare your blessing over this city. Let prosperity, peace, wisdom, and joy abound among these residents. May every family, every neighborhood, every business, and every visitor experience your goodness and your favor. Blow afresh your spirit over this city. and establish your purpose in every sphere of influence. Lord, we're asking for your protection over these leaders, over every family, and over their concerns. Surround them with your grace and keep them safe. Let your hand be upon this city and let your purpose prevail. We are praying for your presence to fill this chamber today. Let your wisdom guide every discussion. Let understanding shape every decision. Let a spirit of cooperation and service mark every action taken here. God, we're asking that everyone who enters into this chamber, every resident. Every business owner, every visitor, and every guest encounter the presence of your peace. Let honor rule in this place on how we communicate, on how we reason together, on how we listen, on how we speak to one another. May respect, wisdom, and integrity characterize every conversation and every decision that is made here. God, we're asking that you apprehend this place with your presence and let your peace rest here. Lord, your wisdom dwell here. Let your righteousness be established here. Let the weight of your glory fill this chamber and rest upon every leader gathered today. And most of all, Lord, we invite you to be the ultimate leader. Guide this council. According to your purposes of heaven, according to your divine plans for this city and region, direct their paths, establish their steps, and give them insight beyond their own understanding. We are praying for the city of Killeen, that it would rise as a model in the earth. A city marked by unity, by wisdom, by purpose, and by peace. Let people stand up and take notice of what you're doing here. Let this city be known as a place where good leadership flourish, where people are valued, where your hand of blessing rests upon the community. Let Killeen become a testimony of what can happen when leaders seek wisdom, serve with humility, and steward well the people entrusted to their care. We thank you for this advancement growth, the flourishing that is ahead of the city of Killeen. May the city be a place where people thrive, where peace prevails, and where future generations are blessed. And we ask all these things. I ask all these things in the mighty, precious name of Jesus Christ, my Lord. Amen.

Amen. Mr. Mayor. I'm honored to welcome members of the Prince Hall Knights of Pythagoras, a youth-rooted organization rooted in membership, leadership, and moral development. These young men from Killeen and the Bell County area represent excellence in service and in education, and today they will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Go ahead, boys.

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. If I can indulge, um, Knights of Pythagoras be having their statewide conference here later in july, they'll be having nights from all around the state will be gathered here and clean is gonna be a big deal. So they will be honored if you could, if they could take a picture with you up front, sir, if you don't mind.

Council, I need a motion to approve the agenda.

Mayor, if I could, if whomever makes the motion to approve the agenda will remove item 12 to receive a quarterly financial report. Our presenter had an unexpected absence today.

So I need a motion to approve the agenda 2 and also to remove item 12.

Mayor.

I move to- Council member Brown.

Move to approve the agenda, removing item number 12 DS-26-041, receive quarterly financial report.

It was motioned by Councilmember Brown.

Mr. Mayor, I second that motion.

Second by Councilmember Kimball. All opposed? All in favor say yes, all opposed no. Motion carries 7-0. Madam Secretary.

Presentation PR26013 discuss proposed FY2027 budget related to community partners.

Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. Good afternoon, ma'am. Today we have 10 community partners here to speak on behalf of their organizations and their fiscal year 2027 funding request. I will introduce each speaker before they present and each organization will have five minutes. Before we begin, I would like to briefly review two slides. The first slide is the fiscal year 2027 budget calendar. As you can see today, June 2nd is dedicated to community partner presentations. On June 16th, staff will present the FY 2027 budget preview. With that in mind, I'd like to direct your attention to the next slide. This slide shows each community partner's current FY2026 funding amount and their FY2027 funding request. The asterisks identify requests that are currently included in the proposed FY2027 budget. As a reminder, staff is still in the process of balancing the FY2027 budget. The information presented tonight is intended to provide City Council with an opportunity to hear from each organization regarding their services and funding requests. You will see this slide again during the budget preview on June 16th as a part of the discussion on the proposed FY2027 budget. With that, I'll begin the presentations. First is going to be National Mountain Warfare Foundation, Mr. Clarence Enox.

Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. My job here today as a development consultant with the National Mountain Warfare Foundation is, first of all, thank the Council for the generous use of hotel occupancy tax funds that we've received over the last five years. You'll see on, I believe it's my third slide, the direct correlation between bringing individuals into the community to experience this destination activity we could not accomplish without that assistance. So This shows our attendance, as you'll see, and this was provided before, so I hope you had a chance to look at it. Some of these attendance numbers were affected by two things that we had no control over, two shutdowns of our government. October itself, the entire staff was laid off and the facility was shut down. So you'll reflect that. But you'll notice that there's a percentage noted to the side that varies about 37 to 44 percent of those individuals that are currently visiting the facility are coming from outside the MSA. So there's an advantage to that because we know that the average person will spend about $25 or so if they get something neat. We want to capture them and keep them here as long as possible because that affects positively everyone in not just our local community of Killeen, but our entire region. This shows our use of funds for the last calendar year. As you know, these funds are mandated by statute to be used for very, very specific purposes and primarily our use is for bringing people in, visitors outside the MSA. Our use of the funds is pretty centralized to advertising on the I-35 corridor. We do have a partnership with an organization that puts our media and things in every one of the visitor centers in the state of Texas on the northern border. And so we've been very blessed to have these funds. Once again, thank you. I know that in five minutes it's difficult to get a lot of that stuff in, so I'll entertain any questions that you might have.

Council, any questions, comments? Council Member Brown.

Thank you. Mr. Enoch, how are you today?

I'm doing great.

How much fundraising does the museum do?

How much fundraising as far as? It's kind of a broad question.

How much fundraising does the museum do on an annual basis for any purpose?

Are you looking for a dollar amount?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd have to provide that to you at a later date. I don't have that readily available with me at this point.

Is there fundraising that happens for the museum now that it's open?

Yes, ma'am. That's my job as a development consultant, development, meaning fundraising.

Okay. What happens with the fundraising money as opposed to the money that the city gives the museum?

Okay. So there's a very distinct difference. So those funds that the city provides are hot funds, which can only be using for the advertising of materials essentially the tourism industry, the product. None of those monies go to the operational expense. There is a certain amount of money that has to be raised to keep the foundation open, so the foundation and the museum operation are separate.

Okay. Of the people who come in from outside of the MSA, are they tourists? Are they coming in as part of reserve groups that are coming in, as part of training activities? Do we know the purpose that they're coming in for?

Yes. So anyone coming outside of the MSA, there's a geographic location. rubric that equates what a tourist is. And so anyone essentially that comes from outside our MSA is considered a tourist. One of the primary tenants of the museum is to educate soldiers. So those individuals that come as part of their duty service are not quantified as visitors.

So they're not listed in the attendance record we have in front of us?

Not to my knowledge, no ma'am.

Okay. Can we prove that any of these people coming in actually stop and clean, stay at the hotels, stay overnight here, visit our restaurants, shop at our stores?

I mean, I don't attend with them. Some of them do comment. We do have information and information board where a number of community partners, be it restaurants, be it other attractions, can post their information and their media information. We do partner with as many of those as we can because we know this is a group effort for all of us. But do I know how long anyone stays here? I do not.

OK. And then I guess the final question is, What can we do to make sure, if we're going to keep funding this, since it is out of hot, that that hot fund is specifically so we can bring tourism to the city of Killeen. And I know that from down there, I've said to the council multiple times, I disagree respectfully to you. I know you're here doing a job, but I really disagree with giving money to any entity that is outside of the city of Killeen when it comes to our hot funds. Because we cannot ever show that there is a direct correlation to any increase in our hotel occupancy or any of our restaurants, any of our businesses in the city of Killeen when we're giving money for advertisement to something on Fort Hood. And I think that really we could have community partnerships that do that without using that HOP fund. We could definitely come up with ways that we could do in-kind through our tourism department. But I think that we have other things that could be better suited for that $80,000 a year. Just my opinion. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Brown. Anyone else? Council Member Kendricks.

Good afternoon. I just want to share with everyone. I've experienced soldiers that are coming back in the VFW on post, helps those soldiers, and those families are going out to the museum and visiting the museum. um we had a vfw um the overall commander he came and he stayed and we have a lot of people that do come because i've been out there at the museum several times in the last um six months so i i want to say there are people coming and visiting thank you thank you council member kendrick's council member kimball

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just so I'm clear, of the 10,000 or so people outside the MSA, we have no stats of how many of those stayed in local hotels?

I don't know how long they stay, whether they stay five minutes or so. I know unless they have access to Fort Hood, they won't be able to eat on Fort Hood. We meet regularly with your Tourism and Convention Bureau to – partner with them to do things that are related to help quantify that number. I assume there would be some way with relevant research model that you could track if there's a rise or a fall based upon the number of people that were there. You could make some type of correlation. I'll just follow up with the Chamber or the Hotel Association.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Council Member Nash King.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. One of the things is that the National Mounted Warrior Museum is not only for outsiders, but it's also for our veterans. A lot of our veterans have served, and we have our Vietnam veterans. And when I go inside, I see some people that I do recognize in the photos. THE PHONES CAN ONLY BE USED WHERE WE'RE PULLING IT FROM. THE HOT PHONES CAN ONLY BE USED FOR ADVERTISEMENT. And this does, if you cannot see it now, it's almost impossible for anyone can say where people eat at or where people live at. If there is a metric like that, then we need the city, we need to assist them with coming up or council with that metric to measure that, if that's even feasible to do. And if we can do that, then we need to come up with it and share it with them if that's the feedback that we would like back. However, as I stated earlier, the museum shows our histories if you're a veteran. It honors us. And there's not many museums throughout the military that's out there. So for us to have one where we're trying to build up our downtown revitalization, downtown Killeen, And we're constantly putting in money when people do come to our sites. There's a way that we can market the museum when we have our events with some of the advertisement money that you do get from the city, that they'll know, even if you're not in the military, it's on the outside, that you can come. I believe in common with solutions and this solution that I'm offering you as a council member, I don't speak for the entire council is that when we host our main events, downtown clean, which we're trying to bring more. for traffic in that area. We would love for you to get with our city staff and come up with some kind of way that we can share your information and you can share what we're doing downtown. That's just a recommendation to take back to your board. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Nash. Can Council Member, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. Ms. Nash-Kate, I would second that. That's a great recommendation. I just had a question. I'm not sure if it's for staff or for Mr. Enochs, but sometime back, council had recommended or requested that as far as advertising was concerned, that the Killeen logo be on different print marketing materials and such. And we also, at the time, there was conversation about airport billboards and other, okay, so airport billboards and things like that. Has that happened yet? And if so, is that print material, can we confirm that it is located at our civic and conference center for the public to access?

Yes, so with that recommendation, and we've taken all the recommendations that the council has provided, and to side note on what you've done, or what you've suggested, we have partnered with the Texas A&M University, Central Texas University, or UCARE, their research arm, to identify a number of problematic situations you might say so I I'm not opposed, and I will likely approach them to see if there is a mechanism that they can construct that can start collecting a lot more of this data of who stays, who doesn't, where they go, how we go about doing that. And on all of our billboards and all of our print material, the City of Killeen logo is is displayed. All of our billboards at the bottom runner, say in Killeen, on all of our billboards on I-35. And wherever else they might be.

And do we have confirmation that the information is also at our Killeen Civic and Conference Center for the public for event and tourism?

Yes, I believe it is. Ms. Wilkerson, can you answer that? The National Men Award for Museum, that those publications are available at the Civic Center?

Yeah, I think the trifolds are.

The brochures are not, but they are in all the different . Okay, so I'll just put an email together for a follow up on this, because that was a recommendation by Council Member Boyd some time back. So I want to make sure that we follow up on that and that it's in all the appropriate places. Thank you very much, sir.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Brown.

So I remember in September of 25, I was hosting a comedy festival here in Colleen. One of the places that we had events was over at the museum. And it looks like that month was your second highest month for people outside of the MSA for the entire year. Have you thought about doing more events, allowing more events to be hosted at the museum? Because then we could say people are coming in, they're staying for multiple days.

So as you know, this is phase one of the museum. Before the exhibits were actually installed, we had use of that center atrium in the main exhibit space. With the installation of the permanent exhibits and the fact that the foundation doesn't own or control the museum now, the Department of Army, the citizens of the United States of America does, There is limited space for us to have events, so the direct contact there is actually a museum staffer that handles that. The key to having more events like that is creating more space. We are in the development of our Phase 2 project, which includes classrooms, expansion of some of that space, which could be used for that, and you'll likely hear more about that, I would anticipate, in the next few months. But the key is adding space that doesn't have the exhibitry in it.

Do you track where people are getting the information from? So when they're coming in, do you find out what advertising is bringing them in?

I believe we do. That is collected at some point, like where they heard about the museum from. And primarily a number of them go to the website. We do have, if I'm not mistaken, our information is connected to the City of Killeen website and vice versa. So a lot of that is just trying to figure out what the family is going to do for the weekend and then investigating things in the area, and a lot of it is happenstance like that.

So what I'm hoping is that there is a way that you're tracking the efficacy of all of your advertisements to determine if the money that you're spending on these is actually bearing fruit or if it's more people just coming to the city's website and seeing that. Otherwise, what I don't think we need to be doing – whether we're funding it or whether you're funding it, is to be paying for advertising that isn't working. Does your website track where the leads are coming from, if they're from something like a QR code that gets scanned, if it's from a different website, if it's from a Google search, anything like that?

I'm a development consultant, a relationship builder, so I can check with the actual staff to see if there's a component that tracks that. I do know that we do collect any type of information that's relevant to those.

Okay. Mr. Knox, if you could email us back before our next meeting, if possible, about the fundraising and the advertisement tracking.

I will likely have Mr. Crouch communicate with you, yes.

Thank you so much.

Mm-hmm.

Council Member Bass.

Sir, as a veteran of 1st Cavalry Division, I think it's a great honor for our city to have this museum. I thank you and the staff for all of your hard work out there, and I'm happy to support the museum, and I think this is a well-spent money on the part of the city. Thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.

Next is Tax Appraisal District of Bell County, Mr. Billy White.

Good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. I appreciate you having me here today. I have provided you quite a bit of information. I'm just going to go over some of the basic ones, more about the budget, and if you guys have any questions afterwards about taxes and values and such, we can entertain those, but to try and keep your meeting moving along, so... Just to go over some of the things that our appraisal district has a board of directors that maintain operations. This is the list of our current directors. We have some up for election in this coming November and, of course, some end of the elections next year is when we'll have some newly appointed board of directors. But that is our current list. We also have Kenny Wills. He's out here in the audience, I believe, one of our current board of directors. But this is our future board director elections. It shows you when they change. There's been a lot of changes in legislation over the last few years as to when those board directors change, but that just gives you an idea as to when some of them will change out starting in November of this year in the general election. Just to show you as again. We're here talking about our budget This is show what some of our major departments are doing Obviously our appraisal district does a lot of services besides just appraisals and just collections of a taxes But to show that we're doing a good service and being a good steward of the money that we have We provide customer service surveys to everybody that comes through our doors and as you can see just since last year obviously Nobody's happy about taxes and appraisals. It's not something that anybody likes to talk about or hear about, but these questions that we give all of our people that come to the door, you can see are overwhelmingly, our staff has done an overwhelmingly great job at handling those that have come in. And we hand these to everybody at the beginning of their service before they're happy or not happy with their service. So you can see 95 to 98% on every single question that we ask of the customer service. So our customer service staff And our appraisal staff that deal with people have done an excellent job. This just shows you the amount of work that we do each year, just our customer service department alone dealing with 40,000 phone calls, almost 50,000 mail-in payments, all the payments we come in through, whether it's mortgage or online or e-payments. And then, of course, once we do the collection of taxes for you and all the other tax entities in the community, county we transferred over 640 million dollars of tax levy to you and every other tax entity there as you may know we do the collection of taxes we also help do the calculation of your tax rates that is not something that every appraisal district does in the state but many of them do we are contracted by you and the other entities to do that in our in our county we're probably one of the largest if not the largest county that still provides the collection services most other large counties like williamson and travis further south All the tax collections are done at the Tax Assessor Office, but we do provide that service. Just to show our other main large department that sometimes gets forgotten about is our GIS and records department. And they have to process every single parcel that comes through every year, along with every single subdivision and split of every property. And you can just see the parcel growth that our county has been having each year. We process every one of those. Our parcel growth is up to 194,000 parcels this year, has grown quite a bit over the last few years. And then our deeds and lots looks like we've processed 3,000 to 4,000 of those deeds the last few years. So each one of those deeds had to be processed by our personnel. Again, just showing you some of the labor drivers that our staff and our appraisal district does each year besides just the appraisal. Going over the appraisal part, some of the major projects we do besides just doing our appraisal every year, we do appraisal aerial projects every year. And what this does is allows us to be a lot more efficient with the money that we use, a lot more accurate actually of appraising property where we use this product that will go in and look at aerials each year. It'll compare aerials from the last year, see if there's any changes. Alert us to go out and either go look at them or measure them from the errors if we can This saves a lot of money and I was going out by foot on every single property every year Also, it's gonna be much more accurate because we can't get inside every backyard And we can't count on every single person pulling a permit at the city level and not everybody lives in the city So even outside the cities don't have to pull permits So this is the way we can stay accurate and equitable as we're required by tax code And as you can see this product pays off in big sums. Last year it cost about $95,000 including our labor charges for the change finder part of it. An estimated value of $365 million and about $7 million in taxes. And when we put those improvements on the roll, those porches, patios, garages, extra buildings, and all those on the roll every year, that's on the roll for every year thereafter too. So this is a project that's well worth doing. We've been doing it annually for at least the past seven years, I believe. Bull finder is very cheap to do also, but it provides quite a bit of taxes back just for the amount that we give.

Okay.

So this just talks about where our praise values are this year compared to the... to the board of realtors and what they just shows that we've been tracking along with the market. Obviously this year, our values went down quite a bit. And again, our appraisal department handles protests each year. Each year we get last few years, we get about 30,000 protests. We start getting those after we get through April and we have till about the, um, mid July to get through all 30,000 protests. Be able to give the, uh, the city and you guys the, uh, amount of value that is there. So you can set your tax rates. Um, so it's a lot of work for us to get through. So, um, So we're out of time. So what questions you guys have about what else I've provided or other questions I can answer you about our budget?

Council Member Brown.

Mayor, I make a motion of direction to allow Mr. White to at least finish the portion where he tells us what he needs from us and what our valuations are. So basically, to skip ahead to the slide that says City of Killeen 2026 appraisal data.

I can skip ahead.

That's up to the council to do one additional minutes. It's up to the council. Council Member Nashborough. Oh, you seconded. Oh, you made a motion. A motion by Council Member Brown. Mayor, if I can. Second by.

I'm sorry. Motions of direction are normally directions to staff, to the city manager or staff. And so, I mean, certainly if the council has a consensus, I don't know that a motion is appropriate.

So for clarification, I'd request consensus to allow Mr. White to just skip ahead to the city of Killeen's specific information.

Is that motion withdrawn just for the record?

Motion was withdrawn, and so there is a consensus among the council. You can finish up, sir.

Yes, sir. I will skip to the specific information about appraisals, skip to the budget information. This just goes over some of the basic information of what's going on in the city of Killeen and our appraisals this year. City of Killeen appraisal data, you can see most of our values throughout the county went down this year, most of the sales and the market in the area decreased. Even though most of our counties south of us had seen quite a bit of decline in the last couple of years, it finally hit us a little bit this year. So we did have flat to lower than last year's sales. So you can see our total value went down, multifamily, vacancy. Usually when single families are going down, you also see a lot of vacancy issues in the multifamily. So their values also are coming down some. Commercial value did go up this year, and then City of Killeen residential value did come down slightly, and the average home value also came down slightly this year based off of the sales. Again, we appraise based off all the market information that's available to us, and we're just trying to mirror what the market is each year. In the end, these were some of the new improvements that we had this last year, how many new houses we picked up. And in the end, this just shows exactly what we actually came to in taxable value change. You can see that off to the far right shows you the light blue is what last year's value of all the properties were. Last year, red is all the new value. And then at the last dark blue line shows you what the change in taxable value was. So even though there was a lot of new value, it didn't overcome how much value we came down on on the existing properties. So we expect a negative amount of taxable value there this year before you say your tax rates.

Thank you, sir. Are there any questions from the council? Thank you, sir.

All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me.

I didn't see you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. One question. So with the valuation.

Council Member Kimball.

I'm sorry. Thank you, sir, Mr. Mayor. With the valuation decreasing, so do you guys have any metrics that the market's softening, or is it just a correction? I mean, what is the thought process?

Really, it all depends. I mean, we look at very specific sales of every neighborhood and every single area. And we're going to look at the sales for that neighborhood. If the sales are down from where they were last year, it came down. There were some areas that still went up, but it's not a generalization. It's not just because the Tampa Board of Realtors or the Fort Hood Board of Realtors says that the average sales price went down. It's looking at every specific area. And after we did every specific neighborhood and area, The total value did come down. So, yes, I mean, sales are coming down. We're seeing more sales happen than we did last year, but we still see some sporadic, some high and low sales. We have seen people that aren't used to the market being taken six months, which is the norm to sell a house. But we haven't been at that for a long time. So we have seen people that have sold the house very quickly and sold for a lot less. So that affects this market value of the other properties. So. Yeah, I believe it's softened some based off the sales we've seen. I don't think there's much more to go down on. We're still a very affordable county compared to the county south of us and such. We've been holding flat when the others had a big drop the last couple of years. So I think this is probably about as far as we'll go down, but it really just depends on the area. Every year we go look at the sales from the prior year and see what was going on in the market.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Any other questions from the council? Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

All right. Next, we have Bell County Communications Center. Ms. Aubrey Huckabee.

Good afternoon, ma'am.

Good afternoon. I appreciate you inviting us to get a chance to come and speak to you a little bit about what we do and who we are, along with the budget part. I know that's also important.

So now we're limited on time.

Just a reminder, a refresher to some, and it might be new to a few. The Bell County Communications Center was formed in 1999. We were formed under an agreement between the county and the four largest cities in Bell County to establish a consolidated 911 and communications dispatch center. So within that agreement, it also lays out the funding for the annual budget. the bell county covers 50 of the operational or annual budget plus capital costs and a percentage of the usage so the county covers 50 and then the remainder 50 is divided amongst the cities in the county based on usage in 2025 we had a 213 000 911 calls that came into bell county and a snapshot of the public safety events that were created over the last three years. We really focus on making sure that we're meeting the community, the public, and the agency's expectations, and with a focus on we want to make sure that we're getting the right resources to the right location at the right time. It's not about being as fast as we can, but being accurate and urgent. On the right-hand side, it just shows our call processing time. So we look at priority ones, priority twos, and priority threes. Priority ones being the highest priority or the most urgent. And it's got a snapshot for 23, 24, and 25 as far as our performance metrics. The call taking times for priority ones, we maintain under 60 seconds. So that's from the time the call taker answers the phone, gets the information to create an event that is then eligible to be dispatched or ready to be dispatched to an available unit. So it takes us about 60 seconds or less. And then on the bottom chart on the right hand side is our dispatch processing. And this is from the time the event is created and is ready for a dispatcher to send to an available unit and party ones. Um, we showed a significant improvement last year over the previous two years and at 89 seconds on average. Now that's all agencies, all types of calls smushed together. That's all party ones throughout the county.

Okay.

Um, one of the things that we're also looking at is how can we tie in additional resources that might be available in the community or throughout the county to 911 calls. So last year, um, in October we introduced basically a telehealth resource. So if you call 911, you might need to be seen by a doctor. you think that your only avenue is to call 911 to get an ambulance to go to the emergency room. But not every medical need might need an ambulance or need to go to the emergency room. So certain types of calls will be eligible for us to offer to transfer or connect the 911 caller to basically telehealth. So we have connection to an ER doctor who can talk to them over the phone or we'll send them a video link and chat with them by video. and either they can arrange over-the-counter medication or something from Walgreens and have it delivered to their home, basically through Uber, or they can arrange alternate transportation through a medical version of Uber and Lyft to either an urgent care or maybe to the ER, but they might not need to go by ambulance. does two things, immediately connects that caller with a medical professional and it also frees up that ambulance that might need to be available for a higher priority medical call. So we started with a very small protocol list and we're actively looking at expanding that. So it's been pretty successful. We're also looking at different mental health resources. So behavioral health, mental health, somebody might call 911 and there's some kind of crisis, Is there another resource that we can offer to connect them to besides police, fire, EMS alone that they might be able to help either while EMS or PD is en route or as an alternative altogether? So we're very excited about those things. And then budget. So when we're looking at FY27 budget, One of the things I want to point out, and this chart might be a little confusing, but as a reminder, in FY26, so we suffer from staffing shortages. It's pretty much the same nationwide, especially in our industry, but we're actively working to improve that. Over the years, over the years, With unexpended personnel, we've built up the comm center fund balance. So last year, the county auditor wanted to take a swipe at trying to draw down our fund balance. So we applied a $1.5 million credit to last year's budget. This year, we're doing it by half. So it looks like we've increased the budget by $750,000, but it's just the credit was cut in half. So on the top, it shows what our operational budget is. then the vacancy rate or the adjustment for fund balance, and then the assessment, how it applies to that new total. So what we projected as our budget was 12.9. What we're splitting amongst the agencies in the county is 11.8. I know that's clear as mud. And then we apply that usage percentage. So we take 50% of the budget that the county is going to pay, and then the remainder of the 50% is spread across the county for SO and rural agencies and state agencies, and then the remainder with the other cities. Questions?

Any questions from the council? Council Member Bess?

Ma'am, when I attended the Citizens Police Academy, they brought us out there and we did a tour. I was very impressed. What I remember is the dispatchers at this call center, they are literally the front line. If somebody's breaking into our house, if an accident occurs in front of us when we call 911, it's these operators, and they're super professional. The center is really intense, but people's lives depend on this operation. So thank you very much for all that you all do.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Council Member McKimble.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good to see you again.

You too.

So our usage share is 18.8%.

Your usage share is actually 36% your usage, and then the county pays 50%, so we split that usage fee in half. So your budget assessment is the 17.

And that went up 11%.

About 10 or 11%.

So I guess, did everyone else's percentage rise also as did Colleen's? Did the sheriff's office and Nolanville and Heights, did everybody else's, did they get the same increase as we did?

Yes. So the way... And I apologize. I should have had a three-year budget assessment prepared for the slides, but I was limited.

You can get it back. You can get it to us later.

I can send you some more detailed information, but the way the formula is applied is applied across the board. Colleen actually saw a dip in usage from the previous year. But that might not be the same for all of the other agencies. It just depends. Like in 2024, we had some pretty significant weather events that we didn't see in 25. So we did see an overall decrease. And there might be some operational changes that some departments might do that might impact their individual usage.

And as a follow-up, so as the police department now has the real-time crime center and they're probably self-dispatching some things, so if we use less, will our assessment go down?

So the way the RTCC works, there might be some actions that they're doing offline. That's my language. But if it's in the CAD system, if RTCC creates an event because maybe they got a call at the PD and they want us to dispatch or they want a unit to respond, it's still built in the CAD system that is maintained at the comm center. So that's where we're pulling those counts from. So it's usage of the system as a whole.

Okay. And with the new fire station, did that increase calls, or is it just the same amount of calls, it's just they're just that dispatcher different?

If anything, it affects their response time.

Response time. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Sure.

Council Member Brown.

I thought Councilman Kimball was about to ask the question I had. Our percent usage, if I'm reading correctly and if I remember correctly from prior years, is only based on law enforcement events, not fire? Correct. Okay. Can you explain why it's based solely on law enforcement and not including fire and EMS?

So there's a couple things. So in previous years, we did look at all events, and it did include police, fire, and EMS. When we create, so part of the argument, or the discussion was, not argument, the discussion was when we have a traffic accident in the city limits of Killeen, for dispatching purposes, for record keeping, for case numbers, all of that, we create three separate events. So one for police, one for fire, one for EMS. Because they might not all respond to every traffic accident or every, you know, fire and EMS isn't going to respond to a burglary. So we treat them as separate agencies. So when we're looking at how we're doing this formula, was it accurate to look at all events or just law enforcement? And it could be the same argument if we looked at just fire. It's just a way to create a representation of usage or workload, not necessarily always going to be a one-for-one.

And then because, correct me if I'm wrong, around the county we have some cities and towns that have a police department, but they don't have their own fire department. And if I'm interpreting correctly, this actually evens out and makes that a more balanced ratio based on who's using it for one set of data. Yes. Yes, that's true too. Thank you.

Yeah.

Council Member Williams.

How you doing? Hi, good. I'm so thankful for you guys there. I really appreciate the wonderful job that you all are doing. Thank you. My question is, for the 911, certain types of call that you say that will be transferred, and you said that the ER doctor will be on call at the same time on the Uber or the pharmacy. Could you give me an example of what kind of calls, what would the call be like that would be transferred that would need a doctor or wouldn't need a doctor? Sure.

It's not to say that they would need a doctor. They just might not need to see one by ambulance at the ER. So one example was we had an 18-month-old two-year-old that was crying and maybe was running a fever, and it was late at night, and the mother wasn't sure if she should go to the hospital, what should she do, does she need an ambulance, and we were able to offer to connect them to a doctor without her having to leave the house, without having to put that baby in an ambulance, without having to sit at the ER. That might have been hours. Because they're going to triage you once you get to the ER and prioritize who's being seen first there too. So it's the protocols that we're looking at are kind of general sickness and abdominal pains, something like that. But it's very low acuity. You know, there's no priority symptoms, no breathing issues, that kind of thing.

And for the mental health part of it, how long would it take for the person to call as far as for having an issue with the mental health? How long will it be before there will be any dispatch before you guys can send out a mental health person out to the home or wherever they're located before you would know that this is a mental health issue?

So that's one of the things. We haven't rolled anything out yet because we're still trying to find the best solution for that. And I think it will still be a very small percentage of those calls. And it wouldn't be that we would disconnect or tell them that we're going to call somebody back. We want to make sure that we can connect somebody directly, similar to what we're doing with the ER for the medical calls, that we can direct somebody or connect somebody immediately directly before we even disconnect. We don't want to kind of abandon that caller and not know for sure if they're being connected. So we're working with a couple of different resources, and they're looking at staffing, and they're looking at call volume and their availability, if we could transfer them Could they be able to answer the phone every time? Do they have the staffing and availability to do that? And if not, what would that kind of back and forth be? And still looking at what are those kind of triage or those qualifications that we want to look for before we even look at that call as an opportunity to handle it that way. Did that answer your question? Yes, it did.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Council Member Kimball.

I'm sorry. I should ask this one not to have my chance. I think we're still paying for KISD PD calls. What percentage of that of our total calls are, and if you don't have it with you.

I don't, but I will send that to you.

Yeah, because I think that number has risen substantially over the last two, if not three years.

I know it jumped. I don't know if that was 21 when we had that conversation. And then they did kind of come back down, but I'll send that to you.

I know during the summertime, as they rotate through their security checks, they generate a lot of calls. And I don't know what our cost sharing or if we need to renegotiate our agreement with KIS. Sure. They changed their operations. So thank you.

I'll get that to you.

Anyone else? Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate your help. your presentation.

Next is Bell County Public Health District, Mr. Robert Kirkpatrick.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Councilman, Councilman. Thank you for your time today. I'm here representing the Bell County Public Health District requesting a little bit more money than last year. That's partially in cost because of An increase of one person for a retail food section. That's to accommodate the new FDA requirements for food inspections. It's a little bit more labor intensive. Therefore, we need more people to do the inspections of restaurants, trying to ensure we keep everybody healthy to go to the regular job instead of the hospital. Additionally, this is part of our member contribution, our cooperative agreement that we have with the city. It was established in 1994. It pays for 100% of the salaries for retail food and on-site sewer facility and 25% of the benefits. Next slide. Oh, I've got it, okay. Justification. One of the things with the retail food section, we do 683 retail food permits facilities within the city of Kalina, and the OSSF division monitors 1,059 aerobic systems, and we've approved 57 new aerobic systems in the FY25 year. Already talked about that, pending your questions. Any questions? And I apologize. This is my first time in front of you all.

No, you're good. You can continue.

Any questions?

Any questions? Council? Council Member Brown.

Thank you. Mr. Kirkpatrick, what is it that you do with the septic systems?

The septic systems are on-site sewer facility program. They do design reviews. They do inspections. And until we do the authorization to construct after a review, Nobody can construct an aerobic system as long as they're going through the proper process. Once that is completed, after the installer is installed, we do an inspection of the installation to ensure that it is in accordance with the design, and then we issue an authorization. I'm getting the wrong term. Sorry.

That's okay.

Authorization to operate terms wrong, but it's to actually use the system. Therefore the household becomes inhabitable with the operating septic system.

So it's required to get a certificate of occupation.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Ma'am, sorry.

It's not the worst I've been called. There are 57 new aerobic systems, and you said in FY25 or 26?

I'm sorry, 26, my mistake.

Okay. Were they all within the city limits of Coene?

Within the ETJ and the city limits, yes, ma'am.

Okay. Approximately, if you know offhand, how many of the 1,059 are inside the city limits of Killeen that your department actually deals with?

I can get that answer for you.

I would appreciate that. Do you have a ballpark on percentage-wise?

No, ma'am, I don't. I didn't think to ask that question before coming.

That's okay. If you all could just send that to us, that would be great. And then I guess for staff or for you, it's common for a municipality to pay for these inspections in technically what's county area if it's in our ETJ?

Can you repeat the question, please?

Sure. So if it's in our ETJ, it's not actually within the city limits. We don't receive any funding for it. We don't collect taxes, and we don't get the sewer fees for it. Is it common for municipalities to pay the health department to monitor stuff that goes on in the county area?

No, ma'am, it's not. And I will double check on that $1,059 to ensure that it's either in the city limits or outside the city limits.

Okay. That's all I want to make sure. We're paying for what we actually have within the city.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. Any more questions?

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate your time.

Next is Hill County Transit District, the HOP, Mr. Darrell Bertner and Tony Austin.

Good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon. I want to congratulate. I see new faces up here, so congratulations on your new office, and thanks for having us here this afternoon. This presentation, it really deals with requests for funds, obviously, but it's really intended to kind of go over some of our key performance indicators. But we have a lot of information, and this presentation is going to be like a rock skipping across the water. So we're just going to hit some high points there. But I did also want to mention that Later, this probably early summer, we're intending to have an additional workshop specifically for new members, kind of do a transit 101 type of class, kind of explain in detail what our funding is, federal funding, state funding, local funding, how it all works, how the formulas work, and also our operations. But having said that... Let me move through this. This is just a quick map of the service area, and you can see the lower left in the hashed purple. That is the actual expanded area that we expanded for 2026 this year, just FYI on that. These are some of those KPIs that I talked about. Total completed rides, these are all 25 numbers, 2025, fiscal year 25. Completed rides was 213,116 rides there. It's roughly double what it was, a little more than double what it was in 24. And for 26, it is trending to be even higher in 26 as well. Customer satisfaction is rated at 95%. Average request per writer, 12.14. So that's per year. So of all the writers, they averaged about 12 for the year. Rides booked on the mobile app that we have on the cell phone was 68%. All the balance of the other appointments, reservations that were made, were done the old-fashioned way through our telephone to our customer service department. So we do still have that. So that's the breakout, 68% of them went through the app. Average travel durations was almost 16 minutes. Again, that's an average, and then average travel distance was just under five miles for each of those rides. Interestingly, we also tracked some behaviors and some impacts that take place. 32% of the riders use the hop on a daily basis. I think that's an important number to know. And then 68% of the riders use it at least once a week. So pretty consistent usage with the riders. 56% of the riders are age 18 to 44. and then 44% of them are 45 or above. Just a quick breakdown there. Interestingly, on the right-hand side of the slide are the top destinations, and you can read those, but Lowe's Boulevard, Walmart, Fort Hood Street Plaza, CTC, et cetera. Those are our top six destinations in Killeen. Key takeaways, you can read those, but on the right-hand side, it's just an interesting set of purposes or reasons that people ride. 28% of them tell us that they're riding just to run errands or to do shopping. 26% were related to medical appointments. 25% are related to work or employment, commuting to work. 12% were recreation or social, and 9% was education, and I believe that totals to 100. Real quick, the request that we are making for 2027 is $650,000 to cover Colleen's portion of the services that we provide in the city limits of Colleen. That is the same amount as what we had requested in 24, 25, and 26. So we're sticking with that in 27. I did want to point out just a quick note at the bottom. I wanted to explain that. We do anticipate for 28. I just want to give you as much advance heads up as possible. We do expect that number to be higher in fiscal year 2028. And that's primarily because FTA, the Federal Transit Administration, has already notified us that their funding donation is going to go down. So we're expecting it to the others, the local city contributions, which are used for grant matches to go up some. I can't tell you how much it's going to be. All we know is the federal government told us they're probably going to lower it as much as 20%. So we'll have to see how the numbers come out when we actually get that information. And I wanted to introduce Tony. Tony Austin is our public engagement director, and I just want to let you all know. I'm going to be retiring at the end of July, and Tony's going to be the main guy speaking to you going forward a little bit here. So I've loved working with the City of Killeen and all of you that I've worked with and talked to before. Thank you. Questions?

Council Member Bass.

I live over, first of all, congratulations on your retirement.

I've got some serious fly fishing to do.

Good. I live over by Lions Club Park. I spend a lot of time over there. And I noticed that hop is absolutely crucial for our senior citizens that go to the senior center. Would you agree with that? Yes, absolutely. A very important demographic that's served by HOP. And then I also noticed that CTC is the third top destination, so I suppose you're servicing the students who go there.

That's correct.

Absolutely crucial demographic. Thank you.

Thanks. You know, we have gone to a microtransit system two years ago, and it's almost tripled in ridership since we started that. We still have the connector route that goes on the interstate between Copper's Cove and Temple, and you can If you're going between cities, you can take that. But the microtransit system, it operates more like a Uber, if you will, only it's a shared ride Uber type of system, has done wonders. And we were worried about the seniors specifically about using the app and would they use the system, et cetera. They've really adapted very, very well. That's great. Thank you. Other questions?

Council Member Brown.

Good evening. Congratulations again. Thank you. What is Killeen's total percentage of ridership across the metropolitan area? Urbanized area, let's put it that way.

The urban division serves Temple, Belton, Harker Heights, Killeen, and Copper's Cove. Obviously, Killeen is the largest city. Temple, followed by Temple, and it pretty much follows the funding amounts because all the funding amounts are based on ridership and hours of service, how many vehicles are running, how many hours are the drivers driving, et cetera. And so I don't have the whole breakdown between all five cities, but Temple's, how much was Temple's contribution? 300? 308. 308, almost 309,000. And yours is 650. So that gives you the ballpark. The others are incidental, to tell you the truth.

So because I seem to remember last year when you came in with the presentation, The numbers were pretty much the same for Killeen and Temple as they are in this request. However, the amount of ridership was also almost the same between the two cities. Killeen is paying a higher cost per trip than our surrounding cities. And we still have yet to get a clear explanation as to why we pay more per trip than the other cities do.

It's really a function of the hours, the number of vehicles. You have more vehicles, therefore you have more drivers that are driving more hours. And you have a larger geographic area. It's more linear than what Temple is. And it literally just follows the dynamics of the two cities in that regard, physical attribute.

I'm going to try to save everybody a little bit of time and make this request. Could you send us the presentations for each of the other cities that you went to so we can see their numbers?

Sure. Absolutely. There's no secrets there.

Let's save us all some time on that one today. And then I follow your Facebook page.

Okay.

Yesterday you implemented a new process. Where and when someone requests a ride, you give them a location that might be nearby along with walking directions for them to get there. Is that correct?

That is correct. So what we have done is basically if you take out like the Lowe's Walmart area, you got all those stores are in the Lowe's Walmart area. Instead of having that bus go to each one of those stops, we now have consolidated, so that way we just have the clients having to walk a distance, so therefore the bus is not, if we have a bus dropping off somebody two stores down, it would save that time if we just consolidate that area.

So what's the point of it being on demand to pick you from place doorstop to doorstop?

Again, it goes back to the efficiency. If I have one bus that's just picking up from one store down and another bus that's picking up two stores down, why not merge them together and put them on the same direction?

And we'll talk about it a little bit more offline, but if we're being told we're paying for the convenience to the citizen, they doubled the fare for the citizen because now it's more convenient. We now want them to carry their stuff to a different store to meet so it's more convenient for the hop that we're already paying more money to. So I have a bit of an issue with that, especially if we have people who are a little bit mobility impaired. Right. So how far, what's the length of the distance that you would say, okay, this is the maximum we're going to ask somebody to walk in order to make it more convenient for our driver?

Well, we're not asking them to walk. I mean, we're only talking about a short distance inside a shopping strip or et cetera. We're not asking them to walk miles or a continuation down the streets. We already do this in a lot of apartment complexes because apartment complexes are very, very complex. that we can't figure out where everybody's living at, so we've got bus driving around trying to find that complex. So therefore, we put a pin there to say everybody meets here, and if everybody knows to meet here, then therefore it's a whole lot easier for the transport. Now, those with special needs can put a request into us to let us know they have special needs that we can address those in their profiles to make a special request outside of the normal.

What percentage of your rides are on time? Because I noticed that we don't have that stat anymore.

Take that again.

What percentage of the rides are on time based on when they're ordered?

Oh, we just, we couldn't fit them all in. It was, we're trying to fit this into a five minute presentation. It's roughly, I think it was 80, 90% are on time.

Could we get that information also please?

And then we'll send you a,

total array of key performance indicators you can read until you fall asleep doing it so yeah councilman Brown every quarter I should be sending out a profile or stat sheets to you so you can actually see them every quarter for us that's something new that we're doing this year right

That would be very appreciated. And then my final thing, Pro Tem Gonzalez and myself had a town hall at the Senior Center a couple weeks ago, or last week. One of their requests was to see if we can get a fixed route. We can maybe pick them up from the center, bring them to the council meeting for a few hours, and then take them back to at least over to the Senior Center. They want to be involved. They want to be able to be here. But currently, the way everything is scheduled, they can't necessarily make it here. And then there's also the question about are we still going to have or can we return to the silver route?

I'm going to take the first one.

So establishing a fixed route inside our system, the problem is it defeats the microtransit concept. And it's very costly. It's extremely costly to run a fixed route bus. A fixed route bus cost itself is almost three times the cost of a paratransit bus or a Ford Transit that we can operate. So if we add a fixed route, I mean, it is possible, but the problem is it will increase the funding amount that's going to be requested because it's got a whole different series of funding from us.

So what happens if all my seniors at the center all put in a 3 o'clock destination arrival time to City Hall from the Senior Center?

We do provide... special trips in some cases uh... and we we've done that uh... for senior exposed running people from lines park over to the expo center uh... we do we typically do that once or twice a year we send some big larger buses we still have some of the larger buses and we will transport people on special runs but we have to be very careful about what we're doing there can quickly be considered a charter which is illegal for us to do If it's directly at the request of a city council member, you guys being one of our stakeholders, and you specifically request that of us, we can provide a trip such as that. We just have to be careful how often we do it.

Councilman Bramman, in exactly what you're saying in this scenario, if everybody's going from the same place to the same place, in the microtransit zone, if they're booked all at the same time, they're going to fill that bus up. So it just may mean that we may have to run one or two buses over there. But, yes, there may be some that are going to get left out or may have to wait until that bus, another bus comes up to pick them up.

And another thing to keep in mind with that, a fixed route bus is about $600,000 per copy. as opposed to the microtransit vehicles that we drive are $80,000 to $90,000, and we can buy six of them for what we could pay for a large fixed-route bus. So that's why we've backed away from the fixed routes, and we utilize the curb-to-curb service with the microtransit. It's more efficient if there's a large number of people. Tony's correct. The software will send more than one microtransit vehicle to pick them all up.

I'll probably follow up with email questions after I get all the reports.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions?

Council member Williams.

Yes. My question is, do you all have any discounts or rebates or anything like that? I heard you mentioned about, uh, if the bus get full and I know there are some people who, uh, don't have transportation, like for the take the, uh, to go to the grocery stores or whatever, and they're needing, transportation from one area to another area. What would they as far as need as far as to call you guys and to do to get those rebates or to get that type of

Yeah, for example, our typical service within the city of Killeen is $2 per ride. If they are a senior or if they're handicapped in some way, ADA qualified, a student, veterans, Medicare.

Children under 8, I think, or 12. Those are all 50% discount, so they're $1.

Yeah, $1. So those people who transfer in their bags or their groceries from place to place, is there enough room? Let's say that we have some that they have to have about five or eight, seven, eight bags that they have to bring on the bus. Do there be an issue with that as well?

Yes, we do have a bag limitation for them on the bus just because they have to occupy a safe zone. and also the fact that there's no way for us to be able to secure it in case something happens inside that bus where that grocery is becoming a projectile in case of something happening. So each passenger gets on the bus, they have to be able to carry their bags on the bus, and that's their limitation.

Thank you. Others?

Thank you so much. We appreciate what y'all do. I have the liberty to be on that board and to serve on that board. And y'all have made a 180-degree turn with Colleen as it concerns the transportation. Some people were not here when we did not have microtransit. And it's night and day.

Yeah.

Totally. So thank you for what you do. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you.

Next is Colleen Rodeo, Mr. Brett Gordon.

Good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, Honorable Mayor, esteemed council members. First, let me thank you for allowing me to speak today. The brief that you're going to see or that you have in front of you was presented to the council prior to our 2026 Rodeo. So I'm going to actually brief the 2026 Rodeo. So with that, we'll get started. Rodeo Killeen is one of the city's longest running tourism events and visitor engagement. It's been part of our community for 79 years and what began as a local small town rodeo has now grown into a nationally recognized event that generates economic activity and brings positive attention to our city. So the 2026 rodeo was the best ever in recent history. It delivered record-setting attendance and visitor engagement. Over a three-day event, we generated over 18,000 visits to the arena and attracted guests from over 40 cities and four different countries. This represented a 35% increase over our 2025 numbers, which was pretty significant as well. These numbers demonstrate not only growing attendance, but also the continued success of Rodeo Killeen in attracting visitors, generating economic activity, and providing a high quality experience that keeps people coming back year after year. In 2025, our event earned national recognition, including the WPRA Medium Rodeo of the Year and the Justin Best Footing Award. These honors reflect the quality of the event and the dedication of our volunteers, our sponsors, the City of Killeen, and our community partners. We're also named for this year. We served as the only Texas qualifier for all the cowgirl athletes to go on to compete at Cheyenne Frontier Days this summer, which is the largest and most famous rodeo in the world, largest outdoor rodeo in the world. Rodeo Clean is becoming increasingly recognized with the professional rodeo industry as a must-attend event. We had 611 contestants from 20 states and four countries. That's just a testament to where we brought this rodeo. Simply put, Rodeo Clean is more than a rodeo. It is a tourism asset, an economic driver, and a nationally recognized ambassador for the city. Am I doing this? One of the primary purposes of the hotel occupancy tax funding is to attract visitors who stay in our hotels, dine in our restaurants, and spend money in our local businesses. Rodeo Clean does exactly that. Based on our visitor analysis, the rodeo generated approximately $553,000 in day visitor spending and $1.2 million in overnight visitor spending over the three-day period. This resulted in estimated economic impact of 1.8 million for the area. We tracked hotel room occupancy as 320 for four rooms. The alcohol sales alone within the arena was over 36,000, and that, I think, is probably one of the highest sales we had. The impact extends well. well beyond the rodeo grounds. It benefits local hotels, restaurants, retail stores, especially fuel stations with all those trucks and trailers coming in, as well as supporting the vendors and concessionaires that come and participate at the rodeo. Simply put, the Rodeo Killeen delivers the type of visitor-driven economic activity that the hotel occupancy tax funding was designed to support. while providing a strong return investment on the city of Killeen and its residents. Rodeo Killeen does more than bring visitors to our community. It also promotes Killeen to audiences across Texas and throughout the nation. Through our coverage on the Cowboy Channel, regional television stations, radio advertising, digital marketing, social media, we got the word out and highlighted the Killeen Civic and Conference Center complex. This level of exposure helps position clean as a destination of tourism and increases awareness of our events and facilities. Sorry, let me flip. As we look toward FY 2027, we respectfully request consideration sponsorship in the amount of $50,000. This investment helps Rodeo Killeen continue attracting our visitors, support local businesses, and promoting the city of Killeen across Texas and beyond. Funding directly supports regional tourism marketing, media advertising, event operations, visitor recruitment, and continued promotion of Killeen as a destination community. The return on investment is clear. From a single weekend event, Rodeo Clean generated an estimated $1.8 million. So a $50,000 investment is really a cheap bargain for $1.8 million. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Mayor Pro Tem Gonzalez.

Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. You know, there's some things that you mentioned that I was going to highlight, so thank you again for sharing this information because, you know, the significant amount of tourism and stability that you've brought to this area is unprecedented. We hope that it continues on and that it also helps other businesses around be able to either develop or to grow and to expand. Some things you did not touch on, though, were the fact that it's a unifying event, a community unifying event. The national prestige alone that this event has provided to us, we have been considered, I've heard it said on a couple of networks that we are a premier destination for Western sports. That's pretty significant for the city of Killeen to be a premier destination for Western sports. This is in line with what I know a lot of us have been championing for putting Killeen on the map, getting a different light presented for us as far as being a key player in different industries. And this is one of them. So thank you for everything that you all have done. But also the give back. I didn't hear you mention that, but there is a significant give back to the community as well as part of this also people that might not have an opportunity to attend an event to get exposure to this type of activity. You all do a lot for the community as well, so I hope that people inquire and understand how significant that is, especially for the youth here in Colleen. Thank you.

If I could just touch on a couple of things you mentioned. So earlier and during the prayer, they mentioned, she mentioned unifying, you know, during the prayer. If you look at that event we had at the demographics of that rodeo, there was no trouble at that rodeo. Everyone had a great time. Everyone. To give back to the community. So $6,000. pounds of canned goods we donated to the Food Care Center. We issued two scholarships to two outstanding youths as part of this year. Thank you.

Council Member Bess.

Some events are just pure joy. And when I was at the rodeo this year, I saw nothing but smiles on everyone's faces. I saw families, saw the kids playing. And as you said, it's a safe place for families to go. And I'd like to thank our law enforcement and our firefighters who were out there in force making it a safe environment for us. And I also want to especially thank you for inviting our Fort Hood soldiers and their families out. I know they had a fantastic time. Thank you. Thank you.

Council Member Brown.

Mr. Gordon, what is the Special Hearts Rodeo?

So the Special Hearts Rodeo is something we created three years ago. We wanted to add an inclusive event for people with special needs, not just children. So they come out on Saturday morning from 10 to 12, and we try to give them rodeo-like hands-on experiences. We had horses out there that they could... I had my miniature horses out there that they could pet. We also had real horses that they could ride, special trained physical therapy type horses that were trained to handle people with multiple types of disabilities. They could ride those. They met with the rodeo clown. They learned how to rope. We served food. Local businesses provided some food. And then there was a lot of game type things that they could do. So again, that was about, I think this was our third year doing that. Had about 100 attendees plus their families come through.

So it's definitely grown since last year's around 88 to 90.

Yes, ma'am.

I'd love an invitation to that next year.

Okay.

But I think this goes to, so the city of Killeen has talked a lot about adding a lot more inclusive programming into what we offer. This is an example of how one of our community partners, we work with them, help them get the word out. You could probably grow that even more if we're assisting you and letting people know that there is an inclusive program that people can do. if they're interested in that sort of thing.

Yes, I did about like five interviews through TV and radio and everyone. I really tried to hammer down on the special events or special. Heart's rodeo.

Perfect. How much would you say that you did not receive in revenue because of the food you collected? And I want to make this clear to everybody. Can you explain where that food comes from and how that affects your bottom line?

So in lieu of purchasing a ticket for $15 in advance, which we're really one of the cheapest rodeos, we're trying to keep it open to everyone by keeping that price down. You bring six canned goods and you get a free ticket. So we start working with one of our partners, Nile Maxwell. They can go there and get advance tickets and drop off canned goods there, or they can bring the canned goods to the gate. So four truckloads filled, overflowing is what we collected. Um, I did not count the cans. I weighed them.

I don't blame you. Um, and I don't feel like doing the mental math to figure it out right now, but suffice it to say that's a lot of $15 tickets.

Yes, ma'am, it is, as well as the active duty military. And all their families get in free on military appreciation night. And then Dominion Energy sponsors all veterans free any night. And then we have our city employee night, as well as our educator night. So we are giving away a lot of seats just to honor those three pillars of our community here. and make it affordable to everyone.

Now, Thursday night, I'm glad it was not city employee night because I think our fire chief or our fire marshal might have had to shut us down. Our stands were a little over capacity. That's the first time that's ever happened. And I'm very excited about that to the point where I'm about to ask this next question. How many more people can we bring into the city of Killeen for the rodeo if we had more stands and more seating capacity? Do you think we could increase the turnout at that point?

So one thing we're looking at is increasing that capacity. We actually want to get a real study that we're going to look to kind of get funded and then through Rodeo Killeen and look at different options. There's that one northeast corner that we could put more stands there over there by where the flag, where the steers and calves come running out. We're looking at making what can we do to make like a special party platform, more of a VIP experience for people to and that would create more room. Most rodeos have something like that. So we're looking at some different ideas to increase that.

I know the city is also trying to figure out how we can make it more ADA accessible into the stands and accommodate more of that. And the last thing I will say that I would appreciate the city looking into as far as other improvements we can make over there is more bathroom space.

That is one of the number one things on our list that we want to talk and see where we can go with that, especially that current bathroom on the north end. We believe with minimal, not minimal, we believe we could expand that capacity there without great cost.

At this point, after being there, I'm almost willing to pay not great cost but good cost for it. On that note, we're talking about the expanding and all the other things to do over there. Because this does bring in so much tourism, you can tell us exactly how many hotel nights, exactly how much. I mean, you can give us a range of the number of cities people are coming in from, how many people are staying, how much they're spending. We know what that impact is. I would be willing to invest, I don't know, $80,000 to go into repair or upgrades over at the rodeo grounds. which we can use hot taxes, hot funds for that also. It doesn't have to be just advertising. But I would be more willing to take $80,000 and assist with some of those upgrades because that's an investment we can directly see that ROI on. Not that one is any more worthy than the other, but one is in the city of Killeen, one brings that tourism here, and one of them, we can see that benefit right away. So I would take that $80,000 and put it into rodeo grounds rather than a museum outside of Killeen. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? I want to thank you. I believe all of us, council, those that went out, we enjoyed all three days. Anyone else? Okay. Council Member Williams.

I just want to thank you for giving Colleen that exposure. I'm a girl from the deep south of Mississippi, and so we know what it means to have a rodeo. And to see the excitement here, and every night, I mean, it was just packed. every night and then to have the veterans night was awesome. As you said, the free getting in for free and all the funnel cakes and all the different kinds of foods and stuff that you guys had. I just thought it was just so awesome. And I just wanted to say that I appreciate you guys for having it. It took me back home and brought back so many memories and I truly appreciate that. It was awesome. Thank you for that.

Well, thank you. Just Monday, next Monday, starts our first meeting for planning 2027. Great. And we have a lot of after-action comments to address. Some of them we spoke in here and just continue to try to make it better every year. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next is Clean Economic Development Corporation, Mr. Tyler Robert.

Good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members. Good to see you. Appreciate y'all giving me the opportunity to present the Economic Development Corporation our budget request for 26-27. So really kind of wanted to talk about the EDC's impact over the past couple of years. So we kind of measure kind of some of the deliverables the corporation has been able to provide to the community. Some of these projects you'll kind of see, they date back five plus years, but the amount of work that we still continue to operate on some of these, they never really stop, right? It's a lot of helping our businesses right now in the business park. A lot of this is even from just the standpoint of their expansion. to working with the city to facilitate some of their new initiatives and projects. So we're really happy to kind of see how this has progressed the last couple of years. So we really wanted to highlight some of the few key ones that we've discussed. The USAM project, a great new opportunity. They're already looking to expand. We're working with them on that capacity. Dongjin, the same thing. We're actively working for a foreign trade zone designation for that property. And so we're happy or hopeful that that's going to be announced here the next month or so. MTC Pure Chemicals, a company that's been here for quite a while, past couple years, but they actually just finished up their phase two development just back in February. And they'll be actually looking forward to expansion of their new services with the rail line system. So that'll be increased in their development as well as the jobs that they're going to be creating. So we really kind of, again, we just wanted to highlight some of the investment and the return on that from the city's standpoint. I think it was about last time, this time last year, part of our budget request, we really started talking about the marketing initiative that the EDC wanted to partake in. And it was part of that desire to make sure that we were telling our story before anybody else could at the end of the day. So, we've really ramped up over this past fiscal year in terms of what the EDC, the city at large, and the community is. So we've partnered, obviously, with our local news stations in KDH and our TV stations, as well as you can see here, the Austin Business Journal. We've worked with them to really kind of highlight ourselves within the Central Texas market as a whole. Site Selection Magazine is one of the number one site selection facilitating media coverage opportunities throughout the entire country. So we worked with them within our Texas issue right here, just highlighting the business part and the initiatives that the EDC is trying to hold in. One of the big ones we actually launched here within the past few months was our website, really highlighting again the new marketing approach that we've been taking, as well as, if you might have seen at the FCT summit, was our new promotional video for the community itself, about three and a half minute long video. But we kind of premiered that at that summit. The engagement process was also another big initiative that we've continued to look for, new opportunities to kind of push the Colleen Economic Development Corporation out to the front of the public, kind of talking about what we're doing, actually engaging with the public in a lot of different opportunities. Obviously, the economic luncheon was the first in series last year, so we're looking to provide that again this summer. The Forging Central Texas Industry and Growth Summit, I think that was a great success for us in a standpoint. of really kind of bringing new industry and new life kind of into the community, showing them what Colleen was doing, and also kind of being able to have a lot of those high-level conversations that are happening throughout the state right here in the city. So we're really kind of happy about that and really kind of where that's going to be progressing here next year and kind of going forward. So I really also wanted to highlight where we stand within our land development and future planning within the EDC. As we can kind of show here, the EDC's facilities, the properties that we actually own in the park, right now we stand at 94% rented out in line with our new partnership with Texas A&M Central Texas. So we're really happy about their workforce pipeline that they've developed out for our military personnel and the incubator system that they're going to be facilitating out of one of the EDC's buildings within the business park. We've talked about it before, the business park itself in terms of opportunities is quickly going down. Right now we have less than 40 acres of contiguous land. So we're always actively looking at new opportunities to bring in new partners, to look at other opportunities that we can kind of develop out and sell as opportunities for businesses looking to build out here in Killeen. Santa Fe Industrial Park is a big one that we've been looking at partnering with a private landowner. to increase the footprint for industrial projects. And then again, the Wolf Tech Life Science Park is a big part of our initiatives to continue to diversify the economy, providing new job opportunities for our residents. And so into the budget request itself, we're looking at different types of facilities, and we wanted to make sure that we were spreading around city funding into a number of initiatives that could provide the highest return on investment to the city itself. Our contracts and incentives really kind of delve into exactly what the contracts that we facilitate through the city, such as HOTDUSK, ASDA, are incentives that we have with some of our businesses for the fiscal year, professional fees, including accounting, engineering surveys. Land improvement and maintenance that touches our business park and making sure that that business park continues to operate at a high level and functionality. Our economic development services cover staff time and marketing initiatives, the Wolf Tech and Life Science Park. That's a key initiative in terms of expanding out the next phase of construction for the tech stock shoulders that we would look to install for the park. And again, property insurance. So really kind of that brings our total budget request to the city for this fiscal year, $1.5 million. This time, if there's any questions.

Council Member Brown.

Good afternoon, Mr. Robert. How are you?

Doing well. How are you?

Good, thanks. Who is your property insurance coverage with?

So we have a number of property assurance companies. We work with BKCW to provide us different wholesale opportunities. So that gets changed out each year. And so I would have to get back and give you the actual detail, but it changes for each property.

Is it possible for TMRL to be able to cover because you are a quasi-government agency or?

Absolutely. And if it's something that the city would potentially look at allowing us to use TMRL, that might actually be a large savings for the corporation.

And I apologize. It should be just TML. We're going to forget the retirement part of it for now. I think that might help us with that cost. If we can save costs anywhere, we can put more into incentives. Where are we at with SEO progress and for the public SEO search engine optimization? So when people search for different things, it comes back and if you say in Central Texas, clean and clean opportunities are gonna pop up at the top of, let's say, Google.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so part of our initiative, the new website build out actually creates, uh, obviously systems within Google analytics so that we can track a lot of that information. Uh, we share that with our board members, uh, as part of our marketing report, um, that as well as part of our new initiatives that were detailed into marketing performance agreements with some of the, uh, the magazines and other, uh, contractors that we signed, uh, to facilitate some of that information. So we can definitely provide more information on exactly what those look like.

I would appreciate it and to see what the metrics are for how it's improving. For full disclosure, you and I have met previous to tonight during my onboarding to go over some of the different things KEDC has going on, and I know that some of them are very exciting. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions I asked while we were there. Sure. Where are we at with the grocery store from North Killeen?

There's a long answer and a short answer. For time, kind of the short answer is that you'll actually see within the economic development services line item, the $250,000. Part of that initiative is actually for us to be able to hire out a director or manager of business recruitment. So that would actually fall in line with that new potential position.

Let's go with the long story and tell me what you told me before.

So that really kind of coincides with the fact that the economic development corporations, our standpoint about the year that I've been here, pertain to kind of the direction that we've received from the board of directors, city staff, has been that we would really kind of focus more on the primary job workforce creating entities. And so that's where we would heavily put our marketing and business recruitment efforts.

I appreciate you being political and tactful about this. I'm not going to be. I'm going to cut to the chase. You had told me that you hadn't been trying to recruit one because you were told that's not the job of the Economic Development Corporation. Is that correct? That's what you told me when we met?

It was the direction we were given was to go and recruit industrial companies.

And that you needed to stay in your lane and not worry about that. This was the conversation you and I had, and I told you I was going to bring this up tonight. So just so everybody knows, I'm not attacking, I'm not catching off guard. This was something we had already told. And Mr. Cagle told you, had informed me Mr. Cagle told you to stay in your lane and that you were going to work on that and not work on getting a grocery store at this time.

We were directed to go after industrial projects.

And the reason I'm confused by that is because I see that you have, you've been assisting Killeen Urgent Care and they're not industrial.

Yes. So those are part of the initiatives that again have been part of the city requests to come to us similar to the Southern Roots initiative. The EDC doesn't particularly provide direct benefits to downtown revitalization, for instance. But under request from city staff, city council, we can definitely operate in those spaces to assist some of those businesses and initiatives.

Where I'm getting at, I don't recall the city council ever voting to bring an urgent care center or three of them to the city. What I do recall is the city council voting, making a motion of direction for EDC to have a top priority to bring in a grocery store in order to continue getting funding. And I understand that was before your time. I understand you're being told something different. I guess the question that is, why would staff, and if it was a particular staff person, it would be helpful to counsel to know who that was so that we know exactly who to address the questions to. But why would staff come back and then turn around and tell the director of the EDC something opposite of what the citizens had said?

I don't know if I can comment to that right now at this time.

So you're not willing today to tell me again who specifically it was from the city who told you?

I don't know if it would be correct in this public forum.

Okay.

Council Member Kimball.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I had one question, but I got several now. I'll go with my original question. So for the... The jobs you had on your first slide. Yes, sir. Wow, the jobs you had on your first slide. Do you have the metrics? Are they local people, or do those companies bring those people with them, and then they fill those jobs? Do we have a metric like the local people, local students, internships, something? Because when we look at that money, we want to make sure that the best ROI we can get is our citizens if they're employed by those companies. So do we have any metrics about how many local people did they get in these jobs?

So what we can do is actually tie to the workforce traffic that goes inflow and outflow from the community. We don't have specifics detailing to the company itself because that's really kind of detailing to an HR matter for a privately held company. So we can't really go too much into specifics. I can say there's not any performance agreements between any of the companies right now that relate to the actual number of jobs that have to be created locally versus in total.

All right. And I guess to follow up with Council Member Brown, I'm a little confused about what I heard. And I'm new. I'm one of the newer council members. I don't think we've ever met before. So you had direction to do something from the council, and you didn't do it? Is that what happened?

No, sir. It was direction provided from the Board of Directors, whose staff effectively reports to which the City Council sits on. So that is our direct line of communication. Now, obviously, we have the opportunity to kind of sit before you report back. And if there is a request from the City Council, they then have the opportunity to, at the Board of Directors meetings, to provide direction to staff.

Direction of staff to concentrate on a grocery store in North Killeen. but then somebody on city clean staff said don't do it or focus somewhere else.

It was directed that we facilitate the recruitment of industrial development and the city would pertain more towards the recruitment of commercial development.

Okay. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem Gonzalez.

Thank you. I'm also in the same position that you are at this time. So I would like to, and again, this might not be the appropriate form for that, but I definitely want to get to the bottom of where that information came from is during my time on KEDC. I know that one of the specific directives was actually to revisit all of the potential vendors that had come before us that were possibilities that maybe had expired or did not quite work out for one reason or another and that was in fact the direction that was provided by Council when I was on there for the time that I was on there So I would like to definitely know when that directive changed so we can speak offline about that that's That's going to be critical information to know, especially since this has been a community project for years. We've been working on this since before 2019. We've been pushing for a grocery store. So this is all hands on deck. Made all calls from this dais. People have known, communities have known, organizations have stepped in. So for one of our major ones to be pushed out or stepped out or assigned out after we've given clear instruction, this is completely unacceptable. Completely unacceptable. We'll follow back up with that. My question was, or my statement was regarding foreign trade zones. Okay, and we'll come back to the other. But foreign trade zones, we kind of brushed over it, but they're extremely important. So I wanted to clarify, did you say that we are working on it? Have we received the designation or where are we in that process?

So right now the application is sitting with Foreign Trade Zone Board, the U.S. government's Foreign Trade Zone Board. So they're looking at final declaration. The application itself had to go through a number of processes where it had to be resubmitted, obviously because of the government shutdown that delayed that timeline by a few months, as well as the company needing to go back and actually add items to identify what items would be sitting within the foreign trade zone. So it's just been adjusting, just going back based on either federal level issues or the company's issues.

Okay. And so, this is for those that don't know, this is an extremely important designation to have. We've got several people in our audience who've talked about where are the manufacturing companies and things like that. And having this particular designation would eliminate delays for industrial, the tariff cost. It would help minimize a lot of expenses that a lot of organizations have or are experiencing right now. But it would also, and correct me if I'm wrong, please, maximize our competitiveness here regionally, which as the city of Killeen is pushing to establish ourselves as a regional leader in this corridor for Bell County, for Texas, it's extremely important to be able to attract international companies. Would you say, is that a true statement?

Absolutely. It's really been paramount in our ability lately to attract a lot of that foreign direct investment that we've heavily targeted as part of our strategy and our recruitment process. So being able to kind of show that we're able to provide for that initiative, the speed in which the city, the county, and school district were able to respond to that initiative was very eye-opening to a lot of companies that we've talked to. And so just, again, congratulations to the city being able to kind of move forward with that so quickly. It's something that a lot of other communities have looked at. we would still, with the creation of this foreign trade zone, be the first within Bell County. So it really is a highlighting feature for us in our recruitment process.

This is huge, especially with us being so strategically located and with ease of access to Austin and Dallas and all the other markets as we consider ourselves the heart of Central Texas. It is important for Colleen to be a leader in this particular type of industry with Texas being open for business. That puts Colleen In a very, very important part for us to continue to grow our city and increase our ability for additional funding and business opportunities and jobs and things along those lines. Now, Tyler, I just want to also state on the record that it was not a personal attack against you. I am livid at this point, but it's not to you personally, but I do want to get to the bottom of that. So I do expect to have a conversation.

We will absolutely council member Williams.

Um, I agree with councilwoman Gonzalez about getting to the bottom of this. Uh, I live in that area and so this is near and dear to my heart, not just a grocery store, but you have other issues as well on that side of town. But grocery stores are one of the big issues there. Uh, I remember when it was raining and when, when, when, when the weather was really cold and uh, we had to drive way on the other side of town in order to get food because we don't have anything here. So to hear this playing out the way that you were saying, this playing with people's lives as well because these folks don't have nothing on this side of town, not one thing on this side of town. As far as grocery stores, well, they say we have grocery stores, but we don't have traditional grocery stores. So could there be... Any plans in the future? Because I want to work on, I'll help you all with this part if I could, because that's the side that I live on over there on the north side. What is it possible that we could do for that north side as far as with the grocery stores?

Yeah, absolutely. No, there's definitely an opportunity for EDC to begin impactfully adding to that initiative to recruit the grocery store. Like I mentioned, part of the budget request is for us to actually hire up staff directly attributed to recruiting that grocery store itself. So if we can actually put real physical manpower day to day towards that initiative, that will go a long way in our goal of actually recruiting that.

Are they planning on putting the grocery store on that side? It's just my question. Are they? Because it's been so long since we had a grocery store on that side of the town.

We would really have to kind of do a study in terms of the commercial market. As I mentioned, we really kind of delved specifically into the industrial component, but we can definitely obviously facilitate the expansion of really the initiatives, the EDC, to really kind of look at some of those commercial projects, not even just relating to the grocery store, but a lot of the other commercial projects that we have without the community itself, such as Anthem Park or some of the other initiatives.

Yes, yes. Okay.

Thank you. Council Member Brown.

Can you define to us what economic development services are for a quarter million?

Sorry, let me go to the slide real quick. So for this amount, what we're showing is the impact in terms of staff time allocated directly towards the economic development initiatives. So your full time staff members, Clean Chamber Commerce is the employer record for KDC staff, but there is select staff within that is 100% of their time allocated towards the EDC initiatives. So part of this is that. Another component of this is the marketing efforts, such as you've seen with the website, with the video development, with our initiatives with Austin Business Journal, and so on.

And I don't recall when anybody had said that economic development staff works for the Chamber of Commerce. In fact, we keep being told the exact opposite.

No, my words were that the Chamber of Commerce is an employer of record. So that was an initiative created to really help facilitate the actual administrative costs between both organizations and carry a lot of that heavy burden. So what you have really is a shared agreement between housing, a lot of the admin. So think of your HR, your finance, your bookkeeping, your property management, your administration. Your front desk, your marketing people, those staff members that you would share with any organization, those are shared costs. And then you also have your staff that exclusively deals with economic development corporation initiatives.

So I'm going to say once again that if there is going to be something like that, there needs to be an RFP put out for it. It really needs to be separated between what is the Chamber of Commerce and what is Economic Development Corporation. Excuse me. Because I know in the past that had been a $500,000 number. So I'm not sure where that number went to. But there's also about three people who work full time for EDC, if I remember correctly. And we're supposed to have one of the brightest business-minded boards available that we put together for EDC. So they should be able to handle payroll and expenses and keeping the books for three people. and a relatively small budget. I'm going to also request three things. I'd like a full copy of the budget and the audit that went with it that shows all the incentives. And I would also like a copy of the minutes from the meeting where the board gave direction in a meeting to EDC that said, don't do what the council said. Instead, we don't want you to recruit this commercial property. We want you to only recruit manufacturing and industrial. Because if indeed it was the board that gave that direction, there should be record of it in minutes with a vote.

We can do that.

Thank you.

Council Member Nash-King. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, ma'am.

I'm completely blown away by how this has played out. I really am. And I'm not going to really go. It really doesn't matter what I say to you because you're not the board. I know I sit on the board. Council Member Kendrick sat on the board. And Mayor Pro Tem Gonzalez is sitting on the board. And so, wow. So let me say it this way. I'm disturbed by what I heard because of the simple fact we had more than I share conversations about the north side, just in general. The grocery store, health care, transportation, bus. I mean, I can go on on all the things that the north side is in need of. It's not one greater than the other. but you need all of it working together. I wasn't a part of that conversation or whatever transpired. And I guess I feel kind of foolish in a sense because I sit in that seat and that's all I said, no matter what. You may give up, but I'm going to continue to push for a grocery store on the north side. But it's no fault of yours. I just want to say you have done an extraordinary job. And you're not even – the Chair of the Chamber of Economic Development, you just interim at this time, they haven't hired anyone for that position. But on the flip side, since everybody have spoken about that, the information will be coming to us to get down to the fact. On the other side of the coin is all the great things that KEDC have done. uh on uh on that side of town with the industrial park and wolf park uh let's talk about that because i'm a real big fan of anything economic development especially on that corridor going straight to austin uh do y'all have any businesses uh that have considered coming to that area

Yes, ma'am. We've received LOIs for that property. We've also received requests to purchase out the park entirely. That's not something we're looking to do right now. The mission of the park itself was to diversify the economy, providing different opportunities itself. So we want to make sure we're continue towards a lot of that the original intent behind the creation of that park itself. And so, yes, we have seen quite a lot of development opportunities. We have we are engaging with companies actively. That's part of the budget request now. We are seeing a lot of interest in the community itself and why we feel it's so imperative that we create more shovel-ready sites here within the community itself. A lot of what we're seeing from companies that we've talked to lately have been directly to us the fact that the development process that they're seeing isn't meeting the timeline that they need at the end of the day. And a lot of that is facilitated by the fact that what we're presenting is green fields rather than the shovel-ready sites that these companies need to move quickly. And so that is part of the initiative. We want to make sure that the Wolf Tech and Life Science Park has that opportunity to meet the criteria for the companies, especially since some of them are also really sitting in that advanced manufacturing life science sector. And so they know at the end of the day what their KPIs, what they need in terms of land development needs to look like. And so we want to make sure we have the best opportunity going forward. And so that is with the increased budget request really attributed for this fiscal year. is to make sure that we're moving forward with that piece of property. People driving through can already see that we've already moved a lot of the trees and shrubbery just from a marketing standpoint to get that land ready and facilitate the actual expansion process. So this will be the next step in that initiative. is making that site ready, putting in the TxDOT turning lanes and the curb cuts and entry points within the property itself, and that'll give us a great opportunity to bring businesses, site selectors, brokers down to actually see the property itself and show that it is quite a bit further along in the shovel readiness.

Yes, sir. And my last question to you, we had spoken the board at that time. And for the record, each board with council members on it have different conversations because sometimes this council does not have a directive. Sometimes it's just us trying to bring, like this discussion, bringing businesses in. When are you going to have the opportunity to go in detail? If you have not, maybe you have, with all the new council members on the projects that we're working on.

Well, I'm not on there anymore.

I'm sorry.

No, our initiative really is to go with each of the council members, kind of have singular conversations, just get everybody updated on KDC. And we've really kind of started that initiative. And then, obviously, a lot of functions started popping up on our calendar, such as the 14th Central Texas Summit. That really kind of delayed a lot of the things that we were doing just from a staff perspective. But now that we're past that point, past this budgetary process, or at least putting the initial points together, we'll be reengaging with those conversations, and hopefully we'll be able to kind of sit down and meet with you all and kind of go through a lot of the projects that we've been working on.

Okay, and one more thing. It was also the board, I think Mayor Pro Tem was on there with me, to have a book to break it down what do KEDC do.

Yes, ma'am. We have that book now in hand. And so we've actually started implementing that and providing it to board members at each of our board meetings. I'm sure Council Member Kendrick can attest to that fact. It's a pretty thick book. But it's, again, something we'd like to share with the council members as well, kind of just to understand this is what economic development is. This is what our corporation is. This is how all of the economic development entities within the city work together to help facilitate growth of the community itself.

look forward to kind of having those conversations in those meetings all right thank you sir council member kimball thank you mr mayor just some questions came to mind throughout the developments of the evening so going back to the funding for the new position for the the 250k and the development services that does not include the new position that you're asking for. That's another additional $150,000.

No, sir, that does include the position. The $250,000 does include all full-time staff plus the new position plus marketing expenses.

So the new position, okay, so economic development, north side of town. Yes, sir. That's why I'm here. Yes, sir. All right. Secondly, I heard Councilwoman Brown said something about some urgent cares that were brought on by. Were any of those on the north side of town?

Yes, sir. The one that was located was on Rancier. That initial project, I believe, and I believe some of our council members can speak to it, was for the fact that there was a stated need for urgent care clinics to be established on the north side of town. And so that was part of our KDC's initiative to be a part of that conversation and provide an incentive for the development of that project.

Thank you. And just for a point of clarification on this for the mayor, for staff, that during the presentation we heard the term staff member directed KEDC to move in a different direction. So is that a meeting that we have a future agenda item on that to discuss that or how do we get to the staff member?

If council would like to bring that forward, they could do a motion on direction to bring it forward at a future meeting.

Okay. Thank you, ma'am. I'm going to make a motion. Okay. I'll make a motion at this point that based on the report that we have, that we had this evening, the place on a future agenda item to, I don't want to use the word investigate, but look into the matter of the staff member that gave that direction to KEDC.

I second that.

There was a motion by Council Member Kimball to, let's just clear exactly your motion. Could you say that motion again, sir?

Sure, our motion of direction for a future agenda item based on the report tonight that we look into the staff member that gave KEDC the direction to not look for the grocery store on the north side of town.

A motion to discuss this item.

To further discuss this item, who that staff member was or how it came to be.

And it was seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Gonzalez. And all in favor? Signify saying yes and all opposed no. Motion carries 7-0. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council.

Next is Children's Advocacy Center Central Texas.

Excuse me. He had another question. We had another council member.

Not about him. Mr. Mayor, can we take a five-minute break, please? Not on...

If you would like, we can take it now, but we're trying to just get through these presentations. We'll take a break in just a few. But if you need to leave, you can go for it.

Next is Children Advocacy Center of Central Texas, Dr. Jennifer Castillo.

Hello, Mayor, Council Members. Thank you for allowing me a few minutes, five or less to be exact, to share with you about the Children's Advocacy Center. So our agency... If you keep up on how many calls come into the child abuse hotline, we have about 7,900 intakes that our agency alone reviewed in 2025. Through our agency, we provide case coordination for children who have been sexually or physically abused, who have witnessed a crime in our communities. At our agency, we conduct forensic interviews, a family advocate is assigned. We, this year, implemented comprehensive case management system, where all families are provided with comprehensive case management. All families who come to our center, not just the alleged victim child, but their siblings and parents, now qualify for mental health services free through our agency. And we conduct monthly case reviews through a multidisciplinary team approach that includes law enforcement, children protective services, the district attorney's office, along with the therapist and forensic interviewers. So I'm just going to breeze quickly over our kind of big picture, but I want to spend more time talking about our impact in Killeen specifically. So we serve three counties, Bell, Milam, and Coryell. This past year, in 2025, we conducted 750 forensic interviews, 265 medical examinations for children. We provided just over 2,500 family advocacy services, over 3,000 mental health sessions, about 2,700 case coordination services. And we have, as I mentioned, reviewed almost 8,000 intakes through the hotline. But let me spend a few minutes talking about Killeen. So the city of Killeen, over half of our families and children that are referred to our agency come from the city of Killeen. This last year when we really looked at how we're serving the city and the members of this beautiful community, we noticed some gaps. Our main location is located in Belton. So if you're a family in the city of Killeen, there might be transportation barriers, you get off work, now you gotta drive kiddos all the way down to Belton for therapy services. So a couple of things that have happened this year that we're really proud of. One, we've partnered with KISD. And our therapists can now, starting in the fall, go into the schools to provide mental health services within the school systems. Two, we now have a fully operational CAC on Fort Hood. And while that directly serves our military families, it's also open to law enforcement, such as clean police department, to children's services. And we've coordinated with Security, a process where families who aren't connected to the military can get quicker access safely onto the military installation to receive services there. Last, well, not last, next, we will open in two weeks a standalone mental health counseling center right here in the city of Killeen to serve families. So we are very excited about that. Fort Hood, just so that you know, is the first CAC that has ever been put on a military installation. And now we are leading a national model to implement CACs across military installations throughout the United States. And the next thing that we're really proud of is historically we have served children three to 17. Now we just implemented a program that we're calling First Five. So thinking about how can we better serve pregnant women and men, and children zero to five to support strengthening families and child abuse prevention. So now we're able to serve those families that are the most vulnerable, right? I can remember being a young mom and being like, they don't come with a manual. I wish they did. So those are some of the ways that we have specifically addressed some of the gaps for the residents of the city of Killeen that we're really honored So here's our ask. This calculation is looking at, you know, we estimate the cost is about $1,000 a case. Our total cases that we had just for your city alone was just over 523. And those additional funds this year would really go to support and enhance our zero to five program, strengthening our mental health services, and our case coordination here within the city of Killeen. Thank you for your time.

Any questions from the council? Council Member Brown.

I would just say that this is an invaluable service. Everything from those investigations, which end up helping our police to bring people to justice when they injure or do unthinkable things to the children of our community, to the mental health services provided because it's few and far between that we have those programs, especially low to no cost or for those people who are uninsured. So I just want to make sure that as I'm saying that those services are provided low to no cost and for people who are also uninsured.

Council Member Brown, thank you for highlighting that. It's zero cost, and that cost never increases. And the child is entitled to mental health services along with their siblings or family members up until the child is 18. And if we're able to start therapy services, let's say the child is 17 and a half, half, half, half, half, tomorrow's their birthday, we do the intake today, we will continue to provide those therapeutic services. And mom or dad can call us when kiddo's in college, and we will still provide those free mental health services to that family.

Do you have an idea of the percentage of growth you've seen for services for Killeen residents?

Yeah, I would say that our growth this last fiscal year, about 25%. And I will say that that's not because more people are abusing children in the city of Killeen. I would say that's because we've been able to expand our services to include more of those at-risk individuals.

And with another only $17,000, you could expand that even further?

Prayerfully, yes.

Okay. And I am in full support of your full ask. Thank you. Thank you.

Council Member Bass.

I taught at Ellison High School, and I was shocked by some of the situations of our students. So thank you very much for being able to go into KISD.

Yes, thank you, sir.

Thank you for what you do. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

I appreciate your time this evening.

Thank you.

All right, next is Family in Crisis, Suzanne Moore and William Hall.

Good afternoon, sir, ma'am.

Thank you for having us here today, Mayor and council members. We're here to talk about our homeless shelter program. Families in crisis would like to partner with the City of Killeen to continue its efforts to provide low barrier housing focused crisis beds to persons experiencing homelessness. We're requesting gap funding in the amount of 350,000 from the City of Killeen to operate the shelter facility. The city has provided gap funding for us in the amount of $664,456 for operations at Friends in Crisis Homeless Shelter since 2024, which was when we began experiencing those funding shortfalls. Okay. These are our numbers served since 2024. These are for our services in Killeen. You'll see that the Friends in Crisis numbers are the first set of numbers that was 736 people in 2024. In 2025, we served 857 through that program. That's a 16.4% increase. You can see our shelter and outreach domestic violence programs served 1,803 and 1,486. And then we housed. 1,725 people through our housing programs in Killeen those two years. We also provided the warming center at the Friends in Crisis shelter 15 nights since 2025, and that resulted in an additional 185 people in the shelter in addition to our regular shelter clients. These are the other funding sources that we've requested. There's a couple of things to note here. ESG, that's not guaranteed, and that number of 298,190 only includes 62,963 for shelter operations. The rest of that has to go to housing assistance. That VA contract bed, $50,000, is kind of a conservative estimate. We're on year three of a five-year contract with them. We've been running those contracts since 2015. We've applied to CDBG through the city for a case manager for the shelter in the amount of $30,000. That's still pending. We are meeting with Bell County Commissioners Court on Friday to propose to them. We're asking them for $150,000. Some other things we have in the pipeline that we could be thinking about would be we're in the second phase of our application to be a bingo partner. with a new facility opening in Harker Heights. We've also been trying to build up some third-party fundraisers. The Temple Rotary, we're going to be the recipient of their dueling pianos event in July. Oh, can we go back one real quick? This number down here, this 292-963 is... No, that is correct. That is the correct one. Okay, we've got a bad one here.

The Friends in Crisis shelter program costs approximately $980,000 a year to run the facility operations for this program. FIC's operational funds for the program is roughly $292,963, which is what we showed you on the slide before. The gap funding that we're requesting is $350,000. We've asked this a couple times in the past, last three times. It is the gap funding to get us from Here where we run out to when new funding starts. It's been an ongoing commitment between the city and families in crisis so that we can keep this homeless shelter fully operational and be able to help as many people as we can. Without the gap funding, it will mean that we will have to reduce our capacity. Ooh. Is there a whole slide missing? I think this is the old presentation.

I'll just talk it.

It's not on. the city, you can, with this funding, we're going to, if we don't get it and we're also asking bell County for money and we keep asking for money and try to use the city's money last, you're the last resort to spend it. We want you to spend every federal dollar and state dollar we can first. Um, but some of the things that we could do, the city could, uh, bear the cost of our city utilities, water, garbage, sewage, give it to us for free, that in itself would free $16,000 a year. Granted, it's not $200,000, but it's something going towards relieving the pressure of the negatives that we do have. And we hope working together, we will overall get this. If we don't get funding, then we're going to have to start reducing our operations. Because we're going to still try to help as many folks as we can. But we will decrease operations for friends in crisis dramatically. Which means we'll have more people on the street, more people homeless, and less people that can be helped. and we will eventually have to transfer it into a housing program or something.

Council Member Kimball.

Thank you Mr. Smith and thank you for your presentation. The numbers that you presented today, do you have any other funding sources besides what you presented today? Do you get money from any other funding sources? Those are the ones we've asked for so far. We're in the funding cycles. No, I'm sorry. Maybe my question wasn't clear. Besides the money, besides what you presented today, do you get money from anywhere else?

Do families in crisis get money? Yes, from HUD. We get money from HHSC for the domestic violence shelter. We get money from the Office of Attorney General. And are those?

They are earmarked for different programs. Okay. But are they coming in at the same level? Are they being increased?

Some of them are. Most of them are being increased, not decreased. It is hard to get funding for homeless. The homeless population is the hardest population to get funding. I understand that. The other ones are getting increases. Okay.

Okay, so you have other funding sources besides the ones you outlined today. Correct, yes, sir. And as many years that I've spent in law enforcement, and those who have been there, they tell you the best way to decrease crime is prevention. So what have you got, or are you in the business of preventing people from becoming homeless, or is that something that we can do so people don't even have to use your service? instead of us just pushing money out year after year?

Part of our job is to get people ready for that point where they can meet opportunities. But one of the things that has to happen is they have to have access to jobs that pay them a living wage, where they are going to be able to maintain housing. They have to have rents that they can afford. otherwise that cycle will continue. Yeah, absolutely. And we can't really impact those things. All we can impact is that person's readiness.

Yeah, and we can because we talked about the economic development. We're trying to do some things and try to get city residents jobs. But if we can prevent people who are on the verge of missing a few mortgage payments or people living in U-Haul facilities and things like that, I mean, yes, I want to put money – to prevent people from becoming homeless besides continually give money to people who are homeless. Don't get me wrong. It's a program that I think is needed. I was instrumental when we started the homeless outreach team years ago. I understand that. But at some point, right, at some point we have to say, where do we need to put the money to prevent people from becoming homeless. And I don't know if that's not in your bingo card. I get that. We'll find somewhere else. But at some point, we just have to say, we just can't be the bank. And if you're getting money asked from other places, I mean, I would like to see that bigger picture if we can to see where you're getting when we can adjust accordingly instead of just year after year just pushing the money out.

Well, let me try to explain that a little bit. If you notice on this slide here, that part of our ESG money is homeless prevention. That's to prevent them from coming homeless. That's that one that's a couple rent payments behind that we could catch them up, keep them from coming to the shelter,

Things that we can do probably without going through you. We can do that without going through you, right? Huh? We can do that ourselves without going through you. You're not the only one that can do that. No, no, I'm not the only one. You're correct. That's right. Okay. I just want to make sure that's clear. Thank you. I don't have any more questions, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. And to add on, Council Member Kimball, you know, you – There's a lot of ways you can prevent, but you can't tell for whatever reason a person that is homeless. It's a number of reasons that people are homeless, and you can't really just totally wipe the prevention or stop people from being homeless. There's just no way. You're going to have homeless all the time. There's not going to be a day that you don't have somebody out there homeless. for whatever reason. And so that's what you have to keep in mind too, just to help you out there. I deal with the homeless as well, working with families in crisis. So there's this, you know, for whatever reason they are homeless, you can't, they may come from Oklahoma, you know, they may have lived here and their husband left them and they're homeless. And so I just wanted to help you out with that, sir. Also,

Thank you. Thank you all for presenting here to us today. This is a very sensitive subject and so understanding to the Mayor's point that there are challenges that people face on the regular and that sometimes things happen we can't control understanding that but also to Councilmember Kimball's point there has to be a point where we have to really evaluate what it is that that we're doing. You mentioned the fact that, you know, we want to make sure that obviously whatever funds we have that we're allocating are going to the best possible cause and that the highest use, right? And so with that said, we understand that not only are you all having difficulties and nonprofits are having challenges, the city is also experiencing those things due to cutbacks, due to setbacks and such. And so on top of that, our future projections as we're looking out We have to constantly just figure out where those funds are coming from and then how best to allocate them. So I'm sure we all understand that. I just wanted to make sure that that was said. Now, the question was asked, though, I know there was a directive given by council and I also followed up in an email inquiry, but the last time you all were before us, I asked specifically and was supported by other council members, understanding the challenges that we have and that we need to come together as a community. I always do my all calls. I call them from the dais. But we asked about your organization on top of these standard funding opportunities to partner with local organizations who shared the same mission and vision that you all had because we obviously know that we can do more together. And so the challenge there that was given to you all was to partner with potentially local churches or other organizations who share the same mission and vision And I never received, and I did request, but I requested a breakout of those organizations that you all reached out to and what their specific responses were and what your specific request was. Because, you know, we'd like to know if there are organizations here that maybe don't know that you need the help that could potentially help. Have you all done that? Because I've not received that information.

We did. We did reach out to other organizations. And we already had a whole list of organizations. Because families in crisis, we have a long list of organizations, churches, different kinds of groups and things that donate to us or do can good drives, food drives, different things on our behalf. So we have had a list.

We sent that back through. So the ask was specifically for funding because that's what we're looking at here is the dollars. So for the funding assistance, have you all requested from local churches or the organizations to partner, create community pools for service? Have you reached out to the community or put a call for a need to the community to help create a funding opportunity for the services that you need?

They send us money. It's a homeless shelter, we get money.

So is it possible to get a break out of that or is it not sufficient? Because you're asking for, what I'm asking for is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. We'll circle back on that because I'm asking specifically for the 350 that you're inquiring about. Have we done everything that we can to reach out to other sources to fund that gap that you're referring to, not just relying on the city? Because if the city does not have those funds available, what do we do? Correct. And then you've mentioned specifically about keeping fully operational. And I'm concerned because we received an email that I was quite blindsided by that basically the dollar amount was far greater than this 350 that's being requested today for the gap. But there was a request to release the lien early on the property, and there's a contract. I would like to request an additional minute if possible. Council? Council? Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you. There was a request for release early. So my question is, if there's a problem, we don't have access to the funding or you're not able to get the funding, what happens then?

That's what we were talking about earlier.

Specifically, what happens then?

On the 6th in July, we will start curtailing services and reduce the numbers so that we can, with the funding we do have, help as many as we can.

And so would that mean, would we be at risk of potentially losing, like we did back in 2019, that is a possibility if you don't get the funding, is that correct? Correct. Okay. And then also with regards to, okay, my time is up. I'll just circle back around after everybody's had a chance to inquire. Thank you.

Council Member Kendricks.

I'll just keep kind of going with what Mayor Pro Temp was asking. It seems like when we're talking about budget that you're outside of your budget, that you're not, you said it yourself, even when it states you're only supposed to have a certain amount of people, you go above that. So that makes you run out of money much faster. Correct. So my question is, if you understand that, then why are we doing that?

Because if we didn't, there would have been another 800, what was it, 100 and something people on the streets the first four months of this year when the freeze was here.

I understand what you're saying.

And the city asked us to have a warming station, and they are my funder and my partner. So if I say no... It's hard to say no to your funder.

Well, I'm not just talking about the warming center. I personally talked to you and you told me you will go over the number of beds that you have. You personally told me that. I did. So now that is my question that I'm asking. If you know that will cause you to run out of money sooner, which means if we stayed along the budget, we could service more people instead of running out of money early.

We could service less for a longer period of time.

But the time or the whole time, the whole time, that's what my answer is.

Yes, you're correct.

The whole time. Then saying we could have went six more months, but now we're short six months.

Correct.

That's all the questions I have.

Council Member Brown.

Good evening. Yeah, evening officially. Okay. On your slide about collaboration, the equal sign is housed. FIC provides rental assistance and stability services. Is that from TEBRA?

You asked if it was TBRA?

Yeah. Is that the TBRA money that's being used for that rental assistance?

This slide here? That is one of our assistance programs. That's one of many.

Okay. So I want to go back to a couple of questions that my fellow council members have had when it comes to homelessness prevention. As an audience member, I believed that when the city council awarded the TBRA money out to organizations, it was meant to be to prevent homelessness. So for those individuals and those families who are behind on their rent in order to pay that, were you given a different idea of what that TBRA was for?

No.

No, one of the parameters of that funding was that it would be used to move people out of the shelter faster.

Okay, so the understanding you had was that Tiber was to be used for housing formerly unhoused people.

Correct.

Okay. Maybe I misunderstood this, but if the city were to be able to reimburse you or compensate that utility bill, then you wouldn't need $350,000? I need $16,000 or less.

Okay. It's just... Everybody said look for areas where we could work together everywhere, churches, this. Pull it all together and see if we can't get rid of that gap.

I understand. And you said something about a gap in July, right? In July you might have to start cutting back funding or services rather. Is that July of 26th or are we talking all the way into July of 27 on that?

We're talking July of 26th.

Because this funding, even if it is approved, wouldn't be available until October 1. So what happens between July 1 and October 1?

We have the stuff we're asking Bell County for. We're asking for turf money. Some of our other money will start in two months. Right now we're running in a deficit.

I understand. What I just want to make sure of, you're asking for this money today and saying that you have a shortfall that as of July 1, you might have to start cutting back on services, not being able to have as many people come in. But even if the council approves the full amount requested, that money isn't available until October 1. So what happens between now and October 1? Because now I'm nervous about the summer months.

We, again, we're gonna keep trying to keep it going or reduce our services until we can get back to fully funding. We're gonna have to reduce services if we get nothing from the county, the city, or any of the other outstanding things that are pending.

I'm just making sure that this is perfectly understood. The money isn't going to come right now.

Oh, we know that.

No matter what. And so my concern is that emergency gap between July and October. What happens? Correct. Okay. We'll follow up after on that. Okay. And then... So my thing is not just getting other organizations to help fund, but getting volunteers to come in. Or instead of donating food, I know there are a lot of church organizations that would come in and cook meals and serve them, which takes out the expense of having to procure the food, having a cook come in and do that. May I have one more moment? Council members, please. Council members? Thank you. So it takes some of those expenses away by substituting with volunteers. Correct. Certified through organizations. And we have so many, it's difficult to reach out to all of them. We have new ones coming up every day. So I'm going to ask you, is there a contact or an email address someplace that we can send those community organizations to contact you instead of you having to reach out to them?

Yes, we have a volunteer coordinator.

Can you give us that information?

It's Maria Carmona, and then call our main office, 254-634-1184.

Thank you. So if we can help to facilitate those volunteers, you don't have to do all the work. That's where I'm going with this. Correct. By us having that information, we can each individually put that out and try to assist you. Thank you.

Council Member Williams.

Yes, you're saying that you have other partners that help you with the benefits and help you with the shelter. My question to you, Yeah, the church organizations and all these other organizations that's helping you. What do you mean when you say that they are helping you or they are assisting you? Because I know a lot of church organizations or nonprofit organizations who would love to help out with this particular thing that you guys are doing now. They would love to help out. but they haven't heard anything from you guys saying that you guys need any assistance, even to the beds and things, having some of the homeless to come there and stay, or food or clothing, whatever it may be. It's just not the funding that they'll give, but they will give their assistance as far as the church members and the leadership that would help out as well. I like the idea of being in unity, and we all working together, and I believe that when we are... This is a lot of money that we have to allocate out to you guys. And to just say, yes, we're going to give this out to you without even having some type of review or something about this, then where does it go? And I know, as a matter of fact, that we have organizations who wants to support you guys, but they don't even know how to be of assistance. So how would they or what do they do in order to assist you guys? What do they do? What does the nonprofit organization or the churches do to assist you all?

They can call our main number, Dr. Maria Carmona.

No, you're saying that they assist you and they help you guys out. What do the churches do to assist you all?

Some of the churches donate money. Some of them donate time. Some of them make a meal.

On a regular basis, we have several that will do that, say, once a month. They'll come in and cook for us on Sunday, let's say. We have Emmanuel Lutheran who does numerous drives for us, and they come in and have service days. I don't want to leave anyone out at the risk of leaving anyone out, but we do have several congregations that do routinely support us.

So this money will be distributed to what? What is the most, what would you guys really do with this money that we give? What is it really details in this money?

What does that 300?

300 some thousand dollars.

That's staff and operations of the facility.

Of that facility.

Just that facility.

Just that facility. Correct. What about the other facilities?

They have their own funding for the same thing.

They aren't facing this type of challenge.

So only you all are facing this type of challenge?

Only this particular program, yes.

This particular program. Okay, thank you.

Okay, Councilwoman Niskanen, she hadn't went yet.

Thank you. Good evening to everyone. Last year when you came before us in the year before for the same amount of money, council have asked some awesome questions, but it was told to us that, and correct me if I'm wrong, that when we gave that $350,000 that you wouldn't have to come back to us for that. The biggest thing that we challenge you on since I've been on here and that's been since 2017 and this is ongoing I really believe what you do I support what you do, but it goes back to councilmember Kendrick if you know We normally give it up because we had opera funding. We pull from other places, but I'm serious. We are on a tight budget. And if you just look, and it blows me away, our auditor, he's not here. Yes, he is. He is here. Mr. Grady said, hey, we have these resources, and there's some more on the other page. This is how many people are coming before us tonight to ask for something for their program. And there are some things that I know, the top priorities are in infrastructure, our first responders, and most important, ours. You using the $350,000 for your staff, but we got to ensure that our staff is being paid also. We are in the business of providing services, too. But you said you wouldn't have to come back to us, and the council at that time stated, what fundraisers are you doing? What is the board doing to get involved? And this happened last year, the year before that. Well, I can say ever since I've been here, there has been a shortage. And I can only speak for Council Member Kendrick, Mayor Pro Tem Gonzalez, and Councilman Solomon, along with myself, that was our challenge is that it was going to come a time, and I know we said this two years straight, and I know it for a fact, that with what's going on at the federal and state and county level, that we have zero control, and we were getting our funds cut at the state, and we was not getting the grants and everything we thought we was going to get from the federal government, which was putting different departments in a tight spot, and we're there this year, too. We have always been honest about our budget. And a lot of things that we're hearing now, we won't vote on it now because we don't even know what we're going to receive. But the question was, not only these other organizations, I get it, that everybody's trying to help you. I'm all for the homeless. But it seems like every year the numbers are increasing, but they're not decreasing. And I know there's a lot going on, and that's understandable why. I'm not that naive that people are just things happen. I'm not even fighting that. But it has to be. Can I get one more minute, please? Thank you. There has to be some kind of process. Everything everybody said up here is correct. Council Member Brown with the nonprofit organization, Councilwoman Williams saying, hey, where are the churches at? But this is every year. And our challenge was who's managing the budget? And Councilman Kendrick hit it on point. Why more people we're taking in if we're not can give the service 100% to the ones we already have? Chief Kimball, correction. Correction. Don't take my time on that correction two times. Chief Lopez, I apologize. Council Member Kimball stated it best about the resources and how we're going to manage them because the more people we take in, you're going to end up with less resources. And we don't know how to help you with that because we're doing a disservice to them that's already there. That's just all I want to say. Mayor? Council Member Kendrickson.

Yes. You mentioned that you have other entities that donate other things and monies. Off the top of your head, could you tell us approximately how much money has been donated from these other entities and how many entities?

Not off my head.

Can you give me a round and about number?

$40,000.

Okay.

In cash. Then linens, soap powder, food.

Hygiene products.

Hygiene products, soap.

Well, I understand those other things. Now, what I understand also is, man, I really didn't want to get into that, but... When you, the people that you have, that you hire to work there, is, I mean, is it a fact? Someone over there is getting paid about $4,000 a month.

That's not true.

It's not? I'll talk to you offline on that one.

Not true.

But I have some documentation that will prove that. So I'm just trying to figure, I want to help you. I've seen homeless people, but I think we have to find a way. If we're using monies, we have to figure out a better way. If you're managing a facility, you also can clean at that facility too. So we have to cut corners. It's just like being in the military. You might have three or four different titles or wear four different hats, but it's things that you have to do. And we just got to figure that piece out. We're asking for more money, but I think there are some things within your organization that you can cut a little bit. That's all I have.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. I want to make sure that for the people that are watching at home, and especially for you all, that you don't feel that we're browbeating. But we really have to be very careful when it comes to this. We've had this conversation numerous times. And so there's some things that we've asked for that I feel like we've not received because I feel like we would not be having the same conversation in this 11th hour when it comes to this funding. And so I would like to go back briefly to that letter that was received regarding the contract for the I believe it ends, is it June or July, it ends in July, the end of July, is that correct? Okay, and so if your contract with the city, there was a tenure contract in place, if the contract ends with the city and to Council Member Brown's point, you receive funding, we no longer have a contract with you with this facility, what happens to the people then if the funds are done and this contract has ended with the city as far as any oversight on those funds and how they're controlled?

With the contract, all that contract is, was that we were gonna do this service for 10 years. In reality, you only have to have five, but the city increased it to 10. That ends July. It's the same with the domestic violence shelter. Years ago, we had a contract for five years. Well, that building's been there now 45 years. But it don't mean that we got a contract so that you, we can't, we can use the building for collateral. So if we have an issue, we can borrow money. We could also use it for a line of credit. So when funding's tight, it goes up and down. Right now, we can't use that building for that.

Understood. And that makes sense. But my concern here, then, staff, you might have to help me here, make this make sense for me, because my concern is that there's been several times where we've threatened or had a possibility of closure, right? And we also had that happen in 2019. So if we no longer have a contract, which means there's no longer an obligation... We're giving $350,000 with no metrics or specific delineation of where these funds are going, not to payroll or to benefits, but to actual services of the unhoused. What do we do to protect our interests, but also to protect the people? And this is also part of your question, so if you could think of this as she's answering. What is the plan in the event that you have to cut back your services or cut your constituency down or losing the 40 beds or have to turn people out. Not now, but I'd like to hear from our Citizens City Manager first, and then I'd come back to you all for that question.

Yes, ma'am. This would be for FY27 funding. So in order for us to give them any additional funding, we would need a new contract in place.

And so that contract, those contract terms could be set because a lot of folks don't know that there was even a contract. So I just want to make sure that we're all tracking on that same information. So if we were to allocate those funds, then we could allocate those funds and potentially negotiate a new contract for services. Yes, ma'am. Now, with that $350,000, it's gap funding, which means to me that it seems like, and it might not be the case, but it seems like they can allocate this for whatever. But specifically, can we allocate those gap dollars specifically for services rendered to people who are in need so we can ensure that those dollars are being utilized for the people that actually need them?

We would have to make sure that there's a specific line item in there that describes what we're paying for and what services are being received.

And that's how it was done last time.

Okay. Part of the performance agreement, but okay very good and then so so to your then just as a what-if right? So the city's going to do what we can obviously we care about our unhoused and we care about our constituency But this is your mission and your vision as friends in crisis So what happens to those folks if they end up you end up with maybe not our gap funding or maybe not another grant that is sufficient to keep the program running, what happens to those people? What is your plan B for the actual physical people that you would have to turn out or away from your facility?

We would try to make sure we get everybody that's in there housed. going from shelter to housing. That's the goal anyways for everybody that's there. It just would be ramped up faster and the numbers would just come down as we house them.

So for our citizens to understand.

So they would all, those ones would be housed. Nobody else would be coming in.

Okay. And so right now, just so everyone is aware and on the same page, there's no mechanism. We don't have a shelter that the city provides. There's not something like that. We don't have that. We can't run that. So this is why making this all call and also giving a sense of urgency here because we do care about are unhoused, and we care about organizations such as yours. But if we don't come together as a community, there is a real risk. Thank you. There is a real risk that these folks could be, unfortunately, back on the streets with no option, and that is a concern. Thank you.

All right. Council Member Williams.

Yes. Question. How many of those residents are from this area? Now, are a lot of those residents from outside of Killeen as well?

No, ma'am. Over 90%. Over 98% are from Killeen.

Over 90% of them are from this area.

Correct. We get some occasionally in spurts. We may get two or three from Austin. We may get one from Cedar Crest. We might get one from Temple because they ran out of time at the Temple shelter. But majority, we get some from Cove. one or two here and there, but the majority of the residents are Killeen residents.

So do you have a plan in place as the Mayor Temple was requesting or asking? What if we couldn't supply the money, the $300-some, because we are limited as a budget, $300-some thousand dollars? What is the plan for the people or the residents if it fails through? Now, will the community help alone? As you were saying, you partnered with the churches and with other organizations in the area. So will they be able to help as well if this falls through? Would they be a big assistant to you guys if this falls through?

They would help on some of it, but we would still house the ones we have. We just wouldn't take any more in. They would all get housed. Or if they don't want to, because not all homeless want to be housed, they'll run out of time and they'll be... moving on anyways.

How many beds do you guys have? How many beds do y'all have in that facility?

Seventy-eight.

Seventy-eight beds. Are those beds filled?

Say that again?

Are those beds filled? Seventy-eight beds currently.

Currently, there's 58 last night, I think, was the number.

It was running about 60 last week.

About 60, so we still have some.

Well, right now it's the first of the month. So people get social security checks, go to the hotel, come back three or four days from now. Mm-hmm.

It just doesn't. And I've worked for Feminists in Crisis for over seven years at one time. And I thank you all for everything that you're doing. I know the work is not easy, but you guys do that. And I appreciate it. And it's not just that they think of the homeless. They have other issues, a lot of issues dealing with this. And so my heart goes out to you guys, and I thank you for doing it. But my question is that I just want to know, where is the money going to? Something's just not adding up. Where is all of this going to? We got the beds. You said it's 78 beds. And I know the food and all that. And I know that they usually go by. That's how you get a lot of your payment. It's about a bed that you all have. So when those beds are not filled, do you guys still get payments for those beds, even though the people are not there?

We don't get paid for beds right now. Not right now. We don't get FEMA money.

You don't.

Not just FEMA money. The county took the FEMA money.

But I'm talking, yes, but the beds that you guys have, isn't that the one that they count the amount of beds that you all have in their facility?

No funder does except FEMA.

No, not FEMA.

And the VA. Those are the two.

The VA is a contract program.

And it's a contract, completely different.

All right. Thank you. Appreciate that.

That was a real problem.

I'm going to try to help speed us along because I think a lot of council members still have questions about where the money comes from, where it goes to. I'm going to make the same request I did to KEDC. Could you please send us your proposed budget, the budget you had for this fiscal year, and then your last audited statement? And I think that that'll give us all the opportunity to review that more closely before the next time we discuss the community partners in the budget. Yes. Thank you so much. Council.

Yes. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Brown. But we have asked for those items. Mayor Pro Tem, correct me if I'm wrong. Every year we ask for those items and we go beyond asking for those items. And then when we get them, it seems good. But I just want to say one thing. Last year, what concerns me, it's just a lot concerns me about this. Last year, $150,000, and it could have been also the year before you did not receive that from Bell County. Is that correct?

That's correct.

That's correct. I couldn't hear you.

That's correct.

Okay. Did they tell you why they refused to give you the funding? If you can't say it now, I'm okay with that, too.

No, that's correct. Okay. It's the FEMA money that I was talking about and Bell County said that they were going to distribute it. Through the county. And they and it was part of when we were going to do. The two campuses so so Bell County funded all that money. To be my sheet or not be my sheep.

They funded another program instead of funding you.