City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you, ma'am.

Go ahead and call to order our April 9th city council meeting for the city of Long View. Uh, welcome to everyone here. We're always excited to have a full chamber. So, thank you guys for being here with us tonight. The first thing we will do is our prayer and pledge. Jack Laneir, who is a volunteer with Greg County Historical Museum's Dalton Days, will do this for us. Please rise. Thank you. Is this where you prefer me to stand? You can be wherever. I was always I was always told being in acting and everything, never turn your back on the audience. But even more, never turn your back on a politician. So, however you want me to do this is anyway. All right.

Right here. Just just right here. This

one. Okay. Right at my face. Glad it wasn't a rattlesnake. Okay. Folks, what we're going to do real quickly, and I've been asked to do this, is is give your invocation, your prayer, and I do this in a very sincere manner. And we'll bow in just a moment and do that, but also in our pledge of allegiance uh after that. And then I have a few remarks I'm supposed to make about Dalton Days and what's going to take place this weekend. I'm excited about it. I always am. But this one is going to be extra special because of our birthday of the United States of America. May we bow for prayer. Our father in heaven, we thank you for this day. Father, we are at a crossroads on many things in this world and this country. And father, the only way out of those issues is to turn to you. Lord, many of us need to turn back to you. And father, we pray for that to happen. We know that it says in your word in 2 Chronicles, that great book which says, "If my people, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." And may that take place, Father, in our nation. May it take place around the globe. And we thank you for Long View, Texas and Greg County. I thank you that you saw fit for my family and I to come here over 41 years ago. And Lord, I'm so privileged and pleased to call Long View, Texas my home. Thank you, Lord. And we just pray for your blessings and the rest of this meeting tonight. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Facing the flag. I pledge 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. You can be seated for just a moment and then when I'm through with my remarks, I will be seated. I just want to say how proud I am of the folks in Long View. We cannot do that without the citizens. And tomorrow or rather on Saturday, we'll be reenacting something and we'll be highlighting the citizens. It was the citizens that went through a very tumultuous time that day in May 23rd, 1894. But I just want to talk about the present day for just a moment. And I want to thank our fire chief and our police chief, Chief Grimes. You came here right at the right time, didn't you? That was a wonderful rescue. And I have colleagues in the fire service all over the place and all over the world I'm talking about that have rang my line and say, "What about that f fantastic rescue in Long View, Texas?" I said, "I'm joyful about it." I said, "If I could, I would turn cartwheels again." So, thank you, Chief Grimes, for what you're doing. You have a great crew. Chief Boone, I can never say anything good enough about Annie Boone. Anthony Boone. I work with this man. We had some good times, didn't we? good meals at that old waffle shop. Remember on the midnight Anthony was our lieutenant and I was his sergeant and we just have a good time, you know, talking. We enjoyed our work was like play, wasn't it? But we got the job done, didn't we? So, thank you so much for those years, Anthony. Thank you folks for being hi behind these men. You need to pray for them every day and those that work under them and the great job that they do. Some of them are standing out here. I've often said we don't have to go to Dallas or Fort Worth or Houston or any of those places to find a hero. We've got them

right here in Long View, Texas. That's right. And we're thankful for them. Let's applaud them.

In 1894, the city of Long View had a population of about about 6,000. It was a railroad town. It was founded by a man that we know as Ho Methan. His home site was where downtown Long View is now. So the home is never there is not there anymore. But the reason we got the name Long View is because he deeded part of his land to the Southern Pacific Railroad and they knew the railroad was coming. So in 1870 this happened and he is known as the father of long view simply because and many of you know this story there the latest one I've heard is uh there's a group of guys on working on the railroad with the railroad ties laying the ties and one of them looked down the slope and said my what a beautiful long view. And so therefore that's why we have Long View Texas. Long View, Texas was known as the Old South until a certain day. It was known as the Old South because a lot of the uh the men that settled in that area fought for the Confederate cause. Some of them didn't, but most of them did. But uh anyway, what happened that day in 1894 after Long View was kind of getting established and everything else, we had a bank called the First National Bank of Long View, Texas. And it was bought by Reverend EA Clemens. He was pastor of the First Baptist Church. And he was a hellfire and brimstone type preacher like most effective ones are. And when he began to preach, brothel begin to close up. This whole area right here were brothel. People were walking the aisles in conversion. Things began to change. But there were people that were after his life. So his life was attempted there in in uh Marshall when he was preaching and the thugs that

tried to break in the door and get to him never made it because they wound up dead in the street because of the marshall over there and a couple of deputies in Long View. He didn't have too much of that problem. However, his sons had a problem that one day, May 23rd, 1894. It was drizzling in Long View according to the story and three four horsemen at 4 in the afternoon rode on their horses rode down Tyler Street and they stopped at Fredonia because that was the site of the First National Bank of Long View. Jack, I love you. You got one minute left.

One minute. Okay. Nonetheless, they pulled off a bank job. They were not successful. One of them was killed. They took four of our towns people in three in death and one who died later. They never did. They made it out of town, but they never did make it out of the area because Bill Dalton, the leader of the gang, was killed because he evaded capture that day. You'll find out more about it if you come to the reenactments here in Long View, Texas this Saturday. We have four of them. One at 12:00, one at one, one at two, and one at three. So that's four of them. After that, we have the parade. Also, Teddy Roosevelt will be in that parade. I'll just let you come and see about that. Nonetheless, thank you very much for your time. I love you as longites. I'm proud to call it my home and I'm looking forward to this weekend. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Jack. Uh, next I would like to invite a very special guest, Reagan Phillips and family or whoever wants to join me up front. All the way up. All the way up. Reagan is this sweet little one here and she attends school for little children.

She does. And as part of their program, they raise money and ask that the mayor and city proclaim a young person as the honorary mayor for the day. So today is Reagan's day. Uh School for Little Children has requested that the mayor by proclamation recognized today, April 9th, 2026 as Reagan Phillips honorary mayor for the day here in the city of Long View. It is the mission of school for little children to provide a positive environment in which children experience Hey Bobby experience the love of Jesus through Christian teaching and caring support. Now therefore I as mayor proclaim today April 9th 2026 as Reagan Phillips honorary mayor for the day here in the city of Long View. Congratulations. Thank you. We look forward to bringing back. She can read her own proclamation.

Do you want to take a photo with family?

Yeah. Come on, everybody. Thank you guys. Sometimes we get to do fun things up here and that is one of them. Thank you guys so much for being here. Uh, next on our agenda is citizen comment. I do not have any speaker cards for that. I do have some zoning cards, but we will do those at the zoning item. Is there anyone that would like to make a citizen comment and fill out a card afterwards? If not, I will move on to our presentation items. Um, excuse me. First presentation is a discussion regarding the city's market pay plan and preliminary findings with Matt Weatherly, our public sector personnel consultants. Matt, I will turn it over to you. Thank you for being here.

Good evening, Madame Mayor, members of council. Uh hard acts to follow. So, I'm very excited that here I am. Um we wanted to honor uh the ask that was put in front of our firm in December. you'll recall uh we visited in December and you approved survey cities uh in January. That was our commission to go conduct a compensation survey. Um so I've got some preliminary results uh to report for that really kind of leading up into some May and June budgetary conversations. The survey agencies uh were selected based on similarity of services uh similarity of population. Uh we had some other demographics that we took a look at such as cost of living, cost of housing, uh proximity or distance to major metro, you know, the presence, abundance or absence of regional competitors. We have collected and compared better than 3,000 job descriptions uh from those comparison agencies. So I do have some samples uh of our work. When we look at what is a good comparator, I'm going to initially say that that should be driven by who has the most jobs like ours. So, we have just kind of a couple Yale flagged when I look at comparing job descriptions. Um, there's always

stop you for two seconds and ask you to do one thing for me. Um, we obviously know what a pay study is, but for the folks listening, would you just talk about what a pay study is, what we hope to get from it, and why we're doing it?

Yeah, 100%. Um when we had introduced you know the project uh mission number one for and on behalf of human resources is the recruitment and retention of qualified staff. Uh the city maintains better than 300 job descriptions unique classifications that describe the work being performed by the employees. Um as well as a police and a fire salary plan. salary surveys are conducted. One to identify and inform how we go about budgeting and planning year-over-year in order to recruit and retain. We want to offer competitive wages. We want to certainly find your sweet spot, you know, that allows you to post a vacancy, fill a position, recruit an employee, maybe keep them for life. you know, hopefully um but offering them then salaries, benefits, uh promotional opportunities, growth opportunities to um you know, kind of flourish here with the city throughout maybe their you know, career, which is kind of you know, I guess I would say the broader heading under which you do these. Now, globally, cities oftentimes a lot of their expenditures are paying benefits, right? We're a service organization. We're not knocking out widgets or selling trucks or anything like that. We are people, right? we are providing services to those that are doing business with the city that live, work, and play in the city. Uh we want to do right by the staff that we hire, but we also want to allow data to help inform one, how are we doing, and two, identify if we're not where we want to be, how do we get to where we want to be. The city has a history of performing salary surveys. I would say every maybe four to six years, five to seven years on the outside, just kind of depending on what has been going on with respect to growth, the economy, uh turnover, you know, lots of factors that influence a city's ability to recruit and retain staff. I would say

thank you so much. Sorry. I do no absolutely appropriate you know question because I didn't want to fly right into here it is you know kind of thing but certainly um I'll provide kind of an overview and show a little bit of our work just to kind of as a preview um when I look at these comparison agencies particularly those agencies that have a lot of services in common uh the Baytown St. Angelo, Temple, Brian. I would say they're right now our best comparators. And what I mean by that is that they have a lot of our jobs in common,

right? I won't get hung up on the dollars and cents of like, oh, this is the greatest comparator because it pays the most or pays the least or whatever. Yeah. We're not trying to create, you know, a narrative other than to honor, you know, the ask. We have collected data really at the pay range level. So, when we compare job descriptions, we're looking for job duties, responsibilities. You have positions that require a great deal of certification, exposed to a great deal of compliance, inspection, environmental quality like utilities, sanitation, building inspection, right? These are positions that uh almost every city has. When we do our comparisons, it's really a paper exercise to begin with. We're comparing the pay range that is afforded for each of our positions. That might look like a minimum and a maximum. And we want to see people move through your pay ranges as long as they're meeting or exceeding your expectations. And then, you know, identify, hey, are our pay ranges correct? When we look at who our comparators andor our competitors might be, I'll talk about this again, I think, the next time that you see me. But I wanted to at least illustrate when I show you some of the survey data, which is kind of here, that we're really comparing a full pay range. We're looking at job descriptions first. And then if we say, hey, do you have a job that performs these duties? We say, "Yes, we do." Well, what is the pay range that's afforded to it? Know that, you know, in our worksheet, we have a minimum and a maximum. The midpoint is what is consistent from city to city. What we notice when we look at these other agencies, some have very wide pay ranges, some have very narrow, some even have steps in between minimum and maximum, not just for police and fire, but for their civilian classifications. So, it can get a little bit noisy, particularly for civilian classifications. If I just compare entry to entry or just compare top to top because somebody might look really wide and low or high, somebody might look

really narrow and low or high. So we try to isolate that punchline. First, we've collected data on about 300 civilian job classifications. Uh all 12 of the sworn police and fire classifications. On the civilian side, our initial kind of finding is if I use plus or minus 5% to define competitive, about 80% of our civilian classifications start to fall low. So up against these comparison cities, these are slightly new comparison cities from past survey efforts. Um we have removed a lot of the Dallas Metroplex data from the survey, replaced it with like-sized cities around the state uh that do offer similarity of services. I wouldn't say that the punchline changes, but what we're noticing here is a little bit of a difference um from us to our market comparators for civilian classifications. Now, anecdotally, the civilian salary table has not been regularly, I would say, adjusted by a cost.

When you say civilian, you just mean not police and fire. That's correct. Okay.

Yeah. So that pay table has not been adjusted as frequently for things like cost of living and inflation compared to the police and fire payable. So you'll see some illustrations there. We have some good news. Police and fire up against these survey agencies do look pretty good compared to market. Past councils have attempted to really just staple themselves close to Tyler, right? Which has kind of paid off you a little bit. When I look at regionally who your competitor is, I think it's probably Tyler comparators. Now, we might be expecting somebody to relocate Yale, but we do have data from those approved comparison agencies. So, you'll see that in our materials job by job, what we try to answer first is how are we doing compared to market. So, upper leftand corner, our job title in the middle on the top bar there, our salary range, midpoint, right? So halfway between minimum and maximum up against the midpoint for a like position out in the market, right? An abundance of caution here when we start looking at job descriptions, job duties to pull the right levels and make the accurate comparisons. A lot of my illustrations I would say are not wildly size sensitive, but I'm kind of covered because we talked about comparison agencies needing to be like size, right? If anything stands out, I would say that yeah, there's a few that are regularly paying a little bit more and few that are paying regularly a little bit less. Um, the Tex Arcanas to an extent, the Victorias to a lesser degree, San Angelo are pretty consistently uh below our kind of survey averages and it bounces around depending on the job that we're talking about. Mansfield's in kind of a growth pattern right now. Tyler shows up kind of pretty consistently, at least compared to these cities in kind of that top third, you know, if you will. And from there, it bounces around a little bit, right? So, it's not wildly consistent to say, "Oo, don't compare to

this one. They pay too much." Or even don't compare to this one, they pay too little, right? So, I want to honor that ask with our 14 cities and be as consistent. And I guess I would also say protect you from yourselves to say, well, now that I have the survey results, do we want to delete any cities? We're not doing that. But I want to remind you that you retain the policy discussion. You retain the decision around where you want to be in this world. If we've identified the comparators pretty objectively, we've vetted the job descriptions. Our next mission would be what does it look like to get back to market, right? So that would certainly be my goal. Some other classifications. This is an example of a job that does have some private sector data in it as well. Um you do have positions that have a high degree of portability uh between the public sector and the private sector. So labor and trades, office and clerical, professional and technical jobs uh not only exist at these other cities, they also exist in the private sector. So we've pulled some data in there uh to kind of bring in and round out the presence of that private sector because that sample size could actually be considerably larger than our say 14 survey agencies. So kind of consistently, you know, finding that we're a little bit low uh for our non-p police and non-fire classifications. Uh the story gets a little bit improved when I look at firefighter when I look at police officer. Uh again, you know, on the lower end of that scale, you can see a very big difference at the entry rate for Tex Arcana and for a Mansfield or North Richland Hills. Now, this worksheet is sorted by the top of the pay range, but you'll also notice a pretty big disparity from the highest pay to the lowest pay, right? And this is where we kind of struggle in a good way to define a comparator

compared to a competitor, right? Regionally, we have, you know, a Tex Arcana in there which is considerably smaller. These are not necessarily size sensitive classifications, but the data does kind of track a little bit where smaller cities are paying a little bit less. The bulk of the comparison agencies kind of fit in our parameters as far as some are a little bit bigger than us, some are a little bit smaller than us, but we want to try and obviously compete uh to fill all of our positions and ultimately have all of our positions benefit from a a consistent market relationship. So, if I can get all of our jobs back to within 5% of market, that's a win, right? So, we'll be talking about that in further detail when we start to react to the data. Okay.

Yeah, you go. I see all these numbers and you've got base an annual salaries. Um, minimum, midpoint, maximum in all the towns. Now, maybe I'm not understanding this. Where is Long View at the very top? Yeah, sorry about that. Minimum, midpoint, maximum. This one doesn't say Long View, but the other Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, Long View is 6976 84, which on this one's pretty close to what? Yeah, you're seventh or eighth from the bottom. seventh or eighth from the top, I guess. But that's not the U. So the 76 is that our midpoint? Yes, it is. It happens to match up with the market midpoint. Yeah, go back. Richard, will you go back one slide? Yeah.

So on there. Well, yeah, it doesn't say somewhere it said layout. Yeah. Yeah, I needed to I needed to throw the word long view in there so that you could see your line. Sorry about that. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. And this is, you know, just kind of our effort at showing our work, right? Yeah. This is the bulk of the lift. we're at, you know, 400 and some hours of comparing job descriptions and identifying how we look compared, you know, to market. Another example, police officers. So, our range is well at the top, 69 to 93. Um, you see a little bit, you know, of a metroplex influence there with Mansfield and NRH, you know, being kind of at the top or consistently at the top of that list when it comes to the topout values. Um, we talked a little bit too about trying to not get swept up in that echo effect of competitiveness. When you have 50 cities within, you know, an hour or an hour and a half, you know, the Metroplex is extremely competitive in pockets, you know, and they're very sensitive to what one another does. Um, but we don't have a whole lot of Dallas Metroplex data in there. U, we have fewer Metroplex cities in the survey than we had maybe in past, you know, survey efforts. Uh, so we're slipping a little bit at entry. Again, historically, you've attempted to keep up pretty close to Tyler. Um, they're about three or $4,000 ahead of you at entry and about5 or $6,000 ahead of you at top out for police officer. Yes, sir.

Matt, there's uh Baytown has patrol officer. Missouri has just officer. Is there a reason for the difference in title? No, it's just how their title shows up in in the salary plan. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, those comparisons, you know, kind of help lend themselves to catching our breath, right? Say, how are we doing compared to market? And then how do we wish to react? How do we wish to position ourselves in relation to market? Again, a paper exercise. Go ahead. My last question just made me think about this too on the firefighter one. Do you identify which ones are also paramedic firefighters? Cuz like Tyler for instance is not. So

that's correct. So, how does that is there a distinguish between there? Oh, you'd put firefighter paramedic on there. Okay. Yeah, there was just uh a couple that you can only be, right? So, that's to take that into consideration. Yeah. If I was comparing a firefighter paramedic for you, then I'd be loading this up because if they don't have the classification, they likely have additional certification pay incentive. And that kind of ranges $300 to $500 a month. So, it's about another $5,000 a year that they see if they're certified as a paramedic as well. And can they do a thousand feet um high angle rescue? Canon. Like, put a helmet on. Okay,

that's that's awesome. I would I would brag about that, too. Actually, I'm not going to lie. Our next steps include modeling out salary ranges for all of our classifications. Again, largely a paper exercise. We do have a civilian salary table that has 100 pay ranges on it. And what we'll be working on next is if a job that's in a range 20 looks low, we want to model that. Does that look like it needs to be in a range 22 or in a range 24? So, we're not necessarily talking about lifting the whole table. We are doing a slotting exercise and a job placement exercise for each of your classifications within the salary table. Now that salary table is also built wildly intentionally to allow for career ladder growth development. Say I have a worker, I have a senior, I have a lead, I have a supervisor. The original design of that table holds and that is to place jobs in relation to market but also in relation to one another.

One thing I think we need to make very clear at this point, this is not something that we're going to vote on tonight. uh this is just information for our benefit. So just look at this and then we'll get chance to spend time going over it and reviewing it. Right now you're just informing of informing us of what you found so far. You're just starting the process. Yeah, correct. Presentation and then council's all been offered a personal meeting with Matt next week that hopefully everybody has scheduled and then in May he'll bring back applying that to Long View. So here's what this looks like. here's what this looks like for you and then we would I need to give some direction because that's got budgetary impacts but then in June we'd be considering a pay scale but yes

thank you for that yeah it'll give us an opportunity I think to fold in any of your input but the exercise really looks like slotting those jobs onto a salary range again a paper exercise and I would say until it's not right so if there was 900 employees sitting behind me we'd be talking about if I move your pay range Do I move your pay? Right. So, that last 10% of this exercise is really going to drive us into May and June for budgeting. I didn't totally understand what you just said, but Shannon's got a question. Yes.

So, I was looking at this. I didn't see uh public's works on there but what I would be more interested in knowing is have you looked at or seen as far as when it comes to directors managers what the qualifications is the requirements are and based on the salary like if they're required a degree or they paid this amount if it doesn't require a degree I would like to see that kind of information yeah the 300 pages that live are representative of us vetting and comparing those job descriptions those qualifications the certifications the degree requirements and so you already have that information. That is correct. Is it available to us now or? Yeah, I imagine. Is that something you would go over with individual council members or do we expect to get that at some point time? Yeah.

Yeah. No, whatever level of detail that you would like to, you know, visit over we have carved out some time to to do those meetings. Okay. I I still think the public needs to hear it as well. So, yep. Both ways. Okay. Thank you.

Very good. Yeah. what the things that drive the budget. You know, picture us moving pay ranges, right? So, a job in a 20 goes to a 24. If I have a new hireer in range 20 and we hired them low in the range, the minute that I move their job to a range 24, they might fall below the minimum. There's going to be a fiscal impact there to get them back into the salary plan. Now, picture and maybe public works is a great example. We have a lot of jobs where there's 20 or 30 people in the same classification. Now, we start to get sensitive to time and position. I don't want to accidentally pay a new hire if I need to move the range. I don't want to pay a new hire the same thing as a three-year or a 5year or a seven-year employee that's fully performing in that same job classification. Those will be kind of some of the machinations that we'll have to ponder in May and then into the budget process to say, what does this mean for the workforce? Typically, unfortunately, every time I show up somewhere, we're talking about dollars that are above and beyond what you were going to do anyway, right? So, October comes along every year. We tell employees, look, we do a salary survey periodically. The salary survey is not the mechanism to give everybody a pay raise. It could be the mechanism and should be the mechanism to catch those up that are farthest behind, but then continue to keep on keeping on. Whatever you're planning on doing in October one or on an employees anniversary date remains highly relevant and appropriate for your annual budget cycle. So, if I'm an employee of the city, I should be, you know, considered eligible typically, you know, annually, either anniversary or October one. When you're doing the budget for something, whether that's a cost of living increase, a merit review, you a salary adjustment of some kind, those things need to continue every year, right? But this is kind of one of those every five to seven years, we're going to talk about we did get behind. And so far the data that I have would

suggest for the majority of our non-p police and fire positions, we've started to fall behind. Yeah. Could I summarize that real quick and you tell me if I say it wrong? So I think what you've just told us is um that our police and fire due to actions in the past are pretty close to at market. Um and we when we did those prior moves, we had to inject some money to get them currently adjusted. Uh, and so if I understand what you're presenting with those examples that our civilian employees are 15 to 20% under market like on average, the pay ranges for those classifications, I need to study where the employees fall in those ranges.

Okay. Yeah, you you answer that. It confuses me, but so it would be that we would need to come up with a dollar amount when you apply that to our pay ranges and adjust it. If we were going to adjust that for employees, there's a dollar that exists that we would be talking about in the future. We're 15 to 20%. Okay. And I think Shannon's question was if you know offhand, does that apply to admin or leadership? Are they also that amount behind or is that Yes, they are. Yes. Yes. Inclusive of managers and directors. And would there be an opportunity for us to look at like those specifically in your 300page? Okay. Thank you.

Specifically there the difference between what you pay an employee with a degree versus without a degree. Sure. Oh, sorry, Derek. Go ahead.

Yeah, I appreciate the time, Matt. And um just you gave a couple examples of on the job descriptions. One was the the planner and then the code compliance officer on the on the screens that you had. A question I have like on the cities. I know you're uh we had a comparison of cities or similar size like with the planners position and can you kind of explain and same thing with the I guess the code compliance that you were using those examples did you have like you know if how many employees for example were would be in that position because that could affect of course the salary and if you have a fewer number of people that are in that spot and then also like their experience level comp in comparison to the people that we have doing those positions.

Got it. I would say no. And no, we did not take into consideration the number, you know, of of people in those classifications. By the nature of vetting the cities before we did the survey, we've landed on cities that are of like size, meaning like population, like FTE, you know, on the employee side. And I would say whether they have incumbents in the jobs or not,

or, you know, you could look at it a couple of different ways. One thing that might influence our collective policy or philosophy is how lean do we expect to be, right? You know, do we expect people to wear a lot of hats? You know, are they going to qualify for this position? This is a degreed professional planner, very, you know, pretty regulated at least until the state gets a hold of it next year or something like that. But ultimately, um, you know, we've got like-sized cities, you know, per your direction. Uh but the number of employees in each of those classifications I'm going to say is probably pretty close just given the nature that we selected cities that are of like size but I wouldn't say there's a guarantee

and then maybe that's something we meet individually because if you're looking so if you're looking at if we have I know one things we looked at was the retention that we had in some spots. So if we have if you have just a few people in that planner position and they're 20 25 year employees of course their experience level could be could there could be a variance from

Yeah. And the unique thing and I think the important thing here is that this doesn't have anything to do with the employee yet. This is your job description with your qualifications whether you have an incumbent in it or not and whether they're new or not. So if I go back to my illustration, this matters just as much. And that would be when I put an employee in the position, their years of experience start to matter, right?

If I can hire them above minimum to honor that years of experience, I think that's a win. Then you're probably getting a decent level of journey level performance out of an experienced employee. But you know really it's it's nothing to do with the employees experience or performance right at this stage. It's just comparing the job descriptions like job for like job. So here's the duties, here's the responsibilities. We're out interacting with the public. We're enforcing our codes. You know they have a job description like yours. So even if we were to incorporate as a city next year, you know, I would still be doing the same exercise that is what jobs do we want? What services do we want to offer? What's the right job title? what's the right job description and then let's go hire. I want to put you in a position to ensure that that salary range matches up with what you need for hiring as well as ongoing salary administration to keep people moving through that range. I'm not comparing actual salaries in this. I'm comparing the posted salary range afforded to an employee in each of those cities that's doing the same work

as yours. Right? So it's it has the benefit of objectivity in it to say we've agreed we want to be in the code enforcement business. We want to have a code enforcement officer. What is the right pay rate for a not him her or the but a you know code enforcement officer? Then we can unbundle I think staffing the ability to recruit an experienced person versus a you know inexperienced or a fresh grad or you know depending on the job that we're talking about. And I do think like the first one of the first presentations you gave us, you talked about um the recruitment and retention factor and maybe when we meet you can see some of the higher skill maybe like you just had on their Conro and how that's helped their over the years how that's you know when how long they've been at that level and maybe how that's benefited their recruitment and retention.

Yeah. And I think and I don't have the the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I believe on your current pay range, if I give you an idea, the average employee has just under five years with us and they're only about 2% above your minimums to maybe 4% above your minimums. Right? So, I do have the potential for some systemic correction that we can make. Meaning, I've got some tenur people that are low in their range and we need to talk about that from a budget priority standpoint to ensure that we don't accidentally pay everybody at the minimum whether they have zero years or five. I want to see people move into that pay range. Maybe incentivize retention. Yeah.

Yeah. I I think having a goal of getting your five to sevenyear employees closer to your mid, keeping in mind that my illustrations are midto mid and that's the going rate for a journey level planner, right? So there's room to pay less than that, there's room to pay more than that. Kind of on that continuum of experience or tenure. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That's helpful. One last thing. Um, so I just want to make sure that the changes that we're making in job descriptions or whatever as we have to meet with him on our time are we have have we updated him on the job description changes and what you're suggesting? We've talked about those things with him. Yes, ma'am. And so are they included in your study?

Yes. Yeah. We're modeling not only now but into any future Yeah. whether it's a reorg reclassification. Yeah. The unique nature obviously of our relationship with the city is that we can do this from a 30,000 foot level and then we can start getting into it job by job, department by department and then remain available for that kind of technical support. So if you do change a job or you reorg anything like that, we all speak the same language in terms of what we're valuing. If it's education, experience, job complexity, a span of control, you know, those things all matter when we shift from kind of market to the pay range placements. Questions? Go ahead.

Go ahead. So your research when you're a small town such as Long View and you look at other towns and you know Long View we're we're somewhat isolated in the sense of Dallas is a couple hours away um to the west, shreport's an hour away to the east. It's kind of fluid though with what our potential candidate would look like when we're doing job descriptions. Correct.

Yes. So even though we can state, hey, this is the ideal person we're looking for, when you're in a situation such as we are here in Long View, that actual candidate and the actual potential person becomes a little bit fluid because our pool is going to be limited somewhat. Um, what experience have you had with that in other cities similar to Long View that actually state out, hey, this is what we're looking for and it's our wish list? Sure. But as you dig into it, you realize that you kind of have to plug and play some.

Yeah. You have some flexibility in some areas, but not in others. You know, utilities, highly certified, highly regulated, an abundance of competition. A police officer, I can't I can't fudge what I'm asking for for a police officer candidate or a firefighter candidate or a degreed accountant candidate or a certified civil engineer candidate, right? So, I don't disagree. I mean, we've we've done work at every corner of this state. I wouldn't necessarily call you small. Um, just kind of for the record, based on your headcount, the abundance of services that you offer, you know, you're you're not small, I guess, for us. Yeah. Anyway, we're not large either, though.

No, no. I would I would say that there's a unique balance between, you know, me existing in a in a major metroplex where without changing my kids' school district, I can drive three cities over and get another $5,000 for the exact same job. That's what cities in the metroplex deal with week in and week out, right? Competing for police, for fire, for senior accountant. I mean, ironically, in the last month, I've been in Lake Havsu, Arizona, very isolated. Sedona, Arizona, a little bit less isolated, u I've been here, and I've been in the middle of the metroplex. And I had four clients in those places tell me they couldn't get a senior accountant. I'm like, wait, yeah, what is it? Because I have a captive audience here. If I get people to move here, I have positions that I need, you know, to fill. you're spot on that yeah, you need to be a little bit creative or kind of create your own farm system because there are positions that are very unique to local government where I think you see some pain points if you can't fill vacancies. You know, I've got clients in the north edge of the metroplex that have 30 vacancies in public works. They're farming out every project because they can't get it done. They can't keep their certified operators on their equipment because the city next door walked up to them with a flyer and they literally got off the piece of equipment and said, "I just got a $5 an hour raise or a $10 an hour raise." That's kind of hard to to beat. So I want to I want to be conscious I think of all of those factors that might influence us as we start to define what is a competitive fair appropriate sustainable is a very important world yeah word in in my language right now of what's that balance to say I've got eight factors that influence our ability to get and keep people where does that push us on a scale of being really conservative with our pay really aggressive with our pay I don't think I'm proposing either of those, but

somewhere in the middle, I'm going to find a happy spot for you, right? I definitely would rely on HR's statistics when it comes to turnover, uh, success in filling, you know, positions, uh, how long some positions stay vacant, because I would propose there are a long list of positions that are extremely picky about what we can use for an incumbent. Yeah, all of your positions, almost all of your positions require levels of certification, levels of training. Some are, you know, beholdened to not even you or the city, but to like Department of Environmental Quality, you know, any other rags when it comes to utilities, when it comes to housing standards, civil engineering standards, public safety as well. It's a balance. I think it's a struggle, but it's also unique that you're you have a captive audience. if you can get people here, you're kind of the only game in town. Now, historically, councils have said, "Well, Tyler's also the game in town, and we want to compete with, you know, with them for police and fire. I totally get it because they're going to drive a little bit further, maybe." Uh, but there is a balance there where I want to see all of our jobs have a consistent relationship to market when we get done. My goal certainly in the next 60 days is to gain your comfort level with how we're interpreting the data and where we land. I have the benefit of not knowing any of your employees, right? I want to protect you from that yo as well because objectively as a third party, I can say here's the going rate for your next CFO, your next police chief, your next building official, your next police officer, right? I'm not hung up on who's in the job now, how long they've been here, you know, their personality, any of that, right? So, objectively, I want to try and, you know, get there with you.

Thank you. John, do you have a question? you actually kind of answered on it. So, I just want to thank you for uh the information and help us to use data to help us guide us into what our decision is on this. So, yeah, it's not intended to back you into a corner. Not by any stretch. Yeah, we'll we'll talk about policy, philosophy, strategy. You guys set that, right? Cindy's got a question.

I just wanted to make a little bit of a comment. uh the people that are watching, the people out in the audience, uh you need to basically understand that we're not a private company. We're a public city and you, the taxpayer sitting out there are are the people we have to answer to. Now, what that means is we start a budget each year and that budget has a pay scale in it. And it's not like a private company. I mean, if you work for a private company and the boss walks up and says, "Uh, I think you're doing a good job. I want to move you up and I'll give you 10% pay raise." That's not likely going to happen working for the city. We don't have the flexibility that you have in private industry. So that's um this is the purpose of going through this is to make sure and it's very public and open to make sure all the people out there that are paying the taxes understand what we're trying to do as we're sitting here working on this pay scale.

Yeah, great point Sydney. I would actually I I love your analogy there. The taxpayers of Long View are both the employer as the paying taxpayer, but also the client of those people serving receiving the services. So, we want to balance giving you the best services that we can and treating our employees well using your taxes because you're paying for it. So, excellent point. Um Matt, thank you very much. I've learned a lot from you. I appreciate you being here. Um I know everybody up here feels very strongly about treating our employees well. Um they are what makes Long View great and gives great services and we want to do a good job recruiting and retaining them. So, look forward to having further discussions with you. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you very much. All right, we'll move on to the consent agenda. What items do you guys want to talk about? I got I'm going to do Will of Fortune up here. Uh C, D, and G, please. C, D, and G. I just want to ask about G. G. Okay, Shannon. Greg. No, ma'am. You copy? I got D and G. I had C and D also. All right. Fantastic. Great. M think alike.

Consent agenda C is Mr. McBride that this is consider a resolution that authorizes the city manager to negotiate and execute any documents for a contract with health. Did I say that right? Half associates sorry to assist NO with transportation planning services. Mr. McBride. Uh Mr. McBride, I called it off because we've been working y'all been working on this for a while. So, I just we're getting to another step in the process and so I just want you to just let people know what what this is and what we're doing and how that can benefit them uh going forward.

Sure. So, um the consent item tonight is to authorize uh city manager and myself to negotiate a contract with Half Associates uh to do a transportation planning study uh specifically on the Four Street uh from 259 to the loop. And for local reference, it's from Fresh all the way down to Walgreens and Outback. So the basically the point of where everyone probably in this room have traveled at some point in their life and have realized that there's issues there. And so um sorry we're going to study that area alongside with half as a consultant to help um go through public involvement process go through our data kind of help come through a lot of the stuff that we have uh in the background if I won't bore you with all the details of that but um to kind of see what solutions we can provide to the community provide to the city to um what alternatives short-term midterm long-term solutions for that area to help improve congestion uh crashes that is one of our highest crash areas within our region. Um, so just trying to provide a solution. I

appreciate that. We all know not to turn left there. So please don't wait. Oh, wow. Yeah. No, got the back. You think am I ever going to get a I'm ever getting out. Will you please share what you did at NO about the creative ways that they intend to get public input? I just think that's neat.

Sure. Um so with half which they're behind me I hope that they can correct me if I'm uh wrong but uh after reviewing their scope and discussing with them there it's a creative way of um approaching the public um some things that they mentioned in their interview process was uh one you'll have your typical um on or your meeting like you'll go to of you know your typical town hall I would call it uh secondly uh they're engaging some sort of virtual platform and then additionally which I think is really cool we're actually going onsite and when I mean on site we're going to Port Street. Uh we're going to the citizens of who shop in that area, who get a bite to eat. Um all the nature of that um because we all realize like I told um a policy board yesterday was that we serve that I mean Long View is the urban core. You got a huge retail trade area and so um we all know that's where we all shop. You know, I've been there actually twice in the past few days to get diapers anyways. Um but that's just we it's with the innovative public involvement process. We're trying to get make sure we get people's feedback. We get the data in certain ways where people want to attend in person, virtually um or just going to them directly to fill out a survey. Um hosting events, you know, um I know Fresh is one of the big ones that I've went out there and they do some some music and uh would like to I'm going reach out to them and partner with them to see if we can do an event, set up a booth, engage that um public as well. So just kind of a different way of instead of just sitting in a room looking at a screen uh just getting a little bit more hands-on.

Well, thank you. I think on-site is great. I think you'll get a lot of people who have just gone through the traffic that would love to tell you about it. Yes. And you get it's a it's communitydriven effort. That's really what what's great about it. So that way the community has an a voice in it, they get to say and then uh that way we can make sure that we're delivering on what the community wants. And I just want to leave it with if half wants to say anything or come up or whatever they since they're here, but they don't have to of course. So but I appreciate you. Thank you Mr. McBride. Thank you for the NO and all stuff doing the work that y'all doing over there. Thank you. Anything else? Was I okay? Thank you. Don't you have a question? No, I was on D. Oh, I thought you said C. Sorry, I did. I did. Wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on.

U on We all know fourth street is a problem. Yes, it is. Do we on this? Have we used this Half, however you say that? Half associates. So, we have in the past and uh uh Mayor Shahara mentioned this yesterday and asked the same question to us. Rin, if you want to speak a little bit about using them in the past. Um, you weren't happy to just kind of talk about

We had actually used them in conjunction with trying to help Leadco and Greg County. That was my recommendation to Leadco as the engineering firm to hire to deal with those things. Uh they are very strong transportation office in Tyler and we're very familiar with text dot and how those things work which since this is not long view money which I think is important for everyone to know this is our metropolitan planning organization dollars it there that's that's the type of regional firm you would want to do the planning one do we have a timeline

so currently in scope um after this meeting we will uh we're anticipating by 12 month uh process going through public involvement and all the alternatives analysis and stuff like that. So about 12 months is what we're anticipating. So you will uh reach out to the public then and make sure you have input from them. Yes sir. We'll do a hardcore marketing campaign. Uh we rely on the city's resources in the sense of media coverage because they have a strong Facebook following um social media following on not just target Facebook uh but able to capture that um feedback. Yes sir. All right. Is this this part of Fourth Street? You're going all the way out. Is this uh city maintained or state maintained? City maintained. Yes, sir. City. So, it's our responsibility. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

Uh we will move on to consent D which is Mr. Albertson consider an ordinance that amends the budget for this fiscal year by allocating grant funds from the US Department of Interior and Texas Parks and Wildlife for the bring back teague park project. So this project is our teig park grant that we got from the federal government. Uh it's operated through the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is how it uh comes to us. Uh it will include an inclusive playground there at Teague Park that we're in the process of working with a committee that we have put together uh to help us design that. It will also bring a new entryway directly off of 80 into Teague Park and it will connect our trail system uh so that we can connect all the way through and have full connectivity from Teague Park all the way to Summers Drive. Uh I do want to mention that as part of this grant, there were only five cities in the state of Texas that received it.

Uh one being Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and Austin. All right. That puts us with all of the major cities in the state of Texas and that is thanks to Director Hill and her team. So, I want to make sure that we thank her. Ya. And then we also want to thank the rest of the uh partners that we have on this project. It truly is a public private partnership with Leadco, Greg County, and the Go-Giver Gala uh giving our money and in kind work. Yeah. Because this is John. This is not a new grant. We got awarded this like a couple of years ago and then we're just finally getting the money. Is that fair? We are. We are finally getting to the point where we're going to do design. We're in the process of that right now.

Not a delay on our side, but a delay on getting the money side. Yes, ma'am. Okay. It was uh some delays with the federal government. So, yeah. Yes. Any questions? Oh, I saw Derek with a hand. Go ahead.

I was just going to say if you just I I know what you mean, but like what an inclusive playground is just in case. So an inclusive playground will focus on uh several different uh disabilities for children. So you have sensory needs uh you have amulatory so wheelchair um there are all different types of disabilities uh that we actually have brought on board with our committee a children's occupational therapist that is going to help us uh with that too so that we can make sure that we uh truly make it as inclusive as possible. That's awesome. Chris,

yeah, I'm changing gears a little bit. I appreciate the aquatics update you sent us and just checking a little bit on Stamper Park coming.

Uh, so Stamper Park pool, we are moving along uh on that pro project. Uh, we do know that it is going to be open July 1. We did hear that information and and learned that from our contractor. So, we're really excited about that. Uh, we're excited about where we are with our lifeguards. We're going to continue to take registration or uh uh applications. Sorry. We're going to take applications. We're at 34 and we need 40. Uh but we will continue to go above that. Uh so anybody that's interested, please come and apply. We would love to have you. Uh and we look forward to having a wonderful uh pool season this summer.

The advertisements, the commercials, I mean Laura Hill, I mean it's big part of it. That's right. So Laura and Seth still gonna have to suit up. Seth is holding out on his court. Go ahead, J. And while you're talking about the pools and the lifeguards, I know one of the positions that uh we've got completed for we've got somebody now that we can do in-house lifeguard training. You won't speak about that a little bit, but let me go ahead and answer that and then I'll ask my question that I originally had.

Yes, sir. Our aquatic supervisor is able to teach lifeguards himself now. He just uh finished that training. And then he is going through the water safety instructor training himself to be able to teach kids how to learn to swim. And then we have several lifeguards that we're working through the process to be able to do that as well. We're uh looking forward to be able to expand that program this summer and and teach as many kids as we possibly can how to swim. And we're also expanding some of the programs that we have for learning to swim even lower down a uh we we talked about that. I know what and I don't know if that's what you just said if you want to emphasize that or not.

There are of course all different levels of learning to swim. Uh and so we're going to be able to address all of those levels uh here within our department especially once we get Paula Martin Jones online which is one of those uh update items that I sent as well. It's in the process uh of being constructed. The gutter system that is uh once it's constructed offsite, they will bring it on and we'll be able to demo that and install the new one.

And and going back to D now, but I had to stay with the pool since how we were on that. Uh in regards to the do you have any timelines on these starting and kind of what any idea what we're looking at as a finished product because I know everybody wants to use it. Uh, I know Teague Park, that's where we stock for trout and you're talking about being able to get a lot more kids in there, activities and things to go on. So, that's I know that's important to people as well.

For the inclusive playground, uh, I have set an ambitious goal with our committee of having it ordered uh, and hopefully installed within the next 6 months. Uh, so I think that we can definitely target that and continue forward with it. I think the road and the trail will definitely be a little farther along than that. Uh we are in the process of all the design. Uh and Mr. Shainer has been helping us with that along with uh Johnson and Base, our contractor. All right. Thank you. Great.

No, that's u um Mr. Barry Hill did. My question was on the timeline and it and it's a major major improvement for Teague Park and if you would I just ask you please to keep us posted as you move along on this. Yes, sir. We definitely will. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Uh next I have G uh which is Mr. Rick Evans. Consider a resolution awarding a contract, excuse me, authorizing the city manager to execute necessary documents with Reynolds and K for the construction of 2026 chip seal project. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Evans, I just um called up. I just want you to kind of go through the road m management and how that's how the chip seal's done and what chip seal is and uh just inform the public on that if you would.

All right. Uh as everybody knows, Stantech is our pavement management system that we use. They drive the the city, a third of the city every year. Uh they give us the data. The data goes to the city engineers office. They the engineers take it, put it into the program and the and the engineers conduct a list uh based on the uh assessments and the model recommendation for the city of Long View. Uh once that list is finalized, that list goes to the street department maint operation and maintenance group. Uh our job, this is where it's critical here. Our job is to get out, patch all the the base failures, the potholes, large cracks that are in the road, and get those repaired before the contractor gets here. Once that is done, we do a final inspection with the city inspectors. Uh we drive over the streets to make sure that everything is complete, that we didn't miss anything. More eyes on it, the better off we are. Uh once we get that done, then the contractors come in, they clean the streets, they get all the grass off the off the road, out of the road, they sweep the streets, they get all the mud out of the gutter so that the hot oil asphalt can adhere to the street well. And then once that's done, once the asphalt's applied, they put down a rock which is uh over the top of that. Then they roll it with rubber tired roller. Uh once that's done that it it embeds that rock into that oil. It kind of like a glue a hot oil and then once once that is done that is complete for that

um was what does it do is like the getting a chip seal done what does it do is extend the life of the road I mean on that chip seal is is a is a prevented is a is a maintenance on the roadway to help prolong the life of a good road. So it gives it five I mean seven to 10 years of extra life. So we don't have to spend extra money on overlay. So seal code is $4 a square yard versus overlay being 20 to $30 a square yard. Okay. Awesome. And then how is the um funds uh how how do you get the budget for the the chip seal? Do you know maybe all inter question but

those those are budgeted funds within the operations and maintenance budget. Rick, I earlier those are budgeted funds through the operation. How much is budgeted this year? Roughly roughly three million. Okay, good. And then uh we did see already seen spray paint already on the roads on those places you're going to see. So anybody that's out there, they're driving by and they see the spray paint with arrows that may be one of the roads that are getting chip sealed. So appreciate y'all's work on all that. That's all the questions I had. Thank you very much. Good. Yeah. No, I appreciate u you said it was about $4 a square yard. What? And I see I mean this is a lot of streets. Yes, sir.

Should cover a lot. How 305,000 square yards. You know approximately how much how many miles or how many how much that would cover as far as the exact because we're talking. Okay. No sir, I do not have that information but I can get it for you because that is I mean I just want to say just looking at this list this is extensive as far as the streets and the streets is that the last question I had. How much is that uh like the distribution of it? Is it is it uh a certain area of Long View or is it Did we notice that when you saw that when the results came in, did it show what areas? Well, there's there's the map up there on the board that shows where I think it's based on where those areas are. Yes. Yes, ma'am.

So, it's not like we get to go pick. It's based on the grade it that Stan Tech gives it. Yes. All right. Thank you, sir. And I know Sydney likes this contractor. Jody, you got a question? Right. Uh I was going to ask about the miles as well, but but uh Derek and you got that answered, but I'm going to I just want to tell people don't go out there with yellow paint and start spraying and thinking that's going to be your road. This is already set. So, but anyway, no, that's what I was going to ask if we knew how many miles it was uh total and not necessarily road because we could be looking at four lanes or two lanes, single road. Yes, sir. I got you. Shannon's got a question.

So, I was looking and you just said that this is to extend the light of life of a good road, correct? Yes, ma'am. So, I'm looking at Walnut uh Street, Fair Street, Park Street. Y'all consider that a good road? Well, St. Whatever the data that the that Stantech is giving us, Yes, ma'am. That's what we go by. Well, I can tell you that if that's what Stantech is considered as a good road, it's not. Well, it's not in good shape now, but it's good enough for us to seal coat it and hope to get more life out of it. We dropped some of the roads off if, so tell me if I say this wrong, but some of them are beyond repair and so we don't seal coat them. So, this one, that's what I'm saying. Cuz looking at those roads, they seem like they're beyond repair. Well, then they would just not be on the list, so it's probably good that they're on the list.

Well, some if they have they have a base failure, then you're going to address the base failure first before you do the chip seal. Chip seal. Yes, sir. And that's my question because he said that this is a chip seal is specifically for roads that are good. Yeah. Well, if if we can if we can spend if we could spend a little money doing a dig out repairing base failures and then chip seal it for $4 a square yard. That's that's money well spent for the rateayers. Well, I'd like to see that on Walnut and Washington and Fair and Park cuz Yeah. Yeah. You tell us if you like them when they're done. Yeah. I have seen the spray paint though. It's exciting. So that means improvements are coming to your road if you got some spray paint. So that's good.

Sorry. We've never been able to do a lot of this work in house. Well, in the past we did. Whenever I first was here, we did this in house. But but no, sir, we don't do it in house anymore. Yeah. I think the contractor that Sydney likes so much has a very specific process. Am I right about that? A contractor. Oh, yes. Very much. Recycle. Yes. He'd be glad to tell you about it. Oh. Uh oh. Okay, go for it. Oh, okay. U Reynolds and Kay, the only thing wrong with them, they're in Tyler. But

but u you know, chips chip seal is is much art as it is anything else. Yes, sir. And if you're not experienced at it and you don't know what um you don't know what you're doing, you can make a big mess. Yes, sir. You can. But uh Reynolds and Kay has done several jobs here over the years for the city of Long View. They do a very good job. They've been in business a long time and I would just say uh thank you and I will recommend them individually. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Evans. Any other questions for Mr. Evans? Perfect. Thank you so much. Good discussion, guys. I need I move to approve. Thank you so much. And a second. Second.

All in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say I. Any opposed? Consent agenda is approved. We'll move on to zoning item A. Public hearing will be held to consider application Z2605 filed by AEL Engineering. Miss Choy.

Thank you, mayor, members of council, and Mr. McY. Uh the C applicant is requesting to reszone this property seen here on the zoning map uh from agricultural seen here in the green to heavy commercial zoning district located on the west side of Sabine Street north of Toledo Circle. The applicant is proposing to develop this property to build some commercial warehouse buildings um and covered and uncovered trailer RV and boat storage facility. Uh in 2009, this property was annexed into the city and when annexation occurs, the property that is annexed in is automatically assigned an agricultural zoning designation. Uh as development occurs, the land that is zoned agriculture will need to be reszoned in order to accommodate redevelopment or development. Uh planning and zoning commission along with staff recommends approval of this request. I'd be happy to answer any questions at this time.

Thank you, Miss Troy. Are there any questions for Miss Troy? Go ahead, Jen. Uh yes. I was trying to see um I couldn't tell by here, but um how close is it to any residential? Uh there are two residential homes facing Sabine Street. uh but they will be required through the development process to pro provide buffering uh meaning fencing and landscaping between the homes and that commercial property. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Go ahead. Rick. Yeah, Miss Troy. Yes, sir. I think I met the uh the applicant here tonight. The owner is here or the uh the engineer is here, I think, along with the applicant. Yes, sir. Do you mind if they come up and give us a little explanation?

Uh sure. I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing for that. And then the comment card I have is for Jeff. Is it a comment card from him as well? Yep. Come on up. I'm psychic. Yeah, it's a alleyoop.

Good evening. My name is Jeff Hamilton. I'm with AEL Engineering. That address is 190 Clover Lane in Diana, Texas. Uh so the property, my client, the current land owner, he's owned the property for many years. And just as Angela explained, it uh it always comes into the city zoned agriculture. So this is now he he's sat with the property for a while. He knows what he wants to do with it. In terms of the warehouse storage, it's it's a trend that we're we're seeing literally all across the state. But it's a it's a flexible space where where a small small lease space for for instance like a a plumbing plumber or an electrician or something that just needs a little bit of a warehouse space plus a little bit of office inside of it. It's it's not an an outdoor manufacturing or anything like that. Just a more or less storefront for for them to operate their businesses and it's not retail as well.

Any questions for Mr. Hamilton? It's good to see you. How you doing? Good to be seen. Good to see you, too. Thank you so much for your comment. Our public hearing is open. Is there anyone else that would like to make comment on zoning item A? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and ask for a motion. Motion to approve. Have a motion to approve and a second. All in favor, please say I. I. I.

Any opposed? Item is approved. Uh uh zoning item B, public hearing will be held to consider application Z2606 filed by David Gable, Miss Angela Choy. Thank you. Uh the applicant is requesting to reszone this property seen here in the zoning map from agricultural to single family for zoning district located west of the intersection of Spring Hill Road and Meyers Street. The applicant is proposing to develop a single family subdivision. Uh Spring Hill Road is classified as a collector street and is maintained by the city of Long View. Collectors serve a critical role in the roadway network by gathering traffic from local roads and funneling them to our arterial network. Uh access management is essential to avoid traffic congestions and delays caused by turning movements from vehicles entering and exiting the roadway. Planning and zoning commission along with staff recommends approval of this request. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Are there any questions for Miss Choy? I will go ahead and open the public hearing and I do have some speaker cards on this one. Uh Kevin Brazwell, you want to come to the podium? You just need to tell us your name. You do not need to tell us your address and then give us your comments, please, sir.

All righty. Uh Kevin Brazwell, kee ven. Blame my mother for that spelling. Um yes, my name is Kevin Brazwell and I reside at 909 Irene Street, which is right on the uh it's the first house. Yep. Right there. Um and I'm speaking to formally oppose this proposed zoning change and development. This proposed development is along the entirety of the north line of my property and I'm probably the most affected party in this development. I have serious concerns about the significant negative impact it will have on my property and the surrounding neighborhood. The plan to introduce higher density housing is incompatible with the existing character of this area and represents an overdevelopment of the land. This change would eliminate the natural buffer next to our home and drastically reduce privacy, increase traffic congestion and create safety concerns on already impacted roads, introduce additional noise, light pollution, and overall disruption to the neighborhood, potentially create drainage and flooding issues due to increased runoff, and negatively affect property values and the overall integrity of the community. Additionally, this land currently supports a significant amount of wildlife and other native species. This development would displace that wildlife and permanently alter the natural environment that has long been a part of this area. This proposal is not in the best interest of the current residents who purchase their homes with the expectation of maintaining the existing surroundings and land use. I urge you to deny the zoning request. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brazwell. Uh, next speaker card is Chenitra Shaw.

Good evening, council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Uh first I want to start off with a thank you. Um thank you Jody uh Barry Hill uh for being an outstanding councilman for district 5. I don't know who trained him but whoever did Hey, he has done a fantastic job. I sent one email and he addressed probably he probably addressed

he addressed five of all all five of my five issues, right? Um I met with par. Good job. Thank you. Um, we talked about the unhoused being a small business owner in district 52 just as well. Um, so anyways, I just want to say thank you for that. I know I have a limited amount of time. I am here to speak on zone zoning item number B. Um, I do reside about 500 ft from Spring Hill Road and Meer Street. I do uh disagree with the new development to a certain extent. Um, I understand, you know, from a business standpoint, it could definitely erase our um, property value. So, I'm okay with that. But the only reason why I do uh oppose to it to a certain degree is because one uh the road paving is already horrible over there. Um I'm really concerned about the infrastructure of the water. We are on a old old water system um in the Scarlet Acres and the Sanchez track district over there. Um I had public works out too. That was one of the items that he did address as well. And they did let us know that our infrastructure is probably maybe four or five decades old. All of the plumbing is on the back side of our resident. We don't have sidewalks and we don't have proper draining throughout the neighborhood. Um so that is definitely one of the concerns. Um with that being said, if the if the builder or the development does come in, are they interested in increasing the lighting? Um definitely repairing the road structure that is there and can we get sidewalks if that is um a portion of their development? That is why I straddled the fence there. But my main concern is the water structure. Um because if it is a new development, we're talking about 20 acres. I'm not sure exactly how many residents will be there. But because the the water system is already stressed, I really do have some concerns about that new development coming and the impact that it could actually impose on what we are are already dealing with. U residents in that area do tend to have to call plumbing quite often. So that is one of my concerns. Straining defense can't say

if I'm I'm approving it, I'm opposed to it, but right now I do have a lot of opposition. So that is where I rest. Thank you. Um, Angela, did you want to make any comments on any of those things? Good. Wait till the end. Uh, the next speaker card I have is Travis Craftton or Croftton? Craftton. Craftton. Come on up. I'm on the last speaker. Uh, you are for zoning item B and then you're down for D, too. Okay.

My name is Travis Craftton with Craftton and Cox Engineering. address 107 Community Boulevard, sweet 7, Long View, Texas 75605. I'm here to represent the owners and developers, David and Michelle Gable, and I thank you for their time this evening. Um, try to think how to address the concerns. So, for drainage, I guess for starters, we do plan on having a detention pond uh for this property to mitigate our increase in peak flow for the subdivision. Um, it's going to be a single point of access for our property. As far as the sewer, we have uh found an existing six uh 6-in sewer line. It is to the south, which is due west of Irene Street, and there's currently only about 10 lots that are connected to that uh line. From that 6-in line, it connects to a 12-in uh main. So, we're not aware of any uh sewer issues. Um anyway, be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions from council?

No. Uh I I appreciate you all voicing your concerns and coming in support of this. This is one of the things and I talked with numerous people about it trying to get a feel for it. Uh I know I spoke with Shai and we had city come out, public works come out to look at the the sewage and the drainage and and didn't know what the situation would would be or find out. uh which we did recognize some problems and that's something that as this project proceeds uh we'll be monitoring and staying on top of uh cuz the last thing we want I know from everybody up on here is a repeat of something that happened like on Camden Court we want to make sure things are done correctly and everybody adheres to it and as construction goes we run into something uh there may be some changes u but uh I just want you all to know this hasn't been without thought that I'll make a motion to approve this zoning change.

Okay, I'll close the public hearing and I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. And a second. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Zoning item is approved. Thank you guys. Uh thank you guys that came to speak. Uh zoning item C. A public hearing will be held to consider application Z2607 filed by Chapel on the Ridge LLC. Miss Choy,

thank you. The applicant is requesting to reszone this property seen here on the zoning map from single family 4 to neighborhood services zoning district uh located at the southeast intersection of East George Richie Road and Harley Ridge Road. The applicant is proposing to reszone this property uh to neighborhood services uh to use as a florist and a wedding venue um and an event center with no outdoor events allowed. Um, staff finds that the proposed zoning change is consistent with our future land use map. Planning and zoning commission along with staff recommends approval of this request. I'd be happy to answer any questions at this time.

Thank you, Miss Chroy. Are there any questions for Miss Choy before I open the public hearing? I will go ahead and open the public hearing. I do have two speaker cards. Anita Sandifer, you are up first. Hi, Anita Sandifer. I'm actually here just to answer any questions. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Uh, next speaker card I have is Karen Peyton.

Good afternoon. I'm Karen Peden. I'm the owner of the property and I'll try to answer any questions that they might have. Okay. Any questions for Karen or Anita? We thank you guys for being here. Uh if none, I will close the public hearing and ask for a motion. Make a motion to accept. Have a motion and a second. So excited to approve it. Thank you guys. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Zoning item is approved. Thank you guys very much. Uh we'll move on to zoning item D. A public hearing will be held to consider application PD 2601 followed by David Gable, Miss Angela Choy.

Thank you. So, uh, so the applicant is requesting to reszone from planned development PD04-01 to a new plan development, uh, located on the south of Rustic Oak Drive and Red Oak Trail. Uh, they are looking to do a second phase of the Rustic Oaks subdivision. Uh the proposal seen here on the uh screen is to create an 28 single family residential lot subdivision uh with some HOA areas. Uh phase one, as seen here on this map, was developed in 2005 and had 29 lots. Um and the previous owner proposed to do a second phase. Um but that never came to fruition. Uh the new development will have the same requirements as the first phase uh with minimum building setbacks from the property line. 20 in the front, 10 on the rear, four on the sides. Uh minimum total lot area of 9,750 square ft. Uh and these are all minimums and minimum living area of 1,600 square ft and a maximum 2 1/2 stories. Uh phase two will have 5-ft sidewalks on both sides of the street uh with a 4-ft landscape strip between the sidewalk and the back of the curb that will match the existing subdivision in phase one. Uh staff does find that the proposed zoning change is consistent with our future land use map and surrounding uses. Planning and zoning commission along with staff recommends approval of this request. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

It's a big night for D5. It is there. Any questions for Miss Troy and D2? Exciting night. Any questions? Okay. I'm going to open the public hearing. Um I do have one speaker card, but it's from Travis Craftton. Is that just for questions? Maybe. Yes. Okay. Anyone like to speak in opposition or in favor of this item? I will close the public hearing. Do I have a motion? Make a motion to accept zoning as presented. Second. Motion and a second. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Item is approved. That's good. That's some exciting development happening in Long. Very happy about those things. Um, we are moving on to items of community interest. Derek, you're up.

Yeah. The uh couple meetings ago, we had the winningest football team in the history of Pine Tree here in Proclamation Day. And um this point our Pine Trees athletics, the baseball and softball team are in contention for playoffs, which would be all the boys and girls team sports would make the playoffs if that happens. So, but athletics has been great, but also want to recognize uh Mr. Barry Hill last time talked a little bit about uh that picture has uh Parkway Elementary and Jody Barry Hill's daughter's actually the uh UIL coordinator for that district and they're the district champs. And if you look at the totals,

Pine Tree Parkway and Pine Tree Birch were first and second in each each grade level of the district. And then the second uh next picture is our uh TMA TMSCA state champion which is math science team at the high school. Uh next picture is another successful group of young people and adults. Our pine tree band had just competed at the site reading competition and got the highest superior rating at Gilmer. Look very sharp right there. And and then the last thing I want to show you is uh not only if you see to the right is the chart of uh you the elementary competition but UL academics at Pine Tree and uh you can see the point totals at the top. Uh 893 points. Uh second place was 170. Uh combination of all the other schools listed there would be uh not equal to 893 by Pine Tree. And I'm really proud of that.

Very proud. And I want to say also and if uh uh eight years ago when I came to Pineree as a as administrator, we were at the bottom of that and there's been a lot of growth in all extracurricular and uh athletics at Pine Tree. Really proud of the people there and the kids. Congratulations guys. And right now uh throughout the state of Texas, Long View area, uh we started this week with u star testing. So, if you have uh students out there in third through uh really 11th grade, wish them the best and their best is good enough. A little bit of effort, a little encouragement goes a long way. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Cunning. Shannon,

uh first of all, I'd like to thank Parks and Recreation for all their help with all the Easter egg hunts that were going on this weekend, through the rain, through it all. Um, and just thanking the community for all the volunteers that helped out to make sure that every child could participate in Easter egg hunt all throughout Long View, all sides of town. So, it's greatly appreciated and parks, we thank you a lot for y'all effort and what y'all do. That it nothing tonight. Okay, John.

I didn't have anything, but I will say that we did attend the art walk recently and it was a great event. So, highly recommend it. They do such a good job with it and just was loving seeing the beastro lights and the live music and all the energy downtown there. So, uh, so definitely hit the next one up. Thanks. That's all I have. Awesome. Jody, um, I didn't receive anything for Spring Hill today, but I do want to brag on Coach Medman. They're doing a great job with baseball. Uh, they I think uh, Carthage has two losses and they were both to Spring Hill, uh, which is great. And then Pine Tree come along and took them down the other night. So, I'm proud of him. But hopefully, Coach Medlin were able to get up here and celebrate him again. Um,

and then another thing I want to know, let everybody know is McDonald's will soon be breaking ground. They have their permits. I've spoke to Miss Choy about this uh because a lot of people have been asking me and there's a lot of excitement for it. So, get to watching as you see ground being broken and new things to come. Uh, and I want to say thank you to everybody who's coming in to develop. Uh, and believe me, we're doing our due diligence to make sure that when we're talking about the water and the sewage that we're taking appropriate actions and everything is being handled. I know that was a concern when I was running. I talked with people in different areas. And the last thing I want to say is I've got to give it up. Miss Shaw just a while ago told me, you know, told you that she answered asked me several questions. I had a couple people call me, not from my district, with issues within the city. And I want you to know, I've called and everything was has been taken care of from every standpoint. And I can't brag on our people in our different departments, from codes to planning and zoning, public works, sanitation. They've done a great job. And I always try and check back and I tell them, I said, "If you haven't heard or you don't see anybody, let me know." And uh knock on wood, I've never had to receive a call or make a call back. And I'm sure appreciative of everybody here that works so hard to make that happen.

Yep. They make us look good. Go ahead, Sydney. Yes. I just wanted to say thank you. It's very encouraging to be up here and have the projects we've got moving forward for the city of Long View. And I think we're on the right trajectory and just enjoy being part of the council watching these projects develop. Thank you.

Yep. Very good. Very exciting. I agree. Um, I have a couple of things tonight. The first is about National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week. Yep, that's got it. As mayor of the city of Long View, I am honored to recognize National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week and to celebrate the dedicated men and women who serve our community through dispatch. If you've ever called 911, you have talked to one of these calm people and you understand exactly the professionalism I'm speaking of. From April 12th through the 18th, we have an opportunity to pause and acknowledge a group of professionals whose voices often meet people on some of the hardest days of their lives. When someone calls 911 in fear, confusion, crisis, or uncertainty, it is those telecommunicators who answer first. They bring calm to chaos, clarity to confusion, and order to moments that can change lives in an instant. National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week is held each year to recognize these essential public safety professionals. We may never see their faces, but public safety telecommunicators are the steady link between the public and our emergency responders. To every telecommunicator serving in Long View, we say thank you. Your discipline under pressure, your compassion in moments of pain, and your endurance through long shifts and difficult calls make you a hero. Thank you for the essential role you play in keeping our city safe each and every day. Over the past year, you answered 171632 calls for service. That resulted in 57,796 police calls, 15,61 EMS calls, and 7,299 fire calls. Your steady voice, calm presence, and faithful service make a difference. more than my words can express. On behalf of the city of Long View, we proudly honor you during our National Public Safety Telecommunicators

Week and we want to express our sincere appreciation for all that you do for our residents, our visitors, and our first responders. Thank you.

Open for open position for that too. Did I Yes, we are. Are we hiring that? So, we have an open position there too. So, if anybody wants to join one of those, that's right. I'll give a little plug. All right.

Good plug. Good plug. Uh, our next announcement is America 250 kicks off this Saturday. Join us for so many great events. You've heard about Dalton Days. Uh, you know about the Shiakwa Festival. Telecommunicators is harder for me than that one. But anyway, uh, Shiakwa Festival happening at the library, our time capsule opening at Greg County downtown live with parade and laser light show. So, Saturday is going to be a big and exciting day in Long View. Please come out and participate. Next, Blue Crew. The city of Long View is calling on our residents to help restore our community's recycling. Uh, you guys remember the story. Our recycling facility closed. We all got out of the habit of recycling and started using that bin for trash. It is now time to retrain yourself on how to recycle. Blue Crew is a new initiative designed to increase local recycling rates and reward environmental stewardship. The program arrives as part of a strategic push to return Long View to its peak recycling performance of 300 tons of recyclables per month. The Blue Crew is an optin cohort for residents who want to lead by example. By joining, members receive a specialized recycling kit and direct communications from public works to ensure they are up to date on the latest sanitation schedules and sorting techniques. Most notably, Blue Crew members become exclusively eligible for the Binit challenge, which is a monthly giveaway designed to incentivize proper recycling habits. You can learn more and register today at longex.gov/blue crew. Thank you, Mr. Archer for that fun idea. Uh, youth advisory committee is my last announcement. It is my pleasure to announce the launch of the mayor's youth advisory committee. This is a new initiative designed to give high school students a direct voice into their local government. The youth advisory committee

is a 10-month program that moves beyond traditional classroom learning by placing students in the center of our municipal decision-making. Members will meet monthly at city hall to collaborate with city department heads, learn the mechanics of city government, and develop the big picture project, which will be a formal policy recommendation that will be presented back to us, city council, in April of 2027. A good opportunity for our young people and a direct uh recommendation from our engagement task force to get their opinions as well as their buyin so that when they grow up, they can be sitting up here and helping to do what we are privileged to do. Next is executive session. We will have an executive session under personnel matters section 551.074 of the Texas government code and we will not return following executive session. Thank you guys for being here and we are Yep.

Is that time cap 250 years old? No. Um but it is from it's 50 years old. Hoping it was 250. No.