City Council - Regular Meeting

Please don't.

I was going to do it.

She brought me like 12 to the office.

I was like, I don't know what to do with that. I was going to do the community highlight.

Please don't. I actually did not read it.

Thank you. Good.

That's so good.

It's so awkward. I hate listening to anything that I talk on or...

Meeting will begin in 30 seconds.

Well, go ahead and call to order our July 9th City Council meeting for the City of Longview. Thank you to everyone who is present here with us tonight. We love having the full chamber, so thank you all for being here with us. The first thing we will do is our prayer and pledge, which will be led by Mandy Brashear or Brashear?

Brashear.

razor oh third try okay uh please and mandy is with the platform and we've invited mandy to a remind our residents that july is independent retailer month so we want to remind you to shop local shop our longview small businesses and help support them which also provides vital sales tax for our community so thank you for your investment in longview if everyone will please rise

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for allowing us to gather here today. We are grateful for the many blessings you've given our community and for the privilege of living in a country where we have the freedom to elect leaders who faithfully serve the people. Lord, we lift up the members of the city council, give them wisdom, discernment and unity as they make decisions that shape the future of Longview. Help them lead with integrity, compassion and a heart to serve every citizen they represent. As we celebrate Independent Retailer Month, we also lift up the small businesses of Longview and across East Texas. Thank you for the entrepreneurs, families, and employees who work hard every day to strengthen our local economy and serve our communities. Bless their efforts, guide them through challenges, and continue to help small businesses flourish. We pray for the people of our city, our county, and the great state of Texas and our nation. May we turn our hearts toward you, seeking your wisdom, showing kindness to one another, and working together for the good of our communities. Father, we thank you for the men and women who faithfully serve others each day. We ask for your protection and blessing over our military, veterans, law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMS personnel, healthcare workers, and all first responders. Wash over them and their families. Lord, may we always remember that while each have different roles to play, we are at our best when we serve one another with humility and keep our eyes fixed on you. Above all else, we thank you for your greatest gift, your Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins. May everything we do today bring honor and glory to your name. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and justice for all.

Thank you so much, Mandy. Before you run away, will you tell us where the platform is and what your hours are?

Yes, we are located. We just moved in March to 1017 McCann Road here in Longview, right in the center of Longview. We house currently over 30 different small businesses within our 5000 square foot. So every time you come in there, it's always fresh and it's 30 individual small businesses. We are open from Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Thank you.

Next on our agenda is citizen comment. I have one speaker card from Miss Brenda Woolridge. Come on up.

I love this. You're very sweet. Thank you, Brenda. My name is Brenda Woolridge. I have three issues that I want to bring to the city council. The first one is the Southwark Park, which Mr. Allison has been doing an awesome job in getting us straightened out on it, but it was in dangerous conditions. The games, the things that they had were down, they hadn't been taken care of. and found out they had a contract, didn't have a contract until 2018. So that's like eight years, 2016. Eight years that hadn't been done. And so it looks pretty bad. But he has already started taking up the old park stuff that was dangerous to kids and cleaning it up. Trees were hanging down, dangerous to people walking around the track. It was in bad shape. And they still need cleaning. It needs a lot of work done to it. The next one is a, I'm sorry, the other thing is the drainage on Southside. In the drainage part where there have been ditches and stuff fixed, put down, it has not been kept up and trees are growing in the cement. It's so much rubbish in there, it's trees and stuff like that in the drainage part. They start out little bitty trees, now they're tall. And it's gonna take something to get them out. we have such a drainage problem one more thing there's a severe drainage problem on 204 melville street i have brought several people there to look at it because it is very dangerous you can't see it because it's overgrown now and they have kids living across the street of it part of it's city part part of the people that own it but it's dangerous and if somebody doesn't get do something with it somebody's gonna get hurt and i want to bring that to you and also last one again okay last one um we have a lot of junk in our streets and Number one, South Longview is big. South Longview is old. And we do not have enough people working to get it up to where it needs to be. If we could pull together some of the people from the north side or whatever y'all want to do to get it up to standard, and then the people in Cole can keep it up. But it's too much. And it's not been done. 12th Street, y'all, it looks like the ghetto. And it doesn't have to be there. It's been that way for years. And it's time for us as citizens of Longview and the city council to address the Southside issues. And you already have a lot of them, and I appreciate everything you've done. But there are some that need addressing soon because somebody's going to get hurt on Melville Street if they don't do anything about it. Thank you.

Ms. Brenda, you know we appreciate you. Can I ask you two questions? You said on Melba Street you took people to see it. Were those city people? You already talked to city people about that one?

Yes. Oh, let me back up. Mr. Rick Evans came to my house about some issues, and I told him about it. That same day, this man had somebody out there taking care of it.

good man thank you and then the drainage one you mentioned before that was that at the park also yes okay all right yes okay and the drainage is all over town it's all over uh rainy and different every place you know it's bad because it's dangerous yeah thank you ma'am i do not have any other speaker cards is there anyone that would like to fill out a card or speak and then fill out a card following If not, I will move on to our next agenda item, which is community recognition, presentation, and recognition of the Juneteenth Celebration Committee with Ms. Shannon Moore, our mayor pro tem. Thank you.

Patrick, will you join me, please?

Good evening, everyone. First and foremost, I really want to thank our Juneteenth committee and Dietrich for all that we did to try to get everything celebrated. So I do want y'all to come up here and join us so that everybody can recognize y'all and see who y'all are. So if you're part of the Juneteenth committee, please come up here.

I know, but man, yeah.

Right together.

And to be honest, y'all, this is not even everybody that takes a part in the Juneteenth festivities and coming up with the ideas. It's not me, myself. It is pretty much people from the community that want to see something different, that wanted to see what they wanted to, how they wanted to celebrate Juneteenth, and you're looking at those people. Everybody had a different part, different role in it. And honestly, I want y'all all to say what role y'all played in that.

Okay, I'm Shativa Marshall and I assisted with the first 5K, Juneteenth 5K.

Jamie Brogan and we provided community health education and screening at the festival.

I'm Willie Marshall and assisted with the gospel concert.

Mackenzie Hodge, I also helped coordinate the first 5K.

Sherry Ann Wilburn also worked on the gospel event as well as the Michael Jackson event with the NAACP.

Elton Sanchez, I'm the one that had the idea for the Juneteenth 5K.

Regina Wayne, I worked on the gospel celebration, the Michael Jackson and gave out t-shirts in the park.

Hi, I'm Rosalyn Cantu and I help with the Small Business Expo.

I'm Pat Hooper, we have the Juneteenth Rodeo along with Calico Heritage.

Terrell Edwards helped with the Gospel event and an actor in the Gospel Juneteenth Father's Day play, Trouble Don't Last Always.

Laura Cooley, I'm with Calico Heritage and Pat's my boss and we work together on the Juneteenth Rodeo.

really the words can't express how thankful I am for you guys and y'all support and any idea that I had and bringing new ideas and seeing them flourish and seeing them grow every year like every year since I've been on council I've seen it grow bigger and bigger and I'm really truly thankful for this community and I'm thankful for y'all and also definitely thankful for parks for always partnering with me and helping me so Big shout out to Parks, thanks John, and police, and everyone else who's helpful. And most of all, Dietrich, who puts up with me, puts up with me, puts up with all of us and our budgets, him and his team. I could not do this without him. So I just wanted to show my appreciation, y'all, and thank y'all so much. Thank you. Thank you.

And of course the city council.

I can't do it without them.

Can we get in two rows for this one? Sorry.

Yeah, you're in the back. Five people in the back. Get closer.

Your front row guy. Yes. Okay. No, no, you're good.

appreciated all the information, so thank you.

Yes, I think it appropriate to acknowledge Ms. Moore, our Mayor Pro Tem's involvement in the Juneteenth Committee. I appreciate and enjoy retelling the story that that event is why you're here, that Shannon got involved in that committee as a private citizen and didn't like the way we were doing it, so she decided to do it better. And that's how the city gets better. People invest their time and decide they're willing to serve to make things better. We appreciate you. Thank you.

Yes.

we will move on to present type excuse me presentation item a presentation and update on the 2018 bond project with Mr. Zack Shaner our city engineer all right good evening mayor city council mr. Rick fee okay we're already on the first one

Um, I wanted to come here to you tonight to give you a update on all of the bond projects today. Um, want to start off with a brief history. Um, so the, uh, projects were selected by the Longview comprehensive plan advisory committee, which was then approved by city council. The list of projects totaled $104.2 million. The bond election was held on November 6th of 18. The debt was issued every two years to complete the projects with issuances on 2019, 21, and 23. And the reason that we did this was in an effort to keep the impact to the tax rate as low as possible. Now, throughout the course of the last several years, We experienced some delays, much was related to the COVID pandemic that caused a lot of non-essential businesses to close that we relied on. We also experienced supply chain shortages and workforce shortages. Moving on to the bond projects themselves. They were split into three propositions. Proposition A, B, and C. A was the public safety facilities, police and fire. Proposition B was our streets and infrastructure. And Proposition C was our park improvements. Now I'll go into a little bit of depth of each one of these propositions, starting off with Proposition A. We had one, two, three, four, five, six projects. Longview Police Department we completed that project fire station five and eight are both also completed the municipal annex which was formerly the police police station we renovated that for several different departments within the city and then we built a fire training center or a public safety training center excuse me out off of Eastman Road which is a four-story burn building and we are substantially completed with that however We are lacking burn props which are scheduled to be installed by the end of 2026. Also, our last fire station in this proposition was Fire Station 7 on Gilmer Road. We are currently under construction and projected to be done by the end of the year. Moving on to Proposition B. We did a complete street reconstruction on Fairmont, which has been completed. We redid the Marbley and High Street entryway to basically improve the entry point into the city for everybody traveling into the city. Real road, or excuse me, I'll skip Marbley. So Marbley complete streets, we shrink it. from four lanes to three added some bike lanes and some sidewalks on both sides to increase pedestrian traffic throughout the city real road and and that's supposed to be completed here in the next month so that'll make a lot of people happy i know that it's been quite the impact on the traveling public similarly real road reconstruction we're turning that into a four-lane facility due to the lack of capacity that initially had and we also made it a concrete street which will last much longer than asphalt and we are on pace to be completed with that this fall and lastly our cotton street sidewalk project with the help of a grant from texdot we uh we're gonna split the project into two We are gonna treat the north side of Cotton Street like a city project, and then TxDOT will be letting and managing the construction on the south side. And so we will have sidewalks from Green Street all the way to Grand Boulevard to connect downtown to Mod Cobb and the facilities there. And lastly, Proposition C was our parks. Broughton Rec Center had been completed. It looks amazing. And obviously was... Big improvement for that part of town. The Longview Arboretum and Nature Center, we also completed that project within two phases. It's now a destination for even people outside the city to come and partake in our wonderful park that we had created. There's several trails. There's more plants than I can count. There's pergolas and gazebos and there's actually a creek with a small waterfall that runs through there and It's really nice And then we substantially completed, or excuse me, skipped Cargill Trail. Cargill Trail connected from the north side of 4th Street all the way down to Highway 80. And we are currently working on a Teague Park project, which will bring that trail clean into Teague Park. But that Teague Park project is not part of the bond. Just adding that in there. And then we had several park improvements around town. We are substantially completed. However, we have additional trails that are currently in design, scheduled to bid first Sunday in August at the Stamper Park, as well as a canopy over the basketball courts and a parking lot, which added 92 different parking spots. So with the installation of the pool, the extra parking was necessary. We are currently on budget across all projects. Now I touched base earlier in the slides, how we ran into some delays, which also had some cost implications given inflation and basically everything that resulted from COVID. And so we were able to offset those additional costs with the interest that we generated through the bond, as well as both a grant for the Moberly Complete Streets, as well as the Cotton Street Sidewalks Project. And with that, I ask anybody have any questions.

Thanks, Zach. Any questions, comments? Oops, sorry. Yes, Derek.

Got a virtual question.

Yes, thank you, Zach. Just real quick on that. The real road, you said fall. Do you have a more specific expectation of when that could be complete?

We are shooting for early October.

okay and i want to uh come in you you said mentioned a lot of the delays in the in the entire department but so you're on the as far as our 100 the entire bond the 104.2 you're saying can you explain a little bit about how the uh we're within budget on that or did we gain figures as far as our interest that allowed for us to be a little still but still will still stay within the what the taxpayers taxpayers approved at 104.2

That's correct. We've experienced interest earnings of about $4.8 million. The Moberly Street grant was $2.5 million. And the Cotton Street was $4.3 million. So the additional cost that we experienced throughout the construction and design of these projects and the delays, we were able to offset with those grants. And thanks to our grant department's hard work in bringing those projects home.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Zach, for the information. Yes, sir.

Yeah, great question. Go ahead, Sidney.

I want to say thank you for what you all have done. The grant you mentioned, is that from the state or the federal, or where did the money come from? TechStop. TechStop.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

That's good.

Yes. Yeah, we have a good relationship with them, and we look forward to maintaining it.

Yes.

Yeah. And you probably remember a year ago we were talking about maybe needing to pull that out of our reserves if we didn't get that. So excited to hear. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Angela, for investing well and applying well. So we did not have to spend out of our savings.

That's right.

Great job.

I mean, that was going to be my question because we did talk about having a shortfall last year. And so to hear that we don't have a shortfall is a good thing on the stamp report. Can you go in a little bit of detail of what's lacking there?

Yes, ma'am. So we're going to add in, let's see, 92 parking stalls as well as a new 10 foot wide sidewalk that's roughly 1,300 linear feet long. so it'll navigate through the north part of the town or the excuse me the park and connect you know we're adding some sidewalks as well to bring people from the new parking lot which was previously the old training field for the fire and police and so everything is going to be interconnected and allow a safe crossing of ferris street right there so you're saying that where the old training station is that's going to be a parking lot now yes ma'am and then you're going to have a sidewalk to that

That's correct. And then on the 10-foot wide, that's going to be the walking trail?

Yes, ma'am.

And what's the estimated completion or start?

Memorial Day next spring. Or excuse me, we're bidding at the first Sunday of August, but we have the estimated completion time of Memorial Day next year.

Okay, thank you. That's a basketball court cover. What is that?

Yes, we're going to put a big canopy over the basketball court so you're not playing basketball.

Oh, like playing basketball, I would be in the shade. That's right. Kind of like I'm not going to play basketball. That's at the pickleball court. Thank you. Yep, couldn't picture what that looked like.

Yes, sir. Couple things. One is I drove down railroad today and it's looking really good as far as it was nice driving down it. The other whole other side direction is not done yet. That seems like a lot to get done in a few months.

The contractor is planning on making more substantial pores with concrete. to meet that fall deadline.

Okay. There's a lot. Yes, sir.

I agree 100%, and everybody gives me the same look when I say that. Okay. Per our progress meeting last week, they're still on track.

Okay. And then also, I do want to give credit to all the work you've done, too, as well, and everybody, also the media team for the work on the Marbury Complete Street and letting them know about the bicycle and pedestrian access. So thank you all for all that. Yes, sir. Appreciate it.

And the Cotton Street sidewalk completion 2029, is that because we're delaying getting started on this or are we having to wait for something?

No, sir. So TxDOT had a let date of the end of 2028. Now, we can't go beyond that. but that is our drop-dead date for TxDOT to let the project. Now, we have all the opportunity in the world if we have the plans together and ready for bid before that. So I gave you the most conservative timeframe here, but we are striving to do it as fast as possible.

And let the project means give us the money, right?

Bid it. Now, the city, the north side that the city is handling will have those plans done much sooner, and so we plan to bid that project as soon as they're ready. So just out of curiosity, why did we get the north side and not the south side?

I was thinking the south side would have been more convenient.

Yeah. so uh the grant that we got was only in under the amount to be able to fund half the project we had previously went after the grant for the whole both sides and when we did that we were competing with the bigger metroplexes given the dollar amount and so we were able to uh in discussions with text dot and internally decide okay if we split this you know the project is now cut in half so the the text dot's portion of it lowered us for the competition that we were going against with other cities given the dollar amount which was what five million and so the the southern sidewalk scope of the work you know fell within that threshold and we thankfully, were awarded the grant and helped us with the whole bond project.

All right. I know Roland and I had kind of talked about this before. I'm like, I know the south side, to me, just made a lot more sense to get through there quicker. And I'm like, we had advantage to be able to. But I understand what you're saying. Thank you, Zach. Yes, sir.

All set. Thanks, Zach. Appreciate you. Next on our agenda is presentation item B. We are going to pass this and we'll bring this back on our next council meeting agenda to talk about recycling program. Next then is presentation item C, presentation of safety audit proposal from GC4 with Gary Mars, the president of GC4 Security Consultants.

good evening good evening gary mars with gc4 it's a blessing to be here um we're going to be uh giving a presentation on safety audit and got a call and was asked to uh to do this and i thought well yeah and then talked to my wife about it and she said well you're not as smart as you think you are so called a buddy of mine and said okay we'll do this together and anyway we're blessed to be here and the safety you know this is a very this is very passionate for us and we've been through a lot I've done this a long time I'm 60 just celebrated 60 July 6 so Got the young buck here and compliment each other. And so it's a pleasure to be here and give this presentation. And thank you for allowing us to be here. Thank you. Thank you.

good evening good evening my name is dustin briggs i'll be the one working along with gary that is doing most of the audit gary's going to step in and help in places but whenever you're doing these safety audits you usually find companies doing two different ways you have the first way which is the company's going to come in they're going to look at the scope of work that you provide them and they're going to compare what your safety programs are and how they compare to the OSHA or NFPA standards. Now, in y'all's case, you know that the city doesn't actually fall underneath OSHA. However, it does sound like y'all are taking the first steps in trying to become OSHA compliant anyways, which is commendable. In most cases, the company's going to look at that, give you a gap analysis of what standards you're actually meeting and which ones you're not quite meeting on the day that they actually come in and do that audit. And then a few months later, you'll get the completed safety audit back. That's not really the method that I recommend. I like to go a few steps further than that. So I will take the OSHA standard and compare it to your written programs to what your guys are doing out there on the ground whenever they're performing their day-to-day work. But beyond that, I'm going to be looking for your recognized best practices and best practices that I myself or Gary has come to know during our own experience. And beyond that, what really I think we do a little bit different than most other companies is we put a strong focus on safety leadership and safety culture. Those three things combined, the standards, the best practices, and your safety leadership and culture, those are what are going to be the things that really tell you about your day-to-day safety and how safe your team is out there on the ground doing the work. And I'll get a little bit more into the leadership and workplace culture in the slide here in just a second. I do believe in spending the majority of my time at the site level, not behind a desk. uh that's because that's where all the hazards are right i don't want to spend just a couple of days here and then go to the office and write up everything just based on paperwork i do want to look at your sops your safety programs and everything that you have written and i will but i want to go beyond that and actually see what's what i call your unwritten safety policies too and that's what the people are actually doing out there on the floor uh and i put a lot of focus on the follow-through after the audit so obviously i can't do the follow-throughs for the city right but i can make the recommendation and i can provide you with all the tools that you need in order to complete those follow-throughs and ensure that those findings are all corrected as they should be so I'm prepared to spend 30 days on site, might be a little bit more, might be a little bit less, but that's the rough estimate. And what I've found in performing these bids in the past is that you'll see that my bid comes up with probably double the time as the other safety consulting companies as being on site and half the time off site. And the reason that I'm able to do that is because I've never accepted the status quo, so I don't like spending all of my time on the back end where y'all don't see me and writing up a report. So instead, what I did was I created my own safety auditing app that puts together the report for me as I'm actually out there taking pictures, taking notes, and it takes away all the time off of that back end so that I get to spend more time with your people, seeing what they're doing, and actually being able to provide more value to you. I think that's something that's extremely important whenever you're talking about preventing the next injury. I have been doing this for quite a long time, or at least it feels like a long time to me, 14 years. It's funny, it doesn't matter how long you do this and have to give these presentations and these speeches, my heart's always beating out of my chest regardless.

You're doing great.

I have spent time on both sides of the table where I was the customer having audits done at my facility, and I've done dozens of audits at customers' facilities. So I know what my customers expect, and I know the quality of work that I provide. I've also worked with some of the bigger safety consulting companies, so I know how my work compares. And I would, it might sound a little arrogant, but I would put my work up against any of theirs. This is something that I am very passionate about. I don't ever want to miss anything that ends up causing somebody to get hurt later. But the real test isn't going to be the safety auditing checklist after the fact. You're going to get that regardless, with everything saying that this is compliant, this isn't compliant, this is where you need to improve. I'm going to go beyond that and look at the systems that keep all of your safety programs compliant tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. I don't want to just hand you a piece of paper and just be done. I want this to have ongoing effects that lead to a better safety culture and better safety performance with your guys from now on. and give you an example of what I'm talking about. So if I were just going by the standard, I would come in and I would look at your, I use TASCOM, so I'd look at your chemical inventory, make sure you have an SDS for every chemical, make sure all your people are trained on those SDSs and how to use those chemicals and just that everything's up to the standard. And then I would mark yes or no. But then going beyond that, I want to look and see if you have a management of change process or some sort of system where this person or this group of people are going to be responsible for ordering all the chemicals onto site so that they can compare it or maybe you have a digital program. that automatically checks off that, yes, we already have the SDS for this chemical. We bought it before. No, we haven't. And yes, we're going to have to go back in and do a job safety analysis on this, make sure that we don't have to have special PPE or special requirements to use, or we don't need industrial hygiene sampling or anything like that. But those are the systems that I'm going to look at beyond just the bare minimum written standard. and the leadership and cultural aspect of it. So this, I can't go into detail on every aspect of this, but to sum up what I'm going to be looking for and looking for this, it's the things that your safety leaders, your supervisors, your managers, it's the things that they're, if I can speak, it's going to be the things that your leaders accept, encourage, don't accept and discipline. because those are the things that actually cause those unwritten safety policies to form, and those are the things that really influence what happens on the ground versus what's written. And that right there is going to be what's most influential on preventing your injuries. Now, this wasn't bid as a full safety leadership and cultural assessment, but there is a lot of it that I could add or that I'm going to add in the compliance audit, just at value, because it doesn't take extra time, and it's easy to observe, and it provides you a lot of value. I want to do all that I can to prevent those injuries. And at the end of it, you'll get a report with an executive summary that has all of the high-level items on one page where you can easily scan and see what needs to be corrected. It'll have the findings ranked by severity of risk, and that's determined by how likely an incident is to occur due to a hazard and how severe the injury would likely be because of the hazard. There will also be another page where it's all grouped by cost and time, so you can easily scan and see, all right, well, these are all of the real easy things that I can fix today. And this item right here, this is going to be a longer project that takes some planning and real thought to go into. And there will be a corrective action time frame, estimated costs, and an applicable standard for every single finding that we produce. along with everything will be grouped by OSHA subpart and if you guys wish it there will be a executive closeout meeting as well and where most audits end at the binder You get the PDF or a printed copy of all the findings and the corrective actions. It's my understanding that Longview does not have a digitalized electronic system for actually tracking your incidents and corrective actions, your safety programs, and any kind of safety observations or anything of that nature. I think y'all are using Excel and Word and a lot of different programs to do all of that. So in my bid, I included six months free to the Safety Spire platform that I've created specifically for being able to track all of those items through to completion. That way you don't risk anything slipping through the gaps and not getting corrected because if it's just on a piece of paper or a Word document or anything like that, it's really easy to forget something. So to sum it up, the majority of my time is going to be spent in the field rather than behind a desk. Systems end up getting reviewed rather than just the standard by itself. Leadership and culture are observed where they actually affect safety. And another thing with the leadership and the culture side of it, that is going to impact a lot more than just safety because it goes into things that impact how your people interact with all of their coworkers, not just their own teams. And then, of course, the six months follow-up that I just mentioned as far as the Safety Spire platform goes. Any questions?

Thank you, Justin. Cindy's got one.

Am I the only one?

No.

You just went fast this time.

You decided to start this side. What I'm looking at here is a written copy of your proposal. You did an excellent presentation tonight. I mean, just excellent. One of the questions I had was time on site. And you said 30 days. That's very good. I mean, that's just good. Again, I'll say it was a very thorough explanation. And going along, I've got a couple of things here. I'm not too much. You mentioned on your cover letter, HasCom

and LOTO what are those are those standards or what are those those are OSHA standards yeah so you have your hazcom that's that's short for hazard communication and that's that has everything to do with all the chemicals on site the labels the training involved with that uh and i don't know if you're familiar with tier two or not probably not but uh tier two reporting to the state where you have to have your your book chemical storage and everything reported to the state in case anything ever does go wrong then Andy over here can respond and know what he's getting into.

Okay. Well now what is a L-O-T-O?

That is lockout tagout. That is energy isolation so anytime that you're working on anything that has any sort of energy going to it you want to make sure that any sort of electrical energy or mechanical energy any type of energy that could

move or be activated and end up hurting somebody that's isolated and completely shut off to where there's no way that it can be activated and end up hurting somebody in other words the switch needs to be locked off yes okay i think that's um excellent i mean it just I can't say enough about your presentation. Good. Thank you.

I was scared.

I was bumbling through it. No, not at all.

Derek's got a question. I see a hand.

Yes, thank you, Dustin. Again, great job on your presentation. First question I have is, can you talk about your company, GS4? How many, can you talk about similar organizations that are like our size that you've had success working with?

I can't really speak for GC4. Gary can speak to that.

I've actually been been fortunate without naming names of contractors. I've been working with municipal for since I say for since 2011 engineering projects probably been on every project in Longview and several counties around here. So I'm very familiar with municipalities, wastewater treatment plants, roads, you name it, I've been there. So,

So with your company, I really appreciate, it seems, the personal touch. I love the fact Dustin mentioned he's going to be on site for 30 days. How many employees do you guys have? I mean, how many employees do you have with your company?

Really, right now, it's just, well, the two of us that are going to be working together on this project. And we've kind of scaled it to be personal. And you've got to be careful about bringing other people in. I trust this guy. We've known each other a long time. And we believe we can handle this project within, what, 10 weeks? Yeah. 10-week period. And you just got to be careful about bringing others in that don't have the same values and quality that we have.

I always like the words free. And you said free a couple times.

That's not why we're here.

So can you review what you said six months ago? A little bit about that, and then the other part, I really like that you talked about helping the leadership as being part of that compliance report. Can you talk a little bit about that extra things that you guys, and again, I appreciate the personal touch. This is the last part of my question, but just talk a little bit about how that leadership, meeting with them, and then how that moves into the, like you said, the executive closeout, how all that looks and, What can we expect with that? Thank you guys.

OK. Thank you. Leadership, especially frontline supervisors, and I don't want to be arrogant, but I think I know what we're going to find. And because I've done this many, many times, and it kind of goes back to frontline leadership. And I'll give you an example. Let's say you've got a six-man crew, and they've been working together for, I'd say, four or five years. Well, one of the crew members is, hey, the boss comes, or the manager, and says, hey, man, you're doing really good, and we want to promote you. And so he gets promoted above his peers that he's been working with. How does he handle that? So all of a sudden you go from, I've been working with these guys for five years and now all of a sudden I'm their boss. And let's say one of, you know, one day something happens and one of the subordinates wants to do something that's different. Hey, I wanna do it this way instead of that way and it's not the safest way. So he has two choices. He says, yeah, go ahead. Do it that way. It's not the safest way, but the guy says, hey, it's quicker. And something happens. The guy gets hurt, or gal. Now what? So a lot of times what happens is we promote leaders from here to there, and they don't have the tools. to handle that. They don't know how to do this. They haven't been trained. So typically it comes down to, I've done this many times, it comes down to communicating effectively, accountability, and leading by example. Those are typically the three failures. when you promote somebody. And even with those that have been in a leadership position for years, they don't know how to handle this. But that's just an example of I think what we will find if and we're gonna be working together to do interviews, you know, that is a big part of this because, you know, data, we can pull data and it will tell us so much, it'll tell us okay, you're having Five times more accidents here than you are over here. Naturally, we would go over here and say, hey, biggest bang for the buck. That's where we're going. But we're going to find that there's probably some training needs in frontline leadership to know how to handle these situations. And we have the tools to do that. I've done it many times with large companies. And it works. But you've got to figure out, you know, just figure out what's going on and who that is and what's happening out there. But I think that'll be a big part of it. And I'm not trying to be arrogant, but I've done this a lot, and I think that's where this is going to land. Sure. We appreciate that.

Well, obviously, appreciate it. Obviously, safety is first priority, and I appreciate Gary and Dustin, your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

One thing I was looking up that came up last time with council was that we were hoping to have an unannounced visit, right? So an onsite that was not, you know, a scheduled, Hey, we're going to show up.

Okay.

Perfect. What other questions we got?

I've got a few so like workman's comp history will you kind of look at that kind of give you an idea hey this is the this is the trail we need to go down first to kind of know where we're at yes all right like that and I know mr. Connolly he answered he asked several questions that I had questions about in regards to different companies and municipalities that you've worked with just making sure you've been with people you know the size of Longview what we're operating with And this would go with all departments, correct?

Yes. The loss run will go with all departments, and then the actual safety audit is scoped to the public works department, all five locations of public works.

Okay. You know, in a situation municipalities and asking you, I guess on your history of it, what do you normally find? Do you find hey, there's three to five things that's real big? Or do you say, hey, we kind of run across more than that?

So so Gary will answer a little bit better on the municipality side of it.

In my experience, whenever you're talking about a come to the microphone, if you would. Oh, sorry.

Sorry, man.

It's for the TV. Gotcha.

I saw you motioning over there. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Sorry about that. As far as my experience has gone, what you typically see is it's going to be kind of apples to oranges. So whenever you have an organization that's already trying to be OSHA compliant and they fall under those standards, you might find zero to two critical findings and that's a company that's 300 500 people big but whenever you're talking about a city that doesn't fall underneath osha that's just now trying to really become compliant with osha and get all the work procedures and everything up to date it's kind of hard to really give a good number on what we will see out there because from one place to another, we don't know the standards that you've been trying to meet already.

Gotcha. And I just want to compliment you on one of the things that I said. you'll have ownership for problems. And I think going forward, that's a great thing. And it's not designed to hold something over somebody's head, but it's just to recognize and bring attention to it. And now you've got something to follow on. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'll add to that is since 2011, I've been working with municipalities, been out on every site for multiple cities. And the other liability is contractors. And sometimes that involves city employees. And so that's been an issue from trenching. Big issue. I mean, there are some top four or five or six things that they don't do. And of course, you're not responsible for that. They are. But there are things that can be done by contractors that create hazards for your employees. So it's kind of beyond this scope, but it happens a lot.

John, you had a question?

Yes, I have a few. Gary, first off, your wife was smart, and you did a good job bringing in Dustin.

Well, no, she's not as smart as me. She's not watching this, is she? Dustin, excellent job with the presentation.

Recording this. It is just recorded. So, Dustin, great job with the presentation. So explain to me the relationship, though. So the GC4 has the contract, but, Dustin, you work as an independent contractor that is part of GC4?

I operate a safety spire. It's my company, and, yeah, I would be a subcontractor underneath GC4.

okay and gc4 is longview based yes okay and then what about safety spy where are you from dustin beckfield beckfield okay all right awesome and then um the other parts i had it was let me see what i had on there um you know i really have some comments regarding just some of the stuff that you mentioned and you hit on like I really was looking for standards, like I really wanted something to go with that to make sure that I think for the team that having something come in, third party, sometimes you're a little bit too close to the problems and you can't maybe see some things because you're just there and you're in it every day. So just getting an outside assessment of somebody that comes in and can lay out how they've seen some experiences or how things can be done or whatever and give a new perspective. And then setting that standards to where we're there. But I also appreciate the fact of leaning into the best practices that are there and then the safety culture aspect of it. You know, the municipality side, we're not like other occupational safety businesses. So we're kind of unique in that. So I think that you're using a multi-pronged approach, I think is really good. I also enjoy that you're 30 days on site and that you have a 10 week turnaround, which is pretty, pretty quick. So that way, if there is a safety issue, we can get to them really quickly. And the leadership assessment, I think, is also a key aspect of what we're looking for because it does come down from the top, right? So it does help to see where things are at and how that culture is being established. And the explanation on how you do the priority based on the severity versus exposure, sometimes we want to focus on maybe the numbers of how many priority issues we're going to have, but the fact that it's really a heat map. You know, some things have a higher priority due to the exposure level to the amount of severity to it. Right. And so there is there is that gauge is not black and white. It's boom, boom. Like we need to know really where is the where's that heat map? Where are the really issues? So that way we know as a council where to focus on the fixing, you know, helping with staff to fix those those issues. So I appreciate that. And then the executive closeout, that's part of the bid process, it seems like, not just something that's getting thrown in. And we appreciate that because it does help us to hear from you about what the findings were and be able to talk kind of casually in a sense or about... where the issues really are and get more of a color onto that, because it's really hard when you read a report. It's much easier to kind of understand where you're coming from and have those discussions with you. And then the the follow through as far as that as well to all of it so those are the things that my thoughts on it you did a great job and I will you know rely on city staff as far as ranking as far as your credentials on occupational safety because I don't know but overall great job thanks appreciate it I will add you mentioned the turnaround time on the report

Well, it's him getting to those findings so they can be corrected. I will add that any sort of critical findings or high risk findings you will know about. Well, before that, OK, OK, even better.

Thank you. Thanks for that. Thank you.

Yeah, no, I would just like to say a great presentation from both of you guys. And I like a lot of things that you said. Those were a lot of things that I was looking for. So don't really have a lot of questions because you all kind of hit the areas that I wanted to see. My main interest is to making sure that we're proactive and that we're safe. And so thank y'all.

Great job. I wrote down safety, leadership, and culture. You said all the right words. I appreciate it. Yes. Good job. Thank you, guys. And next on our agenda is discuss safety audit request for proposals and proposals received and next steps. So kind of same we did last time. If you guys are comfortable proceeding with GC four, I will add it for a vote next time or if we'd like to discuss further or you guys let me know what we want to do.

So I'm sorry.

Well, no, I just wanted to make sure what we're what our scope is, because I hear one we're saying citywide, then I hear public work. So what were we focusing it?

Yeah, good question. Marion, do you want to talk about the scope?

Sure. So the scope that was put out was based off of the accident that occurred. So that is what they are specifically looking at is public works, the water treatment plants and the wastewater plant. GC four and hub added the assessment using the work comp data to look at the rest of the city for us as well as a part of the original bid Uh, but that was not what we scoped out. What we scoped out was just public works and onsite assessments. Um, so they are adding to that and what they would be able to do then is providing that report as they looked at the rest of the city that would, uh, help us align what other areas we might need to look at from that. And then we could bring back something else.

Okay.

and i i asked that question because i want to make sure that we're not going into fire we're not going to police they have their own regulations we're not going to look at the library we don't it is centered only on public works you are correct yeah thank you yeah perfect so i was just going to um the ones that submitted the scope all those were vetted as far as being qualified to handle the work and do the work all right um and then the price on the on hub and the price on gc4

Sure. The price on hub is 66,000 and that is a 130 day turnaround. The price on GC four is 86,000. And as he said, that's a ten week turnaround.

Okay. In my opinion, I mean, I think the turnaround time and the additional things that they talk about warrants the additional cost.

Yeah, we went back two weeks on this now.

Yeah. I think everybody liked them, so I will put it on for vote next time. Yes. Everybody good. I am. Okay. All right. We'll do that. Thank you guys very much.

Yes.

And next on our agenda is our consent agenda. Are there any items that council would like to pull off for questions or further discussion?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes. What you got?

Item A.

Okay.

And then E and G. Yes, sir.

Any other items? C. Yes. D. D. Okay, we'll do item A with Andy Parker, our assistant fire chief.

Got a little shout out in our last presentation.

Thanks for being here. Consider a resolution that authorizes our city manager to sign a clinical field internship affiliation agreement to allow Southwest EMS Academy interns to ride along with LSD personnel for training. That sounds fun. Sydney, do you have a question?

Yes. Have we done this with the Southwest EMS before?

we have not this is a new one that has come to us through uh chief dankers that's a new school that's wanting to come do their clinical write-outs with us so we do require this for all the other schools kilgore tjc school of ms to do this so this is a common thing we're not just starting something new no so this is what we do normally for all of them how do you reduce the liability of a student writing with you do they get out and actually get out of the vehicle and go where the fire is or how do you So this is only for EMS students. They're writing the name. So this is not fire service. This is students in EMT school, paramedic school, and they come and do their clinicals, which is required by the state to do so many hours. Oh, okay, good.

It's just for EMS. That was a... questions I had.

Yeah. Do you know where Southwest is? I do not.

I don't either.

I don't know, but I assume we would be inviting them here to intern because we'd be hoping to recruit them and bring them into our program. Yeah, absolutely.

That's what this program is to recruit. So they come and ride our ambulances for 12-hour shifts.

they're okay great kid i mean i say kids they're young usually but yes they're um i met several of them they were at a local establishment there and i was talking to them about what they're here for and all that and they're from all over i mean i think it's like it's pretty pretty good and it brings a lot of people here and uh to long view too as well so that's awesome

I was just gonna add it's important for people to step up and offer these chances for internships because otherwise it's it's a battle for these students so no I think it's a great thing yes and I just said that I did I had I did do training with EMTs here in here in Longview and they do an awesome job with the training so

That's cool. Thank you.

Burnett, Texas.

Burnett. Still don't know where that is. Consent Agenda C. Consider a resolution that authorizes the city to apply for a SAMHSA Behavioral Health Mobile Crisis Team Partnership grant for GLOW with Ms. Laura Hill.

Yes, ma'am.

um just tell us about the grant and what what part it does what part of the play oh okay uh this would continue basically what we're currently doing with glow and our mobile integrated response teams which includes post community health and mental health and it's a four-year grant seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year so this will this be supporting staff will yes ma'am it supports our existing staff okay so the new grant but

to replace other grants is that fair that are zeroing out yes ma'am and is this a um match grant or is this full no it's 100 thank you excellent one oh sydney's got a question if we are approved for this will this come back for a more thorough discussion at that time uh we're not just are we gonna just i think we're just allowing it you're allowing us to apply if we receive it

we'll come back to you with an ordinance to fund it.

Yes, okay.

But it would basically allow us to just continue our existing operations. We're not creating anything new.

Okay, thank you.

The only extra thing it will do is give us a little bit more time

with the teams to go out so yes thank you uh next is item d that is our housing choice voucher annual plan and supporting documents with miss shativa marshall shativa i just wanted you to kind of just go over it briefly and kind of explain it because i know there's always a lot of questions i think it's great for people to hear it again okay uh and Thank you for what you do and everything you bring to the table. I appreciate the last time you spoke, but I think it's great to hear it again.

OK, good deal. So this is just our annual progress report. Last year, you guys approved our five year plan. And so every year within that five year period, we have to submit to HUD the progress that we've made. We had six goals. Those goals included Of course, increasing or expanding the supply of affordable housing, improving the quality of affordable housing, enhancing services to our participants and to the public, increasing accessible housing, promoting self-sufficiency, and promoting the housing choice voucher program as a whole.

Thank you. And I know one of the concerns you were looking for when we were speaking last time is looking for people to come in willing to get involved with you in the program who had homes out there and looking to join us.

Right.

Have you seen much of an increase in that?

We have. So we increased our landlord outreach. And we have we've been getting a lot more private landlords. And we've also recruited a couple of more of the local apartment complexes as well to accept vouchers. Great.

Thank you. Yeah. Cindy had a question.

I just want to make a comment. I earlier this year, I was able to sit in on one of your programs when you were talking to the public about issuing your additional housing by your stamps. And I was very it was at your office overall. Is that 4th Street or 6th Street? 6th Street. Yes. And I was very impressed with the way you all handled the meeting and your explanations and everything. Just just impressed with the job you're doing. And what I think what we ought to realize also, is this just this is not just or I could be wrong. This is not just a great county. I mean, aren't you running up Russ County also?

Well, no, not Russ, but we are in Panola County. And well, yeah, we are in Russ County, too.

okay that's so it's it's a wider program absolutely than what we're just looking at here in city of longview yes yes okay yes thank you thank you any other questions thank you steven all right uh then we have item e consider an ordinance that amends the budget to allocate grant funds in the amount of 240 000 um mr rick evans

Yes. What questions can I ask?

And was that Sydney?

Yes, it was. I notice here the Federal Highway Administration Office safety's physical year two thousand twenty four safe streets and roads for all grant programs in the amount of six of sixty thousand. What is two thousand twenty four safe streets and roads?

Safe streets and roads there. Their plan is to look at that. Their object is to look at data throughout the cities where at intersections and roadways that you have multiple crashes on and fatalities, and that's including vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, anything. So they come in, look at your whole city, look at the intersections, look at the roads, and give you a recommendation on how to make those have those crashes go down.

Okay. Yes. Thank you very. I just didn't understand the program. Very good. Thank you.

Good question. Thank you, Mr. Evans. Item G, consider a resolution that awards a contract and authorizes the city manager to execute necessary documents for Abco Fire and Safety for fire suppression services, sprinklers and alarms. That's still Mr. Evans and Sydney.

Okay. These where are these these fire suppression systems actually located every pretty much every city building facility that we have would this also be the uh new police department building yes sir and the new and the uh fire building down on is it cotton street the main office yeah so this is all of the city facilities yes sir okay yes

Good?

Yes.

Good. Thank you. I believe that those are all the items we wanted to poll. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Motion. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Consent agenda is approved. We are moving on to zoning items. Zoning item A, a public hearing will be held to consider application Z26-13. Ms. Angela Choi.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council, Mr. McPhee. The applicant is requesting to rezone the property seen here on the zoning map from agricultural two single family four zoning district located on the north side of the Hidden Hills subdivision north of Hawkins Parkway the applicant acquired additional property from the adjacent land owner and so he is incorporating this additional property into this subdivision into all of the lots to the south uh the applicant is also requesting this rezone in order to be consistent with the current hidden hill subdivision which is zoned single family four in addition they're going to provide a private drainage easement across some of these lots 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 any questions or comments from mr and i know that drainage was a concern with property owners back there and

so yes sir i totally get that i know michael uh spoke with him and so thank you good this item requires a public hearing which i will open at this time i do not have any speaker cards is there anyone like that would like to speak on this item seeing none i will close the public hearing is there a motion motion to approve and a second second from sydney all in favor please say aye Any opposed? Zoning item is approved. Moving on to zoning item B, a public hearing will be held to consider application Z26-14. Ms. Angela Choi.

Thank you. The applicant is requesting to rezone the property seen here on the zoning map from general retail to heavy commercial zoning district located on the west side of Eastman Road, south of Van Street. Currently, the property owner owns six lots directly to the south of this property, and those lots are currently zoned heavy commercial. He has requested this rezone in order to be consistent and to sell manufactured housing on these properties. Staff finds that the proposed zoning change is consistent with surrounding properties. 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. Any questions or comments for Ms. Choi?

Ms. Choi, my only concern, I know they are already there operating this business. It's kind of in the backyard of that Lily Street area, right?

Yes, sir.

If this business decides to leave, will these lots be back open to becoming general retail? Will we discuss that instead of leaving it in a heavy commercial and letting some business come in that can be a disturbance to their neighborhood?

So with this rezone request, zoning is required. it runs with the land. And so if that current business owner leaves, that zoning will remain in place. Now we can add there through the development process, he is gonna be required to do some fencing and some buffering adjacent to those residential properties. Yes, sir.

Thank you. This item requires a public hearing and I do have a speaker card for Mr. Guerrero. Is that for questions or do you wanna go ahead and say something? up and introduce yourself.

Hi, how are you guys?

Good. Simply, my name is Jareth Guerra. I'm the owner of Longview Home Center. I just want to take this opportunity to introduce myself and open up to any questions. Thank you, Angela, for all your guidance throughout this process. It wasn't as bad as you said it would be. And thank you guys for your consideration. Any questions for me?

Yes, sir. This is only kind of like where y'all stay, y'all. It's affordable housing, yes, sir. So what's your hours of operation as far as moving in and out?

Nine to five, Monday through Friday.

We don't move anything on weekends. Okay, so nothing early morning, nothing late. No, sir. Okay, thank you, sir. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you very much. I will close the public hearing. Is there a motion?

Motion to approve.

I have a motion to approve and a second. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Item is approved. Thank you so much. Next zoning item is item C. A public hearing will be held to consider application as 26-04. Miss Angela Choi.

Thank you. The applicant is requesting a specific use permit to allow for a restaurant with on-site consumption of alcoholic beverages in addition to beer and wine in General Retail Zoning District. A specific use permit is required to ensure no negative impact on surrounding properties. Planning and Zoning Commission, along with staff, recommends approval of this request. I'd be happy to answer any questions at this time.

Any questions or comments for Ms. Choi? I will open a public hearing on this item. I have one speaker card from Blanca Trevino, who I think is probably to answer questions. No? Yep. Good. Thank you for being here. We appreciate you. Any other speakers that would like to speak on this item? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Is there a motion? I have a motion to approve to have a second.

Second.

All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Zoning item is approved. Moving on to zoning item D, a public hearing will be held to consider application PD2602. Ms. Choi.

Thank you. The applicant is requesting to rezone the property seen here located at the corner of High Street and West Marshall. That was previously the CBS property from general retail and heavy commercial zoning district. to a planned development for heavy commercial with limited uses. Originally, the applicant did request to rezone this property seen here on this exhibit from general retail to heavy commercial zoning district earlier this year. However, the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended denial of this request due to concerns about the uses allowed within heavy commercial zoning district along with neighborhood opposition. In April of this year, we held a neighborhood meeting between the property owners, their representatives, and the neighbors. The neighbors expressed concerns regarding traffic, the uses, and access. It was further discussed that the tenant would be a pawn shop. at this location the neighbors did not have any concerns about that specific use however they just had concerns about other uses that were allowed within heavy commercial zoning district based on that meeting the owner and the possible tenant agreed to address these concerns and submitted a rezone request for a planned development with heavy wit for heavy commercial zoning district with limited uses these uses uses would allow all uses within general retail zoning district in this planned development along with a pawn shop Also, it was agreed upon that the driveway along Northcutt Avenue be gated with a fire department approved Knox device that would be installed for fire department access. Also, an existing solid wood fence along Northcutt Avenue and the alleyway would be extended further west to meet up with the driveway on Northcutt Avenue. Staff finds that the proposed zoning change is consistent with surrounding uses. Planning and Zoning Commission, along with staff, recommends approval of this request. I'd be happy to answer any questions at this time. Any questions for Ms. Choi?

Just more of a comment. I just want to thank the owners and for y'all getting with the neighborhood and working something out for them to make them comfortable in that area. I really appreciate that.

Absolutely. This item does require a public hearing, which I will open at this time. I do have one speaker card, Mr. Brent Bull, but I think that is for questions. Thank you for being here. I do not have any other speaker cards. Would anyone like to speak on this item? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Is there a motion? Motion to approve. And a second?

Second.

And a second. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Item is approved. Thank you so much, Ms. Choi. Thank you for everyone that's here for zoning items. We appreciate your investment in Longview. Next, we'll move on to items of community interest. Derek, we will start with you.

Yeah, I don't have anything in the future, but I just want to say it's been a great month for Longview and the community. I look back to the balloon race. Appreciation to all that helped with that. Shannon, with all the Juneteenth celebrations, congratulations to her. And then the America 250, Richard. I mean, just a whole lot of great things happening in the last few weeks around Longview and really proud to be a part of it.

Absolutely. Thank you. I think it's time for a break. Richard wants to go home. Miss Moore.

So it is long awaited. The Stamper Park Family Aquatic Center will be opening on July 18th at 10 a.m. I want to give a huge shout out to all and everyone involved in this process. This was a long journey. Really, it has been a very, very passion of the council and myself or whatever, because when we saw the swim center being closed in Pine Tree, and we did this project, and it took a long time to get it here to where it's at, and I'm grateful to the council, grateful to the citizens, grateful to Parks for always working with me, and I'm really thankful and excited about this, so come out and join us. This is the grand opening. It will be free that day for swimming from 10 to 12. We will have hot dogs and burgers, so come on out and bring the family, and let's have some fun. Sounds fun.

Mr. Smith. I just want to say, just give another shout out to Richard. He's been doing a great job. Richard, come on. Richard and the entire media team, you look online, you see how fast they're getting information out, whether it's updating what's going on out here in Longview, the bike lanes, the pool, just everything. So you guys are all doing a great job.

Absolutely. Go ahead, John.

Yes, so we have the drive to aspire golf tournament coming up Friday, October 16th from benefiting the aspire mentoring program, which is an amazing program that we definitely want to continue to keep having helping the success of that. by helping them raise money. So go out. It's at Tempest Golf Club, amazing golf club here. And then we have $125 a player, $500 a team. And it is on Friday, October 16th. It's in the morning, so it's even better. So come on out, LongviewTexas.gov slash golf to register. Thank you.

Thank you.

Joey. All right. I want to give everybody a heads up because Green Street Recreation, one of the things that they have is they go to a Texas Rangers game. And first priority goes to those people who are members of Green Street Recreation. Membership is very, very affordable. I'm sorry, I don't have the cost right.

I think it's $15.

$15 a year. So you've got a chance to go become a member of Green Street Recreation now. And that's something that I serve on the board out there. I'm proud of. And everybody that went last year, the people I spoke to, they had a great time. You can see there them sitting in the... Take a nice bus. It didn't know roundabout taxi, believe me. Nice transportation. It's a good time to be had by all. It'd be a good thing. But first priority goes to those people who are members of Green Street Recreation. So get out there and join if you haven't already. If you are a member, just remember, July 22nd is the first time you can sign up for this trip. That's it.

Thank you. Good job, Sidney.

Yes.

First, I want to say thank you. I think we had a very, very informative meeting tonight. A lot of information. And also, I think I mentioned this to Shannon yesterday, but Tuesday I was out in her area, which adjoins Stamford Park at the pool and visited with several people there. And they were very enthused about the pool. And their question each time was, when is it going to open? So thank you, Shannon. I mean, it's it's it's turned into a very, very wonderful. I wasn't sure at first, but with the financials we support, we got through our representative J. Dean. It's just really turned into a wonderful project.

Thank you. And Stanford's got a lot coming. Basketball covers and sidewalks. Yeah, it's exciting. That's exciting. Do you have anything?

Just happy birthday, Laura Hill.

My items of community interest tonight, I want to say thank you to TxDOT for McCann Road. I think we all enjoy riding on McCann Road. That is a picture that I took while driving, but I was fully stopped in the turn lane. Yes. It was 6 a.m. All right. But and I actually want to thank our citizens who engage on those posts. I know some of you jump on there and just complain about the roads. But if you will complain about and identify a road, I will send that to Rick Evans and he will send somebody to fix it like that day. So please engage with specific information and give us the opportunity to do better. Thank you, Rick, for tolerating that. And I appreciate it very much. But we're super excited about mccann road and all of the other road improvements coming because of the city of longview work you can also yes john yes you can also city send it Yes, he did. And when I celebrate Longview Animal Care and Adoption Center last Saturday, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of that center. That is a excellent, excellent example of a private public partnership where the county nonprofits, private donors in the city have all contributed since the very beginning to make that happen. Very proud of that. If you've not been there, please go visit a perfect person. and bring home a dog or two um and with that we are adjourned see you next time turnout at the animal care center it was very nice and the shelter is full so definitely go visit yes yes the end