City Council - Regular Meeting

I will go ahead and call to order our August 27th, 2026 City Council meeting for the city of Longview. Thank you guys all for being here tonight. We do truly enjoy having a full chamber and I appreciate you taking time to be here. The first thing we will do is our prayer and pledge and that will be led tonight by Miss Thelma Reese, who is the mother of Damien Reese. this evening, a volunteer with Community Outreach Mission. We will rise and then I'd love to have someone with Community Outreach say a couple words about what you guys do, your important work in our community. So everybody please rise.

Good evening. Community Outreach Mission is a non-profit organization which help with food, clothing, and any other necessities that we have here for individuals in Longview who may be facing hardship. We're open on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and we do serve what we have.

And if someone wanted to donate to you, how would they do that?

Oh, they can call us, or we're on Facebook, and also our website. Our number is 903-757-3601. Thank you. Yes.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you tonight with open hearts and an open mind. Bless us tonight in this meeting. Give us what to say. Give our minds and our heart to be open to your voice that we might be able to do what needs to be done for the community, for the mission, for everything that we are standing for tonight. We believe and trust that all will be done and all is well. We praise you, we honor you, and Lord, we just want to thank you. Amen.

Amen.

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.

Thank you so much. Uh, next on our agenda is citizen comments. I do have one speaker card for general citizen comment, and then a couple for discussion items that I'll call up at that discussion item. But go ahead, Mr. Holloway, you're up first. David Holloway is our first speaker. Um, if you would just please state your name, we no longer ask for you to state your address. And then you've got three minutes.

Over by real road. How's that?

Perfect.

Uh, I'm here today to lodge my concerns about the railroad safety. They have now opened it up to three lanes of traffic, and they've originally removed the speed limit signs because they removed a bunch of the barrels that they were on. And I even told them then that 40 was too high in a construction zone because the regular speed limit is 40. I left a message with Carter Horton when they opened the three lanes up, didn't put any speed limit signs back up. And so I left the message with him, please consider making the new speed limit 30. He did call me back and tell me that whoever the engineer over the project was said that 40 was safe. Didn't need to be 30. So if 40's safe now in the construction zone, are we gonna make it 50 or 60 once they get it finished? through that little stretch of road. I invite everybody here to drive from Pine Tree to Gilmer Road in the construction. And yes, I have met people going the wrong way since they opened up three lanes, three times the other way. There's curves. There's hills, all the equipment that's blocking the view. All of the construction going on now is on the south side of the road. The north side is finished. When they put in the three lanes, the same engineer that thinks 40 is safe put the single lane going west-east against the construction workers and the barrels and the big equipment that blocks your view. I would like somebody with the city of Longview that has the authority to visit with whoever the lead engineer is to revisit and put a 30-mile-an-hour speed zone until the construction is finished. And I leave you with one thought today. You're born with six senses. The other two, horse and common, you have to acquire. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Holloway. Appreciate you being here. I do not have any other speaker cards for general comment. Is there anyone that would like to speak and fill out a card afterwards? Seeing none, I will move on. I do have one presentation item that I'm going to do first that is not on the agenda but was part of my community comments just to get it out of the way. Mr. Billy Hodge is our local association coordinator. President for the Fire Department. Billy was recently awarded an IAFF Local Leadership Award, and that is a statewide organization that includes over 500 associations, and that leadership award begins with the ability to work well with the city. So Billy, if you would mind to come up, and I believe your family's here, would love to bring them up too. We're gonna take a picture, and thank you for your service and dedication. Earlier Marianne asked, they were proud of their daddy and they said they were proud of their family.

Excellent answer.

Come on up here so we can take a photo.

Two, three, good job.

Thank you guys, great job.

Thanks, Billy.

Good to see you.

Thank you, guys. Next on our agenda is presentation item A, an update on the City of Longview Firefighters Pension Fund. I believe that Will will join us via Zoom. Hello, Will. How are you?

I'm wonderful. Thank you very much. How's everyone?

Doing good. Cannot complain. Can everybody hear him good? Yes. Okay. Will, I will...

It's great to be... Great. Pardon?

I'm going to turn it over to you. You're in charge now.

All right. Well, it's great to be with everyone. I have a, a brief update on the, uh, on the status of the Longview fireman's pension fund. Um, as of, um, yesterday, the current balance is $116,792,546 and 47 cents. Um, this year in 2026 through the end of, uh, through actually through that balance, Year to date, the fund is up 9.4%. That is net of all investment-related fees and all flows, money in and out. For the quarter to date, that would be from the end of June until yesterday, the fund continues to grow up about 1.2% net. As of the end of July, the year-over-year or trailing one year, as I like to call it, return or performance for the pension fund was 15.55% over the trailing one year period. That again is net of all fees. And that trailing three year period is 12.22% each year on average for the last three years. Regarding the pension obligation assets that were deposited into the pension fund in the middle of 2022, If you go back from the inception of those funds and when they were invested and run that performance back to the middle of 22, those assets have grown at a rate of 11.14% each year since 2022. That's an annualized average. And obviously that's net of all fees. So if you were on a cumulative basis from the middle of 22, that roughly $46 billion has grown 52.59 and currently is worth a little over 70 million dollars we recently received an actuarial study results from the end of 2025 and as of that date the pension fund is 72 percent funded on an actuarial stand from an actuarial standpoint and the amortization schedule has been brought down another three years the prior year to 26 years and as a reminder the pension fund has a target rate of return of 7.5 percent each year with a three percent inflation assumption uh meaning that our target is a four point five percent what we refer to as a real target net of inflation As you well know, Madam Mayor, I can go on for hours. I thought I'd keep it brief. Are there any questions or anything you'd like me to discuss further?

Sydney's got a question.

Yes, sir. Thank you. This is an excellent return. I know we've had a tremendous stock market. Could you give us an idea of our investments? Are we...

bond market compared to stock market i mean what absolutely yes absolutely that's a great question scott if you could just um bring the balance sheet up one more time please sir all righty um we pull up my version and my eyes aren't uh aren't quite as good as they used to be so to directly answer your question pardon me let me get this zoomed in right to answer your question fully sixty five point seven percent of the pension fund is invested in publicly traded individual stock or individual investment managers the list begins there at the top from Vanguard and Loomis sales another Vanguard there's an ETF in there Clearbridge. So it's a very diversified portfolio amongst large, mid and small cap. Then you have some internationals in there as well. Some real estate. They're your internationals. And so that total equity is seventy six point seven million dollars, which is sixty five point seven percent of the fund. And as a reminder, every six months, each one of these investments has a target weight here along the right side. And in the middle of June, in the middle of December, dispassionately, every six months, we get all of those by either selling something that's outgrown on a relative basis or buying something that hasn't grown as quickly as something else. Everything gets rebalanced. So each and every investment has a target weight. And that target weight is achieved by rebalancing every six months, which is recycling gains and forcing us to buy low and sell high and is a great driver of performance. You also see 5.3%, and those are two different very, very good hedge funds that help curb some of this equity risk. Then we have 1.46% in alternative funds. These are legacy funds that have been here longer than I have. and are in the process of winding down. And then to your question about the bonds, we have two total return bond managers at Guggenheim and PGIM, both very, very good bond managers. And then we have some alternatives, some global opportunities funds, which is a global bond, and then some high yield bonds as well. So it's a very diversified portfolio, but to directly answer your question, it's 65% stocks, 26%, 26.8% bonds, and about 7% in alternatives, including 5.3% in hedge funds.

Okay, thank you. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, that's good.

Other questions for Will? John?

Hey, Will, this is John. Yes, sir. I was wondering, just go to the return page on here, if you would, with the comparison between the median, the Longview Fund, and the benchmark.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

All right. I don't know if we can pull that up or not. I just wanted to let people know, when did y'all start taking over the portfolio?

Oh, that would be the beginning of 2018.

Okay.

So that would be eight years ago. Yes, sir. Somewhere between that seven-year and ten-year cut.

Yes. So I just want to point that out. The performance is doing really well between that seven and 10. The 15, of course, was prior. So I just want to look at that and show the comparison between where y'all are actually been the managers of it. Thank you.

I do appreciate that. And that 5.8% number is the effect of 2022 when the portfolio was off a little over 14%. Yeah.

Anything else for Will anybody want to ask or talk about?

Okay.

Thank you so much, Will. We appreciate you being with us. We'll see you next year.

Let us know if you need anything.

Thank you. Just for those that are not well up on the fire pension. obviously the firefighters pension fund pays for the retirement when we have longview fire department folks that retire it is how they fund their and their pension and so our firefighters put in a certain amount the city puts in a certain amount and i do want to say a specific thank you to the voters who several years ago approved a bond that put in a chunk of money And that's what Will is specifically tracking when he talks about those bond funds, because that helped us kind of get over the hump where the fund now generates more in income due to good financial management and investment than we are giving out in benefits. And that's been about a decade or more of work on the firefighter side, reducing benefits that they are receiving to reduce our outputs. And then voter approved bond input has really helped us make that a very successful program so not that long ago we were talking at 40 million in the fund to so to hear 116 million is pretty incredible it means that our firefighters and first responders will be well taken care of in their retirement so proud of that proud of our voters for doing that just a fun reminder uh... next is our presentation item b that is discussion of the city of longview's curbside recycling program uh... that is under my name i don't really have anything to say about it except that uh... council considered this a couple of meetings back just the current status of our recycling program where we've been where we're currently at uh... and and discussing this further with individuals Folks that gave opinions on it. I thought it was appropriate for us to discuss. I do have one comment card. I'm sorry, Mr Boyd. Would you like to come up and make comment now? I'm so sorry I forgot that I had a comment card. I have one citizen comment card on this discussion item, so we'll let him make comment before we discuss.

Thank you. I'm Ray Boyd, live 1426 Page Valley Circle. I taught at Longview High School 35 years, with Turner University for 13 years. And I want to thank you all for what you've done on the resourcing program. and also for the tree program that's coming up. I just want to thank y'all for doing that. We've always recycled in our home, paper and so forth, and we think it's very important that we save on our trash and the trash dumps and everything else, but we can recycle all this, and I'm supporting that. Also, my work with Longview Community Ministries, we cut up every cardboard box, flatten them out, make them small, fill up eight barrels, If it's had meat in them, you can't recycle them. And coming up right now is the tree program in another couple weeks. I'm going to grab a couple of those trees. Thank you all for doing that. The arboretum is nice. The people there are good. And the new arborist is very knowledgeable and very good. And just my thanks for what you all have done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Boyd. Yeah, so our discussion on the curbside recycling program we had discussed it kind of gotten an update Mr. Archer is here tonight for questions as well But I realized when I said that I would bring it back that one of the things that was brought to my attention is of course with our proposed budget we have a small increase to sanitation rates and as I understand it if we did not continue the recycling program we would not have that increase and So I did feel, not that I am rushing decisions, but I did want to bring that back for discussion just to see how council felt about that. So I am opening the floor for discussion.

Dwayne, you may be able to answer this question. You may not have this number. I know. So we were looking at this about a year ago before Murph had all the troubles. We had a lot of dirty recycling going out there. We were at about 50% collection on recyclable, but we were having to take a lot of that, pick it up and take it to the landfill.

Yeah, the contamination was so high.

Once we cut down, and I think there's three items that we can recycle now. Mr. Boyd, I sure appreciate you because this next number, if we had more people like you, would be a lot different. I know when we talked about this two weeks ago or a month, I won't say a month ago, we were at 12% on recycling. Yes, sir. And bottom line, even the MRF needs 15% just from Longview. And we're providing about 12 truck loads to the MRF a week.

Is that correct? No, three, I think.

Todd, correct me if I'm wrong. Three loads, four loads? A week?

Yeah.

We get more than that. Do you?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But I don't know if it's quite 12, but yeah. Okay.

And, of course, I knew Tyler at the same time. They're charging. I think they're charging between $5 to $6 right now currently for you to be involved in the recycling. And I understand that they're going to move that up close to $10, which we don't want to do that. And it'd be hard to kind of set up even a pickup and schedule that with people wanting to get on and off. And you'd have to probably get on for a year. But I said all that to ask you this question. Have you seen the number go up from the 12% since the last time we discussed this at all?

You know, I've not really seen a big increase. And I think we were at 360 people. Part of the blue crew last time we talked, it's up to 389. So we've had another few join. But the numbers are still significantly low compared to the 27,000 customers that we have.

All right. And, I mean, I think we were talking about going up 46 cents on our water, you know. So we're not talking an extravagant amount of money, but to people that's on a fixed income that's real tight on their budget, every dime does matter. And when we're talking about 88% of the people that's choosing not to do it, it really kind of puts us in a bind. And we're looking at a quarter of a million dollars that we're spending And people's not taking advantage of it. Now, as we recycle more, our costs are going to go up because people need to understand we don't make a dime off recycling. It costs us money to do what's right. But we're just not seeing the commitment from the people in Longview. Mr. Boyd, again, I applaud you and the people like you who do that because it's the ones that make the difference. But if people are not interested in it, I can't see us throwing a quarter million dollars away, and then on top of that charging people more for our water services. I just think it's a discussion that needs to be had, and I wish there was more people here to be proactive or reactive to, hey, this is where we want to go and what we want to see, because it's your money. We're just trying to be accountable by it and the way we handle it.

Yeah. Dwayne, would there be I guess I have two questions. One, if we did not continue recycling now, how hard would it be to bring it back in the future if something changed? And then two, would there be cost benefits or time benefits to employees or others if we did not have recycling? So I know at some time I'd heard about routes or trucks being less utilized so it could save money on the wear and tear?

Yeah, we will be significantly more efficient without recycling. We'll be able to route our routes for garbage collection. Now, the routes will need to be smaller because, remember, the amount of waste out there doesn't change if you recycle it or not. So we've still got to collect it. And so we've got to make sure, yeah, we're not going to travel the roads twice. And so there's efficiencies in that. But we'll still have to make sure we get that waste picked up. So we'll just have to make smaller routes picking up that trash. And then the other question was?

If we did not continue recycling now, how hard would it be to bring back?

Oh, okay. So. It boils down to if we have a MRF local or not. And so if the MRF is still there, then certainly we'll be able to work out something. We'll leave the blue carts in place. The intent was, I think, to leave those for people to use for extra trash if they need it at their homes. And so it would be simply, you know, just starting that back up. We would have to probably have some expenses to that, so there would be probably some type of rate increase to cover those expenses. And then we'd be in that same kind of boat. You know, we've got to build a program that is efficient and is not heavily contaminated.

Any of you? The one thing that I want to say, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm speculating from the things I've heard, we're the largest supplier to the MRF are right now in this area I think at one time we certainly were I'm not sure if that's still the case Republic is continuing to increase numbers so so we compete with Republic as far as the numbers but in regards you know I like to see all businesses succeed I don't want to see anybody fail and I want to be part of anybody failing but if all of a sudden our 12% 15% goes away what does that do to this company

I think Todd's here.

Yeah.

Do you want to make any comments? What's that? Do you want to make any comments?

Oh, you know, we don't want to see you go away.

Yeah. If you are going to talk, will you come on up here? I'm so sorry. Yeah. Uh, Todd Lucas is the owner of the Murph that we partner with.

One of them.

One of them.

So, um, The city of Longview probably makes up somewhere around between 6% and 8% of our inbound revenue. So it's a portion of our business, but I don't want anybody to think that if Longview trucks stop coming that we're gonna up and go away. That's certainly not the case. But I think what is important to know is that Longview used to be the largest single city of curbside recycling in this market. And did a very, very good job when Duane and the team rolled that out initially. And so I've seen it work here. And so just so people understand, we handle all the volume for Marshall, Kilgore, Henderson and some other cities that are serviced by Republic and they offer once a week trash, once a week recycle. We also saw some increase in contamination when we opened after the previous facility had their fire. And they went through and did the things, the communication and all of those things that were necessary to bring that contamination within a reasonable level. That's somewhere between 15 and 20%. And Longview's done an even better job cleaning up the contamination. I know we're just not getting all of that. And I think, I just moved to Longview, so I see- Welcome, thank you. Yeah, thank you. I see the carts in my neighborhood on the street. And so I see trash and recycle where I live. Trash is Monday, recycle's Tuesday. There's a couple of us on our street that put trash out on Monday and recycle out on Tuesday. But I also see a lot of people that put trash and recycle out on Monday, and their recycle carts are full of recycling. but they all go to the landfill. I got a question for you, if you don't mind. Sure.

If I was an individual person in Longview that wanted to recycle, could I bring things to you directly? Is that an option or do you?

If it's sorted. The beauty of single stream recycling is you can put plastic, paper, aluminum, tin, cardboard, all in a common container and a truck picks it up and it comes to our facility where it's sorted. That's what makes it convenient and easy So I had curbside recycling when my children were small, and our 95 gallon poly cart would be full, a family of four, with paper, cardboard, aluminum, tin, plastics, and our trash cart would be about one-fifth full of just heavy organic unrecyclable products so yeah but you would be able to if it's done properly yeah from an individual i could save all my boxes and bring them to you if happens every day okay if it's sorted people can bring it and we have places out front for people to deposit items but we don't want to see longview scrap their program i know a big investment was made there's been a lot of effort um the work that has been done to clean up The material that we get is good. It's just a matter of rolling that out into the rest of the city where those things are not happening. And I've had a conversation with Mr. Allen. We talked about maybe why some of that volume wasn't coming. And anytime you have a catastrophic event like the one that happened a couple years ago, we all try to do what's right for our people and make life easier when we don't know what's going to happen. I think the way to... correct the volume is to pick up trash on trash day, recycle on recycle day, and understand that there is gonna be some contamination. We're gonna stub our toe along the way, but we wanna help y'all do that. We understand that there are gonna be loads that are questionable. We're not a bad group of people. We wanna help. So I think that's the solution. Trash on trash day, recycle on recycle day, and no other option.

and it's it's a partnership so and like you said you've seen us at a high point and you're seeing this at a low point right yeah and I know Dwayne and everybody within city has done a great job trying to communicate put this out on Facebook different avenues and water bills provide the information have you seen anything done in another municipality that they've done to make it to where, hey, it grabs people attention to do it, or does it just become the responsibility of the people to take part?

I think that if there is a way to get that information to everybody that this is how it is, trash on trash day, recycle on recycle day. Here are the items that can go in your recycle cart. I think that's the start. I think that's how you really have to start it. And I heard y'all talking about Tyler. Keep in mind, Tyler hauls to the landfill twice a week for all their residents. And if you want recycling, it's subscription service. We would like, that's old, that's 1980s and 90s thinking. You know, we would like to see them go to once a week landfill, once a week recycle. And that's what y'all are doing here in Longview is what they do in Dallas and Fort Worth and Houston and Phoenix and Denver and Atlanta and all the other major areas. And it's the right way to handle it.

Todd, yes, I appreciate the time. We've discussed this. Now, you mentioned... trash on trash day and recycle and recycle day and I've talked to Mister Archer about this. What we do here is on your trash day we let you put out your trash and your recycling container and then when that truck comes by it picks up both containers and puts them in the trash and I asked Mister Archer if we reduced it to only one container if we only pick up the trash container and we leave the recycling container there people are going to be they're not going to be satisfied they're going to say why did you only pick up one you didn't pick up the other one because to i'll just be up front to a majority of the people here in longview texas they consider trash and recycling the same thing and they put them out that trash day and in another point we're all lazy we don't want to roll one out one day bring it back and roll another one out the next day and bring it back We just want to roll them both out one day and forget about it until the next week. And how you get us to put that energy in it to roll one out one day, only that one, and then roll one out the next day, only that one, I don't know.

I'm 79, and I do it every week. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

Yes, there is a, there is a, there is a, yes, I agree. I agree. It's just, The majority of the people don't do it.

I understand what you're saying, but I also think that sometimes when we find out about this, some people don't maybe see social media as much as we do or hear about it in ways. You know, sometimes you find out because your recycling bin didn't get emptied, and that's how you find out. And I think it is confusing to have both of them out on one day. I understand why it happened. You know, I'm not saying that... I mean, I understand that. But I think the way to correct it and get the volume up is to pick up trash on trash day and recycle on recycle day.

I agree with you 100%.

It doesn't matter if you haul two 95-gallon carts out in one day or one every other day, you're still hauling two carts to the curb and back.

Respectfully, I do think that we would have the same level of contamination that we did when we brought the program back. It would be no different. So the same people are still – same amount of people are putting trash in the recycling that would get picked up the next day. As I know that I agree, there are people that are putting out recycling and think that it's getting picked up and going to recycling on trash day. But I think that's a small group because when we came back, Our contamination rates were such that you were going to raise our rates, which is why we switched to the second day to avoid that. So I think if we didn't pick it up until the next day, we'd have the exact same problem that we started with when we brought the program back. And not to correct you in any way, but we have spent an enormous amount of communications time putting stickers on bins, communicating with people, promoting the Blue Crew, giving them $200 if they do it. I personally feel like we have done as much communication as we can to bring the program back to this point. If we did not continue the program, I would personally feel satisfied that we had done enough to communicate to residents to try to bring it back, that there wasn't anything else for us to do. That's me personally. I don't know how the rest of the council feels. Go ahead, John.

um so a lot of i mean a lot of it's going on so i appreciate you being here todd um so real quick i just don't want to put you on the spot too much but why but you're here why you're you're in it you're you're you're in recycling why is it important to you like what is the question well i mean we employ about 20 people that live here in longview and kilgore gregg county that's important we got trucks that come in from louisiana arkansas

Mississippi every day, fill up for fuel. Kilgore, Longview, stay in hotel rooms, eat at restaurants. The items that people are putting in their trash bin that are recyclables go to the landfill. And I'm not saying the landfill's bad. I'm just saying that the items that can be recycled create opportunities for other people to have jobs. And so you haul it to the landfill, it decomposes and probably gets reclaimed into gas or something like that. When it comes to our place, it creates opportunities that trickle down all over the place.

Do you find that businesses and citizens expect recycling to extent to be available?

I can tell you that I think it most definitely makes a decision on businesses that are looking to locate here in East Texas.

I know that would be with Republican, not the city. Yeah, possibly.

Yes. Okay. We only pick up the city. That's right on the side of it.

That's true.

But is there is downstream effects. Are we the largest customer?

Apparently not.

Well, I'm talking about the largest. The city was 68%. I'm sorry for that. But if we pulled out, there could be some downstream effects where the MRF, you know, could not exist.

I think he's saying he'd be fine.

Yeah. If you're going to be fine, that's fine. But we don't know what... We could have a recession tomorrow. We never know what's going to happen. Yeah, we don't know what tomorrow is. I mean, losing any client, any customer, any business, losing a client that makes up 6% to 8% of their customer base is going to be impacted. That's the reality of it.

But we have a responsibility to the people that are paying. Correct. We have that responsibility and for the people. Yes. And along that line, we don't own the landfill. The city of Longview does not own the landfill. It's owned by a company. I'm not sure if it's waste. Going to look like Republic Services owns the landfill. So I'm not. And there's still plenty of room out there. I mean, Mr. Archer, we're not running out of anything.

I think they've got 70 years left.

70 years left of the landfill. So we're not, but I'm not promoting the landfill. I'm just saying, if you're saying we haven't got any room left, that's not correct. We've got plenty of room. Would there be a possibility that Republic would take on the contracting of the recycling only? I bet you, well, we've been down this path once before. i mean i i'm sure that they would love to look at it you know it's just just for a rate so yeah because yeah we're running we're running ever trash route in longview twice I mean, we're making twice the pickups. I was on city council years and years back when JDN was mayor, and we started this, and we knew then it was gonna cost us. I think the attitude back then, it was a new thing. More people were interested. They were, so to speak, gung-ho. They wanted to really get into it. I think that generation that was interested in it 20 years ago is still interested, but there's not as many of us as there was 20 years ago.

And we were getting paid at that time.

Yeah, we were getting paid for what we delivered. Yes. Now, what do you charge us for what we deliver to you?

It's $90.

Yeah, it's $90 a ton. And what does Republic charge us at the landfill?

$35.

$35. All right there. So there's, how much is that, $60?

Well, it ends up being almost a quarter million dollars.

A quarter million dollars that we're paying. to go to the landfill you know but it's i'm not trying to say it's only about dollars and cents but it is about dollars and cents because nobody wants to see their taxes go up nobody wants to see their bills go up and uh but dollars are dollars and it just depends on where you're going to put them and that's something that's

pretty good sum of money you know and sydney just respond i agree with you on all that so the the kind of the way that i'm like looking at it differently is if if we get more recycling as the way it stands right now more people participate it costs us more money right and so therefore the way that it's looked at as far as like the the community is that it's a quality of life item So quality of life item, the more people utilize it, the more expensive it is. So if we had any quality of life item in the city of Longview that had a 12% household participation in it, we would consider that a major success.

We would. We would. If we had a 12% participation in a quality of life item?

So is 12% of the households going to Ingram Park? You know, it's 12% of any of these quality of life items that do cost the city money. 12% of the households using the trail. All that.

But this is this is an ongoing day to day expense every day. You got trucks. And when we bought these trucks, Mr. Archie, I said, Well, you're going to have You've got mechanical problems, you've got hydraulic problems, you've got electrical problems, you've got operator problems, you've got fuel problems every day. And you don't have that walking down Borman Trail.

You have it with the pool, you have it with the recreation centers, you have it with all of it.

But a very, very small amount.

Let's not get off on a tangent.

So anyways, that's really the base of it. It is something like that. Is there options in other communities that are doing things like subscriptions or other ways that we can help offset the cost of the program? There's that. I do think there's opportunities for other things. We've talked about Republic. We've talked about all these different things. And so the other part of it is that the you know i think you know mr archer you're doing a great job with the blue crew and the communication i agree it is exhausting to keep always doing that i do think this is something that there's certain things you have to always communicate because i tell you right now when i first came here and i was uh doing recycling and Anything that even resembled plastic, I threw it in there. Because I would much rather be overly cautious that it was recyclable versus it wasn't. I got told that's not the way to do it. And then it wasn't until we brought back recycling that I realized that I'd been putting them in the bags, the trash bags, the entire time, doing it wrong the entire time. I'm still, I'm on council. I'm still getting educated every day on the proper ways to do it. Um, but that's just part of being a community. That's what we, you know, we, you create the blue crew for is to help get that message out, make it a community led effort. And I really just want to see if that's a way that we can get that to continue going. And if it's a dollars and cents argument, it's never going to make sense. It's not. And that's a great point. But in my sense, I look at it as it's a quality of life. People, for economic development and also community engagement, it's the way I look at it. So that's my thoughts.

Yeah. The only thing I have to say is just that, I mean, with the time that we've spent, I mean, if we're not going to increase the usage, And then we say what we're saying to the citizens, we're going to raise your bill, but this is not beneficial because nobody we don't have enough usage in recycling. I mean, that's basically what we're saying. And I get the whole trying to compare it to the quality of life. But at the end of the day, when we have people that are struggling to pay their bills and we're going to raise their bills on the service, it's not being utilized. It's not fair to the majority of the city is all I'm saying. And that if you're that passionate about recycling, then I do say, hey, let's go into suggesting doing other areas and maybe subscribing to recycling be a part of that versus charging a whole city this not the majority of the city is not recycling. We have 12% usage and how long have we been promoting and trying to get this going we didn't talk about the same thing for years and we've been talking about the contamination and the money that we get cost charge back for not be on not being able to recycle. So I mean it but that's what it boils down to. I mean you this city is going to recycle a majority or we're not because i don't want to see my bill go up if the majority of us are not going to recycle i mean that's how i look at it i mean set a time frame on it either we're going to get there increase or we're not yeah again yeah i wasn't trying to push it but i do feel like i need some direction from council so we're adopting the budget next meeting that's what i'm saying so it's either we're going to get an increase or we're not oh derek has a question i'm sorry derek go ahead uh yes i just wanted to ask dwayne and uh we talked about when we had

In the previous time that we did it, and I believe we've exhausted a lot of opportunities, but what has been the difference in the participation that we had in the past versus this time?

Well, I think it just boils down to we had such a significant event where the MRF burned and everybody went to putting their trash in the blue bin that the habit was just lost. And now you've got to recover 26,000 customers' habits, and it's going to take a while. It's not going to happen overnight for sure. And it's kind of one of those questions. And now we are. We're having rate increases that are increasing the cost. But do we want to offset those rate increases? I mean, those are questions that we have to ask, I guess, at this point. But it was just significant in getting those people. And I would think. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Yeah, I would think it's echo what others have said with only a few customers that are taking advantage of this service. And I think it's a great service. It's hard for us to make a rate increase for all the other 27,000 customers. Thank you.

Thank you, Derek. And I didn't mean to come off as negative, because I'm going to catch it from a family member who 100% recycling, and I promise you, you can eat out of her recycling container. Duane, you guys have done a great job, and like I said, the rest of the city, with putting information out there. Todd? I want to see every business succeed. Because somewhere along the line, there is a trickle-down effect. We receive money. You come and do services with us. You live here in town. I want to see that happen. But when 88% of the people are not taking the reactions that Mr. Boyd takes the time to do. I didn't catch your name, ma'am, who drags the recycling out every week. For you guys, I feel bad because we got 88% of the people just don't care for whatever reason. Lazy, don't have the time, just not interested in it.

I don't understand. Don't understand.

But we do need to come to a decision, I feel like, to make it right because I don't want to keep throwing money away if 88% of our people are not taking advantage of the situation. And I don't want to be the one sitting here saying, Jody Berryhill's the one that said that, but Jody Berryhill said that tonight. I don't want to do that to the majority of people.

now the difference better step your butts up if you want to keep recycling that's the way I kind of look at it you can't blame it on the other person you've got to get out and do it yourself sorry yeah I think and you guys correct me if I'm wrong but I think the overall majority of council would like to not raise the rate and to discontinue the recycling program

We've given Mr. Archer anything, every opportunity we can think of to work with it, and the people just don't seem to want to get involved.

What I think I'll do, guys, if this sounds okay, is at our next meeting I will actually set it for vote. then the because the adopted budget needs to reflect it so i think we do need an answer so if we're not going to change the budget presentation i think i will just set this for vote at the next meeting and then either budget can be ready does that make sense yes is that okay with everybody i know it's a short time dwayne can you still provide us with the percentage of what it looks like before we have our next meeting as far as dollars as far as percentage yeah i mean i can update my number yeah i know it's not much

Yeah. I know it's not much time.

Mr. Stiller, are you wanting to say something? Yeah, I'm dying. Yeah, you've got to come up here to the microphone, though. Get out of those uncomfortable chairs and come talk to us. Mr. Stiller would like us to improve our chairs.

I've complained about these low seats already.

Drusilla Johnson, 416 Church Street.

Now, I drag that card out every Tuesday. I drag my trash out on Monday. The block that I live on, most of the people were not aware of the change, for whatever reason, to put the recycle out on Tuesday. And I feel that we're not giving the population an opportunity to be properly educated on what goes in that cart, and I still have questions of what really, in the plastic, what really needs to go in there. And I don't have a A guide of the piece of paper, I've heard you guys talk about those being distributed. I didn't get one.

You should have a sticker on your bin.

No, I never got a sticker on my bin and I'm sure I'm not the only one. But anyway, I don't want to see us give up on that quite yet. And I see a couple of opportunities to educate the community. We've got National Night Out coming up and neighbors gather for their festivities, eat hot dogs and talk and everything else why not use that as an opportunity to educate them on recycling also you've got a group together that's a perfect opportunity um i just don't want to see us give up on it um and i don't want to pay any more tax dollars i'm on a fixed income like all the other old people around here but you know i i just don't want to see it go down the drain and and Another, well, I'm rambling now, but old people do that. But the other question I had, what was the difference between, when I first came to Longview, I think we had bins set around the city where you took your recyclables to it. Glass.

We had glass recyclables.

Glass was the only one that we did that with.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. I'm just trying to think of ways to... give a recycling CPR to get it revived again to keep it going. And I would wish the council would at least look at some other options. But I think that we've fallen short in educating the public on how to do recycling properly. I don't know if it'll make a difference. Some people just aren't going to do it. They just aren't going to do it.

I will commit to you that even if we did not continue our curbside recycling, we would continue to look for a solution. I just heard mention of potentially contracting with Republic. I don't know that we've explored that yet. So even if we did that, we would continue to explore options because I do also have very avid recyclers that contact me, and I would like to provide an option. Even if it's driving straight to Todd and delivering stuff in Kilgore, we would look for an option that could be available.

Yeah. Yeah, that's, sorry. No, thank you.

That's the benefit of being at a council meeting. You get to hop up and give your opinion.

Yes, G. If you don't mind, I'd like to.

You got to come on up.

G. Floyd is my name. I did write down some ideas about this the last time we had the meeting, and I just didn't come forward with them before. I say this, whenever you want people to participate from the general public, there's two ways. You can either incentivize or penalize. Well, we don't want to penalize them, but we can incentivize them. And I thought that one of the ways that you could do that is you can have some way of gauging participation. And I thought maybe having a driver on a route with a touch screen when they have their route, they just touch that. I stopped at this address and they participated. And you could have all that and just compile it. You know who participated. And then when people do participate and they do well, maybe the city can put a sign in their yard. This is a recycler here. They live at this house right here. Maybe that would help. Also, you can incentivize it by giving them a reduction of some costs from some other city services based on the participation in the recycling program. We all pay water bill and they might do that. Or you might recognize them by the participation either at the council, on the website, or somewhere just to say, this is a recycler here. And I think that would really incentivize people and get them to talk to their neighbors. and say, hey, you know, maybe you ought to see our block is a participation in the recycling. And everybody on the block, they might pick up two or three or ten people. And that incentivizing would help us to be able to get the numbers up. Because it wouldn't be the city doing the communication. It would be neighbor to neighbor. And maybe that would help. But those are the four or five ideas that I had written down earlier. And I think it might be a good way to incentivize participation.

you gee i know duane had similar ideas and we have given out 200 to our bennett to win it folks we figured that would be a good word of mouth you could win 200 cash by doing i was 250. oh excuse me yeah it was enough to talk about but yes yeah come on miss brenda you're good well so they're drawing for it uh but if you have clean recycling they draw out of the hat right Oh, if you're not a member of the Blue Crew, you've got to be in there.

And you'll get a sticker sent to your home along with recycling.

Okay. I was going to say that y'all did different kinds of communication. One communication that we failed to realize is churches. If we could get that out. all churches, you know, whatever way that is, because that's where a lot of people, they're there, and give them the difference in what you can recycle. Like she said, some of us don't know what to put in the thing, and so some just get disgusted and don't do it, or put everything in there. But if you can get some communication, because everybody don't have computers, everybody don't have Facebook, everybody don't have a lot of things that we use every day, but it's a lot of people in the city that do not have those avenues. So if we could get maybe a sheet of paper telling them what days it's going to be picked and what is going to be in the recycle bin. And that's one way, because a lot of times preachers and teachers can get things over better than anybody.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Ms. Woolridge. Any other discussion or comments on this one? I'm going to set it for a vote at our next meeting. Thank you, Dwayne. Appreciate you. Next is presentation item C, discussion of potential improvements of the Green Street Recreation Center. This is from Mr. Jody Berryhill, District 5.

Mayor, Council, Ms. Hagen-Buecher. Thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight to discuss potential improvements for the Green Street Recreation Center. Just wanted to give you a brief history of the Green Street Recreation Center. It was built in 1949 as the Roundup Club. it was in 1971 donated to the city and became the the office for the recreation department and then in 1978 it was refocused as the senior center when broughton recreation center came online and then in 1982 the recreation offices moved out of that facility and moved to 321 gum and then in 1988 was the last major improvement and that is when the south side extension was added onto that building This is our current numbers compared to the last several years. So we're currently at 166 members. And of course, this is like all the rest of our program. Prior to COVID, a lot of our programming was participated in much more heavily. And it's taken several years to try and recover a lot of members with a lot of our different projects and programming. This is a list of a lot of the main activities that we do. We have bingo weekly. We do line dance classes, arts and crafts. We have a potluck monthly as well. And I would like to take the opportunity because Tamara Lang, which is our recreation coordinator, for Green Street Recreation Center, I would like to take the opportunity to be able to brag on the work that she does. She reaches out to so many different organizations to be able to get donations to put on programming there at Green Street, and we greatly appreciate the work that she does. And with that, I will gladly answer any questions.

I have two speaker cards that I should have let come up talk prior, so let me go ahead and ask them to come on up. Ms. Barbara McDaniel, come on down.

So first of all, I would like to thank the city for having our recreation center. And for some reason, years ago, they took the senior out of the recreation center. I would like to see it referred to because I'm proud to be a senior. Yes, ma'am. And I remember when it was around that club. But I love going there. It's a nice, safe environment. It's just minutes from downtown. And I have never, ever had any kind of problem or any other member have any other kind of problem being on the south side. I wish more people from the north side would come. And as far as the remodeling, we've got little rooms that aren't utilized because they're so small. And we've got, there's one little alcove that's got a sofa and a chair. The sofa's been there for, I bet, for the 1800s. I mean, who wants to go sit on that? You know, and places like that that aren't used that I would love, and the garden club, We were using a little small room in front, but we got too big and we're having to go out the main thing. So I hope y'all remodel it so we can keep having fun. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, and the recycling. I would love for somebody to come to Green Street and tell us all about recycling and what we can put in and maybe go to other clubs and inform them.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Ms. McDaniel. Next is Beth Thomas.

I, too, am a member of Green Street, and I do love going there. Thank you all for having it. But I would because our... The people coming in there are the people that are not scared of the South Side. I love it, but I think we could have so much more for our seniors. Now, we have 81,000 population in Longview, Texas. My mother belonged to a senior club in Ulis, Texas. They had a pool. They had a gym. They had places for people to play cards. they had all this stuff and one side of it was seniors the other side was for families now even on Thursday night my husband and I were a part of that because we took care of my mother after she became ill and so I really would love to see Longview do something like that but possibly on the north side of town because there are so many that are scared of coming to the south side of town I'm grateful that my husband and I were open to that because we have made many friends, but I really think that we could see the membership more than quadruple over on the north side and offering everything in one place as opposed to Paula Martin Dean or whatever the name of it is and Broughton. Everything's scattered out in Longview. It would be lovely if we had one facility that offers it all. And that's my thought. I would love to start seeing some things happen on the north side of town, whether it's toward where I live in Diana or if it's toward Gilmer. I don't care. I don't care. I would just love to see more membership, and I'd love to see more people being a part of that. That's how I feel about it. But anyway, thank you for having us. And I also know y'all are working on renovation. It would be lovely if we had an updated stove and oven because I do like to utilize the kitchen because I'm a fan of the kitchen and I have lived in the kitchen since I was 15. So anyway, thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. Jody, do you want to?

First off, Tamara, in case anybody does not recognize you, would you stand and wait? Because I'm telling you, this lady right here does a fantastic job. I mean, you talk about go out into the public and work on her own to bring people in to sponsor and to help donate and do things for the senior center. Senior center, she's the one that does it. So my hat's off to her. And I may have took her by surprise one day, but I come in there and I said, listen, I've been on this Board of Directors of Parks and Rec and Senior Citizens for a year. And I said, but I've been looking at this. I've been walking in, smelling the smell of the gas stove, looking at the 1950 green floors, maybe 60s. And I said, I want you to show me everything. I said, you turn on the lights and unlock the doors. And those are the people who know what's going on. I said, I know what I think I see, but I want you to show me. And so that's where I brought this attention. And I called the mayor. I talked with Rollin. And we sat down with John and kind of went over some of this. And I'm telling you, you take care of your kids. You make sure they have something to do. When you get to be 25 to 60 years of age, you chase your grandkids around, you chase your kids around, you see them at the ball fields, you go watch them play soccer, you go to the movies, you go swim at the pool, you go walk the trails, you do things like that. But just because when we get old, Sydney and I are the only two up here that's that category. But when you get old, you don't get forgotten about. You have things that people can be involved in. Not only the events that they've got listed here, but there's some senior services, Alzheimer's Association and things like that come in and give help, let you know where to go for help. So it's very important that we have it, but we don't have to look like it was built in 1949, and it don't have to look like it was last renovated in 1988. You walk in, my wife always tells me, first impressions are what you remember. My first impression, It's still etched in my mind because I care about our seniors. I firmly believe we need a change over there. I asked Sidney to go with me over there, and him and I don't necessarily always agree on everything. And he said, man, it looks nice from the outside. And I said, oh, it does. Put some paint on the door, trim up some of this other. But I said, that parking lot out there, there's a little loose gravel in there. I said, just to reseal it would be nice. You start at the curb, our transportation If we're not getting dropped off in the parking lot, we need to see if we can't get with our city transit and drop people off. Because you don't need to be trying to come across the street, four lanes of traffic with a walker, and then across the parking lot that the gravel's loose. We need to be able to be dropped off at the steps where we can roll up and go inside and enjoy ourselves and be with people. Because sometimes that's the only people we've got to be with. Then when you walk inside, you want it to say, hey, this is a place I want to be. It should look like that. You feel comfortable in your own home. You've got it decorated the way you like it. Everybody there should feel comfortable. And we spoke with a group of ladies who was doing line dancing that day. And I said, what would you like to change? Oh, please keep the floor to where we can still dance. And then some would come up, but it don't have to be this green color. You can tell there's some spots in the floor where there's small crevices. And I always think of my good buddy. He walks with his left foot kind of sliding the ground. And I told Tamara, I said, my buddy would catch his feet in here and fall. She said, we've had that happen. That don't need to happen. It needs to be a safe place. And those places are there because there was probably some existing walls at one time that were taken up. The rooms that Miss Barbara mentioned, they are small. There's some walls in there that I don't think are low-bearing walls. I kind of pointed about Sydney and I said, I'd love to have somebody come in there and look at them, take them out, open these rooms up where we can use them for dual activities. If you've ever been to church, you got your back row Baptist and you got your front row Baptist. And you say, where are you going with this? Well, some people just always want to sit at the back. Well, the TV screen that shows bingo is at the front of the room. There's no TV screens at the back. The microphone and the speakers are out the front that poor Tamara has to roll out every time she wants to use it.

They're very bad.

It should be something that speaks to the whole room. If you're comfortable on the back row, sit on the back row. You know, we're going to make it to where it fits for you. So I know we're running ahead thanks to Angela and our little bitty money tree. Our revenue this year was fine. I'm not asking to take something out of our reserves after our savings. I don't want to bond. I'd love to have a new facility like you mentioned up in U.S. I would love to have that here. But that's not something that we can just pull out right now. We're trying to make our budget fit with no tax increase and take care of our employees at the same time. But this is a project here that I 100% believe in and I was told by somebody, they said, you're probably going to catch grief from the north side. Well, I don't care. Senior citizens, if they're in the city of Longview, we're going to take care of them. North side, south side, east side, west side. This is what we've got right now, and it's what we've got to work with. And it don't take much to make it look better. We're making a big change for Josh and the guys with IT and with finance. We're doing things, Michael, them over at Planning and Zoning, Let's don't forget who our seniors are. They worked hard. They paid their dues. They paid their taxes for a long time.

Make them feel comfortable. I was just going to add, you know, the thing about it is, is I took a, I mean, I've been to green street plenty of times and I went there today just to go and see, you know, what, what the concerns were. And it's, to me, it's just upkeeping and that's the problem. you know the upkeep another building has not been done and and that's the major thing I mean and as far as it being in South Longview and people not feeling safe, I don't feel safe in for North Longview but they don't make me not go is a choice is a choice that you have a whatever and I believe that we can't keep abandoning and tearing down things in South Longview because hey, this is wrong or I'm scared to come over here. We have to start investing in the things that we do have so that we can keep a good budget and so that we can be conservative because doing something to that magnitude, we honestly, this city can't afford that unless everybody wants their taxes to go up. And I know nobody wants to hear that, but the bottom line is that we have those places. We have places to do all those things that y'all are talking about. They're just spread over Longview. And it is 81,000 people here, and we're all spread over Longview from north, south, east to west.

Is there any sort of dollar associated with what we've talked about so far? Or we're just looking for direction and maybe we can come back with that? Okay, John, go ahead.

So I'm glad I didn't have to follow Joe. So, Tamara, I want to say I've heard nothing but raving reviews about your programming and the things that you're doing there. And that's the key thing. And you can look at the chart of the users. I mean, it's a trend line going up. I mean, there's definitely a correlation that's there. And I think we know the cause. So appreciate the stuff that you're doing and continue doing that, please, for us. And I do echo Jody's sentiments on it. When you go in, it doesn't seem like, and you look at the outside and the safety of it, it doesn't seem like we value our seniors, which are a large percentage of our tax base. They also, more than probably any, need recreation and community above all else. And so I do think this is something that we can, that I'd be interested in us exploring to see if there's something that we can do to make this a more inviting place to go. And it was mentioned, it's safe, like Barbara was saying. Safe, go there. The programming will draw them there. And the other thing, too, is any type of membership like this, the more people that are there, the more fun it is and the more people will come, right? So one thing I would want to explore with this is if we can do similar to what we did with Broughton and make it free. And then we can make it free. A lot of them are on fixed incomes. We can make this something that is going to drive the usage like Broughton did. Broughton usage went up. And then you get more people there. And then that now, then you can start looking at increasing fees or doing different things to help increase the programming. You can make it easier on for Tamara, because if Tamara goes to these places and say, listen, I'm going to have 600 people here tonight, they're going to be like, here, I'll sponsor. They're going to be lining up the door. for that opportunity so I want to look at options for that as well in addition to the addressing the safety and also like it's the hasn't been updated since 1988 right we you need you know it's just it's remodeling that needs to be done as well there so that's my thoughts on it in the direction yeah I like it go ahead Cindy okay

I'm not quite the orator Jody is. He's really good. No, we had a very nice, Jody called me, asked if I'd come out there and walk through with him. We had a very nice walkthrough. It's really much nicer facility. This was the first time I'd ever been inside, and it's really much nicer facility. It's got a good physical appearance on the outside, a little driveway work and this and that, but it's got a good physical appearance. it inside it just needs some remodeling they've got a good concrete floor it needs there's some walls there back in the old days we had doors for everything and nowadays we open things up and and there was there's some door facings where they've taken the doors off i'm trying to make it easier to go in and out but what we were talking about was maybe drawing up a little um layout, something of walls we might remove and such as that to open it up a little bit. I think their office is over to the far right-hand side when you walk in, and that needs to be easier to access when you walk in the front door. and just a floor plan for some remodeling i think would really make it much more beneficial and you would get more people coming out there because it's it's a nice size building everything about it is okay it just needs some remodel one question did you get rid of that stove we have disconnected the stove and it is supposed to be removed tomorrow okay And one of the things we noticed when we were out there, try your best to keep that kitchen open. I mean, because they really, we've got a nice kitchen there. It's got dual sinks in it. It's really nice. And that old stove there, I looked and there's six burners there. One of the pilot lights was out. And we've had some problems previously with it leaking. And you don't want a gas stove in a confined area leaking. I mean, that's bad. So, you know, it's a nice stove. It's a high dollar, nice stove. I don't know who put it in, but I think there's a lot of people that would like to have that stove and completely redo it and put it in one of these houses that they're redoing. But get the stove out of there. Yes, sir. And keep the kitchen open. All right.

Thank you. I will say, Jody had me at AV Technology. We go and speak at Pollux every now and then, and the speaker system is atrocious. So I will be. Glad to support updating that. And just, okay, so if I understand, you're wanting out of sales tax money, just so I can clarify that for folks? Right. So I know everybody wonders when we talk about spending money, where is that coming from? So the proposal would be to look at how much would be needed for renovations. but not increasing the budget next year, not coming out of general reserves, we are thankfully in a good place that based on our August report for sales tax for this current fiscal year, we're up $714,000. So when we look at having funds to use for something like that or the next agenda item that Sydney is going to talk about, that's where we're talking about those funds coming from. It's like if you got a raise, you have a little extra money, you can put it in savings, you can choose to do something that's been needed to do for a long time, but we're not talking about changing the budget, increasing anything for next year, right?

Correct.

Yep. Okay, so instructions would be, John, will you come back? Is next meeting enough time to do that? Probably not. Probably not? Okay, so give us 60 days.

John's better than that. I believe in John.

Okay, maybe not next meeting, but in a short order if you could let us know. Would that need to be done before the end of the budget year, though, for that to be out of those funds?

Well, we would have to roll it. We can figure that out?

Okay, all right. Perfect. Anybody else? Good? All is well?

And I want to thank you all for coming. I never said it to anything, but I am so appreciative of all the seniors that come tonight. And every time I've gone, I see all the women. You guys come because, hey, I've got an idea. I want to do something with the fellas. I've kind of mentioned it to John and Tamara. And I want to see the numbers go up. Like I said, I want to see it quadruple because I know what it can be. And we'll build with what we've got and go from there. Thank you all. Thank you.

Yes, thank you for being here. You've got to come up to the microphone if you want to talk to us.

I'm so sorry.

We used to have over 50 people come to play bingo. We're down to maybe 15 or 20 now. And if y'all can get bingo back with cash, would be wonderful.

I think that's illegal. We did have a license. I am willing to explore that off the record for you, Ms. Barbara.

But we used to have a license, and it expired. And then now they said we didn't have a license. But if y'all could get us back bingo, we would love it. Yes, ma'am. OK, thank you.

I'm not sure if the bingo .

When you're talking about removing the stove are we talking about replacing it?

Okay. You can have a stove. Yes, ma'am. Okay, okay. I just want to be sure I have an oven.

And please don't forget, when the cookies come out of the oven, if you'll give me and Sidney a call, we would appreciate it. Well, you can bring the rest of them.

Well, you might even enjoy the beans and cornbread, okay?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you, guys. Yeah, thank you all very much for being here. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I miss something?

Yes, Tamara, if you don't mind, is there any way you can start getting out more information about when these activities are going on, time, dates, and stuff like that, so we can kind of help? put this information out so we can get more people involved in what's going on.

Yep, sorry, you gotta come on up. There is a calendar that gets posted. Is it on our parks?

Is it Green Street or parks? We have a Facebook page, Friends of Green Street Recreation Center, that you can post anything about Green Street you want to. Anybody can post. And if it's not about Green Street, I'll delete it.

Okay, thank you.

Why don't you just tell us a little bit about what you've been doing to promote stuff there, and then you can answer Brandon's question about the calendar.

Well, as far as programming, everything that I do, I kind of reach out to the community to try to use more of the outside to bring in because I know budget is an issue. I used to do a job like this for a nonprofit, so I'm pretty good with reaching out to the community. I've been taking care of potluck for the last couple of months. Every week I have a different sponsor that talks about anything from hospice to cleaning to you guys are coming in a little bit to talk about wills and trusts. But I try to use the community to make everybody aware of the things that they need to know. So in response, what they do is co-host bingo. So that kind of helps offset the budget because everybody brings five. They call half a bingo. So it kind of helps relieve the staff. Because it's usually just me and one part-timer that works maybe five days. So it kind of helps us because then we can answer the phone, set up the tables, look up numbers for members that don't know, clean up, make sure there's coffee, tea. There's a lot of other things that have to be done. So as far as getting the word out, I usually have to set the calendar. I try to have everything set by the 15th. they get the calendar to us on the 30th parks and Ricks posted on their page and then they share it to the Friends of Green Street page so now we have a new programmer so now I'm trying to work on getting more flyers into play before the month maybe two or three weeks so the city and everybody involved already knows what's to come so so far that's what we have perfect okay thank you you're welcome yeah

Okay. All right. So we got marching orders. We're good. Excellent. Thank you, Green Street friends.

Thank you.

Next, presentation item D, presentation and discussion of hotel occupancy taxes. Mr. Sean Harrah, director of community destinations. Hello.

Hello. Good evening. I'll talk more about Green Street Recreation Center. That's where my first office was as a city employee for three years. So I've had a lot of tamales. They used to make lots and lots of tamales there and lots of bingo and lots of line dancing. But on the topic of hotel occupancy tax, we talked a little bit about this at the last meeting, but today we're just going to go a little bit more in depth, have some slides for you, have some background information. I'm going to open things up and talk about kind of the overview of how a hotel occupancy tax works, what the laws are related to that, and talk about the visit long view and convention complex side of things. Then I'm going to turn things over to John and to Dietrich to talk about their areas in particular. So first of all, what is the hotel occupancy tax for the city of Longview? It is 9% is what we charge and that is applied at the hotels for any hotel stay less than 30 days. So there's two parts of that. So the 7% is the general hotel occupancy tax, the eligible categories that that fits within, and we'll talk more about that. And then 2% is for restricted for convention center facility construction expansion or operation. So how do we budget for this? It does happen as part of the budget process. We generally allocate those to the eligible categories, and then the revenue and the category expenditures are included in the city manager's budget proposal. So that's generally how this goes. Then I've got my clicker here. There we go. So the revenue side of things, I mentioned that there's a 7% and a 2%. They're proportional, so I'm only showing the 7% chart for now. The 2% is very, very similar. What this is showing is going back to 2021 and each month you'll see that there's a lot of variation per month, similar to sales tax. You'll have a lot of variation based on what are people paying and how are things changing in the economy? What's going on as far as things like construction will impact when there's a lot of when there's big projects coming in and you have crews coming in and staying for a period of time while they're working on a construction project, you'll see some fluctuations with that, but also, again, it will be based on different times of year are busier than others. The thing I want to point out on this slide is that for 25-26, we have been trending upward. Now, not every single month, but 10 out of the, sorry, I guess there's 10 of the 12 months are showing, eight of the 10 were greater than the prior year. That's not necessarily always going to be the case. I don't know if you recall that last time I was mentioning that a lot of our change, we were seeing somewhat similar occupancy levels, but our average daily rate, the average on that was going up a little bit. We can't say that that's always going to be the case, but we do think that was a piece of what was happening here. So we did see increases in this fiscal year. Okay, so I'm going to talk about the law and how it applies for all hotel occupancy tax in Texas. They call it the Texas two-step, so it is a two-test process, and every expenditure has to meet both tests. The first test is they all must promote tourism and hotel industry. Simple. Then it must also fit within one of these nine categories. So convention centers, convention facilities, visitor information centers. Pretty self-explanatory. There's no limits on that. There's no restrictions on that other than it has to fit within those. Same for any activity that's related to registration for convention delegates. Then there's promotion of the city or its vicinity. So there is a restriction on this part. And it is a relatively new thing on how it affects us and how it affects the budget proposal this year. So this is obviously advertising for people to be able to come and add to our economy. That's what we want. We want those folks here. The law had said that it's one part of whatever your hotel occupancy tax is. So again, we have 7% that is our general usage. So ours is one seventh. It has to be promotion for advertising purposes. There used to be a carve out for our population size. And so we did not have a minimum spend. Larger populations did have a minimum spend. We did not have that before. That carve out amongst several other changes happened and so we are now trying to adjust for that to be able to meet this one seventh restriction. The opposite side of things where that one has a minimum The arts have a maximum, and this applies to all communities, and it is 15% is the maximum. You can also do historic restoration and preservation. You can do sports events, sports tourism. You can do enhancements of existing city-owned sports facilities. You can do transportation of tourists, and you can do wayfinding signage. I want to point out on the transportation piece, it's not general transportation. They specifically say you can't do just Longview Transit. We want to put money towards that. It is geared towards moving tourists from point A to point B, hotel guests, conventions, those kinds of things. What has our revenue been? We looked at that earlier. This is on the expenditure side for the 7 percent. How have we spent those funds? I want to point out that on here, some of this was at times using fund balance that may have built up during that time period, just like we do in the general fund. So these are the categories for the last three years of those things. So you can see in the 7% arts and culture there at the top has been basically flat around that 15% mark. then for the CVB, Visit Longview, for tourism promotion as a whole, and it is all of Visit Longview operations, that's one where you're seeing that large increase going from 821,000 to 1.274. That change is that increase in promotion. Then you have the convention complex. And that has been in the 7%. Traditionally, that's where we funded it. The 2% dollars, that restriction category, has not been around forever for Longview. It was put in place, oh man, 2012, 2011, I think is when the law happened. We started getting funds in and available. So we had primarily been using that for capital improvement projects. I'll talk a little bit more about that later. But what you'll see here is we had been funding the operations side of the convention complex. within the 7% and then doing our capital projects for the most part within the 2%. And this year's budget proposal from the city manager, it is that we would not be doing the operational side within the 7%. We've got the operational side within the 2%. It is an allowable use of the 2%, but that is why that number has changed there. Then you'll see revenue collections, sports tourism, and sports tournaments, those numbers there. John could speak to that a little bit more on some of those things. I think you'll notice that there was a larger expenditure last year under sports tournaments, and I believe that was for a capital project that took place that he could speak to a little bit more.

Sean, I have a question. Yes. So on the 7 and a 2%, is that a city's policy, state policy, law? Which one is that, the 7 and a 2%? As far as how you divide it, like you get 7% here, 2% there. Is that a city policy or is that a state law?

It is state law. It is state law on what the eligible categories are. So the 2% that we have, like again, it went in place 2011, and that was that we here locally –

through our state legislature petition to have that two percent authority and it was restricted for that purpose okay and then my next question i don't know if you're going to get to that in in the next slide but so when we did the increase from the 2025 to 2026 to the 1.2 million and you said that it was in what tourism promotion or whatever do y'all have that broken down now

Let me get to that in just a second. But the short answer is we will, but after once we really have a good idea of exactly what is the budget process going to be. So we will break that down. But I'll give you some more details on that in just a moment. I want to look down then at the far right corner there, bottom of the corner, is the other part of the 2% for this year. So now in the 2% this year, there are two items. There's a CIP, a capital improvement project, and that is for the exhibit center. We have a a master plan that we've been working through. And one of the projects while we were working on that was we discovered that there was an issue with the the exterior walls of the exhibit center. It is actually in alignment with the master plan, but it is not the project that we wanted to do, because we're actually having to do more repair than improvement as part of that. So that is a significant expense there. And then the 1.377, that's on the operation side of the Longview Convention Complex. Again, I'll give a little more information on those in a second. Visit Longview, there's a lot of words here, but essentially, Visit Longview, our goal is to be able to promote, it is to be able to welcome visitors, potential travelers, and to generate economic benefit by those people coming into our community and spending dollars. We do a lot of different things as part of that. We provide customer service to visitors. We do Discover Longview tours where we're trying to train the frontline workers, not just with the city, but all across the city, all of our hoteliers or anybody else that does customer service. We want you to be able to answer the question of, Hey, where should I go? What should I do? I'm here in town. Be able to be the front door for people. And then there's a lot of hotel relationships, education, and coordination. And I want to take this time to be able to say thank you to the manager for this area, who is CJ Clayton. She is a former hotelier. She has amazing relationships with our hotels. She has a great background in customer service and has been doing a great job for us. A big part of this area is on the promotion and advertising side of things. And so our budget that we normally have for the promotion and advertising side of things, these are the kinds of things that we would be doing in any given year. So we would be doing digital advertising of all kinds, social, website, digital advertising, video, print, a lot of different print things, as well as in person, going to trade shows, doing meeting planning. presence at our local and regional events both making sure that when people have come in for an event we are able to give information for that but also other things like radio and billboards and market research so so the question of have we identified how we would be doing the things this is a large increase that we would be looking at these are the kinds of things that we would be looking at doing but in greater magnitude. And as we looked at that and as we budget for that, we want to take some time to really look at it and get some very good input from others that are involved in destination marketing to look at it and give us some good options while we do that. So that'll be the very first thing that we do once we clear on where we are budget-wise, is really developing out exactly how and where do we spend these. But again, it'll be these types of things, but to a larger degree. So it's amazing how quickly you can spend advertising dollars, because everything is expensive, especially if you're trying to market throughout the state of Texas and throughout the region. On the advertising expenditures, these are some of the large categories. It doesn't do the breakdown to say, okay, we're buying this ad in this magazine, or we're doing this much on social advertising. It is just these larger categories. In this year's coming budget, the proposal is $410,000 for advertising, which is a huge increase for us. Then there's a miscellaneous advertising. There are a lot of other things that are related to advertising that we have other expenditures for, for contracts for websites and personnel and all of those other kinds of things that fit. We also do advertising specifically for downtown as a destination. It says citizen education there, really that's promotional items. It's just that's the budget line item that it's called. And then there's some advertising there specifically for uniquely Longview. The $480,000 listed at the bottom there, that is the 1 7th of the estimated revenue. So that's where that number comes from.

Okay, let's stay on this slide for a second. So when, just for example, like the downtown advertising, 27,500, what would you say? I mean, because somebody came up with that number. What would you say you would spend 27,000? Because mostly I see is Facebook. I don't see any commercials that y'all have done in the past. Is this what we're?

So it is actually those kinds of things. It is social media advertising. And for downtown in particular, we've done video-related things. and that would be some of the things we would want to do with this additional funding is to be able to get more video, more features, more social. We've actually, for downtown in particular, beyond Longview, but done radio advertising, done billboards specifically for downtown, trying to encourage people like, what often happens even though downtown is a um you know the heart of a community people will go sometimes just to the one shopping district that they're aware of so it's also reminding people and getting advertising to hey you're here but come in this way in the same way of way finding signage would work um so yeah so it's it's all of those other things but specific to downtown and so the visit longview advertising miscellaneous you don't necessarily know what that is y'all just kind of plug the $32,000 it's actually a much larger number than that that that is in that miscellaneous piece in that 32,000 it's to get you to look to 480 and my answer with that is When you're calculating what that 1 seventh minimum is, there's staff that are specifically doing the work of advertising and the social media. All of their expenses could be counted towards that. But there's things like, again, the website fees, any of the digital tools that we use, any of those kinds of things would go into that number.

Things that we've already used in the past, correct?

Correct, but they have, yes, things that we've already used. And that is something that is already in the budget. Those are things we've already been doing. But again, we're increasing this other section.

That's interesting. Why do you think that the state requires you spend that certain minimum?

The state and I would say the hotels as a whole want to see the use of hotel occupancy tax to be used to promote travel and tourism. And so they've, as part of that, have prioritized advertising and prioritized promotion. The hotel lobby. Yes, and that is the way the law is written, is to promote the activity to drive people into the market. But again, we didn't have that minimum requirement before.

And the reason why I'm going so in-depth on this is because the hotel tax is really the biggest chunk of money that we as a council can kind of, better Longview to attract people to Longview. So when I want to see where these dollars are going, that's why I'm asking, hey, if you're going to spend $30,000 here, is it truly going to bring that? So I really want to look at where we're spending this money at because this is where we really can affect what we bring people to Longview with is this money.

Right.

Yeah, I agree.

You definitely want to use the money wisely.

I assume you're open to our ideas and I'm going to give you a couple and they may not be applicable, but feel free. I mean, I think this is the time. I have always wanted to modify CitySend where it gave out like event notification or shopping notifications, a better app that could communicate with people about things to do. And also a mural map that would be like where all of our murals are that people could access. And I've always really wanted a full-time like marketing of Longview person, which I realize we kind of have in the visitor center, but more even, just more, just more. If we ourselves were marketing, I know I'm preaching to the choir, but if we were talking about how great it was to be in Longview all the time, we have to give people the tools, even the residents that were born and raised here, the new ones, like they need to know all the wonderful things so that they can help market too.

Yeah, absolutely. Marketing to our own residents is a part of marketing to visitors. But you have to be very careful on what you're doing with that. Yeah, the first test. Very careful. It's that first, first test. You want to be able to make sure that our own people are supporting our own businesses and that they're aware of what's going on. And so I'm going to pop ahead to the things on what you're talking about on calendars and those kinds of things. And I will come back to that. But I want to show you some of these things first. So we have a downtown visitor center. It's something that we really wanted to make sure that Residents also know that this is a place where you can go and represent Longview as you're going out and being a promoter of Longview when you're not here in Longview. So please come buy some things that represent your town and have that home pride. So we do visitor guides, a lot of print guides, and we distribute these all across the state as part of those dollars. We do maps of a variety of kinds. We do have, actually, Arts Longview does have a mural map. I don't know, I think it actually is in something Dietrich can talk about in a second. It is in, I think, their brochure that they just, just put out.

Excellent. So smart.

So we do have actually on our downtown map it has all of the downtown murals on it So we also do these kinds of guides that are just the quarterly guides of some of the events that are coming up We have an events calendar. This is one of the things that we would like to be able to upgrade and do More features more ways that we're pushing out that information so we had there's a lot of events going on and we want to make sure people know about them both locally and beyond that we also do a fair amount of advertising as part of that these are just some examples and then social so we've got the visit Long Beach social that we manage as well as down the downtown social and we have social just for for the store some of those items of things so I was going to go ahead and look to the convention complex unless you have further questions on on this part in particular

Okay, so when we talk about the store, the downtown store, are we paying for the, because the rent is still $3,000, correct? $3,000 per month?

Correct. It is slightly more that in total cost because we also have some operational utilities and those kinds of things, yes.

What funds are we paying that out of? Are we paying that out of the?

Correct. That is the category of Visitor Information Center, the Texas Two-Step, so that's in that category.

Okay.

Okay. All right. I visited your downtown facility earlier this week. Very nice. Very welcome. Thanks for coming. Yes. First off, the 7% in the 2% is that set by this council or is that set by the state going all the way back to the first the 7% 2%

Are you talking about what the rules are or what the percentages are?

Well, we get right here. When you pay out to your hotel, you pay 7%, and then you pay 2%. Correct. Is that 7 and 2 set by the state, or could it be 9 and 3? It is set by the state. Okay. Well, I notice in the hotels in Dallas, they add on. They'll have different taxes for something else.

So there are limits on... What you are able to do. So it used to be that it was limited to 7%. And, Robert, if you have more on this, I'll look to you on that. But it used to be that it was limited to 7%. And then they also added these special categories. And so several cities added these 2%, which brings us to a total of 9.

So we added it, but it has state limitations.

We requested that it was added, and the state legislator enacted it.

In other words, you're saying if I'm going to a hotel in Dallas, I will only pay 9% of all the taxes on there? No.

Special districts set up.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. They get other districts set up.

And you also have the state hotel occupancy tax as part of that as well. It is all additive. So if you're here, you're not paying only 9%. There's 9% that's coming local. Then there's a portion that goes to the state. And there are some communities that have put in place. There's 9% coming local. There's 9% coming to Longview.

How much actually is the person that's renting the room, what percent are they actually paying there?

I think it's a total now of 6%. Let's see. I think the state's portion is 6%, so it ends up being 15%. 15%. Okay. And we get 7 and 2.

Correct.

Okay. All right. And just to the other point of if you go to Dallas, you might pay more. There are also special districts, which Marianne was talking about, that – They are also doing these additive fees and things on top of that.

So we get the 7 and 2, but I don't want somebody staying at a hotel here in Longview and coming up the next morning and saying, why am I paying 15 if you tell me you're getting 9? Right. The state gets their piece. We receive 7 and 2, and the state gets their piece. All right. How are we doing? You've got a very good bar graph. How are we doing on 10 months? total compared to previous, like 10 months before. I don't know whether the bar graphs are good, but when you add up the dollars, I don't see any, you see, you've got to itemize months here, but where are we so far through 10 months?

Okay. So I don't have the total for you there, but I believe there may have been some information shared, uh, with you that had, um, are we up to the two seven?

Are we up to the two 78? Is that maybe I'm not looking at the bar.

Oh, two 78 was for the month of July. That's just one month. That was just one month, 278 for the month of July. To put it in perspective, we're estimating, I believe, to be increasing the total revenue estimate by about $500,000 for the coming year. Prior to last year?

For FY26-27, the estimated revenue would be $3.36 million.

And for this current fiscal year, we had estimated, I believe, 2.8. Okay. That's good.

Okay. One other little thing here.

And that's specifically in the 7%.

Yeah. I take the Texas Highway Magazine. I see a lot of more. I see more advertising from other towns in East Texas than I do Longview. I mean, Tyler's got some very nice ads in there. Nacogdoches has some ads. Lufkin has some ads. And I see very few from Longview.

And we have done advertising more within Texas Highways in the past. It's just expensive. And so, again, from all of those categories, where did we spend the dollars? We did more this year with Texas Monthly, for instance. OK, well, I don't think there's too much. But if if we receive these additional funds, then again, we would be looking at and saying, OK, what are all of the travel magazines? The Texas Highways is one of those.

It's a very excellent magazine. They have some good articles and a lot of OK. We've got. This money, you put the amounts up there that we're spending in all these different categories. Who decides, right there, you've got arts, civic, inter-fund, revenue, sports, sports tournaments. Who decides how much money is spent in each category?

So just like the regular budget, the departments have meetings with the city manager's budget team, and then we go through the estimated revenues and the requests and the various things that we present

But some of them have maximums and minimums, like promotion and the arts and culture. Both are kind of set for us.

Okay, all right. But the others, y'all, it's just a regular process that you go through to decide. Right. All right.

Yeah, and again, like the Visit Longview budget as the example, our budget is pretty status quo from last year, save and except for the advertising.

Now, I'm kind of confused. This one-seventh, that one-seventh of – go back to that. What is that one-seventh you keep talking about?

So the state legislature, what the code says is that one part – for whatever percentage of your hotel occupancy tax you collect must be for advertising, for the promotions category. And so we were basing it on the 7%, because the 2% is convention center only. So we were saying of the 7%, 1 7th. has to be for that category.

One-seventh of the seven percent. One-seventh of the seven percent.

So that's why the CBB transfer, that's why it goes from 821 to 1.2. Sean didn't say, hey, I'd love to spend 400 here, but we have to, and now we want to give. Sean would like to hear our ideas on how we think would be a good way to spend it. Right, John?

All right. So those were the questions I had. Yes. Yes. Yes.

First, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I've carried this around. Excuse me. Longview visit Longview summer 2026 event schedule. And it's a very nice flyer leaflet. What are you going to call it? There's only one problem. There's nothing on here about the Arboretum. And that's one of our public parks. And they have all kinds of activities out there.

During the summer, they don't have as many events. So if you get the fall one, you're going to see all of their fall concerts and all those other things.

This is broken down by month by month, by day by day. Right.

But just the summer. CJ's got one back there for you that's got Arboretum on it.

Right. He's ready. It starts in... Okay, you're saying it starts in May.

And that one is just the larger events that we try to put on there. And then live music. People ask about live music a lot, so we have that on there. So Arboretum concerts are 100% on that.

It's a good flyer, whatever the technical name is for it. I like to see these things out, and it's nice. Longview Summer Events Schedule.

And we distribute those at hotels and at events and anywhere we can find somebody with hands.

Okay. I got two. Go ahead, John.

So I want to say, first off, I want to just brag real quick. The Visit Longview store, like, if you haven't been there, the selection is amazing, and it's always changing. So you walk in, it's like you're changing. You're going to a new store every time you're going. So it's definitely something. And I try to... I try to walk into somewhere with fresh eyes, because it's hard to look at it when we live here. But I try to see how it would appeal to a tourist. And it's something we can't fully do. But I go to other places and visit their downtowns. And I always go to their visit centers and see what they're doing and checking out. And that's a way I can kind of see how things are going. And I can tell you our Visit Longview store on the merchandise selection beats them all that I've been to. So great job on that. The other thing, too, is the hotelier's knowledge. So credit to CJ. We were traveling this summer, and I went somewhere that we stopped just on the interstate, wanted to stop there, wanted to go get something to eat. And so I asked the hotel person there, you know, where do you recommend to eat? What do you recommend to do? And there was crickets. I don't know. Okay. So we go somewhere, end up going. And their downtown was literally two miles from there. And it was an amazing downtown. and I sent y'all, I sent Sean videos. He's got plenty of them. I'm like, how are you not telling everybody about this? I went back to the hotel, like y'all need to tell everybody about this downtown. And so kudos to that. CJ has them on all the boards, on all the stuff. I mean, they're connected. So I appreciate all that y'all are doing there. Now, question on spending money. All right. Is there any way we can use this to spend money to get bathrooms at Heritage Plaza?

I don't believe that is an eligible expense. If I go back to here. Robert, cover your ears. I would love to get some bathrooms at Heritage Plaza. But I think it's going to have to come from donations, sponsorships, or general fund.

Yeah, or something else. All right. I believe that was all I had. Thank you. OK, go ahead.

Yes. You have it divided up in the 7% and the 2%. Is that how on these that you gave us? OK, so the 1.3 million on here on the budget line detail, add a repair, is that? That's exhibit building, right?

Yes, that's the exhibit building. So would you like me to talk more about that now, or did you have more questions? Yes, go ahead.

No, that's what I'm asking about.

OK, so first let me say all the things that John said about the store, all credit goes to CJ. She does an amazing job at that. For the convention complex, much credit to Gabe Bennett, who's been doing an amazing job there. The convention complex, it includes ModCob, the exhibit center, the rodeo arena, the agricultural pavilions, and then the general festival area, the fairgrounds, and the blind garden, and those kinds of things. So how is it funded? It's funded by hot funds, which we talked about just a moment ago, the rental revenue generated by the customers there, And then there's a small portion that is for July 4th. So our July 4th celebration is within this budget. Fireworks are one of those things that the state has says you may not use hotel occupancy tax for. Because everybody has fireworks, it's not bringing people to town, that's not unique enough, okay? So we raise money for July 4th, okay? But that is within this budget. Also, what I mentioned before, that's 2% dollars are specifically for convention center facilities. When that 2% was put in place, there were a lot of... I'll say deferred maintenance that had happened over many years. The exhibit center building is very old. The ModCob building was built in the early 80s, opened in 1984. There had been some projects done there, but not very many. There was the Eidelman room that was added on, and a little bit of renovation happened as part of the 2007 bond election. But for the most part, we hadn't spent very much capital dollars there to speak of. And so some parts of that area you can see that there is deferred maintenance. So when we had these 2% dollars, this was before my time in the department, but I'd say kudos to Laura Hill and to Dixie Golden and to Rollin, who I believe was in Public Works at the time, that all championed we need to get a master plan to say what do we need to do there. And so we've been primarily funding these improvements using those 2% funds. I do want to say we stay very full. That is very highly utilized. We have a 12-month rolling calendar for how we book events. And so as soon as you've had your event, you can rebook for the next year. But you can't book way out unless it is a tourism-generating, a visitor-generating event. Then we can book you further out, conventions being a part of that, large, large events being a part of that. So again, we have a lot of people come out there. We're very, very busy. We have more than 500 event days in a given year. This 100,000 number I think is an undercount. We were being generous or conservative. There's over 110,000 square feet of rentable space within the facility. This is that master plan that I was speaking about. We've made a lot of progress over the years using those 2% dollars. Our next priorities are the exhibit center. And so in this year's current budget, we had money in there to be able to work with engineers to be able to look at what that exhibit center project was going to look like. In that master plan, it identifies these are some things you need to do, but we wanted to get more specific on is what was in the master plan exactly what we wanted to do. When we were doing that process, as the engineers were out there, we were making them aware of a maintenance issue of the bricks, the actual structure of the building. We were having some moisture, water damage kinds of issue in a few different spots. um and what has happened these are very very old um the the way they make those cinder blocks is very different than they do now and they were painted over the years and moisture probably got trapped inside them and so some of those are deteriorating and we're going to need to do something to be able to to save that building and so what is proposed in the budget at 1.3 million dollars is actually to it'll build a facade around the main area of the building which will be an aesthetic improvement but more importantly it'll be a structural saving to be able to deal with that moisture problem so it is a large expenditure and it would be coming from the fund balance within that 2% fund there's a specific fund just for the 2% And then the combination of using the operations and doing this project will be using the available funds that are there.

So on this 2%, I just want to make sure that I'm clear on it. So the 2% is set by...

It is.

Can we go higher? Could you go higher? No, ma'am. No, like what I'm asking is, is the 2% set that we're going to say is 2% on mob cop and before anybody... get any upset. I'm all in favor of anything because that is one of our biggest attractions is my car. But what I'm asking is Is the 2% set to specifically go to mob cop? Is that a statute? Do we pick where the 2% goes? That's what I'm asking you, Robert.

It is state law. Chapter 351 of the tax code specifies that we will use that 2% on convention center facilities. That's what I need to know. It doesn't mention mob cop by name. But it is our convention center. But it says convention center facilities.

Yes, that's what I want to know.

We wouldn't have anything else that would qualify as a convention center, I wouldn't think. No. Fair enough. No.

I don't think so.

There have been discussions over the years when they were putting in place was do we need to add something? Do we need to build something? And it's just... That was the initial discussion. We looked at a lot of different things. There was a discussion of a coliseum. I don't know if you recall that. That was the impetus for actually doing the 2%. There was a discussion about doing a hotel conference center. That was one of the things that was looked at. But ultimately, what council decided to do is we don't want to do that. We need to do this master plan and start maintaining this property that we have. It doesn't mean you can't choose other eligible convention centers in the future. But that is what has historically happened.

But right now we want to focus on this one and get it to where it needs to be. And then we can say, hey, we're going to allocate and do 2% somewhere else later. Yeah.

But potentially. But you still have to then fund ModCob. If you're going to use 2% dollars, then it needs the operations part would have to get back into the 7%.

I'm just saying hypothetically. Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, good discussion.

So anyway, that is how that is funded. So the most recent project that we did, as you recall, was the pavilion, which opened in May, and has been a really great resource, and that's what we used those 2% dollars for. And with that, I'm going to turn it over. One more question. Unless you have questions. Go ahead.

It might be for Angela. So I'm looking on here. And so we're able to pay over time. We're able to pay into the looks like. their retirement, if they work at any of these facilities?

Yeah, that's more of a law question.

The 2% can go for operation of ModCob or construction of ModCob.

And operation includes the costs associated with running the building, including staff.

That's what I'm saying, including planning to their benefits. It's their health plan and all that.

Because we have been long supplementing operations at ModCob with... That's what I'm asking. Because that's what it's looking like. That's why I'm asking. Absolutely.

Yes, we absolutely can.

And we have for a while. And I think part of us looking at updating the ModCob fees and changing and increasing those is an effort to make ModCob a little more sustainable on its own. And I think that's important to mention.

yeah absolutely so we've been making those up updates to the fees um so we did that two years ago um and then well i guess actually just one year just one year ago and then we did it uh three years prior to that and so this year um i think right now i looked at it this morning we're right at six hundred thousand dollars in um in revenue from from rentals So, but ultimately we'd like to keep seeing that number grow and get less subsidy.

We could do more capital improvements there. And yeah, right.

Exactly.

Yep.

I just had one question for you.

So we've got a couple of hotels here with convention centers in them. Uh, and when you, and when you get up to about 350, 400 people, they're maxed out, we got a place that's bigger. And I did see in there that some of the things we can do is help with transportation. And I'm like, do we ever kind of partner with some of these hotels and they say, hey, we're trying to bring this convention in here. We're like, hey, we've got something going on downtown. We'll provide free transportation to and from your hotel to this. And at the same time, if you've got the people who's involved with those conventions, say, when you run out of space, you don't have to leave and go to Tyler or to Dallas. We've got a convention center if you want to stay here in Longwood that will accommodate you. Do we ever partner with them and try and – team up or go after some of these?

First of all, yes, that is an allowable way to use the funds. Secondly, yes, we have done it, but it has been rare. And I think a lot of it has to do with convenience for the guests, right? So we had a firefighters association actually come and have their conference here. And they were spread out at multiple different locations, multiple hotels, and as well as how they did their meeting space. So unfortunately, at ModCob, we've got great space. We don't have an adjacent hotel. I would love to see that as a future project, is how do we get a hotel closer to someone.

You're not far from Lear Park, and there's a lot of events there. Absolutely.

But we don't have that. right so if we're having something at modcob then yes it is possible when you're having those conventions to be able to provide that transportation more common though is most people drive on their own we are largely as i think most of you are aware we are mostly a drive market to come to us most people aren't flying in and then carless while they're here and so most people end up wanting to have their cars while they're doing that basic back and forth so what is more common is when they're having a convention and then they have a special event and they want to be able to say okay we're all going to go from here to this evening event and then we're going to take you around for here but even that is relatively rare again we're only going to do that primarily for those those larger conventions those bigger groups to justify that expense

And I know we've got ModCop booked pretty solid. It stays that way. So y'all do a great job on that. That's all I have. Thank you, Sean.

Thanks, Sean. That was fun. Oh, you're not done. I'm so sorry.

Who had a question?

I'm done with my questions with you.

Okay. All right. All right. I'm going to turn it over to John. John has less slides than me. All right.

Oh, as director air mentioned, uh, we do follow the Texas two-step as well. Uh, two different ways, uh, that were listed in there is sports tourism and sports tournaments. So sports tournaments we use at both Lear and Spring Hill currently in order to be able to essentially operate the facility for any of the sporting events that we host there. Our sports tourism funds we use to help us promote events that would come to our community. So for instance, we were working with Laterno to try and bring in a large scale volleyball tournament at their new air dome that has since fell through. But that's one avenue that we would be able to assist with trying to bring that event and draw it to us. A lot of those come to us through the sports ETA, which is Event Tourism Association membership. that we're part of so we work through that organization to reach out to different tournament directors event holders throughout texas and throughout the country to try and draw them to the community the sports tour or the sports tournaments uh those funds are limited to spring hill and lear because state law requires that you had to have hosted 10 district national or state meets in the preceding year and then as part of that state law also says that over the next five years you have to be able to prove up that you made that money back so those are the stipulations right now currently we host upwards of 26 regional or state tournaments at Lear Park. We host 11 at Spring Hill. So Spring Hill is just over that threshold that allows us to use those funds there. And then we have another couple of facilities with McWhorter where LYSA has been operating recently that is on the up and come to try and start to host more district and regional as well as Hensley Park. uh we obviously look through all of our facilities to try and see if they meet those standards and we would gladly be able to try and get any facility to the point that we can we can meet that standard so that we can use those funds there so i will be glad to answer any questions though that you may have no i just want more facilities to meet those standards that's all yeah i mean bottom line

Yeah, how have we used, because I think this helped us pay for some lights.

Yes, so that was the project that Director Herr mentioned earlier was a lighting project at Lear. We used it to automate the lighting systems there at Lear, and we're actually currently in the process of automating all of our gates. That will help us to be able to cut down on some of our overtime use that comes from those accounts. That way we can start to dedicate more of those funds back into those improvements.

And our electricity.

Yes, and electricity.

Yeah, good. Yeah, I think sports definitely brings people here this day overnight. So this is a really, I mean, I see the dollar return on this one pretty easily. Did you have a question? Oh, I thought you were moving. I'm sorry. Any other questions for John?

No, I just want some turf. John knows what I want. Yeah, Lear wants some turf too. I hear about artificial turf all the time. I mean, it just brings more sports. That's all I'm saying year round. Yes, ma'am.

Yep. Thank you, John.

Thank you.

Is that it for hot? No, diatribe. Come on down. Never mind. Sorry. I'm so sorry, Dean.

You going to exclude me, Madam Mayor? No, you are always welcome.

Good evening, everyone. And I just wanted to share with you that for the most part, the cultural arts, my part is focused on promotion of the arts in terms of the nice categories that Sean just outlined. That's my area of focus. And within this bullet, what I would like to share with you is the support of the arts that's backed by the city of Longview. What you need to know is you helped to build the foundation over the years that helped us with our cultural district designation because over the years you've dedicated that 15 to the arts and with that we had the opportunity to invest in our arts community with our various projects and programmings that we have throughout the city so i just want you to know that your investment over the years has paid off with our cultural district designation and because of that not a lot of cities get designated on their first time around the city of Longview we did our cultural district application was approved on our first try so that's because we had the infrastructure and it was very obvious that the city was making the investment as well that was showcased very well So part of the use of our $508,000 is the distribution of arts group supports. As you know, the Theater Longview, the Symphony, the Fine Arts Museum, Gregg County Historical. Museum all of those projects are eligible and there's a grant process that the city's requires the state tells us that we have those grant projects that we do support that they have to fit nicely in was eligible But the process is done through the city of Longview through an application process. And you have to be a 501c3 and then at least be able to show a year or so of tax filings that you're an organization and you have some fiscal accountability. And part of the criteria is you have to showcase artistic merit within that application, community outreach, administrative and fiscal responsibility, and you have to have matching funds because the amount of grants we give is not going to fund your whole project. So you have to showcase that your point is putting some skin in the game. And at this time, we are in the middle of our cultural arts grant application process. On July 12th and 15th, a public notice went out in the Longview News Journal announcing this grant availability. The application deadline was last Friday and the commissioners are in the process of reviewing and scoring those applications. On September 30th, the commissioners would come together and start that review process to help determine what that allocation is going to be for each grant application submitted. When the grant application gets, it doesn't get to the commissioner unless it's eligible to be considered for scoring. I get to do all the vetting in terms of making sure when it comes to the commission that it's an eligible application. And on October 8th is when we will make that recommended funding to the city council. A little bit about our cultural district designation like I shared with you. We're coming up on our 10-year application reunion and we'll start that recertification. I know it went really quickly. We're about to start the recertification process in 2028. and just like the initial application the recertification process is going to include the community with all the feedback and from the city council so that's our next step And just kind of want to share with you a few milestones since our designation in 2019. We've had about 60,000 plus arts and culture events within the cultural district within that 10 years to date. and we have a database of artists and we draw this database has built over the years from art walk and various other arts groups that we support and partner with so that's up to about 400 plus and this 1.1 million these are grants that have come back to the city of longview from the texas commission on the arts and so and we've had about 30 plus new businesses and this is where the cross promotion comes in with sean harris office our office and our salon view and sean harris office we've worked to on our downtown efforts and it really has made a difference in print in terms of bringing businesses back to our cultural district and to downtown And as you know, we have murals and public art projects all across the cultural district. One that's my favorite, of course, is on the campus of City Hall. It's Pegasus. And so we're really, really proud of that. But as you see, downtown, there are lots of visual improvements. And we're really proud of the work that we've done so far.

Yes, I have one question. So for the next round, since this round has ended, can we do some type of class to try to train people on how to apply for those art grants or whatever? Can we set up some type of training for that?

Oh, sure. Yes, we can. In terms of showing people how to apply and if they're eligible. Yes, we can ask them to be more deliberate in that outreach. Yes, please.

Dee, do you know how many applications you got this time? Eight. Eight? Yes.

I think it's just not a lot of people understanding the process on their part.

I think it's a great idea.

Sure, yes, we can do that.

I was just curious, how do you have the ability to determine for the grant?

Well, the eligibility is determined over the years. I've looked at other cities, their applications, in terms of what they ask, and for the most part, the eligibility categories that we do are pretty in sync in what they ask for, that should be a 501c3, and that is for the promotion of the arts, and that is, you know.

So one thing on the, I think it's the Texas one, where they require... you to be in the arts cultural district to that be something that would be help promote that or how would that, what's your opinion on that?

Oh you don't have to be in the cultural district because it may be like a councilwoman more just alluded to you may exclude a lot of opportunities so it's not so much that you're programming is directly in the cultural district, but you're creating opportunities that bring people to Longview that may have an overnight stay in terms of your cultural attraction.

Okay, but I think Texas requires that one, that little caveat or two there, but I don't know if that's the case, but I was just curious why they require it.

Yeah, in terms of the monies that support the cultural district, yes, they have to work within those boundaries that we drew. That's okay.

That's for that purpose? Yes. All right, thank you. That helps. Sure.

Yeah, good question. I think that is important about awareness. So it's almost 500,000 that were allowed by the state and we choose to give out to 501c3s in our community that are promoting cultural events. So yeah, great opportunity for a nonprofit that wants to promote something. Yeah, I think that's fun information to share. Thank you. I appreciate that. Anything else? No, not for me. Anybody else? Questions for Dietrich? All is well now. Are we done with hot?

Yes, we are. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, that was a great conversation. Yes. Moving on to presentation E, discussion regarding providing a one-time retention payment of $500 to employees making below $50,000 a year. Mr. Sidney Allen, District 6, this is you.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. A while back, a couple of months back, the temperature's heating up and I'm driving around Longview. Now when they talk, maybe, I think I'm correct here, when they talk about 100 degrees, they're talking about 100 degrees in the shade. That's not 100 degrees standing out in the sun. So I'm watching, or noticing, our city employees that are outside. They're working on the street. They're working on the potholes. They're digging up the water in the sewer lines where you've got a leak. They're working on the Longview beautification. Anyway, these people are out there and it's considerably over 100 degrees where they're working. And I got to thinking, you know, how can we help them? And so what I'm proposing tonight, and this is not a budget item. This is coming out of the sales tax. We're very, very fortunate that the sales tax revenues are up this year. I would like, what I propose is to help retain those who are in the lower level pay grades that are making less annually, annually $50,000 or less. A one time check to give them a little catch up money because in these lower pay grades you're struggling quite a bit and I would like to propose that we we do a one-time check and this is not a it's not it's a separate check it's not going to be a payroll check however the withholding and the retirement fund and all that will be taken out so the 500 and then a little bit of income tax depending you would get approximately four hundred dollars that's what that's what we're thinking here and um I would just ask if we approve this and you receive this money, do not go blow it. Make sure your rent's paid up, make sure your utility bills are paid. It'd be kind of embarrassing if you're a city of Longview and we cut off your water and you're a city employee. So you don't want to do that. So let's, I know the gasoline is going up, insurance is going up, and this is just a one time, one time, payment for those in the lower pay scale that make annually less than fifty thousand to give them a little something where they can catch up and it'll be a little easier for them to make their meet to make their financial status make things work that's what I'm proposing like I said this is out of the the additional money that we've been able to receive through the sales tax Yes, sir.

And tonight this is on here for a discussion, so I think Mr. Allen is asking for a discussion.

Well, you know, I looked at this when Mr. Allen presented it, and I'm like, is there any other thing that we can look at and, you know, try and do this as well? And one of the things I had looked at was we're giving everybody raises across state, bringing them up to market value.

This has nothing to do with their payroll increases. And this has nothing to do with that.

That's correct. So I still took the number 50,000. I said, what if we were to add 1%? to their existing salary. That actually puts them above market. And when I got to looking at it, and I asked Mary Ann if she would break it down for me. And the cost to the city right now, based on the vacancies we've got, you're looking at about $150,000 to do what Sydney's wanting to do. And by the time that we throw in paying the trms uh you know the other uh payroll taxes got to come out it's going to bring us up to close to 184 thousand dollars uh if you did the one percent you're still getting up there you're about 133 thousand dollars the one thing you're not gonna have is a catch-up And I really got to thinking about that. I discussed this with my wife today. I ended up talking to a couple people who fall into this category. And, you know, when I look at it, I'm like, if you give 1%, and I don't want to confuse anybody, and Sydney asked me, said, don't confuse them. And so I'm going to try and make this as clear as I can. But you're looking at about a $400 to $450 one-time payment based on what your deductions are with TRS by doing this. By doing the 500. By doing the 500.

One time.

One time. You get one check, 500. Yeah. If you did the 1% over the course of a year, you're looking at about $300 to $400, which that 1% would stay with you. Hold on a second.

$300 to $400 over a year.

For the year.

You'd have to divide that up by 26 payments.

Let me do it so we don't get confused. So that's $300 to $400 over the course of a year. That 1% stays with you. So at the end of the second year, you're looking at six to $800. There's not many places you can go put $500 in a bank and turn around and get possibly $800 on it. But the thing about it is we're not catching people up. And as I got to talking and visiting today, and I'm like, you know what? $400, $450, that's a pair of tires on the back of somebody's car. That's paying their automobile insurance two, three months. Catching them up on a bill. An unforeseen circumstance that's going on. They've had to call out an AC repairman. They're running with box fans right now. And when I look at it, people that can afford it, You look at the long term and what that 1% means over two years, three years, four years. Sure, you get more on your end. But I'm not sitting in that situation to where I need to catch up. I need help right now. I need to get past something. And so I really, I come in here and until I asked Mary Ann today, I said, I want this broken down so I can see these numbers and what it really means. Because I know over the long term, it is more. And I'm not trying to squeeze people together, you know, a nurse's aide and a nurse by their salary and bump them up and get them close. I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to take care of the people who are in a situation and they do a great job for us. And so... Like I said, I come in here thinking I had a great idea, but the more I got to visiting with people today who's wearing those shoes, who's walking that street, that's what they need right now. But I go back to what Sidney said. This ain't a time to say, hey, Mom, let's go take a chance at the boats. Let's go do this. Man, I've been wanting this for the house. Take advantage of it as a time. And it's your money. You're going to do what you want to with it. But take advantage of it and put yourself in a good situation. You put us in a good situation, and we're doing this and only recommending this because we believe in you and we appreciate what you do for us. That's all I've got to say.

Thank you. I think you might have confused me, but did you end up supporting Sydney? Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry.

And he told me, he said, don't confuse anybody.

I followed most of it. But just to summarize, so Sydney's suggestion would cost $185,000. Yes.

Total. Yes, sir.

And that you are also requesting that we consider that out of the sales tax, which we have $714,000, which we've also heard another proposal about Green Street using funds out of there. But yeah, same pot.

And this would be made to where we have, I forget, I didn't write, the vacancies are written down for me. Right now we're sitting with current vacancies of 45.

In that category.

In that category. But if we have 10 more people hired before this comes on, that number's gonna go up just a little bit. And we know that. And if we was to wait till Christmas time, Hey, that number could totally change, and we don't want to do that because, you know, the time is now to take care of our people.

What I'm proposing is we'll have a cut-off date. What we do is we'll have a cut-off date, and anybody hired previous to that cut-off date, I mean, if you just worked one month, you're still going to get the $500. And if you worked all year... And this comes out of the Bible. If you worked all year, you'll get the $500 less deductions. So we're not going to prorate this. In my plan I have, we're not going to prorate it. If you start a week before the cutoff date and you're in the pay scale where you'd earn less than $50,000, you'll get the $500. So that's to keep it simple. All right.

Other discussion comments. I don't think that says of course I I wholeheartedly agree with anything to you know, he'll follow them for employees because as I look at the at the pace day that we did and you know look at the numbers, the actual numbers of what it looks like with that pay study in place or whatever and adding the 1% you're saying on to what we're giving them along with?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And that's what I do.

I mean, that's what we need to get. That's what we need to get because right now, as it stands, when we look at the pay study, we average employees making from, and this is me looking at the pay study. If we go by the pay study that they just completed, we have employees ranging making part-time. You said part-time was $15? One person making $15 an hour all the way up to $154 an hour. So that's what I'm trying to get, what we're talking about right here, when we're talking about these monies.

This will just be a, okay.

Max salary, $50,000 and less.

You've got the pay grades. The pay grades that will, on that pay, that will end up with $50,000 or less on a 12-month period of time. And so this is the 1% note.

Yeah, Jody considered it and decided it was not the best way to do it and supported Sidney.

If we're using it to catch up, it is not the best way. And I thought, hey, let them choose, which that gets too difficult and it would be a headache for Angela.

This will only benefit the people who in a current pay grade on an annualized basis would make – I'll say $50,000. Anything makes $50.000.00. So I'll say this will only benefit the ones on an annual pay grade who will end up with less. $49,999.99 or less will get a $500 bonus one time. Irregardless of when they start to work, as long as they're at that cutoff date, as long as they're in this pay grade where their annual wages will be below $50,000.

So we have 350 authorized positions where they make less than $50,000. Of that, we have 46 vacancies, so that brings the number down to 304 at this moment. So that's the employees that he's talking about.

We're trying to retain those people that are in the lower pay scales. And that's where we've got most of our vacancies. And we're trying to just do a little something to retain those people. It's a lot more expensive to hire somebody new than it is to keep somebody.

That's true. Yeah.

Go ahead, John.

So a little different thoughts on this, and this is just my feelings. I know that we have the best staff, period. So for me, like a couple years ago when we did the budget, we did a one-time bonus for pay because the fact that we didn't give raises. So we just went through the process of doing a pay study that we went through, got new peer cities, selected that council we went through, decided where we want to pay, which was in the middle of the peer city group. And this was to bring everybody into a competitive pay environment. So with like the pay increase, let's see, like for the average pay increase over $50,000, how much is it? Under $50,000. How much are they getting a pay increase?

Average 10%.

Not everybody, but average, yeah.

Yeah, the average that we're going to give, $50,000 or less, is going to get a 10% pay raise this year, which is significant. It's bringing them up to being competitive. And so we're already doing this. And so kind of to show the point on this, how many – Under $50,000, you said there was 304 employees. How many under $50,000 will we have after we do this pay raise?

We will have, well, 249 employees and then another 45 vacancies. Total, we would go from 350 to 294 employees. And then 204 to 249? 304 to 249? 294. Yeah, well, so total workforce should go from $350 to $294.

So it's already doing a lot of the heavy lifting, in my opinion. Doing this, it's also, you know, what's different this year from next year? What's different from last year? Things are hard. It's that way. If we're going to do this, I'd rather it be something that's predictable where the employees can have an idea of what they're going to expect every year instead of it being on the whims of council and what sales tax does or doesn't do or wherever we're at. So that way they can plan, they can know what to expect, and they can do better with stability as far as having an idea of where things are going to be for their planning. So it's hard to say that we're just doing it one time, but then we'll feel that we need to do this again next. The other points I have on it is What about those that make $51,000? I mean, are we just... You have to have a cutoff. I know, and that's what I'm saying. So the only way to have... But you have to have an arbitrary number. So it's an arbitrary number. You throw a dart at a board, and you decide, you know, $50,000 or less, you get a little bonus. $51,000, tough luck. Maybe better luck next time. And then it's the taxpayer's money that's paying for this. And so what about the taxpayers that are struggling that are under the $50,000? So it gets really difficult to hold this threshold to where the pay plan is addressing a certain thing, but it's not addressing the whole issue. And our biggest thing from the pay study was our biggest gap, if we're looking at retention, and the intent of it was five to 15 years were the ones that had the biggest gap that we needed to address. And that was another reason for the pay plan and the pay study and what we addressed with it. Um, so those with those different things in mind, I mean, if council wants to approve it, that's, that's fine. Um, my feelings are, I just rather, if we want to do this as a one-time payment, I rather just look at it as like, we need to be consistent with the program and look at doing this every year. Um, at the rate that we're going, like we won't have very many below that $50,000 threshold. And so we can continue looking at that and, uh, that way we know what we're doing. And that's just my thoughts. Everybody's fully deserving of everything.

You know, that's the I wish I was in the credit card business because everybody spends. consistently they use that credit card. Why do you think credit cards, they give credit cards to everybody because they're charging 24, 25% because when you've got an expected amount coming in, you spend a little more. You put it on your credit card. This is a catch-up, one-time payment only. Now, John, I'm going to be a little crude. If you don't think they deserve it, just tell them.

I think that's unfair, and I would like to celebrate two things. One, that we have a sales tax problem of having $741,000 that we're going to flat up here about how to spend. That's awesome. And two, that the heart of every city council person up here is for the employees. We have already adopted a pay plan that will be put with our budget next year that will give significant raises to all of our employees. I just think that honoring and making sure to honor everybody else's heart about supporting employees is important. Like, what great problems that we have. Council loves all of our employees, and we have some money to talk about. Yes, ma'am.

I mean, and just to put it into perspective as to why, you know, probably certain council fields, certain ways or whatever, because when you look at it with the play plan study, the lower level employee that would get a 15, because they're so far away from market, that would get a 15% raise would only be $194 biweekly by this pay standard. But then when you go to the highest paid employee, theirs is a $7,000 biweekly increase. So that's the bigger problem to me.

Well, you have to keep in mind the job responsibilities of those people are very different.

And I do keep in mind. I keep in mind the job responsibility and all the support staff that they have when you have an assistant to an assistant to an assistant to an assistant and then we're talking about low-level employees and trying to do something sustainable that we can do every year is the goal here no no no i'm not talking about your five hundred dollars all right remember we're going to be respectful and not interrupt exactly so i'm not talking about that what i'm saying is is that if we want to look at then let's look at it wholeheartedly and look at the numbers and say, well, hey, well, this time, because historically, y'all have not been giving raises to employees every year. So if we can bring them closer to market and include what he's saying just by giving them a higher percentage, whether it be 1%, 2% on top of this, then we will be at a better spot than me saying, say, hey, I'm going to give them $7,000. That means nothing to them. I'm going to be honest with you. If I can't afford a health insurance premium and all you're giving me is enough, a 2% raise to give me the health insurance premium, then we're still, what service are we doing the employees? When we do have the right, when we do have the right as a council to say, hey, this time Let's look out for their employees. Get them closer to marketing. This is what's sustainable. This is what the pay plan study said. And this way, we can do it this way. And we'll pause right here for a second because I got somebody that's going to get $10,000, $12,000 extra biweekly when this person is only going to get $194. Well, we have done that.

So in the proposed budget, we have brought everybody to market. I think we've done exactly what you're asking for. Sydney's asking for on top of that.

But you're missing what I just said earlier. What I'm saying is, is that Even at the 15% bringing them to market, what Sidney is saying is even looking at that, he feels like that they need something else.

He's actually not. He's saying it for this year because he's told me before he's not. Right. He's saying it for this year.

I mean, but right now, this is the right now. Sure. And I think that's why he's asking for it.

He's not asking for it next year, and he told me he's not thinking about it in the future because we are making that $3 million out of our general budget leap to pay our general civilian employees.

I mean, but it would be fiscal conservative, and it would be the right thing to do is to say, hey, it's okay for us to take a break for somebody that is going to get a $12,000 increase versus somebody that is going to get a $194 increase for one year.

What does that hurt?

Because you're able to give a higher percentage to the lower, just because this is the market that y'all are talking about, this theoretic market that we're comparing other cities that we're not like other cities. We're not exactly, there is no exact job. These job descriptions change. This person may get a raise because they got more responsibilities. What I'm looking at right now, what we have,

on paper right here is that I'm looking at somebody getting a $12,000 raise and somebody getting a 54 cent raise and y'all can look at the book and look at it and see the same thing that I see yes ma'am so that's why the pay study is so important it takes your feelings out of it it takes my feelings out of it it takes I know but you're looking at names and you are giving your feedback on it I'm looking at numbers so when council many months ago looked at and adopted pure cities We updated from our dated ones. We do have to compare because that's who we're competing against.

What's feasible.

Right. And so looking at what those market plans are with other places, I agree we're doing the best we can. But if we were doing it subjectively between the seven of us up here and we were choosing by name who we were paying, that would be very dangerous territory. That is what you're looking at. You're looking at a name. But I'm looking at numbers. I'm looking at numbers. When you ask for names. So you're looking at names and you're looking at pay. Because they go with numbers. Right. But you're judging our higher level employees who manage a $232 million budget, 975 employees. I'm just saying they are well worth what we are paying them. And they're managing our city well. So we shouldn't be trying to take away what the market would pay them.

I'm not trying to take away what the market is paying them. What I'm telling you that they're so close to market that their even marginal percentage raise is way more than the person that is farthest from market.

It's because the job that they do is a professional job, and that's what they would get paid if they got recruited to another city, which is what we would lose if we had people being paid vastly under market.

And that's why we have this as our employees. Yes, I agree.

So what you brought up earlier was just making sure that we're maintaining things well. Part of that is having a pay study so we know how we compare to others and doing cost of living adjustments. I agree with that, but that does mean all of staff. That doesn't mean cutting out the top 10% that are running everything else for us.

But y'all were just willing to consider saying if they make less than $50,000.

Well, that's Sidney.

I'm just saying, y'all, make up your mind. I'm just trying to come to a— Not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. Either we're going to block somebody out or we're not. I mean, you just—I mean, it's on discussion. If you're making less than $50,000 to give them $500, then what's the difference?

That's what Sidney requested to put on the agenda, and just like I let other people put things on the agenda, that is why it is there.

It's their right to put it on the agenda.

Yes. So I will say, it's based on where you were, based on the study that we did, where you were to market. So those that are getting larger raises or percentage of raises was because they were underpaid more towards market than what their position was. Or if you did not get a raise, then it was to the fact that you were already at market. So as counsel, we did a great job of compensating police and fire in advance of everybody else due to the nature of that. And the competitiveness that was there, the needing to fulfill vacancies, the need for the things that were there, it had a purpose. The police and fire, when we did the PACE study, they were comparable. They were pretty much right there. And so that means we did a good job as council of getting them there and focusing on that. And we were serving some sort of need or some sort of end that we were trying to satisfy. If it's just... The pay study, we just did it. We're doing the pay raises. The $50,000 and under are getting a 10% raise, which if you look at it as dollar amount, maybe a different dollar amount, but it puts them to where they are in a competitive area. And most people, if they were getting a 10% raise in a year, this is something we should be celebrating, we should be happy about it, and we should be talking about that and on that. The other part that I did forget to mention is we've already identified so many different things up here as council that other projects that we want to spend money on that we could use this for that would benefit the taxpayers, that would go and give that back. So just to kind of give a list, so we had Green Street Recreation Center. I do know, Stamper, you're interested in turf, interested in lights. There's the street light study. South Longview is severely underlit. Demolish or rehab vacant buildings. We have Heritage Plaza bathrooms. And then we also have roads. That has been a constant thing that we need to focus on. So there's already projects we've already identified. And so I think it's a nice thing to do. I think it's something to always value our employees in one way or another. But we've already identified projects that are going to go to that, I think, that are much better use. Those are my feelings. Those are my thoughts.

Discussion? Comments? Questions?

I'll just say this. You know, we chose the cities we did the market pay study with. And when we talked about it and we adopted that and we challenged Roland with doing that, we knew everybody was listed in that. And we knew, you know, place of fire, thank goodness we had got them up like John mentioned. And the raise isn't going to be as much as some of the others. I've been in situations where administration and school, we didn't take raises. We made sure the people, the boots on the ground, the teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers, they got it. And I feel like sometimes that's what you've got to do. Last year, we were proud as all get out to be able to offer the 5% raise that we did. With no tax increase this year, the way it works, we got some people that's going to get, you know, 15%. We got some people that's going to be 2%. And we're excited about that because there's no tax increase on that. The other thing about these numbers, we've got 45 current vacancies. We got 25 employees that's under that $50,000 threshold who are eligible to retire per TRMS guidelines. That's a lot of people to have to go looking for. And if you don't take care of your people, that puts you in another bind. So this is a danged if you do, danged if you don't situation that we're in. Just going to leave it at that.

Yeah, I mean, it's a discussion item tonight. Obviously, everybody can express opinions on it. It is not for vote tonight. It's a discussion only. It would be a budget amendment in this current year if we were to do it. Is that correct? So it would have to happen at the next meeting. Okay. So I guess, I mean, I would like to hear a little bit. I don't want us to have a vote if we're all, you know, I would like some sort of, I don't know, give me your thoughts or feedback.

All right. I know you're in favor.

No, you can't have a motion. It's discussion only.

But I don't know.

No, you can't be on the. I need to know if I should set it for vote next time, just kind of by understanding where people are at, willing to share. What are we standing for vote? Sidney's proposal.

This just be put it on for the next meeting. If you would like to vote on it.

Are you interested enough to have a vote on it? I guess it's that question. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. I will put it on for vote next meeting.

Yes.

Yes. All right. Moving on to consent agenda. What items would you guys like to talk about on there?

Oh, it's actually good. You don't have anything you want to. I'm going to let it go tonight. I'm fine. I'm not buying any of that.

All right. I need a motion to approve the consent agenda.

So moved. Second.

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

Aye.

Any opposed? Consent agenda is approved. Moving on to our only action item of the evening. Consider a resolution that awards a contract that authorizes a city manager to execute necessary documents for the City of Longview Community Satisfaction Survey. Ms. Laura Hill.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Mayor Ishihara, members of council, and Mrs. Hagenbucher. This is to request approval of a resolution to award a contract to ETC Institute for our community survey in the amount of $48,965.34. This would provide a budgetary savings of $76,000. We had $11,000. RFPs received. Our committee of nine persons reviewed them, and ETC was by far the favorite with 745 points. And we have the timeline. Once we get the contracts, if you approve, this is the timeline. It would basically take about four months. So we should have the results being reported to the council at, I'm hoping, the first meeting in January.

Yeah, and council had already approved $125,000 for it.

You approved $125,000 as a budget amendment, and so we're only asking for about just under $50,000. That's awesome.

I think it's excellent that the company y'all approved is saving us. How much did we put in the budget?

$125, and we did have estimates from other vendors up close to that.

This is the low bidder, but also the one y'all think is the best one to do the job. I think that's excellent.

Yes, sir. We ranked them first on ability to do the job and their references before we ever got to even see the costing.

And then they're a little bitter. I think you can't go wrong.

Not much to complain about. Yeah. Yes.

I just have a question on the budget side. This is the you want to do a survey regularly, right? Going forward.

Oh. Well, since it's been nearly 12 years since we did the last one, I would hope we would do it like every five years, maybe.

I know you've expressed that, and it helps you with the grants and all the benefits you get from that. And so my question is, are we looking at a way to budget this going forward so you don't have to come to council every time to get a pull from the fund balance to be able to do the survey, or is that not feasible? How is that?

Oh, I ask every year. Okay.

I got them mic'd up right now. I do ask. I will express then for that would be my preference. If anything that we know that's going to be some sort of set ongoing expense that we're going to incur to do the best that we can to budget for that because it's not something that we're going to be unexpected that we're going to need to do for five years from now. So it is my preference in that.

I don't think that we'll need to budget for it for another five years, but I understand what you're saying.

We would put it in up front.

Wherever that time is the budget, I'd rather not pull from the fund balance going forward when we need to do that. Thank you. That's what I wanted to say.

As long as we still discuss it.

Yeah. Bring it up on the agenda, of course. Appreciate it.

Good.

Thank you.

Any questions or comments for Laura? I'm excited to get that going. I think that'll be fun. I need a motion. Oh, yep. I need a motion. Motion approved. Sorry. And a second?

Second.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Item is approved. Next is items of community interest. Mr. Conley had to leave us, and so Ms. Moore, you are up next.

uh just good luck to all the high school people going back well going back to play football so i'm glad football's back i love high school football i think freshman is in lufkin today for longview freshman and jv yep they're in lufkin so good luck this week for all the football fans i thought we were doing a live game or not a live game but oh yeah live uh-huh at the wreck i did see that i did see that pretty fun is that you good oh this

Speaking of the watch party, that will be for the Ruston game, which will be September 11th at 6.30 PM at Broadland Recreation Center. It's free interest to get in. They will have, there's no food or drink can be brought in, but they will have a concession set up to where you can bring, you can purchase an item at the watch party. It's some fun, first time doing this, so they will be watching from the Longview game day stream. Also, this Saturday, we have community outreach mission in Longview. We'll have their back to school drive. What time does it start? 12? 12 to 3? Yes. It'll be from 12 to 3, sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield. There'll be vendors there with food, desserts, drinks, items to purchase. Kids will have games, bounce houses, things of that nature. So that'll be this Saturday from 12 to 3 at Community Outreach on MLK.

Awesome. Thank you.

awesome i don't know which one is first also okay my town hall i got the uh this will be my fourth annual town hall and so we're gonna have the district town hall meeting uh 6 p.m thursday october 15th the location is changing so we're going to showcase a very great business that we have in district 4 jack's natural foods cafe and market and so we'll be there for that at 3110 neely way So make sure you go there. Prior before, I was at the Builders Association, so make sure you go to Jack's Natural Foods for this town hall. Looking forward to seeing y'all. Let us know. Want to hear your input on all things that we're doing. Next one is the 4th Street Corridor Study. So I believe this set records for the most participation already. Brian left, right? So... The MPO is doing an amazing job with this. They're doing the study, and we need to fix 4th Street. I think that's the consensus that we have. And so we just need your input on how to do that. We want this to be community-led, not city-driven. And so get out there. They're going to have multiple different events. You can go to LongviewTexas.gov slash MPO to see all the different ways that you can contribute to share your opinion on how to address 4th Street. Golf tournament, the Drive to Aspire, benefiting the Partners in Prevention's Aspire Mentoring Program is coming up. It's a morning game at Tempest. You can pay by the player or pay by the team. Tempest is an amazing course if you haven't been there. And then the Aspire Mentoring Program is just a phenomenal program. So definitely go out there and support them. And also sign up to be a mentor if you can. And then Arts View, 24-hour musical. It's going to be going on. We have it at the – it's going to be not at the Children's Theater, but this one's at the Dodson Auditorium at Kilgore College. It's $25, Saturday, September 5th at 7 p.m. Our very own Richard Yakeley will be there. so just go to at least to cheer him or throw tomatoes whichever one it is they'll be glad to have you so go check out that they put on a great show i've been to many arts view stuff and definitely check it out that's all i have mayor perfect thank you mr fairy hill all right um

I've got a couple announcements first did you hit okay these are great things I know y'all heard me speak tonight and you're ready for everybody to go home and me to shut up but I got some great news and at the end of these first three I think we'll hear some amens so at the lead co board meeting today want to let you know we kind of made a little history for this year I'm gonna let the mayor talk about that but today Letco approved signing with Rob Roy Industries to go out to Longview Business Park. It's going to be committing 65 new full-time jobs and over $18 million in capital investment over the next five years. Rob Roy, a lot of you may know, is at Gilmer. They have a facility that's in Avenger. They are moving here, and it's 110,000 square foot, the building is. and they anticipate to grow even once they get here. So that's big news for us there. Now for the west side of Longview, something that you don't hear about very often, WPC Services, which has been in existence over on Highway 80 between Longview and White Oak in Longview city limits, they are fixing to increase helping to retain 43 jobs that they have and create seven new full-time positions with a place just outside the city limits but will still have an impact right off of Oh, I'm sorry, I don't have an address for it, but it's right off of Harrison Road. And Rick Williams was the founder of Rick Signs, who started WPC back in 1974 when this all got started. So we want to welcome them for expanding and continuing to keep their money. And that's going to help Pine Tree ISD School District, which Lord knows I know they appreciate that. one of the the biggest one of saving for last quantum services uh out of houston they have selected long view for their critical infrastructure manufacturing facility it'll be 106 new full-time jobs and over a 75 million dollar capital investment over the next three years uh if anybody's aware where trinity industry is off jordan valley road that was fixing to become vacated and it's going to go from looking like it's going to be vacated to fixing to be a new $75 million facility. So we want to thank Wayne Mansfield and his group over at Leetco for doing the work to get these three businesses in. That's five for this year, if you're counting. That's a new record. They celebrated that today with a balloon and a piece of pound cake over there. I couldn't be happier. Before we get to the next one, I want to tell you, Pine Tree and Gilmer is playing tonight, varsity football, so if you've really got something that you want to go do afterwards, or that you're not wanting to go do, stop by the stadium over there and you can go watch some Thursday night football. To the next one, I want to talk about Spring Hill. Nope, there we go. Spring Hill ISD recognized as an A campus on every one of their campuses. I want to congratulate Penny Fleet, all her administrative staff and her teachers for a job. If you know anything about school system, receiving an A is a huge deal. Very few of them around and they don't hand them out easily. Congratulations Spring Hill ISD. Our tree giveaway, it continues. That put my glasses on. And Longview Arbitorium from 9 to 11 on September 12th. If you've got any questions about how to plant your tree and what you do, our arborist is a great lady, very knowledgeable, and she will help you out. That is first come, first serve. Now, where will the trees be at? Right there. Longview Arboretum first come first serve Longview Arboretum on Cotton Street on Cotton Street alright and the last thing that I've got it's just for me I want to wish this lady a happy birthday I've got to celebrate 43 of them with her I'm not going to tell you how old she is but she's younger than Sidney I'll be home soon now you're getting personal alright

Yes, sir. Ms. Moore, I want to ask you, are the Lobos going to make a state run this year for the championship?

Who? Oh, yes, always. The Lobos? Yes, always.

Every year. All right, okay. All right. I understand now that we can watch high school football on TV, but I'm not sure how we do that.

Go to Broughton Rec Center. Longview Game Day. Longview Game Day.

But not in Broughton, isn't it?

I'm sorry, yes, you can. Yes, I'm sorry. It's Longview Game Day.

On YouTube. On YouTube. On YouTube you can watch high school football, Longview Lobos. Okay.

Or Spring Hill or whichever one of these other schools out here.

That's it. Thank you.

Yes, sir. We'll get one of your kids to show you how to pull up YouTube. Yes. It's a plea for help. Yes. Okay, I have a couple of things. And like Jody alluded to, we want to celebrate and thank LEEDco. They are our partner in bringing business here that pays property taxes and brings jobs, good paying jobs. They spend their money here. That sales tax that increases our hot money. It is a win for everybody involved and we are very grateful. But LEEDco's total project count this year is up to five, which is a record breaking year for us. Each project takes months and months and months of meeting and recruiting and planning and we're very proud of that as well as the city staff who gets involved with the map development what they need to help sell the city of Longview marketing. But the 5 projects from this fiscal year will be a total of 323 million in capital investment here in the city of Longview the retention of a 147 jobs and the creation of 328 new jobs so congratulations that is very exciting well done.

Sorry? What are the five projects?

I don't remember what the other two are, to be honest. Anybody else know offhand? Oh, yeah, there you go.

Oh, the milk. The record. Holt. And Holt? Holt Cat. Holt Cat was the other one. Good. That's awesome.

That is well done. Record year for them. Yeah, that's amazing. A couple more things. Walk of Honor. Join us Saturday, August 29th, this Saturday at Longview Community Center as we celebrate the latest individuals that are being added to our Longview Walk of Honor. It's a beautiful event. Very nice. You learn a lot about individuals that have invested their time and talent into Longview. Great thing to participate in. Downtown Live resumes every Friday in September and October at Heritage Plaza. Don't miss this great free concert series. Please come hang out with us there. National Night Out. Yep, there we go. National Night Out kickoff is Tuesday, September 1st. That happens at Mod Cobb Convention Center. National Night Out Kickoff is a great place to come learn how to host and attend a community party. I'm sorry, I would normally give it more time, but it is 8.30. And Labor Day holiday offices, we will be closed Monday, September 7th, for Labor Day. But sanitation, as always, will be collected on schedule. Thank you, Mr. Archer. And that is all for us tonight. Thank you. Excellent discussion, guys. And we will see you in a couple weeks. Meeting is adjourned.