City Council - Regular Meeting

session to order. It's Monday, July 6, 2026. And about 12.06. And first item, discussion regarding the fiscal year 27 budget.

Mayor and council, if I may. in May was recognizing that for the last, well this fiscal year and last fiscal year, our electric fund revenues were falling short of projections, which can largely be credited to the fact that we had a lot of rain over the summer last year. in their interim meetings this year, the state legislature is discussing limiting the transfer of funds from enterprise funds, so your electric fund, your water fund, to the general fund to support those operations unless they were for a specific expense. So a portion of your electric fund can cover HR, finance, Those expenditures have not been limited yet, but since they are talking about them in the interim session, bad shape.

I'm certainly from the electrical,

Yeah, first of all, there's absolutely no way to do it all at once. It would have to be a year-by-year, very strategic process to get there. But you couldn't increase rates enough to make up what the electric fund is currently supporting the general fund at.

And with that, it hasn't been presented yet, but one avenue would be

If there is an increase in property taxes, And I don't have it, first of all, I can't tell you when legislature is going. It may not be in the 2028 legislative session. It could be in 2030. Either way. But the further out, the better, because that gives you more time to plan for it. If it happens next year in an FY28, we can't support the general fund with electric fund revenue.

like having a pool, having a library, having kids to have, having well-staffed police force, having a good fire. Right.

There would be sacrifices that citizens would have to make if they're not willing to cover that revenue.

Right.

As I said in this first memo to you guys, what we currently collect in property taxes and what we currently collect in sales taxes does not pay in its entirety for your police and fire force. Which leaves, again, swimming pools, parks, cemeteries, library.

All these things that people have said, do we have too many? And I can defer to Chief on that. In my opinion, I think there could be some changes made to the department with staffing.

And we run into a city that's growing, and services are made more and more.

my second budget memo was giving you just a heads up you'll recall that the city covers health insurance or All the retirees that are eligible to retire in 27 and 28 due to that expense will double to almost $400,000. At the same time, the recipients of those City Council meeting was changing the employee manual to bring all their existing employees in, but to change it to where the post-retirement insurance is no longer provided. Another option that we have is to remove our retirees from the city's insurance plan and put them on individual plans, which will then decrease the claims against the city's group plan. It will lower our renewal rates.

If you're hired on a certain year, you'll receive health insurance prior or after you retire. But something like that already has to be brought in immediately. There's a lot of options on how we can go back and see it.

so with the city we can retire after 20 years of service so if someone starts working for us when they're 18 years old they can retire at 38 and we'll cover them until they're 65 years old and it's a fantastic

I've run those numbers and if you guys would like me to move it over there so I can share my screen with you, I'm certainly happy to do that.

What I found in the rates that were sent over to us this year, say for example, next month per employee. And based on individual plan rates that we received, it will be a reduction in cost for some of the employees. If we cover them at that $914, it's a change. It only goes up for a few of the employees. And if we wanted to cover that in whole, it's almost a wash because several of those There's no immediate cost savings, but next year when we go out for our renewal rates, if you'll recall, had we gone out to market this year, our renewals were looking at a 25 to 40 percent increase. They would be closer to 9 percent. With the exception of 2017, 2018, and 2019, the City of North Texas has utilized the line item called Punt Designated Unassigned to balance the budget. That's not a source of revenue that's indicating to present a balanced budget to you guys. We've planned on using fund balance. For example, this year in staff turnover and things like that, there's been savings in some of the line items that haven't required that. Sometimes you'd like to fund what were before, then we've got some more money that we can transfer over. So that's not necessarily meaning that we've gone down on the fund balance for each of those years, but we should plan on a balanced budget with available revenues. So when I removed that item from my original budget documents, it left us at about a $411,000 deficit in the general fund, and not enough money in the other funds to cover that deficit. You heard a presentation from LCAP about the additional properties that have been added to the tax roll that have not been previously taxed or correctly taxed, and with that addition

So is that built into this?

It is built into the budget that you have in your budget book. My point being, before you have a balanced budget, there is not enough money for any cost of living increase, for any fleet replacement, for any capital improvement projects. The general fund is at an even keel, 0-0. The electric fund is a positive of $33,000. There is no room within this budget for, I'll tell you, I didn't get the capital improvement committee together this year. It was an exercise in utility. We approved one patrol vehicle last year and two replacement servers for We're in the same boat this year, so the CIP that you have in front of you today is the same as last year, with the dates pushed out.

We have several items that aren't on the CIP plan. We're talking about the replacement of roofs. We've got mold throughout City Hall. The IT building needs roofs replaced.

We're looking at in excess of $350,000 for that. The hostess house building still has a lot of repairs to be made to make it actually usable. Our accounting software is going to be phased out. We don't have an exact deadline on that. That's going to be $160,000 in the first year. Like I said, there's mold at City Hall. We don't have any cost estimates on that. The golf course bridge, if you go in with a metal bridge instead of the wooden one that FEMA would help with, we're looking at a quarter million dollars. The hole number two, bids came in. Now we are in communication with FEMA on that one to see if they'll kick in some extra money since those bids didn't come in higher than anticipated. But the point is, we have no room for any improvements at this point.

So no, no, no, no.

There's a tab in your binder called debt. Debt schedule is in the very, close to the very back next to the last tab. We don't have a significant amount of debt fall off until 2036. We will not be able to issue any new debt until 2036. The water fund.

If you communicated with the nonprofits, the persons that were creating

So what's the multi-year plan for staffing? Yeah, that's all. So, I mean, I know these are really crappy conversations to have, but if anyone wants to say any of this stuff, what the committee department is, is that in general, what's the recommendation?

So, last year when we were going through budget, the council had requested that I go

I'm just trying to remember the formula for increase. What does that gain us in revenue? For tax rate? Yes, tax rate, yes.

The CAAT doesn't certify the tax rule until I think they have July 20th. But just based on some early numbers, a two cent increase, Um...

I do remember them telling us a while back that, and I know that they're trying to get away from electric, but if we raise electric rates by like 10%, it's about a penny is $500,000.

I thought it was a million. It might be a million, I'm sorry. But again, yeah, that's great if we want to use that

that to the general fund because that's making your general fund more reliant on your electric fund.

I wouldn't recommend it for the next fiscal year but I do Yeah, so your citizens will see relief through their electric rates for what they might be paying extra in their taxes. And that makes the funds more self-sufficient. And that's not to say that you're Again, there's a bit of formulation that you can do, how much does your finance department

They're discussing this outside of session. My opinion is if we're planning on raising property taxes, then we need to go ahead and lower electric rates as well.

You're saying we need to prepare for it now. We need to do it right. You're saying we're going to do it. So we'll kick the can down the road and lower rates next year. I don't think like you were saying, there's certain things that we can do.

Going back to

they're more valuable is in the utility sales. And with energy efficient homes, maybe not that valuable. And water.

Yeah, so everything we're hearing is that

We're not getting them. We're owed.

Remember that that's very . I do understand that, yes.

But those can help with some of the parks and rec. It can. It can help with some of the heritage and some of the things to bring people to town. And so that may make up some of the differences. I mean, if you're talking taxes, you might as well get everything that we are owed. because someone's paying those.

Approximately in the city.

I haven't looked in the last probably 12 months, 13 months or so, but the last time I checked it was about 26, 27 in the city limits.

Yeah, so that's a lot.

It's more than the three that we started with when we started college.

Yeah, I'm just saying that's a .

It's state law for them to pay that tax. We don't necessarily need an ordinance We need a registration process but in my opinion we do not need to make people pay a fee to operate an Airbnb. What does that process look like to you? Because you might feel responsible,

water are still I think a little we have room for growth there especially if we're going to be making improvements to the water system our electric rate I don't think it's wise to go out any further even though we are not on a deregulated market we should not operate our rates

Our electric rate is fairly standard.

Our meter rate for water is a little high, but I think, again, our usage, and that's where we started working on last year. you know, electric utilities, and the

nowhere close with roadways, we're nowhere close with trench. And those are the only ones that you can apply for. So it's a long road ahead of us to actually utilize impact bees for the growth. We're on the right track, but it's still a long road.

It's generally an 18 to 24 month They're responsible for the road... Well, in his conversations, we would recoup that money in the first.

Yes, the goal was to be able to recoup it within the first 40 homes developed.

And since that would be the impact he is talking about, utility and infrastructure and all that kind of stuff, would that be something that we could use before the legislature changes their mind on how we use it?

that you acquire are heavily regulated.

based on historic consumption. depending on Mother Nature.

I believe that we have to cover our costs, so.

doing one dollar per thousand correct but what i was asking because you said right now you're trying to get away from transferring money from the electric funds could we use the money from the electric fund for that eighty thousand dollars because it is infrastructure wise before the lost you can share the expense so there's

So I guess I need some guidance from council. I've got a variety of numbers put together. But I just need some direction. This meeting can be real short if we're not looking at increasing revenue somewhere, some guidance on where to cut. I would almost guarantee that your department heads are going to say they need everyone I got. You can't hear me.

I said, I mean, you can't. I'm not saying let's do it, but you can't.

Well, I won't say let's do that.

Texas is equity.

Are you asking for a prioritizing of what can be cut? Is that what we're looking at?

So we're probably able.

different statement to say that we believe that attrition, we should reduce that.

So that every time someone is leaving, that department will review what their true needs are. I mean, that's been used by government in the past a lot.

for transfer i didn't remove the transfer okay and that's what i'm asking like what is it the plan for transfer is that uh paying for the electricity for the hr department for the electricity no it's if you go to page if you go to page nine

you'll see line number 410498.00 and 410498.01. So the electric fund off the top makes a $1.2 million, $100,000 a month The money that will likely stay the same if you look at page 8, you'll see line item 440.32, electric franchise fees, that will remain. Okay. And then further down that page, you'll see 446.81, admin overhead. That's what's going through your staff support right now. Okay. The other two numbers, as far as I can tell, are an arbitrarily.

Can you repeat the two lines again? Electric franchise fee 4032 and what else?

If you look further down that page under other revenue, you have admin overhead electric funds.

Okay.

What thousand?

547,500. Okay. Okay.

Just one clarification on page 24 under the city manager. In 2022-23, we had total salaries of $286,000. I understand where we're at today. How is that? We have a full-time salary of $207,000.

That would pay for a seat.

consensus on how to approach this. So far we've been hearing a lot of ideas, but no one has wanted to say on council what they'd be comfortable with. It's a complex duel. You can't just do one. You have to do more than one thing. Tax increase, staff, water usage increase. It's those ideas that I can throw some preliminary numbers out at you.

the water fund number one for the debt service over a million dollars for the next several years but number two as we pursue water bill and board funding we're going to have to keep the money in the water fund a two cent increase is just under three hundred thousand in additional revenue a three cent increase is i'm sorry that's our five cent increase um it depends on how much we So we're running some scenarios with a tax increase and a decrease in electric rate, water increase.

And you said water increase?

And it transfers admin overhead, just like electric does, for the utility bill and things like that. But it does not, it would not do any other transfers to the general fund.

Do we have any say on hot funds going up or down?

It takes a vote of the citizens.

But no, we could not increase our hot rate anymore.

On page 38.

to 425.

So what page are you on then? 36 of 9-0.

After the Brooklyn Bridge.

I mean you're looking at which, I'm sorry?

The full-time salary.

From 24 to 25? From 24 to 25. We added a position? We added a position? Yes, it was added. You'll actually see the large increase for 23. The position was added in FY24. It was higher partway through the year. And then a 3% cost of living increases. In theory, I'm assuming that we're decreasing the electric rate at the same revenue value that we would be increasing property taxes, so it would be a net neutral... For the citizen. That I'd have to run some numbers on. Yeah, I mean... And consumption of electricity varies so widely across households.

Yeah, that's wild. That's wild.

A little bit, yeah. Do you have any more control over your utilities than you do over your cat?

How do we talk about satination? Do we need to move the attorney to the same concession at some point, or...

I think it's stretched onto executive session on that one. Don't we have this again on Wednesday? Yes, but the agenda is already posted.

What I'm asking is how can we do that?

We cannot reduce any staffing in our fire department. They're already, quite frankly, below the recommended standard. They have requested an additional full-time firefighter for each shift to meet the national standard. And their overtime budget is high. But it's unavoidable. And in adding the three full-time personnel, they still have to be paid overtime due to the nature of how their shifts are scheduled out. So there's not necessarily one cost saving over the other, other than if they have a full-time employee that wasn't able to come to work, they could drop down to

So the last year and a half ago, two years, right before Chief Evans left, the volunteer fire department and the city fire department separated. We went from a combination of both into two separate entities living in the same house. When we did that, that separated. We have paid staff has to meet a service dinner. We are regulated.

We do have an agreement with the volunteers as far as response and automatic day agreements on house fires and major car wrecks.

But we may get one, we may get none, we may get two. if we were below minimum staffing, which is the one.

Which I'm currently at, below minimum staffing.

If somebody takes off, it's below minimum still.

There's like, y'all's, you have the most efficient or effective scheduling right now, right? Yes. You changed that a couple years ago and now you have a new structure than that. Yes.

So they had that previous, uh, beginning here and I got here and then, uh, Chief Smith had changed that.

We can move on from there. I know we can't get most of this stuff done, but y'all are good, right? There's nothing that can be taken away from the fact that you need help. No, I can't believe how you need help with the other aggressive.

We don't have like a national standard like the fire chief does for communities. And every community is slightly different in your makeup, or drastically different in your makeup. So how many police per thousand? We are about where I think we need to be. We have 37 total employees at the police department that I manage. Sounds like a lot. Three of them are the annual shelter. We split the cost 50-50 with the county per year. So you can take a one and a half off that. Five are school resource officers. The school pays for for the other three. So that's a pretty good cut right off the top of those 37 there. We have 10 dispatchers with our agreement going back almost five years ago with the county to provide EMS dispatch. And they pay for three of those dispatchers 100% training, staff, all salary. That leaves us with seven dispatchers

Yes, sir.

That's part of your- And I think it's very important. And they pay for that training, the county does. Okay. So- Did they pay the staff?

You said they pay for the training.

Did they pay for the staff? They pay for 100% of the cost for the EMD program and three full-time employees that we felt we needed to add for the additional responsibilities of the dispatch handlers for the county. So if you took those three off, then that's down to seven dispatchers, which I think is about what we have. services. So when we get back down to our basic staff without the shelter, without the school resource officers, without those additional dispatchers, I think we've only added one or two over the last maybe two to two and a half decades. I think we might have added one patrol officer, we've added a code enforcement officer. Aside from that, I think we're back just might have added additional staff other than shelter, school resource officers, dispatchers. And again, I think you've added one patrol slot over that approximately 30 years and one code enforcement officer. new position. She had a form for that, brought it to all of us. In the budgeting process, she decided not to present it, and I understand. I asked for it again this year, and she's gladly smiled, and it's not going to be presented, and I do understand. I feel like it's needed, and I feel like I'm not being responsible for not asking for what I feel we need. The responsibilities have grown drastically. Where does that need to come from? I think it's a combination of several things. One example, if we get called for someone possibly having a mental issue, in my day, as quickly as you can find something borderline on a Class C misdemeanor, which happens quickly with being, you know, a medical, excuse me, a mental, as quickly as you could, you've got a cost all the way to the jail. You don't do that anymore. They're going straight to the hospital. Well, it's just they have to go to school. I think it's a two, maybe three-day school to be a mental. You can be a mental health officer, but you have to have mental health training just in general to be a police officer. Then you can actually be a mental health officer. They don't have to have the highest level, but you do have to have training to be a police officer. which is a few days of training. And that's just one example of the increase. One second, where you say you had to pick them up and bring them back, once they're released? Yes, sir. If they're still on hold, right? No, if they're released and they decide after, sometimes it's just a couple hours, sometimes it could be a couple days. Once they're released, we get a phone call. We, the city police, took them over there and dropped them off. We have to go over there and either bring them back here, We can take them there, but we have to make sure it's a quality place to keep because they're probably off on the street. So we drop off and we pick them.

But the officers from the PDL will take that transport back to Metro Pleasure sometimes. The deputies make a courtesy transport for the PDL.

If we pick them up in the city, it's our call. It happens in the city. We have to do the whole thing, and that includes picking them up right in the car. I thought there was an incident a couple years ago where one of the if you didn't hear assistant chief boswell remembers the Councilman, I'm not trying to sum up what we were going with there. Exactly. I was just trying to make the point, and I polled emergency medical dispatch out the increased responsibilities that our officers have to do these days.

I understand that, but it's not an increased responsibility if those responsibilities are not being taken care of. If there's no increased responsibility, I'm not hearing an increased responsibility in housing. Because if you don't have specialized Have you addressed any of your responsibilities?

Maybe that one wasn't handled, I believe I made you think I'm not sure how we got to. is required to be police officers, though there is to drop off. Then, it could have been hours or maybe the next day, but if it was our transport and I dropped off, we didn't have to go get that person up and bring them back here unless there had been some kind of another rain to make, and we still have to make sure they get to where they're at. So, I was just trying to make one example of how the responsibilities, in addition to the cost of service in relation to the traffic that comes through town on our highways now to the slight increase in population, There was a certain amount of training within the next few years that we had to go through. That's increased drastically. If you have a legislative session, to be a police officer and maintain your police officer certification, you have to take certain training over the next couple of years. Those hours have increased drastically. It's becoming harder to be a police officer and maintain your police officer certification, and it's getting harder to get police officers. We have an opening, as we do right now. We are advertising. They're already certified and ready to go to work. Most of the time, we put someone through the academy. If you have one in the academy right now, graduate in January. If we don't get a certified for the one in September, start in September and graduate in March. That's roughly five and a half months. They go through six to eight weeks of training depending on how it goes before they get out. So you're looking at almost your process to advertise, get someone in an interview, get them into the academy, graduate and get through field training. So it puts a short staff, and I don't believe we've been fully staffed in my project for four and a half years as a police chief for police officers. We've had it's only been for a day or two that we've gone through that process. We're often two or three down at the time trying to get someone either out of field training or out of police gathering or into the police academy. So it takes a lot longer to do what we do. We are slowly being surrounded by over the years slowly, but he's more than

It's just, we understand that it's tough for partners to afford. It's tough for recruiting officers here. Money's tough. We've got to figure out something. Because your department may be in a position in the next couple of years

I feel like our police department is in really good shape all the way around. We are very well taking care of our equipment, which is the biggest expense out of these RPOs. As Councilman Keeney mentioned a minute ago when she was throwing a few things around, we do have take-home cars for every officer. Once you get to that point, you always ask for a car or two per year, but we've got a car for every officer, so it's a car or two per year. They were going to be back to buying a car or two every year, one way or the other. And it's hard to say exactly. I don't know of a study to say the comparison of it. But I can assure you, from working in the business, when you have your own car, you take care of it better. And it lasts longer. Because there's only one person responsible. You're sharing cars. Everybody's . So that argument, I guess, could go on forever.

So is the random posting for 10 hour shifts or 12 hour shifts?

That's one thing I was mentioning and then Councilor Morris would not use the word company officer but we kind of went like this.

That's why I was asking specifically what you can do different because I'm hearing the same thing over and over.

their advertisements. Some of the schedules will have built-in overtime with them and it makes it difficult to compare apples to apples. We are on four 10-hour days which is a 40-hour shift in addition to any overtime that they might need. And a lot of these agencies will do these three days on, four days off, and you do the math and then one week they may be actually So it is true. And then they'll advertise that break. So though I say I saw that just last week, I've never seen them post that high. We would have to do that math to see exactly. But I do know we're slightly behind the hourly rate of almost everybody that's coming around. I'm not saying we're terribly behind. I could get a hit. But it is slowly increasing more and more. And I do have to bring that up when you're talking about

Did your investigators cross-train on the mental health issue? That way they could address that if need came up? Because they may have a little more time than the patrol to cross-train on the mental, so they could take care of that need?

Well, as police officers, they have to have that basic training like every other police officer, but the mental health hours are what they do.

to make sure we can answer those.

We'd have to put them through that video program again, yes sir. Just to follow up on what happens before I'm just saying, and I have had this conversation with Chief before, and he doesn't like the 12-hour shifts because he thinks there's exhaustion at the end of the shift.

However, landing on advertising is likely on a 12-hour shift that the agencies that surround them.

And for law enforcement, although the City of Glen Passes does do this, for law enforcement, you don't pay overtime until you get more than 86 hours of work. Now, the City of Glen Passes pays overtime for anything over 80. But if you were to take one of our lowest officers' pay and transition it to that 12-hour shift, it would be $61,000 a year. So that's what I was thinking about.

rate is likely the same, they're just guaranteed more hours in their pay period.

They're guaranteed 86 hours in their pay period when we're just guaranteeing 80. And so our starting pay looks lower because it's based on a different hourly scale.

I'm fully aware.

I was just pointing that out. We pay it after 80. Right. Other law enforcement agencies typically pay an average of $6,000.

And that discussion has came up for years here. And it's always that I've heard, long before I was even in this position, is that we're not going to ask any people in the city if everyone else is overtime at 40 hours. We're not going to ask any other department not to get overtime at 40 hours.

That's something to consider, though.

And I am very aware of what the manager is speaking about. And I don't know the exact hours in the schedule when I refer to it. advertise that because they're putting in those hours and it makes it a little easier to stomach. But even at that, Llano wasn't paying that much, even what they're saying now, if they're on that schedule recently. I'm just trying to make the point that surrounding us, the pay is getting higher and more as the days go on. And we're having a hard time getting applicants here in general. To sum it up, and I can keep going, and I just, I'm very passionate about not cutting staff, which I believe we've got services, and if we were going to, I think we would have to look directly at our school resource officer program, which I would sure have, because we've worked for decades to build on what I think is a shining example of a good program. I think that provides a great service for our community. And no one's suggesting that.

You're working it back.

We're suggesting maybe do attrition, was the word I heard when I stepped up.

Well, I mean, that's been one thing that's been brought up. Also, potentially different structure in your scheduling. But we're not talking about SRO. I mean, we're talking about, because that's split with the ISD. Sure. Well, again, we... It takes a lot of management.

I mean, somebody has to manage that. They shipped primarily our patrol lieutenant when I was a sergeant. But I did hear Patricia, Councilman Morrison, and I heard from over here, you know, where we might cut staff. So I was looked at just out of the, you know, to step up and start talking. So here we are. get it advertised, get interviews, you know, take applications, get interviews. It's probably a nine and a half to ten month process to get somebody out on the streets.

And for the new hires, you have three or four months of training, learning on the job, writing on, is that correct?

Six to eight weeks after they get out of the pilot. In addition to that. It's a happy investment. over there. You're just getting fewer and fewer when it comes time to try to hire somebody like right now. And retention is extremely important. So if I seem passionate, I am. And if I seem like I'm on edge as soon as someone starts talking about attrition and cutting and equipment, I am. Because we are doing everything we can to try to retain these people that y'all have invested in as taxpayers. A ton of money is getting and retaining.

What is the tax rate plan on

I know you thought that I was getting personal with you, but...

It's 53. It's 53 over there. That's right. And where are we at? We're at 34. Say it again? Atlanta is 53. We're 34.

And I was just talking about, because I know that with the budget deficit, looking at staffing, and that's just a really easy way to bring it down, because that's the majority of it. So I was just asking.

Fine. I'm not upset. But I'll assure you, the things that are said here today We're going to be known right over there within minutes. And I just want my people to know that when people say the manager looks at me, that means stand up and talk. And I don't mind talking. That's what I'm doing. I'm very proud of our program and our people. And I know I'm just one of the six, eight directors here. But it's hard running that thing over there. And I'm not the only one that runs it. It only goes well because of the good people I've got with me. And I just don't want to go backwards. Now, if you want to look at me and you say you stretch every dime I give you and make those cars last, we're going to be watching you close.

I feel like we'll do a good job. We'll do better.

If we have to make cuts, we're going to do it. We're going to buckle down. But I'm not going to stand up and act like, well, we could have been cutting years ago and thank y'all for all the fluff. Because that's not what we've got. It's getting harder every day.

manager, two in finance, one in city secretary, two in IT. Those girls stay busy, busy. And respectfully, I did visit your position last year because I also presented an extra one for IT, but mine are both for funding. One for the building department, we've got three for cemetery. There's two full-time and three part-time for the library. I think we can maybe dive into that one a little bit deeper. In looking at their schedule, Monday through Friday, they typically have all five employees working at some point during the day, and one employee on Saturday.

At the library? At the library. Five employees?

Two full-time and three part-time.

What's the hours every week?

Ten to six. Do you have water in the wastewater? There are nine in the parks department. That's general parks, maintenance, and everything except for sports. There is likely one position in that department that after retirement, I would recommend replacing that position. It can be potentially combined with another role when city halls return.

Two years.

Obviously, the pools are seasonal. We've got three at parks facilities, maintainable fields. Chiefs just spoke to theirs. Obviously, we have a part-time judge in the municipal court and two full-time employees. Two in the public works department. There are currently six Yes. So potentially just five. Or I'm sorry, it would stay at six instead of seven. There's a part-time employee at the collection But if we're kind of cutting a position from the streets department, it would help cover the expense of that. In utilities, I've got four full-time employees. I did cut a part-time from that this year.

At the collection center, you're going to that, sorry, part-time, full-time, what would that be?

I don't know. We're going to take it from $18,000 a year to $46,000 because of benefits.

And what are the part-time numbers right now?

$10,000. talked about tuesday through saturday off sunday monday yeah that's what we discussed and you also have the potential there to we just raised the rates in the collection station just to break even from frontier but you could also incorporate that a little bit more to try to break even with the salary as well so talking about adding an extra day

you were talking about going down, so it's kind of a wash.

I can see that.

That's the cost difference between having your own landfill versus having it hauled off for you. Well, they haul it off there, right?

Who do they use? I mean, we're talking about trying to find places where we can save money here. I don't personally see...

time, but that proper advertising and would increase the use of that same video. So a lot of people want to see that ad. I'm really curious. I'm really curious. How much is it being used?

In the utilities department, we have four full-time employees. I cut a part-time position out of that this year. Non-departmental includes our HR coordinator and two custodians. Economic Development Fund has one employee that's paid for by LADC. Airport has one part-time employee. Golf course. is nine, superintendent, essentially four part-time clerks, and three grandkeepers, four grandkeepers, one of those being a supervisor. Animal shelters, three employees. Correct, county pays 50%. There's a meter reader that's paid for out of the water budget. There are six employees, does that sound right, for water, rice, water?

Should be more than that. Should be closer to nine. Do you have the plant in there as well?

And then three for plants. Three for? Four for plants, I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. So there are six employees split between the Water and Wastewater Fund and four that are paid for online. And one of those is a meter reader? One of those is a meter reader. Oh. No, I'm sorry. That's an addition to the six for Water and Wastewater. Then there's a meter reader that's split between the two.

I think this only has a good perspective of our surrounding cities. Barton 44, Cove 68, St. Saba 34, with bypasses. And Liberty Hill 46. I think the reason our tax rate's been so low is because we've been supplementing with our knowledge.

Burnett also has the runs. Okay, does that make sense? To that point, Burnett does have the runs. Okay. I think there are limited transfers, but not in full.

I guess even if that legislation doesn't pass, I think in the next three years, we'll probably go practice trying to move into that.

I think Vernon has a lot of, they also have the delays and things like that. They've got a lot more tax bases.

They do, and a higher tax base. More in. And the city one. So we're looking at potential tax increase, electric weight decrease, water increase.

Our city employees need support. I mean, instead of talking about

I need some guidance on whether council wants me to explore any sort of cost of living increase. Perhaps not across the board. Perhaps for earners under $50,000, under $60,000. What that number looks like to council, I don't know. Or across the board. I mean, I can obviously review all scenarios.

But... Citywide, correct.

but maybe focusing on the lower earners of the city. I'd like to focus on the lower earners, the ones that are in the morning.

But it's not, are you talking about something that goes away at like 28?

Bless you.

And if there's nothing in those departments this year, then we work twice as hard next year to find that money for the departments.

Oh, for sense? Yeah, I do have...

So the base number that's in your budget that gets rid of us having to rely on the front balance to balance the budget, that includes the added property. That includes the estimated value that includes those added properties.

But if the rate went up, then more money would be... That's applied to that.

So if we were to adopt the current tax rate based on those new properties that we have found, it gave us that So for example, this year our property tax revenue is 1.96 million. Next year I've got it built in the budget at 2.4. That's based on those new values. If we get a tax rate increase. Right, so. Yeah, sorry. 36 cents is 296,039 cents. It is $528,175.41. And it spreads the burden amongst more taxpayers.

Is the rate the same for residential versus partial?

The valuation will be higher. The rate will be the same. The valuation of the property may be higher. Does this have to go to a vote or is it just us or we can only go up X percentage? We can only go up so much we cannot exceed the voter approval rate without it triggering an election. And that's 41 cents? Estimated. Okay. That's not what it was last year.

It's somewhere between 31 and 41, potentially.

Between 34 and 41. How did that happen? It will likely be around the 41 cents. Lowering it half a cent, I do think, is about $500,000. I'll have to run the numbers off.

So that just levels out. It doesn't give you money for any of the raises or anything like that. that we can't transfer that money to the other funds. And so we're increasing the general fund via the tax. Right.

It just doesn't give you extra money to wiggle with, I don't want to say play, because that's not the right term, but it doesn't give you any additional revenue to

water projects, future water projects, would we still look at increasing the usage to help the flood projects?

Yes. You will not be able to fund any of your water projects until... What was the rate on that we were looking at? The dollar increases... water rate we're currently at 505 per thousand now 2036 correct I'm sorry is when um but yes we don't see any

That was what I've taken away so far. That's exactly what we're talking about, Zach. You know, it's exactly what Zach's talking about, especially with the possibility of not being able to transfer those electric funds.

I mean, for however many years, that's been our primary income source, and we've used it for everything.

If in the future we're not going to be allowed to use that money.

I would like to, I had a request from someone that involved pulling the audits from the late 50s, early 60s, and I'd like to read you something that I found in the audit from 1966 if I may. It says, we note that $121,817 transfer from the utility fund is practically all of the operating net income of the utility system. Continued transfers of similar amounts could be deducted If it is anticipated that general fund expenditures will continue at the 1965-66 level, additional revenue must be sought from another source. We're in no different position in 2026 than we were in 1966. And the... is because in supporting other funds at such a high rate, you are neglecting the infrastructure need of the enterprise fund that is funding that. And so there are water projects, there are electric projects that are being shelved. And in some instances, the state is having to step in with all this water money that they created last year. If cities were taking care of their own business, they wouldn't have to be funding to be

All the ditching comes through the waterfront? Or is that public works? Ditching. Improvement of ditching.

Drainage. Drainage. Comes from the general fund. But we don't collect anything specifically for drainage.

So we've got a really unique opportunity as a council right now to have a lot of people really mad at us and talking pretty mean about us, but maybe helping the future of this community.

I think by being prepared now and then not facing the possibility keeping whether it's they love the parks or they love the library or they love the swimming pools to be those available to them.

I've got one more question for Chief. With our population that's grown over the last, I don't know, say five years, you guys who produce on you're not a revenue chaser. All of that being said, we're still, with your law enforcement,

Did you say over the past six months or a year, have you seen an increase or decrease in the number of cases presented very high in the grand jury?

Charlie does most of our cases with Fidel, our lieutenant investigator. I can't say if we've had more than one night.

It's about the same old way it was when I was

I think they work very hard.

I think a good correlation would be able to see the number of arrests, essentially like the only level of arrests, and then how many cases are presented to the grand jury. I think that would be an interesting number to see. I mean, that's an interesting number to deal with. If you don't mind, that would be great.

But if you don't mind, you're saying your business has been hurt.

I see what's going on there. I don't really hear We've seen investigations, but not as many arrests, which is great if there's nothing going on. But then if you hear, hey, there was only X amount of cases recent to grand jury, it's just interesting So you can't see that with what's presented to the grand jury? Sure.

That's not part of that federal rule. Right.

Okay.

Ms. Sargent, where do we go from here?

I think we have some marching orders for Wednesday, if there's nothing else you guys want to get into today.

Can I get a copy of that listing of employees by department that you read off?

You actually have one in your budget book. How great is three part-time? Three part-time, so that equates to one and a half full-time. And this shows 1.5 part-time and two full-time. Correct, so two full-time and three part-time.

So,

One of the wives.

One of the wives. One of the wives. One of the wives. One of the wives. One of the wives. One of the wives. They weren't not interested last year, so. If you would like a more detailed list of personnel in this person, I can send that. If it summarizes what you need, I would prefer to take the names out of it and leave the positions. I just put something that indicates how many positions.

Whatever is easiest for you.

Okay.

Just so I can hear.

So are you wanting to break up