City Council - Regular Meeting

We'll go ahead and call to order our November 13, 2025 Long View City Council meeting. Thanks for the full chambers. We're always glad to have people here to participate in local government. So, thank you guys for being here. Uh the first thing we do at every council meeting is our invocation and pledge. And today, in honor of Veterans Day, which was this past Tuesday, our prayer and pledge will be led by US Armed Forces veterans that work within the city of Long View. Officer Benjamin Easley will lead our pledge and Main Street Coroner Paul Gudros will lead the invocation. They are joined by our accounting manager, Heidi Nance. Please rise.

Please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for our city and the community of which we are so blessed to be a part. We pray for wisdom, guidance, and a spirit of unity for our mayor and city council members as they deliberate the important matters before them today. Help them listen to one another, make decisions that are just and fair, and work together for the good of all. May your grace and strength be with them in their service to our community. Also, please be with our veterans as they navigate the mental and physical challenges their service may have brought upon them. We ask this in your name. Amen.

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 guys and thank you for your service. Uh, next on our agenda is a presentation for a proclamation which recognizes Zantis says no to violence against women, a 16 days of activism. If I could ask Tea Dudley and the Zanta Club of Long View to meet me up front, please. Thanks for coming.

[laughter] All right. Uh well, it is my pleasure to recognize today as a the beginning of 16 days of activism for the Zanta Club of Long View, which is a women's civic organization here in Long View that fights against violence against women and specifically uh looks at sex trafficking, which I know a lot of us believe do not exist in our community, but it does here, and it is something that we all need to be aware of, educated about, and fighting against. The crime of violence against women and girls continues to be the most pervasive human rights violation and a global epidemic. Those crimes are due to systemic use of physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, psychological, and economic control and/or abuse. Zanta International is a leading global organization of professionals with more than 26,000 members in 64 countries working together to make gender equality a worldwide reality for women and girls and has contributed to help achieve a world free of violence against women and girls for more than a hundred years. During the 16 days of activism from November 25th to December 10th, 2025, the Zanta Club of Long View, Texas, along with other Zantic clubs, is encouraged to take part in a Zantis says no to violence against women campaign and to take local, national, and international actions to influence the making and implementation of laws, as well as changing gender-based attitudes and behaviors to end violence against women. It is now therefore my privilege as mayor of the city of Long View to hereby recognize Santis's note of violence against women 16 days of activism here in the city of Long View. Congratulations. [applause] I keep this.

Yep. Uh, next up is recognition of Deanna Frank, our municipal court accountant, for receiving her level three certification through the Texas Municipal Courts Education Center. Uh, I and Jennifer Borsen Borne. Oh, that was not that close. Sorry about that. With the Texas Court Clerks Association will present. Go for it.

Thank you very much. Well, good evening, mayor, council members, and city leaders. It's a privilege to be here tonight in the beautiful city of Long View and I appreciate the hospitality. Uh, as your mayor mentioned, my name is Jennifer Bizorgnia. I'm the court services director for the city of Irving and the president of the Texas Court Clerks Association. I'm grateful for this opportunity to celebrate this remarkable milestone. Out of approximately 4,000 court clerks across the state of Texas, only 153 have earned the prestigious designation of certified municipal court clerk. Tonight, we're here to recognize and honor Miss Deanna Frank, who has now joined this elite group as the 152nd certified municipal court clerk for the state of Texas. Your court administrator, Kirby Hewitt, shared with me that she'd been with the city of Long View for 19 years, and he's had the privilege of working alongside her. He's personally witnessed her unwavering commitment, perseverance, and dedication as she's tackled the rigorous requirements of the certification process. Her hard work and determination have now led to this very well-deserved accomplishment. But this achievement is more than just personal success. It's a testament to the dedication and expertise required to serve our communities at the highest level. Becoming a certified municipal court clerk demands extensive legal knowledge, mastery of judicial procedures, and a steadfast commitment to professionalism and ethical service. This accomplishment also reflects the tremendous support and encouragement provided by this city, this leadership, and this community. a culture that fosters professional growth and development. Deanna's success is Long View's success. Her expertise directly strengthens our municipal court system, ensuring greater efficiency,

accuracy, and responsiveness to those we serve. It enhances access to justice, reinforces public trust, and ultimately benefits every member of this community. On behalf of the Texas Court Clerks Association, the Texas Municipal Courts Education Center, and Texas State University, it is my great honor and privilege to extend our sincerest congratulations to Deanna Kirby and the city of Long View. Congratulations, Diana. We are so very proud of you. [applause]

[applause] And in honor of this recognition, she is presented with her certified municipal court clerk plaque and certificate. Congratulations, Diana. We're so proud of you. Why don't you come up here and we'll take a picture and Kirby and anybody from the court that needs to be in it, come on up. That's Dina.

Go Dana. [applause] Next on our agenda is a presentation of a proclamation recognizing November 16th, 2025 is Danny Craig Senior Day here in the city of Long View. Miss Shannon Moore, our District 2 council woman.

Thank you. Um, Sister Evette, will you please come? And the family. Any family that's here? It is really my honor and my pre my pleasure to present this proclamation and announce Danny Craig senior day November 16th 2025. Whereas Danny Craig Senior was a distinguished public servant, pastor and business owner who dedicate dedic decades of service to his community in Long View and Great County. And whereas Mr. Craig faithfully served the citizens of Gray County as the precinct for commissioner, first holding office from 1999 to 2006 and being re reelected to the position in 2022. And whereas in his capacity as com commissioner, Danny Craig senior was a devoted advocate for the city's homelessness community and other undeserved populations and was a strong supporter of the county's indigent healthc care programs. And whereas Mr. Craig also served in his community as a former county sheriff's deputy as the pastor of Woodland Hill Church of Christ and is the owner of Craig home Craig home Craig funeral home in Long View. And now therefore as mayor on behalf of the mayor of the city of Long View and the city council, Long View, Texas do hereby proclaim the day of November 16th, 2025 as Danny Craig senior day in

the city of Long View. [applause] [applause]

And now, can we have the Woodland Hill Choir please come forward if you want to? You want to sit up? Watch yourself. It's up to you. Okay. Let the spirit of the Lord let it arise among us. Let the spirit of the Lord, let it rise among us. Let the praises of our king, let it rise among us. Let it rise. If you love him, say, "Oh, let it rise. Let it rise. Let the spirit of the Lord Let the spirit of the Lord let it [music] let the spirit let it rise. Let the praisees let it go. [music] Let the glory of the Lord

Let the glory of the [music] Lord the glory of the Lord [music] of my right [music] the joy of the Lord the glory of the [music] Lord [singing] the joy of the Lord the praising [music] of my rise above the spirit. [music] Let it rise. Let it rise. Say, "Oh, say oh." Yeah. [music] Say, "Oh, we need your spirit. We need your spirit. We need your [music] spirit. I need your spirit. I need your spirit. I need your power. I need your power. I need your love. We need your love. I need your blessings. I need your blessings. I need your blessing. I need it. I need I need I need it. I need Yeah. Yeah. Rain out upon me. Yeah. [singing] Oh, I need your blessings right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. say, "Oh, [singing]

[music] oh, [music and singing] let Woo! [applause]

[applause] That was beautiful. I know. Thank you guys so much. Um, that was really special and I believe that was because Pastor Craig really enjoyed worship.

Thank you for that special special participation. We do not do that every week. Uh, but thank you guys so much. Um, next on our agenda is a presentation regarding the city's market pay plan and potential survey cities with Matt Wely who will be joining us remotely.

Hey Matt. Good evening, Madame Mayor. Can you hear me? Okay. Can't hear you yet. How about now? We'll see if Scott can give us audio.

Testing one, two. There we go. All right. Madame Mayor, members of council, appreciate the opportunity uh to join you this evening. this was the safest method of guaranteeing that I could attend your meeting given the uh the travel snafuss that are occurring and hopefully clearing up. Um my name is Matt Weatherly from Public Sector Personnel Consultants. Our firm has been retained to do a salary survey uh citywide for uh the city of Long View. Again, we've had a chance to work with uh the city in the past. We wanted to spend just a couple of minutes this evening introducing the project, answer any questions that you might have and really kind of work through uh over probably the next council meeting or two, any research that you uh put on our plate for ensuring that we compare to the agencies that you have in mind. So, we'll talk a little bit about that. If we want to get into the slides a little bit, I'll provide an overview of the project scope and the purpose. Um, we're going to be performing a city-wide salary survey, which is really determining the going rate for each of the city's positions. We want to identify where we are in the market and then obviously ultimately lead you through a conversation later on around where do we want to be in the market. We're going to collect some direction from you uh this evening uh depending on what that feedback looks like. we have an opportunity to visit in December and maybe finalize in January a list of survey comparison agencies that you would like us to bring forth data. When we do these surveys, yeah, these are taken on by a lot of public agencies. I would say every 3 to 5 years. The goals are retention, recruitment, you know, ensuring and being intentional with what we do budget for our pay and for our benefits. We want to obviously be competitive but also create a sustainable level of compensation for each of our positions. Uh reminders here depending on and I guess I would say regardless of the data that we bring

council retains that policy decision. Historically your city council has intended to achieve at least the 90 95% of market. So staying within 5% of the average of market. Um, so we'll visit about that maybe in the spring after we have some of our our data and our results. And I think the other reminder, you know, is a super critical one, I think, for everybody listening. And that is salary surveys are done really to establish, you know, data for you all to make decisions with. Uh, but it's not the means by which your entire workforce sees a salary adjustment. That should be reserved for the annual budget process. So if we do survey work every 3 to 5 years, obviously you do the budget every year. So considerations for cost of living adjustments or inrange adjustments, market corrections. This will be an opportunity to ensure that our pay plans are competitive and consistent for each position. If we go to the next slide, just kind of a little bit of detail about how we do this. We'll be reaching out to those cities that you approve us to to compare with. We'll be collecting their salary plans, their job descriptions, their organization charts. the challenge, you know, is defining the market, right? So, that's what we'll kind of start to introduce this evening. But then, as I mentioned, establishing the going rate for each of the city's jobs, uh, modeling out pay plan and pay range placement so that all jobs have a similar relationship to their respective competitive market. Before we look at the survey cities, I have one more slide here just for a little bit of context. Um certainly 23 24 was a very aggressive year when we talk about wage growth and wage inflation across all sectors. Uh that is pretty visible especially at our entry level positions. Last I looked uh according to uh MIT and according to

Alice the the going rate or the living wage for a single wage earner is almost 1650 an hour. Now, uh, the city does have some positions that start right around 15 and a quarter. So, we will see, I think, that floor you need to come up a little bit to ensure that our full-time employees are at least meeting kind of that living wage threshold at the bottom. Uh, but as I mentioned in our firm, just backgroundwise, we do probably 30 to 40 salary surveys a year uh, in Texas, specifically at the municipal level. Uh I've been at this since the late 90s and in the last 30 years I would say some obviously extraordinary things occurred you know during that time we had 9/11 we had a recession we had a pandemic and then 2324 was a remarkable year for wage growth really I think in reaction to CPI and inflation and so you'll see I think some movement especially in the market since the last time that we did a salary survey. Um, a couple of other notes. When we map out your employee addresses, uh, just to kind of keep in mind, one of the challenges that faces us when defining the market, the majority of the city's employees live within commuting distance of your city facilities, right? So, we do have some employees that drive more than an hour. They could be some of your shift personnel in police and in fire. They are included in the study as well. But the challenge is really then defining this market when one we're, you know, kind of the the big one on the block. Maybe with Tyler, we have one big neighboring competitor within kind of reasonable commuting distance, but we do have to go somewhere, you know, to find data. And then lastly, just on this kind of context piece, uh the the city has seen some turnover the last 5 years. That average turnover just over 17%. Um, if you asked maybe staff and maybe

myself anecdotally over the last 10 years, I guess I would say that 8 to 10% is about average and 10 to 12% is high. And so there's certainly been some more turnover. I think that that can be attributed to a lot of different factors, but even just locally when we all either patronize a a fast food restaurant or whatever else you've got in town like a Costco or something like that, you know, suddenly those private sector employers are establishing our entry level pay rates for us unfortunately. And so they're not necessarily job for job comparator and competitor, but they are in our labor pool. So you know being influenced by that prevailing rate at the entry level is something to just kind of keep in mind as we go collect the data. Now certainly when we look across your organization there are between 150 and 200 job descriptions because you are a full-ervice city. We have entry- level positions. We have some highly certified and highly regulated positions. We have public safety positions. We have specialty jobs in engineering, in IT, in finance, and building safety. And so, we've got to, you know, obviously look at other cities to try and define what our market is. Historically, we've looked at other cities driven largely by population. Our next slide up kind of shows that historical list of cities that past city councils have approved. As I mentioned, the goal was to collect all of the data, so salary plans, job descriptions from comparison and competitor organizations, and then historically the city has attempted to try and stay within 5% of average of those. So, if we look back at maybe most recent 2019 2020 survey effort, uh this was that survey list. uh depending on what history I'm walking into and anybody that's new to council, there may be, you know, some concerns about some

of the agencies on this list. So, we took and put some fresh eyes on it. If we go to the next slide, this will be a little bit hard maybe to see on the screen, but our intent then would be to share our presentation after this evening. But what we would propose here would be similar to a kind of population look, but I'm also looking for agencies that have an offer like services. I need to find jobs in utilities, in library, in housing, you know, in-house city attorney. Not everybody has that. Uh trash collection, you can see that's one, you know, on the solid waste and sanitation side where not everybody is in that business at the municipal level a lot. Contract that out. All of the proposed survey cities have police and fire. Uh nearly all run EMS, nearly all have utilities, but not all have treatment plants. But running from this list as far as toptobottom population goes uh we're looking at regional agencies that have either a similar proximity to one the metroplex uh to two uh another major metro area because they might have some similar factors with respect to commute uh regional competitors full service organizations. We started to look at general fund. We started to look at the number of staff on the full-time side that each of these cities has just to make sure that nothing leaps out at us to say, man, it's going to be really hard or super easy to get data on as many jobs as possible. We're going to try and survey between 150 and 200 of Long View's classifications or job descriptions. And so that challenge is of course finding cities that have that many jobs for us to work through have services in common as I mentioned which kind of you know show up on that slide as well. And then we would propose that we add a Tex Arcana and a Tyler more just kind of

regionally. These are competitors maybe more so than comparators. And I guess I would just say kind of keep in mind our goal here is to compare jobs, right? I know it's kind of easy to fall into a trap of wanting to compare cities, but I need to compare jobs 150 to 200 different jobs across somewhere. And so we would propose a balance there of agencies that are a little bit smaller than us, a little bit larger than us. When I stack all of the cities across the state, uh, and try to look for some other factors like services, uh, and like, you know, proximity to metro. I think my last note on this slide would also suggest that for office and clerical, labor and trades, professional and technical positions, we consider the private sector. So, we would look at some published salary surveys that would give us insight into laborers, uh, accounting clerks, accountants, IT help desk professionals, positions that have some portability and maybe don't just exist at the local government level, but would also exist not only in the public sector, but also the private sector. Lastly, for the most part here on our slides, the direction that we'll need is just really kind of establishing a comfort level. So, if there's a an absolutely yes, compare us to those, absolutely not, don't compare us to those. I think a sweet spot is probably somewhere between 10 and 15 comparison agencies. Um, that green light that you give us, whether that's now, December, January, allows us to go really kind of with a a polite knock on the door to these agencies and collect all of their data, their job descriptions, their salary plans, their budget documents, their organization charts. We're going to be surveying all of the city's positions uh to establish one how are we doing, you know, and that answer will depend on the job that we're looking at

and then come back to you perhaps in the spring with both those findings as well as kind of some now what conversation around pay philosophy, pay strategy. So really the next you know kind of 30 to 60 days we want you to review this presentation certainly provide be it through Miss Hubard in in human resources uh or through the city manager's office any feedback that you might have certainly I'll take any feedback that you have this evening and answer any questions that you have but that will give us kind of our staff the green light to then go start collecting that data. Um it is my intent to be available uh should I be needed to be there in person in December. uh to work through any of those feedback, any of those notes um and and have probably a pretty good idea uh at your December meeting about where we want to go with just the raw data. And then those reminders are, hey, it doesn't box us into a corner. You still retain that policy right to say we want to be at average, we want to be at 95% of average, however you might want to react. I have one more slide and that's really just to kind of warm up a future conversation and that includes factors that influence uh both our ability and our intent to compete at a certain level. So what happens when we post a vacancy? What happens when we do experience more turnover and what factors are influencing maybe our pay philosophy or our pay strategy? I mentioned geography that can work both for you and against you. um finding a local labor pool for police officers, for firefighters, for a senior accountants, for attorneys. That's not an easy ask even in the middle of a major metro. So, if we remove you, you know, from a major metro by a couple of hours, some of those comparison agencies are going to have similar challenges in finding those highly skilled and oftentimes highly compensated individual contributor positions in engineering, in legal, in public safety. Uh but

certainly then what too are our expectations of our workforce? Do our folks wear a lot of hats? Do we run pretty lean? Do we expect a pretty high level of of uh service, a high level of performance out of our staff? Then that starts to kind of lean us into ensuring that we're also providing a pretty competitive and fair you wage. So lastly, that direction needed I think uh one slide prior would really just be you know again any absolutes um you know for or against uh any reaction if you want to go maybe back to the slide that's got all my red and green on it. I'll pause there madame mayor just in case there are any other questions or any questions or comments that I might be able to answer or take notes on so that I can do some research for you.

Okay, great. Thank you Matt. I enjoyed that presentation very much. which I think we do have some discussion. Mr. Connley. Yes. Uh thank you Matt. I just uh you mentioned our turnover average in over the last five years is uh just over 17% and you use that as one of the factors. How would you rate that as far as in your professional opinion you you you had it on the scale I think on this other chart being either minimal turnover or moderate. What is 17% over the last five years? What would you consider that? Yeah, I think especially considering pandemic, post pandemic, and then inflation, I'm hearing a lot from our clients where their turnover was up, you know, kind of in that 15 to 20% range like yours was just in those last five years. Now, those numbers do not include retirements, I believe. And so, if I take those out, you had an interesting period of time in 23 and 24 where employees kind of had their way for a while. they demanded to be able to work from home or they demanded flexible work schedule and you know they demanded a higher wage and if they couldn't get it from you they were going to go somewhere else and they probably could you know get it u that has maybe settled in a little bit so I'm kind of a little bit more optimistic for stability for maybe these next two to four years u certainly you know we have all kinds of other factors that you know could influence that but you know I think to to really put a bow on it saw a lot more higher turnover the last three to five years than maybe the three to five leading up to the pandemic.

Thank you. Uh any other questions for Matt? Go ahead, Miss Moore. Um just looking at the red here um for like sanitation, attorney housing. So you're saying these cities don't have that at all. That's correct. Correct. And so I would think that Yeah, I would think that we wouldn't even want to look at those cities because sanitation is one of our biggest the largest employees that we have.

Rollins, it's it's it's actually a smaller group. It's probably 30 at this point. I don't have the numbers off off cuff. So public works work into that then. Uh public works overall has 220. But uh to to to Mr. Wley's point, one of the things they said is we obviously wouldn't be able to compare our pay with those cities, but we would still use them for all the other things that they have. So, that's I think when you try and mix and match and I'll let Matt you can comment on that uh the difficulties. I know y'all y'all do this quite frequently,

but public works would that be under utilities then? That's what I was asking. That would No, I don't have a column for public works. they all have, you know, street [music] maintenance, drainage maintenance, um, you know, median maintenance. I just didn't have kind of room for that extra column. So, we're missing obviously some large divisions here when it comes to, you know, I don't have finance or IT or admin or anything on here either, but kind of looking at core services, trying to get enough data points, sanitation. I mean, we we do this in the middle of the metroplex and we struggle to get sanitation data. So, that that's one. And I think housing, you know, is another that, you know, is a little bit more unique, but it would appear that a few more have some housing jobs than they do um, you know, solid waste. I think that there's some easier linkages internally just to kind of give you an idea of how this goes behind the scenes. We try to survey every position and when we can't, we look for logical linkages between those survey jobs and those non-servey jobs. So for example, you know, we'll get some insight from those agencies that have equipment operators in streets and have equipment operators in sanitation. Are those being treated equally? Is sanitation paid the same or higher than those in streets? Are there tiers of equipment operators? So we can make some really really good educated inferences about how to treat those positions where we might have fewer data points. Uh, but a lot of those agencies otherwise are are rock solid comparators for all of our other divisions. That was just one that kind of sprung to mind. If you said we have an airport or we have a golf course or we have a zoo, we'd have those same kind of conversations around we're going to have less data for some of those services because they are a little bit more unique.

Okay. Thank you. Great. Yes. I have uh several questions. the is the value of the benefits that they get is that factored into the pay? Not in our current scope. Um I know that your staff studies benefits regularly when they go to do their renewals. Um so we can be armed, you know, with that as a consideration, but it is not in our current scope. No.

Okay. I mean, I think that would be something that people evaluate when they're looking at changing careers or jobs or going to a job accepting it that they do they weigh the cost of the benefits into that factor. The other question is um do we would we put like a waiting towards certain peer cities like maybe certain peer cities that are much more cons similar to us we wait them higher depending on how you define similar. If I'm being honest, the only similar that matters to me is your directors and above. Your equipment operator and to an extent your police officers performing the same job duties in a city of 80,000, 100,000, big, small, rich, poor. Those duties and responsibilities have a high level of portability where I'm probably the most sensitive to either the word similar. So pick size, budget, then scope, span of control. It's really my directors and above that I'm a little bit more worried about size sensitivity as far as scope and comparability, but this certainly represents about five or six just bigger than you and five or six just smaller than you.

I'm thinking similar will show up in the data. Like we'll figure out who's going to be the most similar cities once we have the data and then provide a higher waiting to them now. So, and I don't want to nitpick on the cities right now because we're going to have time to evaluate and come back to it. So just for sake of time, but for like I mean Brian for instance, it's 100 miles distance from a major metro. I would say College Station is a metroplex. Um also Mansfield, Flower Mound, North Richen Hills, very high median pay probably compared to where we're at. And so I um I'd also like to see kind of where just on these cities where they land on median pay because if they have a major university there, they got a major hospital network, some other different things could tilt that uh to a different way. And then um yeah, those are all my and the median pay. That's other things. So that's all the questions I had. Thank you. I think if I characterize what we're proposing here, we're we're leaning a little bit farther away from the the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex than we have historically. Uh certainly we have some folks that are living even equidistant that are working for the city of Long View that are living equidistant between you, you know, and the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. So, you know, there's some other agencies that we had considered that would ring in that surely based on population and median, you know, income, median salary. Uh there's some around the Austin area, including Cedar Park, uh Georgetown, that, you know, certainly are we're steering away from them because of their higher cost of living. I'm going to infer that there's a potential higher median salary for those municipal employees. Not necessarily or always, I would say, but yeah, we are in this particular sample um leaning a little bit farther away from the the Dallas Fort Worth area than than I think we have in the past.

And real quick, I follow up on that real fast. So, you actually bring up a good point. Maybe the way that we weight this is based on purchasing power, cost of living. And so, for instance, let's say Tyler, we weigh it, you know, let's say one for one. And then you take, you know, Brian and you maybe weight it where we're trying to maybe target maybe 95% pay. Maybe on those that are higher up, we just try to target 90% of pay uh to factor in for that cost of living standard.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. I think Yeah. And I'm never a fan of fuzzy math. So I want to I want to bring you everything that I can bring you to kind of honor the the the established list and then a thousand% agree with you. let's model out what this thing looks like to react to either those cost of living differences, that purchasing power difference. Uh because absent, right, and I I'll I'll be honest, we we do probably 20 surveys a year just in the metroplex. We struggle with where to stop, right? Like I could compare to 50 cities. There's 50 cities within an hour there and that's a struggle. That's too many. Uh but ultimately, you know, where you're at even geographically, we struggle for the opposite reason, right? like what other factors matter to this council that would define a comparison city. Um certainly then we can react to the numbers you together both globally as well as individually if any of these ring out to be a considerably higher or lower cost of living than yours. I'm comfortable with that for sure. I start to say you and John both just address because that's one of the things I had, you know, the competition in these populated areas. I want to make sure it kind of lines up with us and I'm like you Brian Brian and College Station,

there's a lot of competition there. I want to make sure we're not uh fighting that battle. The other thing I want to make sure is when you do this salary study, especially with the boots on the ground sort of people, uh is there a tier level, you know, at fiveyear tenure because when you're talking about retention, I what's going to keep them here? You know, what's what's that? And I want to make sure that that's uh addressed as well and we'll be we'll be able to see that.

Yeah, a thousand%. And I think yeah the your staff does an amazing job at maintaining a classification structure with tiers levels and distinguishing characteristics between worker senior lead to ensure the presence of career ladders job families promotional opportunities because if we get people in the door I want to do everything we can to develop them promote them keep them. Um, so you know, I think retention and then recruitment is kind of what I have in mind when we do these. Uh, the the punchline to implementation is right where you're going, I think, as well. And that would be what is the going rate for a 5year or 10-year building inspector, police officer, firefighter, equipment operator. I want to honor through implementation the placement of people. Right? So 90 probably 90% of our work over the next four months is a paper exercise comparing job descriptions comparing pay plans recommending pay ranges for job titles the last 10% is really what we're going to get together on and that is the people when I put people onto a plan did I move your pay range and do I need to move your salary are we honoring and preventing compression with respect to a fiveyear versus a 10year versus a new hire in that same job class. So, spot on good warm-up, you know, I think for a conversation that we we plan to have with you in the spring.

And and my last thing, uh, and I don't know that you'll be able to maybe you've seen this, but, you know, 17% was our average, you know, uh, turnover rate. Would there be any way that you would be able to as you look into these cities say, "Hey, you know, uh, city A, B, and C was hitting a note like that, they made some of these changes and now their turnover rates about 12%." They were headed in the right direction. Our people remained at 17. You see that number grow uh because I know I've looked at some of our numbers this year and I think we're going to probably exceed 17%. And that scares me because the retention I know is huge for us. Yeah, I think if there were some positives that came from the pandemic, the world shrank a little bit. Um, the HR directors around the state started sharing a lot of information. They were on list serves. They're trading emails back and forth about their experiences. Then certainly reaction to that higher inflation. We've started to see a move, a very intentional move on hard to fill positions to try and tackle that turnover. We always, I think, experienced it indirectly in public safety, but you start to see a separation now in distinct different salary plans for skilled trades, for equipment operators, uh, for utility operators that are a little bit separate as well because once you get them and you certify them, they become pretty valuable. We've got certainly a lot of clients that are influenced by refineries. We don't have too many of that, you know, in this data. maybe maybe a Baytown, you know, indirectly, but you look at some of the others and they had to be really intentional about moving salaries for skilled individuals that are fully certified and fully performing and that was one of the ways that we started to see some of these agencies combat turnover. U but I am definitely not above asking you know

each of these cities one where are they at and two what has worked and maybe not worked. Uh, but like I said, that that lists serve communication between HR directors around the state was kind of really neat to see even as an outsider because I kind of got CCD on some of those topics like how do we address work from home? How do we super supervise somebody that's working from home? How do we tackle additional turnover? Is everybody getting killed for CDL equipment operators? Right? I mean, those were really common topics and threads where you could see a lot of emails from people uh around the state trying to combat that a little bit. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay.

Uh thank you for your time. Just most of the questions I have. Am I on? Okay. Most of the questions I have have already been discussed and we've had very good answers. I just want to go back over my concerns. First off, uh the retirement plans and the health plans. I mean, our municipality here, City of Long View, has an excellent retirement plan or an excellent health plan. How do you factor this in when you're comparing city to city or maybe city to private?

Yeah, city to city, I would say that there's a there's a price of doing business. Um, I've been waiting, you know, a long time. We do this work in California and other union states where there's, you know, been some attempts at cost containment, cost measure. I will share the Bureau of Labor Statistics tried for two years to compare the public sector pension to the private sector 401k and the sum of their work after two years was a three-word paragraph that said no, we we can't compare the two. And so the the price of doing business and I'll I'll focus on public safety for a moment. Those positions are designed one to probably retire out a little bit early based on what they're exposed to and their kind of postretirement, you know, I quality of life, you know, maybe. And so pension, health insurance, ad pay, certification pay, those are all neutral buoyancy, right? Right. I mean, if you're in TMRS, there's a few options for enhanced add-ons like cost of living and service credits, but really the only other variable might be, am I contributing 14% and the employees contributing 7%, am I contributing 12 and the employees contributing six? About the only, you know, factor that you can control if you're a local government is, you know, kind of what that contribution and benefit level looks like and then if there's any enhancements to that. seem to I think with health insurance that has been a shifting sand I would say certainly in the last 10 years you know moves from cost sharing to a sensitivity around what we offer for family independence you know certainly there's a a way to put a cap on that however you know there's a a giant weight I mean it's a very topical question around the cost of health care and the cost of health insurance I'd love to say people migrate to the public sector for health insurance if I'm 22 if I'm 26. If I'm 28, that

light bulb probably hasn't come on. I need to pay for my F-150 and my kids diapers and child care. And the the benefits light bulb doesn't really come on probably until 20 years after that. So, there's a challenge there of what we offer, what we spend, what we allocate towards our total pay and benefits in the public sector. There's really only about a 8% gap between the public sector total comp and the private sector total comp. And they're a wash because the private sector offers bonuses, stock options, profit sharing, especially for degreged and above, management and above. There is no comparing your directors to the private sector because their quarterly bonuses exceed what you pay your directors on an annual basis. Uh, but outside of that, on a local level, I definitely want to bring forth for you, hey, what is the going wage for that new hire, for that entry level worker to make sure that we're not susceptible. I mean, I I love Bies. They put their salary plan right on the ceiling, you know, right when you walk in. It's $22 an hour with dayshift, benefits, and air conditioning. We got people at $15, $16 an hour. Like, I need to know those things. That doesn't mean that we're going to try and keep up with bies, but it's right there in your face. And that's a rarity for the private sector. They usually don't tell you, they just steal them and then you've got to rely on maybe exit interviews and that kind of thing. But yeah, I'll do my level best to bring whatever data to you that, you know, you find to be pertinent. You know, I want to honor the the benefits and total comp expectation, but know that, you know, the data is going to be dominated by public entities because that's where I can find police, fire, building inspection, utilities. I could go to even some MUDs or library districts or whatever I need to do. U some of those are all enterprise fund and they're going to, you know, cream you on benefits and and total comp. So whatever that balance is, I want you to be comfortable with the data that we

bring forth, which is why, you know, your your staff created this opportunity to kind of talk a couple of times and allow you to, you know, kind of think about this a little bit and and let it marinate a little bit. But certainly any other research, feel free to reach out. Staff has my contact information. I'm more than happy to get on or or respond whatever in the appropriate, you know, manner so that we're we're all kind of comfortable come spring. I think several other things I had down here. Of course, growth rates in really growing areas is is a big factor where the employee has more choices and he's always got people coming to him trying to hire him. And then u geography and I think you've already talked about that where you've tried to stay away from the big metropolitan areas or not be as close to them as you had before. I think overall the questions have been very good and the answers have been good and uh appreciate your time and looks like we're heading in the right direction.

Great. Mr. W. Yes. Good evening, sir. Thank you for your time. My question kind of goes along the lines of some of these services that have began to the municipalities to begin to outsource those services such as EMS, sanitation, um, and some of the others that are not on here that a lot of public sectors are beginning to do.

[snorts] So once you begin to outsource those, then it's really hard to compete with those salaries because you're dealing with a public corporation at that point in time. And so do you factor in a lot of this in that process because then it kind of misleads what these answers are?

Yeah, I think you get a little bit of an echo effect, right? if the private is is stealing them or or even an enterprise fund or utility district or you know a service provider in the private sector they they'll just change the rate so that they can pay more right so you know there there is a line to be drawn I think we see that a lot out in Midland Odessa where we've done work certainly down you know in kind of the triangle with the you know Port Nous and Netherland and some of those where you know industry is paying double for an equipment operator even they'll steal a police officer and and put them to work as a safety officer. And so you recognize those things, but I think it's, you know, you suddenly lose that as a data point, you know, to a degree. The other context, I think, is an internal alignment and internal equity. We have at our disposal the ability to express the value of each of your jobs in relation to one another. So even looking internally instead of externally, positions that are highly skilled, positions with certifications, positions that require a two-year or four-year degree, position that supervises 30 people compared to 10 people, you know, those are also some, you know, valuable tools because I would say that the survey is a guide, the survey is a great starting point, but there is some art to this, right? in the art is reacting to it in the context of internal equity, you know, promotional opportunities, career ladder, reporting relationships. And I don't want to say that, hey, you know, we we pick the city manager salary and we work down, you know, from there, but indirectly, you know, we kind of have to do that for our directors, you know, as well to say, what's the going rate for a finance director? Who's reporting to the finance director? Because we may even be putting a cap on ourselves. I would, you know, be remiss if not bringing you the right data. I'm not picking on any specific director. So, I apologize there, but I want to make sure that, you know, we don't have any potential for sticker

shock because I would say that, you know, replacing your next director could be a sticker shock, you know, and that's naive of me to say because I simply haven't seen the data, nor have I seen, you know, what you offer your directors. But my larger point there is you almost get these real world experiences along the way that look like, oh, we posted and and we even used a a search firm for our next police chief or for our next fire chief or finance director or IT director, that kind of thing. Man, that tells you almost everything you need to know, you know, about the market for that job. And it's just so right in your face because it's hard to go, you know, without filling those jobs. So, I want all of those factors, I think, to just keep the dialogue going, I think, around those factors that influence the city's ability. Uh, but that is certainly one of them. You know, seeing some of these services be outsourced. You know, EMS, you know, sometimes Austin area's got a ton of like fire districts and EMS districts. So, I see that probably more there. Um, utility districts come and go, you know, a little bit. The metroplex got a few muds that, you know, the cities aren't doing utilities. the mud is, you know, and they that's a mixed bag, but they're usually pretty competitive simply because all of their all of their positions are funded kind of through enterprise fund. So, they just say, "Oh, we'll just charge more and pay more. We want to get certified operators, keep them, you know, that kind of thing." So,

yeah. And lastly, at the end of the day, as long as we're better than Tyler, none of this matters really. [laughter] All these other cities that that could make my job wildly easy. Let's just pick like Tyler within five or something, right? So, they they might have done the same thing to you in the past. So,

I'm sure they have. Well, thank you, Matt. That was very informational and we appreciate it. So, we understand our job to be to review the presentation that will be sent to us, send questions back to Rollins, send any uh concerns about the proposed cities, and then we'll redisuss, but hopefully pick cities in December. Um, so we'll do our own research and come back with questions. All right. Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it. You all have a great evening. You too. Uh, next on our agenda is presentation of recommendations from the coordination task force. Dr. Reverend Evan Doleaf. And I see some committee members out there. I want to thank your task force members for serving and for you for chairing. It's a lot of time and we appreciate it.

Thank you so much. On behalf of the coordination task force uh of the mayor's task force addressing homelessness in Long View, I'm pleased to share our recommendations for strengthening coordination services within our community. Uh the task force was composed of about 37 community members from a wide range of sectors and organizations and life experiences. And we had open and constructive dialogue about how the city of Long View, our nonprofit partners and local services can providers can work more effectively to address the issue of the complex realities of homelessness. The recommendations that we will uh present uh reflect our collective belief that meaningful progress can only occur when all partners, governments, nonprofits, faith communities, and residents work toward a common purpose. We also realize that no single organization or city department can meet this challenge alone. It will require our continued commitment and partnership and innovation and more and most importantly our compassion. The problem that we have in our um city is one that is pretty much everywhere is that we operate in silos in the nonprofit world. Sometimes those silos are on the same farm. Sometimes those silos are on neighboring farms. Sometimes those silos are in the next county over. The problem with having that is that we have no way of coordinating our efforts together. So a lot of things are duplicated uh when it comes to caring for someone who may be experiencing homelessness, transitioning from a rehab facility or someone who is just on the bubble uh from going from self-sufficiency into homelessness. We also don't have a way to coordinate all that data together. We don't have a way to interlink all the nonprofits to a single system so that we can know if uh client A goes to this nonprofit and then they come to see another nonprofit what

happened and what was already done for them. So the problem with that is is that things are getting duplicated which is a uh not a ideal use of our time and resources and and as well people are falling through the cracks because we think oh the other guy did it. So what we have recommended from our task force are 22 recommendations around four key goals to how to transform this uh fragmented model into a better coordinated system. So, we're going to talk about real-time communication and data or the HMIS system or the coordinated entry system. How to better do our point in time count, which counts how many people are unhoused in our city and in the area. Uh providing a resource guide development uh for not only our first responders, our EMS, our police, our fire, and our nonprofits. And as well as what do we how do we help those who were in in uh transition in maybe like House of Disciples, Highway 80 Rescue Mission who've gone through a program and now are transitioning into independent living which studies have shows that is the weakest link of of of how do you cycle back into homelessness. So what we have here is our first one is about data coordination and resources. As I said, um, any nonprofit has their own system of how they track their clients, what services they provide, and how they do those, when they came in last, and all those things. There is a system called HMIS, the U homeless management information system, um, which can provide real-time data between nonprofits. There's a catch though and this is something that was we we talked about and was made evident uh throughout our conversation is that it's kind of expensive and nonprofits have very thin margins and in the city um it's not in the budget this year. So we have to wait and see it happens. Another issue that comes up with this HMIS system is that

some of our nonprofits utilize systems that can leak into the HMIS system and then there's some who cannot. So that we'd have to build a bridge app to get us into HMIS. So our recommendation is to develop a comprehensive HMIS system from the city as well as for real-time data entry and also even mobile apps for people in the field. Uh and also designate a city department to oversee the implementation and this coordination. Some cities like we talked about with salary schedules um have done this. Um most notably and quite most recently uh Abene took about five years but they have their homeless population to what's called effective zero. Uh so people who want to be uh in in some kind of residential housing a shelter or their own place they have a system to get them into it. And there are just some people who just would like to sleep outside and that's fine. Um it did take them some time and this as when we talked to Abalene they said this was the hardest piece. It is the most crucial but is the hardest piece to get every nonprofit on the system trained in the system and then also utilizing that system when they interact with a client. We also want uh recommend that we authorize the expansion of the Greater Long View Optimal Wellness Program data sharing protocols to all uh homeless service providers. As we saw at the Glow convening yesterday, Glow is working. So, we want to don't reinvent the wheel. Let's just link into what they're doing. And also, they're seeing clients that probably also are being seen at other nonprofit partners. So, how can we link those that data together? And then we need to authorize uh a design of a multi-format guide uh wallet cards for first responders, booklets, and then even maybe down the line an app that's on every city uh cell phone uh so that they can also uh know the resources that are in our area uh know where to go, the

requirements to get there and um you know the hours of operation and then also have that HMIS system eventually down the line and then also utilize the info line of Greek county which uh as the director of the United Way, we're very thankful for the city's uh investment in that uh 903236 9211 uh as a primary contact point uh to help those in need. Next, we want to talk about the point in time count. Now the point in time count is is mandated by housing and urban development of the federal government uh to go out and physically count how many people are actually unhoused on a specific day generally in January. This will help us to know uh what our uh point in how many people in our area are experiencing homelessness but also funding from the federal government is tied to our point in time count. So on one hand we want it to be accurate so that we can have the funds that we need to help those but sometimes we don't want we don't like it to be accurate because it actually means that we have a larger number of people who are experiencing homelessness in our area. Right now um we have tried our best in our nonprofit sector to to establish better ways of doing it. I think we could do it better um to make it happen. So one thing we recommend is the formal participation in the Texas balance of state continuum of care to coordinate regional efforts and resources uh and to establish a dedicated budget line for point in time count operations training and technology because it you need some training of how to enter the information into HUD and also if we can have apps or iPads or things while we're in the field you know and the camps that would help us uh to do that and then also build the infrastructure um The city already uses etxcares.com for connect long view. So make that the portal also for primary recruitment

volunteer uh and coordination platform uh to use that for the point in time count. All right. Another issue that we wanted to talk about is what I mentioned earlier is about that weakest link when it comes to people reexperiencing uh uh homelessness and that is uh people transitioning from a a program like uh highway 80 rescue mission house of disciples somewhere house of hope. So, some of our in in the formal packet that I sent in, not on here, but we recognize that some of our recommendations may overlap with Sativa's C uh uh task force, which will hear next month, uh for housing, but appoint a housing navigator and create incentives like a damage mitigation fund to encourage landlords participation. Um and then also expand affordable housing and and feasibility study for a community land trust. But moving forward, our vision is that these recommendations would provide a strategic pathway to move from a fragmented model of coordinated to a coordinated system that maximizes the resources and better and provides better care. All of our nonprofits in the area and everywhere in this country are passionate about what they do and they want to help people. But all we but what we have found in our area and we're not alone is that we need to be better connected together. Some would say we need to live united. No single organization or city department can meet this challenge alone. We can't take it all on by ourselves. We have to link arms together to ensure that we have all the necessary resources uh together so that we can build a stronger coalition and foundation. and we ask for your partnership and authorization to begin these implementations to require a continued

commitment to our partnership and the innovation, but most importantly our compassion. So with that, I'll I'll answer any questions if I if there are any. Thank you, Evan. Um just for council's sake, I did want to of course reiterate a big thank you to all of our task force members and to Evan for chairing that. Um you guys met a lot and spent a lot of time doing that.

Thank you. Um and just like every other task force that I visited and said this is an unfunded request, right? So the city does correct. We don't have money set aside for this, right? Um and it is my intention within 30 days to meet with city staff and to give a response to you and the task force with a yes, we'll do this, a no, we can't do this, or uh we would like to support this, but it needs to come from the community. So not a yes, not into empty space here. Um and I'd love to hear from council if you guys have questions, discussion. I did have one question for you. Sure. Of course.

Of the um HMIS, do you guys have a recommended list of agencies that you would want to coordinate into HMIS? I mean, I know that there's probably a long list that could be there. Yes. And so, we we did talk about in in the uh task force uh of starting off with a pilot program of and particularly the the nonprofits that systems currently will link into HMIS and so we don't have to build the bridge, right? Um and so um I don't have that list here with me, but we we thought maybe a pilot program would start off first.

That's where you work out all the bugs and then start kind of concentrate circle build it out further and further. Okay. Yes. Good. How does the HMIS compare to like what Glow uses the healthcare health information exchange? How does that differ? Because I know that

Yeah. Everybody just wants another software and another app, right? I mean at what point do we have too much to where the inputting all the data is going to cause issues? Sure. So HMIS is kind of like the the hub and so uh other apps and health information exchanges can link into it and pull the data and populate it into the system into a single platform. Um there are several options um that are out there various features and you know cool things that you can do with it. um and also price points. And so there are different price points when it comes to the coordinated entry HMIS systems. And so what we talked about is trying to find the one that would blanket the most nonprofits already existing systems as well as Pulsera and others to help uh pull the best data that we can and then work with those nonprofits that don't have that system requirement to link into the the state system of HMIS um to build that bridge app to get the data back. I will add I think maybe chief can hear me and will correct me if I'm wrong, but our post already uses HMIS. Is that right?

Um and I believe that's a free He's giving me a not Yes. Yeah. system that um we already as a city utilize. Um and adding users I think is 750 to add the user but then there's additional training and if their system doesn't work with it. Um Glow uses Pulsera and I do know that we won't be able to connect more people there because of their uh memorandum of understanding for sharing the healthcare information. Correct. Um, but I do think so we can't combine the two. I do know that. I can't answer that one already. But, um, I do believe we can look at expanding HMIS to additional nonprofit partners and that would not be too big of a leap.

Yeah. No, just because training and and the actual software and so would this create redundancy though as far as these other organizations having to put So the idea would be that ultimately all the nonprofits would utilize the same platform that would then link into HMIS. When we talked to Abene, they said this is the biggest hurdle that it takes because we're married to our systems that we have and u we like our input and our data entry. Um, so it's going to take some conversations and some um funding to to do that uh to help kind of dangle the carrot a little bit to get people to switch over to that. I think if the pilot program begins and and we're seeing um clients come into certain nonprofits here, here, and here, and then we're not dropping through the cracks, we're not duplicating services, I think that that that would help us to expand that to further nonprofits in the area.

Thank you. I saw a couple of other hands. Uh I just wanted to say that on the with the homeless population, the majority of them is usually with mental illness. Would you agree with that? There's a high high propensity of that. Correct. Yes. So um do y'all make sure that y'all in this task force that y'all ever talk about making sure that we are coordinating with all of them? because I know we use community healthcore for a lot but they are maxed to capacity but we have other individuals that offer that same service here and we don't we don't utilize them and I think that would be a big help

to that because that puts a big dent in the homeless because mental mental illness is one of the major reasons why a lot of people are homeless. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I I totally agree with with what you're saying there. Um there is a mental health task force um that that that is looking into all those options as well. Um the HMIS system, the coordinated injury system is going to take the main big players in in the in the area um to come to the table and say this is what this is what the city needs to move forward to ensure that um we can get to effective zero uh in our area. Um other cities have done it and have have modeled it. Um, and so I think that we, as as I said, when it works in the church, all great ideas are stolen. So, let's just borrow that. And so, but it it is going to have to take everybody coming to the table, checking the egos at the door. Exactly. And and saying that this is what is best for our community and and more more importantly the um those who are experiencing homelessness right now.

Thank you. Thank you. I saw another hand was it. Go ahead, S. Okay. Uh, thank you much for your presentation. Is it the uh cities I've visited that have been successful at this we're talking we've been talking about primarily about data entering and all that kind of stuff. What about

I think the biggest concern is actual boots on the street correct that that get out with the programs. Uh how do we do that? Thank you for your question sir. Um it it it will take a you know some of our volunteer support and some of those agencies even hiring additional people to like glow go out into the camps or uh or to whenever they encounter someone who is uh experiencing homelessness. Um, part of that could uh also be dovetailed into the point in time count uh piece of it too because you have to grow your volunteers there to make sure you cast a wide enough net because you only can count on the day HUD says you can count. So if it's January 21st, you can't go on the 22nd or the 20th. Like you got to go on that day. So we have to make sure we we mobilize enough folks. And so um the idea of in incorporating everyone into the HMIS coordinated entry system is that they also would would raise up uh employees, volunteers, uh make partnerships with other nonprofits to establish that they would have enough people to u make those connections or when they came in for services like at highway 80 or LCM, there's a dedicated person or persons that can help ensure that we're not duplicating and we can put things in the system correctly. this this data information that you're talking about, is that important for uh grants or funding? I mean, what's the key? What does that really uh tell us other than we've got homeless people? I mean, where does that

Sure. So if a so if a client came to a nonprofit and that nonprofit was helping that client uh get their birth certificates and IDs that then if they went to another nonprofit for mental health counseling that mental health counseling nonprofit would not say oh let me also let let me get you your your ID and your birth certificate. No nonprofit A is already doing that. The idea of the coordinated entry HMIS system is to ensure that all the nonprofits who are in uh the system can see when client A comes to their door, I put in their name and everything. They've been here, here, and here. They gotten this, this, and this. I don't need to reduplicate that and and I can save my time and energy, but I can focus on this one thing that that the other three can't uh provide. And so it's not data injury for I mean it it will help us for a point in time count down the line you know several years into it because we have a constant running list of people who are either unhoused or getting services or have transitioned into stable housing. It will make point in time count a little easier but at the beginning it will make sure that we're not um we're all not just grasping that straw trying to help this person and say now have you gotten your ID yet? Have you gotten your birth certificate yet? we can just look and see they got it at nonprofit A. I'm going to help them with these things. Send them on to another nonprofit that has those things and then they all they're taken care of in this safety net.

So what you're saying primarily importance is coordination between the different nonprofits on helping these individual people uh instead of them going to different agencies or maybe falling through the cracks. Yes sir. Absolutely. Yeah. And so and also not only coordination of putting data into it, but also knowing what each other's does, how they can help, who's the main contact person at that uh facility, um what their specialtity is. Um you know, instead of have, you know, being a kind of a a buffet of nonprofit services at one place, you kind of specialize on on one thing. We got to get we have to get talking better with each other.

Thank you. Yes, sir. Very good. Okay. Thank you so much. really appreciate it. Thank you. Um, that concludes our presentations and we will I am sorry citizen comment folks, you guys have been very patient and you're all signed up to be point in time count volunteers. Thank you for staying. Um, citizen comment is next. Miss Brenda Woolridge. You have three minutes. Please come say state your name at the microphone.

Oh boy. My name is Brenda Woolidge and I reside at 227 South 13th Street in Long, Texas. Can we hear I have some Cindy can't hear you. If we can hear you. You're you're quite a ways distance from the microphone. Well,

could we get city staff maybe to adjust the mic? Short, so they're going to have to adjust it [laughter] where it be closer to her. We want to hear what you're saying. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. [laughter] Good [snorts] job, Michael. He wants me to shut up. up [laughter] there. Um, I come this evening with some applause and I don't know how thank yous and everything, but I have one thing before I get to that and that is um I addressed a couple on 706 South 12th Street and the neighbor has some dogs, some bad dogs and they have eaten through the fence and I told them to call the city pound and they have called them three times. And these are elder pups. The lady's 81 and the husband is 83. And anytime a dog eats through a fence, you can imagine what they can do to a human being. And if we don't address this, we going to have another situation where someone ends up dead because the uh precautions were not taken. And for them just to go out there and say we go find you, find and happen, we can't do anything about it. So something needs to be done about it. Another thing regarding the dogs is I know the uh pound has rules 8 to five or whatever, but I've seen people put their dogs out after five and they bulldogs out after five on the yards and on Saturdays and Sundays. So something needs to be done to address that issue even though you know they're not working but that needs to be addressed because y'all we are headed for another one another calamity and this is not something I'm making up. I've talked to them and I've told them what I knew to tell them, but they're still dealing with that. And uh now to the praise. I want to thank uh Mr. Rick Evans for helping me getting some signs. We had a bad curve and we've always had several wrecks there and now we have signs and he's going to get some signs that light up. um our code uh supervisor, Miss Graves, and I drove around the neighborhoods for the southside

addressing those issues that we were talking about. I thank the city for that and she has noted those places and they're out working. They're going in the neighborhoods and they're um filing the code complaints about that. And another thing was uh they're getting the southside uh not beautified, but it's getting clean. And so that's a step and I applaud them. And also we had the uh city employees addressing some of the southside uh what do you call the outside of the street?

The Yeah. Yes. No, not the sidewalk where the grass is. Uh right away. Yeah. Thank you. [laughter] The rightway. But anyway, that was something that the uh people that owns the place was told to do, but they don't they don't know they're supposed to keep it up. And so they're they're addressing that and there's several things that they are addressing and I want to applaud them because immediately when I brought it to them, they got on it, I had people coming to my door uh the next day and I thank y'all for your help and pray we get more so we can get it at least clean and then beautified. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Wes. [applause] Uh next up, Melissa Lynn Kelly. If you'll step to the microphone and just tell us your name. We don't need your address. Just tell us your name. Okay. Uh, my name is Melissa Lin Kelly and thank you for letting me speak. I'm here representing the Trimman Smith Toy Run. It's not a business. It's not a bar. I represent a 33-year tradition that belongs to this community and the children it serves. For 33 years, Trimman Smith Toy Run has been a proud Long View tradition. Every December, hundreds of riders come together to bring Christmas to more than 100 disabled children at the Trimman Smith Children's Hospital. For 30 of those years, the city has issued a parade permit, and the Long View Police Department provided a safe and professional escort without incident. For the last three years, I have been denied that same permit. And in and in each of those years, I have taken every appropriate step to follow the process. I have fouled properly. I have communicated with the city. I've met directly with the chief of police and with I've met directly with the chief of police and the city long view representative Michael Shirley. And despite those efforts, I still have not been able to move this forward. That is why I I have formally appal appealed the most recent denial. And I want to add to this within the last three years there has been an accident during this ride. One of our veterans, Fred Terrell, and his young grandson were actually ran over by a car during one of these rides. That alone should show how important it is for for us to have the support of law enforcement to get from point A to point B safely. When riders are scattered, unescorted, and forced to break formation, the risk goes up. And the accident we had is proof of that. From my understanding, the city of Long View

still gives out permits for multiple runs and bicycle rides. I understand that ordinances change, but rules should support the community, not block long-standing traditions that have proven to be safe, organized, and beneficial. The city says that this is a safety issue, and that ex is exactly why we've always partnered with the police department, paid the required fees, and complied with every guideline set before us. Our record speaks for itself. It has been brought to my attention that the Long Beach Police Department off the record is claiming that we do not follow direction. We do not listen and that riders are drinking before the ride. I want to set that record straight today. Three years ago, there was two gentlemen outside of our business. They were intending to ride in the toy run. An officer that was going to escort us seen them drinking. He called it to my attention. Immediately I went over there. I told the two guys that they could not participate. They left the property. At the same time, the police officer left and did not escort us. That was year one. This was after we had paid for the permit. This event is about real children in this community. children that depend on the community community for everyday essential needs. The small things that most of us take for granted. Things like shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, hair detangler, body wash, sheets and blankets, pajamas and socks, sensory toys for learning, story books, and puzzles. There are items that are needed every single day for these children and for this care center. Without the support of this city, the tradition will eventually fade away and the children at Truman Smith will be the ones who suffer. They depend on this community effort and the success of this toy run directly impacts the joy and support they receive at Christmas. The people of

this community have come together today to ask you to please reinstate the parade permit and police escort. Let's keep this 33y year tradition alive and show these children that Long View still stands for community commitment and heart. Thank you. [applause] Thank you, Miss Kelly. [applause] Uh, next is Cindy Walls.

Miss Walls, just tell us your name and then you do have three minutes. Yes, I'm Cindy Walls. Um, former precinct chair 11 in Upshire County and I'm here to speak to you about Mrs. Kelly. For about the last month and a half, I have helped her every way way I can to get permits, speak with the city of Long View, do anything I can to get these riders safely from the city of Long View to Upure County. We have Uper County covered with escorts as soon as we get off into Upshire County. We have White Oak. We have Gladewater. We've offered to pay for escorts where it doesn't have anything to do with Long View Police Department. We've been shut down on that. We've offered to pay off offduty officers to come escort us. They won't allow that. Um we've been um asked about meeting outside of Long View. That won't work. Um we've got big old slaves. We've got riders coming in from everywhere that meet at Outlaws. They have I've rode in this parade for it's not a parade. It's an event. I've rode 33 years in it. Um it's a tradition. Um, we have elected officials, lawyers, doctors, everyone that rides in it. The only thing we're asking is to safely get from outlaws to the city of White Oak outside of the city limits without having an accident. Um, we were told we needed to stop at red lights. Well, it's safer to keep the group together and get through the city of Long View in 15 minutes than it is to have every rider stop and put everybody in danger red light to red light. Um, brakes to go out, anything can happen. Um, we need y'all's y'all's help in anything y'all can do to help us with the situation, conclusion, anything to help Miss Kelly and the Long View Police Department rectify this. Thank you. Y'all have a great evening.

Thank you. [applause] Uh, I believe that's Jimmy Adams.

[clears throat] Hello, my name is Jimmy Adams and I'm here to support the children of Truman Smith because that's what it's all about. And I hate to see anyone be the Grinch that stole Christmas from these afflicted children. And so, and a lot of these people that participate in this ride are veterans of war. I don't know if any of you are veterans and done battle, but surely you understand what they've done, putting their life on the line for all of us, and they put a lot of time and effort for those children. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. ADAMS. [applause] UH, next is Scott Gillespie. [snorts] All right, bear with me. I'm Scott Galispy. November 16th, 2022, I had a cardiac arrest. I died at Crunch Gym. Long View Fire Department number six came and saved me. They escorted me or took me to a regional hospital which was approximately 2 miles away. In that ambulance, his name was Will Corman. He said it was his job to say, "I've done all I could do. Cover you up." But Will said he wasn't going to give up on me. He was going to get me to that trauma center [laughter] and pass me off. Where am I going with this? He didn't give up on me. And he told me in that in that ambulance, my eyelids started flickering. And even though I wasn't breathing or a heartbeat, there was hope. And you know what? I fight every day. I'm not the same person that I once was. I fight emotional roller coaster every day. Do you understand what those children over at that hospital are going through? No, you don't. [laughter] This lady and her group want to take these kids some hope. Do y'all understand hope? Yeah. They want to get over there and give these kids an hour, 30 minutes at least of hope because they fight every day. Something that y'all will never understand. Just like me trying to explain to you what happened to me, you will never understand. Being dead for 20 minutes changes somebody. Those kids over there, they might not get the second chance that Long View Fire Department gave me

and the hospital regional hospital gave me. All this woman wants is a little safety, a little hope to get those presents to those children. And if that's all I [laughter] got.

THANK YOU. [applause] THAT IS ALL the speaker cards I have tonight. Um, I will move on to our consent agenda. Are there any items that council would like to pull off for discussion or questions?

Okay. And Mr. Connley or was there one over here? Yes, sir. Ma'am, I'd like um well C uh M and O. Okay, I've got C E M N O

N in Can I say something real quick? When Go for I heard that y'all did a story on me and won an award because I got to meet the fire department and uh y'all y'all were there and I didn't get an invite to go and uh go

to the the about my story. Oh no. Yeah. But anyway, hey, don't lose hope. Remember, thank you. Okay, we'll do uh talk about consent agenda C with Robert Ray.

So, um this is just a resolution that would deny uh SWEPO's request for rate increase and they will of course immediately appeal to the PUC and this will authorize us to participate in that proceeding and happy to take any questions. But I just wanted to um get some an explanation on it and thank you for your work on it, Robert.

Thank you. And just to say clarification, shoot. I I mean I thought the light bills already went up cuz mine went up from 300 and some to 500. So definitely Thank you. Yeah, they they do have um they raise rates. They can raise rates in some interim proceedings between major cases. Uh and we don't we have the input we can on those, but usually it's it's not very much. But in these this is a general rate case so we will have uh much more opportunity to have much more meaningful input.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Uh next item E, Mr. Shirley. Yes. This is an item uh from a request filed by the Talwood Neighborhood Association and this is for uh a request for the city of Long View to accept their street that's currently a private street.

Thank you. Do you have questions, Mr. Allen? Yes, please. Um, first off, this is not in my district. Um, however, I feel that there is a necessity to bring this up and discuss it. Uh, due to the fact that on the agenda, we are positive for a private street to go into a public street to be maintained by the city of Long View. Um there was a um memorandum that the u public works developed that uh states several items that I'd like to uh bring to the attention and this this I I want to say that this denial was from the uh department of of public services and this is based on u figures and um information that they've determined um on this approval transferring the responsibility for this street from the U p from the U private sector as it is now to the public in one of the items on our memorandum additional information regarding current conditions and required maintenance. This is public information. It says the need for maintenance on Tealwood Drive is long overdue. Continued delays increase the risk of water infiltration, freeze thaw, cracking, and accelerated payment deterioration. Without this intervention, the roadways condition will continue to worsen, resulting in a higher. Also at this point they say next subject uh next paragraph excuse me Talwood Drive is not a suitable candidate for overlay and

heater repaving repaving and they show several estimates here. The their first estimate of A is a full recondition estimated cost of 1,600,000. Option B, estimated cost of 950,000. Pave it recommendation. Then a chip seal I think was um $50,000. [clears throat] Um I just I hate to set a precedent here when we've got city services that has done their work out there, have done their borings. I mean, this is not just a drive over. They went out there, did their borings, and gave us a uh engineering report on this street. And uh their recommendation at this point is denial of request. So I hate to set a precedent that u we're overlooking their denial of this request. Thank you.

Thank you. Did you want to respond? Okay. Yeah. Appreciate that. uh this is uh in my district and so uh to kind of address the same concerns. Sydney's correct. I had the same concerns as well as it was brought to me. I wanted to make sure that if we're going to take over like take the street as make it a public street that we weren't in a bailout situation, it was nothing that was going to uh cause any sort of money exchange or anything that's going to have a higher liability as far as the city goes. Um, so with that, I mean, the they went through the process. It's not a precedent. We're setting a process where they filed a petition. They've actually been in this process for, I believe, six years of going through this and following the necessary steps to get to this stage.

You're talking about the homeowners, the homeowners and the homeowners association of that neighborhood. Yeah. Thanks for the clarification. So, they've it's been a process. It is not something that's been done uh overnight. The um so they've been working on it for six years. The street uh in question is a half mile long. It's a single entry, single exit street with 20-ish homes on there. They have been maintaining this house, this uh these homes, this street uh and everything for over 70 years. The reason for uh public works uh denial reason is because it doesn't meet current standards for a public street. understand this neighborhood was built in the 70s. And so what ultimately is happening in this situation is you're penalizing homeowners that have been paying taxes for 70 years, maintaining their homes, maintaining the streets. And what you ultimately will end up happening, and it is happening, is that the homes will become less marketable. And in the sense that they become less marketable, they end up being worth less money, which means we end up getting less tax revenue. Now, in regards to the uh assessments from public works, of course, they're going to take this and look at it as worst case scenario, full boore, what would it cost to redo the streets to do uh to get it to the standards. Now, the as I mentioned to the homeowners association, I've spoke to them. I told them if they do this route, I will tell you right now, your street will not get repaired. Um because the lack of traffic that's going through there, the city, we use an objective basis on traffic and the quality of the street to determine the uh requirement for the repair. They would be so far below on the priority level. um they likely to never see any sort of work done um as far as more than just minor maintenance to keep and maintain the

road to a standard that we would want these homes to be able to be uh in and accessible for city uh services. Right. So the um the other point of it is that um trying to see where I was at on all those, but I think I pretty much covered most of those. Um, and again, it's you're talking about a half mile private street. The streets right now are in much better condition than on most of our streets here. You can drive down it. The streets in well done. Um, no issues um that are going to be of any sort of thing that's going to be happening in the near future. and the um you know and this was you know in my district and again looking at as a case byase basis um and that's so I feel it warrants approval

we do we take a vote or how do we decide on yeah it'll either stay on the consent agenda or if you'd like to pull it off for a separate vote we could do that that's I' I'd like to see a separate vote on it my point is we need a lot of street repair all over the city of Long View. And according to the engineering department, this street will need maintenance. And so that's my point right there.

I'll make just one final point on that. It's a good point. We're talking about.1% of the streets. A half mile is.1% of the current streets that we are currently maintaining. Well, my point is spend the money other places where it's more needed and not worry about this in the future. We having to step in and do something in the future because there's other streets that that need this money and there is no guarantees. You can't say we will not spend any money in the future until there's no guarantee absolute at all. It depends on this council and that's what uh 2 years, 3 years, four years, 5 years, six years. It depends completely on the vote of this council. We cannot set a president that applies from now on. You just can't do that. And so I would like to have other streets that I that we feel are more subject to money than uh than this one. Again, I'm going I'm going with the development services and the city engineering. This is not my district. I don't have anybody that lives out there. I don't have any dog in the hunt, as they say.

I think uh we're I think I think you guys are agreeing in that we clearly have worse streets that are evaluated in the city of Long View that would be addressed first and those are already public streets. Um I don't think we have a lot of private streets that will need to be brought into the city system. Um so I don't see that as a major

hurdle for us in the future. So I think you guys are saying the same thing. the street won't need repair and we will focus on other streets that we already have. In the future, it will need repair because the report says right here that it's long overdue overdue according to the engineering department.

At at the end of the day, it does go through a priority system. So there's already through public works when they go through and they grade the streets, streets that are going to have a higher need for repair is not going to change based on that. So there so that it's going to still fall into the same level of where it would be uh regardless.

I think any ideas uh just within the city miles of private road that's in HOAs that uh we do not currently cover cuz if you do something like this you open up Pandora's box. A lot of people will look at it down the road and say well we do have a hightraic area. We've got uh you know a couple entrances or exits out of our subdivision. U do we have any idea on that?

I don't have it on hand. I know over the last 20 years because the street standard was different for private streets both in dimensional and construction. Um that we had a number of developers take that opportunity because the cost was lower on the front end. Um that has since changed when we updated the UDC. we made that uniform so we wouldn't have that problem. But as far as miles and all, I don't have that with me. It's certainly something we could get for y'all. If if y'all need that information, we can get it for you

because I mean I I would say it says if left unadressed can progress to severe distress or complete payment uh pavement failure. And I see where the old standard you was talking about was 3.1 in. And I guess 6 in is where we're at now. Yeah, six inches is the typical minimum for a public,

right? Yeah. Y'all going to cut them out and let them not pay property taxes. How do we do that? That's what I'm saying. I think it's very unfair to ask somebody who's paying property taxes like everybody else to have an unmaintained city street. It wasn't our idea to be originally a private street. That was a developer's idea. And now with his idea, we're having to go in and do the maintenance on his idea. We had no intention, no idea of anything to uh we did not choose it to be a private street. The residents chose it to be a private street.

Probably not the ones that are there currently, but I understand your point. Seven years ago. Yeah. And I I I guess I go back to talking about the areas of ETG. I've I've got a lot of people out in Spring Hill who they have old top roads and they're taxpayers. And I know we get calls and Dwayne has done a good job going out trying to take care of them. Uh but those are public roads. They're not private and they're still behind schedule. And I just want to make sure those people are taken care of. And I've got a lot of them. I don't know if I've got the majority of them, but I I've got to represent those people to make sure if we've got a road that can be taken care of, but it it needs to see priority. And I don't know, like I said, it may be 10 years from now, 20 years from now, where that priority changes at, but uh I've got people that's lived there since way before, you know, before the 70s, uh the same time this subdivision was built. And that concerns me.

Um cuz I want to represent my people just as well. Just just for clarification. So on this private road, these individuals say pay the same property taxes and pay into the cities. Yes, ma'am. just like anybody else they do. And so the only difference is is that they choose to be a private road and they y'all are saying that they didn't maintain the road.

I think they've maintained the road fine. I mean I think that is a discrepancy. The engineer because engineers say everything needs repaired and every street in the world needs repaired. Um say that it needs repair. Um but there would be no planned repairs for this street and it is way better than lots of other streets especially in your district and in your district. So nobody's trying to spend money there. Um you know. Yeah. I mean it's just you just want to make uh clarification on exactly what is being kind of discussed here and based like I'm with u Mr. Allen here I just you know do we depend I mean this is the city engineer that we're paying I'm assuming correct

that that made this so it's just like you're saying it's not that bad but then you got a senior engineer saying that it is that bad. So what I think an engineer would never recommend that we take a private street because it's additional financial cost to the city, right? I don't think there was any chance that any city engineer was ever going to say take this into the system because it's always going to cost us money because it's going to be a road that we maintain. And I just think if the message council is trying to send is we care about the dollars over the people in this neighborhood who are putting in the same property taxes that everybody else is, that's a message that we can send, but it's not one that I'm going to

No, no, that's not. I'm just saying that we have a lot a lot of streets all over Long View and putting this in the on the agenda for future repairs is going to deprive at some time or another. The general condition of this street at this time is good. There are a lot of streets in Long View that the general condition at this time is not good. Y

so somewhere another if we if we bring it into the city it will be put in the scale of streets that need repairs and there's a lot of them in other parts of the city that it's a limited amount of money that that need repairs and u this u you know can we call for a vote or how do we do that

and to not keep going like again this is a single entrance single exit 20-ish homes 70-y old neighborhood that again we rank it based on priority based on the streets. You're talking about.1%. Of our current public roads. It's I can take the public roads that we maintain which is about 450 miles

of all public roads of all the public roads that city of Long Beach maintain. It's.1%. It's not going to move or affect anybody else's districts. And again, if your road is in a worse condition, therefore your road should have priority because it is in a worse condition and it will continue to have priority in that sense. So I don't believe this is

I think John I think Mr. Barry Hill brought up a very very good point. This sets a precedent and we all have private streets in our districts and I think this sets a precedent in the future of of saying that uh we will decide better than the engineers on what needs to be repaired. That's just my opinion.

I think then we just never adopt one. I mean if we adopted your logic we just never take one back. Do we I mean have we taken that many back? I don't remember my years on the council. It's been Yeah. Is this street gated off? No. No, it's not.

So, I'm just kind of looking at one of the issues and they said underlying tree root intrusion. Now, you got an HOA. We go in there and say, "Hey, you know what? To save this street, we're going to need to take out some of these trees, which is a cost to us." And then you got a homeowner who's been part of an HOA who bought in there and all of a sudden, well, no, no, no. I you can't take out my tree that's been here since I I moved in in the 70s or we planted it when my granddaughter was born or whatever. I think you get it yourself into a a whole lot of dis I wish we my apologies. I wished I knew more about it. You've been down the road, seen it. Uh but right now I think that's Pandora's box.

There's a lot of things. I did drive the road this afternoon. Yes. Yeah. Well, we'll we'll pull this one off to vote for after the consent agenda. Um let's finish the consent agenda and then we'll or move on to M and that is Mr. John Albertson. This is giving us approval to uh go through the process of filling out the paperwork for the Stanford Park pool uh grant opportunity that we have. So, I'd be glad to answer any questions. No. Oh, go ahead.

I'm just excited to see the the steps are in place. Thank you, D John. Okay. And so, this is the additional step for that. Yes, this is the first step that we'll go through and uh it will uh put us on track to be able to start getting reimbursements and and all the paperwork done.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Uh and oh, that's you too, John. Hold on. Come back. [laughter] That one is night winds. So this is for uh placing night winds uh the art installation at the Long View Arboritum. Uh it was at request of the arburitum board uh to move it from Trinity School to uh the arburitum. So I'll answer any questions.

Can I um I'm not able to give any opinion on this because I'm on the board of arboritum. So this is I have no opinion, no statement on this. Got it. Thank [clears throat] you, Sydney. No vote. Can you do that pull off separately? I don't know. I mean, it's not a financial interest. I don't think you have a conflict. I think you're just saying

it's not a You're not making any money. Okay. It's not It's a nonprofit. Yeah. Okay. And we and I basically pulled it just to hear more information exactly what what was going on there. That's why I think this one's exciting. Hopefully this piece of artwork finds its home. Right. If if you haven't been to the Arboritum, it's a city park. It's a wonderful, wonderful city park and they're doing a Christmas light festival starting, I believe, in about two weeks. So, it's a walk through. You go in through the Mod Cobb uh west side through the Mod Cobb parking lot, and I think you will really enjoy it.

Good. Uh, and O is Chief Boon. Good evening, Madame Mayor, Council, Mr. McY, happy to answer any questions on that. Yeah, I'm just u as an educator, I'm just wondering like more information about this this program and can you explain a little bit?

It's it's a grant opportunity. Um and what we're actually wanting to do with this is and it's a zero matching. So if we're awarded it u all the money will come to the city. It's to actually build a modular training center and classroom for our active attack training. As you know, especially in the education business, uh since the eval incident, some of the requirements now uh for state law enforcement for all law enforcement in our state, required to have training every two years. Uh we were actually started this before that law was passed. We've continued doing it. In fact, not only do we train Long PD, but we train just about every law enforcement agency around us with the help of Gre County Sheriff's Office, Smith County Sheriff's Office, and Tyler PD. Um, the bad thing about it though right now is we're we're generally always begging, borrowing, and uh to get a place to actually have this training. We'll be at an old school, but if a district's selling it, we have to move somewhere else. We'll we'll have training another location, but we have to work around other people's schedules. So, having a actual standalone facility would just uh really be great for our active attack training that that's required. And again, like we train the really the entire region and it benefits us to do that because most of our communities are smaller and if a an incident ever happens, uh even if an incident happens in Long View for our size, we're going to have other law enforcement agencies coming to us and it just gets us all on the same page, especially when we've already worked together and trained together. So you said the region. So what what um other than Long View uh what other school districts would be have access to the

Well, as far as no school districts will have access to it. Now if they want to send if they have ISD police, they can send them to that, but yeah, we have an agreement with alert uh which is basically the the hub for training on active attack in Texas. And I believe it's only uh our agency and Fort Worth PD are the only ones that are actually uhou partners with alert to provide that training. And what that does for us is basically we go to the front of the line if there's a train the trainer or if we there's a class we want to host uh we're able to do so but we actually provide that training and opportunities not just to Long View PD but again our surrounding area. So we have probably trained officers from Lufkin to Tester Canana and uh state line to probably well really the metroplex as well. Well, I appreciate you, Chief B.

Question on that. This, so I know you said police uh ISDs have police departments and all. Would this also work uh if ISDs had guardian programs and they come out and this train is not specifically for them. Now, there are some other portions uh and we could actually still if we had this building, it may not be alert training, but there are other uh classes. In fact, we we've trained some of our local school districts before. So, this building would work for that as well. Okay. Great. Thank you, Chief.

Thank you. And [snorts] a request for V, which is Keith Bonds. Hey, Keith. Howdy. What can I do for you? Uh, just I'm back [laughter] very shortly.

Flood mitigation services. Yeah, this is for when we have a sewer backup in someone's home and have to hire a contractor to clean it up and had one bid. I guess it worked out. So, need to start over. Yes, I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you, ma'am.

I said I couldn't hear what you said. I'm sorry. It's for uh when we have sewer backups in homes and we need to fix them up. So, hire a contractor to do that. I only had one bid. I don't think they were happy with the bids. You only had one bid. Mhm. Okay. Yes,

that's first. Okay, someone need to reject and start over. Okay, thank you. Um, so I would like to get a motion to approve the consent agenda with E pulled off that we will uh discuss separately. I'd like to make a motion that we approve the consent agenda with E pulled off separately.

Thank you, Mr. Raid. Second and a second. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Consent agenda minus E is approved. And since this is John's district, we're going to let him make a motion about E. Yeah. So since there's concerns, we'll motion to table it and then we'll discuss it and then see what we revisit for our December council meeting. So everybody Okay.

I got a motion in a second to table and we'll revisit in January or nope, December. Sorry, wrong way. Because they the petition they have to get the decision done this year or what they have to do is they have to go back around and do all the work they've been working on for about six years trying to get this to this point. So, okay, we'll put it on for action in December. I had a motion in a second. All in favor, please say I.

Any opposed? Fantastic. Thank you. Good discussion, friends. Uh, next on our agenda, our agenda is too many pages. Yeah. Uh, moving on to zoning item A, Mr. Michael Shirley. Thank you, Mayor, members of council. Mr. McY, um, I'm here to present the zoning items on behalf of Miss Choy as she's out of town at a conference this week. Um the first item uh is a request filed uh to consider application Z2505 or Z2520, sorry, filed by uh Mano Tabia, excuse me for picturing that. Uh requesting a reszone from single family SF4 to general retail for a portion of lots 20 and 21 in the Burgess Edition located at Leota Street. Um this is an area adjacent to existing commercial. They've acquired some additional property adjacent and they're just trying to get the zoning consistent uh for some future expansion. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Um P and planning and zoning commission and staff do recommend approval.

Okay. This item requires a public hearing that I will open at this time, but I do not have any citizen cards. Anyone have questions or comments for Mr. Shirley? If not, I will close the public hearing and call for a motion. I move to approve. A second. Have a motion and a second to approve. All in favor, please say I.

I. Any opposed? Zoning item is approved. We'll move on to zoning item B. Thank you, mayor. Uh this is um item Z25-21 followed by uh Brad Phelps on behalf of Highway 80 Rescue Mission to reszone from single family to heavy commercial uh for lots 1 through six in the Springside and lots 15 15A 15B 16A 16B of the Greton Heights located west of Avenue B uh between Melrose and East Grand Avenue. This is for a future construction of expansion of their facility. I believe it's for, uh, I believe a women's shelter. Um,

sounds right. And so, um, be happy to answer any questions you may have. Um, PNZ and staff do recommend approval. Excellent. Thank you. This item does require a public hearing that I will open now. I do not have any citizen cards, but I see the executive director, Brian Livingston, back here just here for questions. Thank you. We're glad you're here, and we appreciate the expansion of services. It's very important. Uh, any questions or discussion for Mr. Shirley? I will close the public hearing and call for a motion.

Motion to approve. Second. All in favor, please say I. I. Zoning item is approved. Thank you so much. We'll move on to zoning item C. Thank you, mayor. Applica, this application is uh planned development PD25-02 uh filed by Assad's Elquatro, Inc. Um this is located at 3700 Judson Road. This is to reszone from Agriculture to Plan Development General Retail. Um, this is the Summit Club property that you may be familiar with. Um, that property was zoned as a planned development when they originally developed it. Um, because of their mix of retail and the fact that they do have outdoor events that is kind of limited in general retail. Um, at that time they did not reszone the entire property that they owned, which you can see is the uh dark green a zoning uh because they're looking to expand some of their facilities and correct some areas uh where they built over the line. They're asking to uh reszone just a portion. Be happy to answer any questions. Um and planning and zoning and staff do recommend approval.

This requires a public hearing that I will open at this time. I do not have any speaker cards. Are there any questions or discussion for Mr. Shirley? All right, seeing none, I will close the public hearing and call for a motion. Move to approve. Second. I have a motion in a second. All in favor, please say I.

Any opposed? Zoning item is approved. We will move on to action items. Uh action item A, consider all matters incident and related to the issuance and sale of city of Long View, Texas, tax note series 2025, uh, etc. John Martin, Hilltop Securities.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Michael Martin with Hilltop Securities. I work with John Martin who is the financial adviser to the city. Um I'm just going to go over a few things in the book. Not going to go over the whole whole entire thing. I'll leave that to you guys later if you'd like. Um I'm going to skip to tab two in the first page. Um this is the rating report update from uh S&P Global Ratings. I'm happy to report that the city received a affirmed doublea uh bond rating with a stable outlook. Um the rating reflects uh long view our rating on long view reflects the city's stable economy and strong fis financial position. The city has intentionally built up uh reserves supported by officials conservative budgeting and revenue growth in property and sales taxes. I'm just going to go to the next page. And one of the key considerations and those bullet points there if you'd like to follow along. Um strong financial performance with six consecutive general fund surpluses before a capital driven draw on fund balance in fiscal 2024. Reserves remain a credit strength. And then towards the bottom, the outlook it says, "Stable outlook reflects our expectation that Long View Long View will maintain its strong financial position and its economy will continue to expand. I'm going to move to the last page of that tab. So just before tab three, um just going to go over the results from the tax notes bidding. Um, we sold these notes on a competitive basis. And basically the way that that works is it's kind of just like eBay, like you're all these different banks from all over the country have the opportunity to bid on the notes that the city of Long View is selling. Um, we received five bids with the winning bid coming from Bo

Financial Securities. Um, you can see in there that they came in at 2.68 and the next closest was 2.84. So, they really wanted you guys' y'all's debt. they wanted to to sell that. Moving on to kind of the meat and potatoes of the deal. In tab three, going to see a uh sources and uses city of Long View there. Um this is kind of like the flow of funds for the notes. You can see we have a PAR amount of about $8 million. Uh premium on the notes is 627,000. Um I'm I'll go through and show you guys how that what that means and how that's calculated in a second. And then the deposit to project fund is about 8.5 million. That deposit deposit to project fund. That is the amount that the city will receive on December the 10th, which is the date of closing for these notes. Um we have the deposit debt service fund. That's just a rounding amount. Um municipal bonds are sold in $5,000 increments. So you can see that the par amount of the notes is 7.945 million. And then the cost of issuance and the underwriters discount. Underwriters discount is basically just the sales commission for the bank that um purchased the notes. Moving on to the next page, we can see that we have uh 1 2 3 4 six uh principal payments starting in 2027 ending in 2032 um with about 1.5 million each year for the starting in 2027 ending in 2032. true interest cost came out to 2.682944. And then moving on to the next page, it's what we call the bond production report. So this is how that premium or production is calculated. Um so basically the best way I explain it is the interest rate. That's going to be what the city is paying. And then the

yield, that 2.59 in that first year, that's basically what the investor is earning on the notes. So they're willing to pay 104 cents on the dollar to get that tax exempt 2.59% yield. Then the last page of that tab is just our cost of issuance budget. Um this is uh just a budget that most of the time they come in we overbudget on purpose and anything that we over budget for is returned back to the city as well. Um, you have the financial adviser, bond council expenses. Bond council is called Parkhurst and Horton. Um, attorney general fee. Any publicly sold debt in Texas has to go through at through the attorney's general office for review and they collect a fee on that. Um, you have the S&P rating fee. That's related to the report that I went through earlier. And then a miscellaneous just in case we had a mess up. The fourth tab is the what we call the notice of sale or preliminary official statement. Um, this has basically all the information that anybody would want to know about these notes that would be interested in in purchasing them. Um, and then tab five is just some suggested motion language. Not trying to put words in y'all's mouth, but just trying to make your job a little bit easier. Happy to answer any questions. Do you have a

question? Um, two questions. First number one, first question, [clears throat] excuse me, in simple language, what is the benefit of having a double A rating compared to a single A or such as that? You get a lower borrowing rate.

In other words, when you AA is the highest down in our interest rate. In other words, we pay out less money with a double A that we'd pay more interest with like a single A. That's correct. All right. Now, you mentioned also the price of these bonds ended up being $104. I don't want people to think you're getting that $4.

No, sir. The city is receiving $104 for every $100 worth of bonds they sell. So, when maturity comes up, we're only going to pay $100. We're not paying back 104. We're just we're they're giving us 104, but we only owe them back 100. That's

right. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or discussion for Mr. Martin? If not, I think we have a motion. Read this on here. So, I move to adopt an ordinance authorizing the issuance and sale of city of Long View, Texas tax notes series 2025 and approving all other matters related there too.

I have a motion. Do I have a second? Yes. Second. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve. All in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Action item is approved. Thank you so much. You're already gone. Thank you. Uh action item B. Consider a resolution authorizing directing the city manager to execute any necessary documents for the purchase of several fire apparatus. Chief Greg Grimes.

How can I help y'all tonight? [laughter] Uh tell us what you would like to purchase there. We're going to be purchasing the uh uh midmount platform uh a rescue to I'm sorry, yes, a rescue engine and then the remainder are a regular velocity puck trucks. Uh we refer to them as engines uh from Pierce uh for a grand total at 8,436,47877.

Any uh questions or discussion for Chief Grimes? Just one. Yep. Go for it. When you say um uh midmount, is that a ladder truck? Yes, sir. It's uh the ladder base is in is right behind the cab versus on the tail end, which would be uh considered about just just for curiosity about how high will it extend for?

It's 107 ft. How many? 107. It's way up there. You want to climb it? [laughter] No. No. That's a good No. Any other questions for Chief Grimes? If not, I need a motion. Move

to approve. Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Action item is approved. Thank you so much, Chief Crimes. Action item C. Consider a resolution amending the financial management performance criteria for the city of Long View to maintain unassigned fund balance in the amount of 15% of budgeted annual operating expenses. Mr. McY.

Yes. Uh I I prepared this slide just as a summary of where we're at right now, what our fund balance looks like. We had at the end of next at this last fiscal year, we had $23.6 million and 10% minimum based on that budget was $10 million. The fire apparatus seed money that we replaced that we just took action on was what we set up was the ability to do what you just did was 5 million. So that leaves current unallocated reserves of 8.6 million. The 5% additional reserve that we've talked about, there's been lots of discussion about it. I think everybody has a really good understanding of that. That would be about another $5 million based on our current year's budget. So that would still result in unallocated reserves of an excess. We still have $3.6 million. And so I just wanted that to know that's a current snapshot of where we're at. Not subject to anything else. That is where we would be with this motion.

Okay. Uh questions, comments, discussion. No. Anybody? No. Okay. Uh do I have a motion? Motion to approve. I'll second. I have a motion and a second to approve. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Action item is approved. Action item D. Consider a resolution authorizing an economic development incentive agreement between the city of Long View and 9inth Avenue Foods. Yay. 9inth Avenue Foods under the authority of chapter 380 of our Texas Local Government Code. Mr. Wayne Mansfield. Uh,

we're glad you're here. Thanks for waiting till the [laughter] end. Sorry, y'all. Best for last. Oh, I thought those were Cokes when you walked in. That makes so much more sense. Mayor, I'm glad that as well. Well, I was almost about to say uh good morning, but [laughter] no, we're we're excited to be before y'all this evening to present the 380 agreement uh which is part of the incentive package associated with 9inth Avenue Foods uh the city's participation portion of it. But before I would uh will do that or answer any questions regarding that, I'd like to introduce Mr. Steve Goldenstein with representative with NH 9th Avenue Foods to introduce to council and welcome to Long View. Thank you Wayne and Madame Mayor Council. Uh out of respect for all of your families, I'm going to keep this to about one hour. [laughter] I wouldn't do that to you. You'd kick me out of here. Uh but on behalf of 9inth Avenue Foods, we want to thank you all for uh the hospitality this last several months as we've been looking at many different communities all over Texas trying to figure out where we're going to call home and uh we're very happy to say that we want to be in Long View. Uh we're we're excited to be here. It's a great community. We've been welcomed and uh we can't thank you enough. and and with Wayne and Heather and the team and the economic board, uh we we really appreciate everything that uh and all the work that's gone in uh to support 9th Avenue Foods. We're going to be a great employer. I can tell you that. Um we have many plants. We have a big vision and we're executing that vision and uh we will be great stewards of the community and uh we look forward to breaking ground I hope in February. So, but thank you all very much and I I hope to be running product and that specific product two years from now here in Long

View. And uh that specific package right there we'll be doing about 80 million of a year. Wow. So just just that one line. So we're excited to be here and thank you all again. Well, Steve, we are excited and proud to welcome you to Long View and we will support you in any way that we can. We are just very blessed and very grateful to have you. So thank you for choosing us.

Thank you. And on behalf of all of our company, thank you. Okay. [applause] I would like to add and Steve kind of touched on it. It's it's an incredible number of partners that are involved in making any project work and especially uh this project because of the the unique nature of it involving wastewater water consumption and so forth. But without the uh cooperation with Rand and Maryanne and Michael Shirley, Dwayne Archer, Rick, all of them, Scott, you know, it just took a lot of work in a very short period of time to make this happen. Um Rollins flexibility and cooperation and working and trying to meet in the middle where it benefits both um the company and more importantly the community is not an easy thing to do. certainly understands the balance that is needed to make that happen. Um, we do have one of our board members here this evening, Ranja Kadali, our vice chairman. Um, so the overall package, the incentive package that we put together includes LEO's participation, the city's participation if you so vote tonight, as well as the counties. But the total incentive package represents I think Heather what about a two and a halfyear payback to the community with everything that we're putting into it. All three entities are putting into it. So it's it's fairly aggressive incentive package but it's a very quick return back to the community. And I'll be happy to answer any questions if anybody has any.

Any questions for Wayne? I just uh just want to say again just another example of the wonderful job uh Mr. Mansfield you're doing with the Long View Economic Development Company and appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Yes. Great job. Do I have a motion?

Motion to approve. I have a motion and a second. And a second. All in favor, please say I. Any opposed? Resolution is approved. Thank you'all. Good job. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh, next. Oh, that's the end. Uh, we're moving on to items [laughter] items of community interest.

Mr. Connley. Yeah. I'd just like to say um on behalf of Pine Tree, but I I know the entire Long View community, we appreciate our veterans and uh and just being a part of school systems. If you ever get a chance to uh visit a school, a local school, and be a part of those ceremonies, I think uh teaching our young people reverence for uh our military and uh is the is the only way we can sustain and be the greatest military in the world. And uh uh you can see the kids with smiles on their faces and appreciate all the veterans that show and uh at Pine Tree and uh the Pirates tomorrow night in Lumberton uh round one. Congratulations to coach Bachmann. Good luck to uh the football team at Pine Tree. And then finally um I think we started this it says fourth annual a few years ago. It's at at Pirate Stadium. Um, we just really had an idea cuz we had a few uh families that had a little competition going on about who had the best tamali. And so we organized a a Hispanic heritage festival. It's at the stadium. And so there's uh competition for tamalei salsa and dessert and prizes. And um that'll happen from 5 to 7 and also student participation. And then it's it's just a fun night. And uh everybody everybody's invited. Come out to Pine Tree Stadium 5 to 7:00 on Saturday.

Joy Hispanic Heritage. Awesome. Good. Miss. Uh yes. I just want to um talk about uh Commissioner Craig. The official arrangements for him will be um Sunday um November 16th at 2:30 p.m. at Mob Cobb. Um there will be a visitation in wake um Saturday, November 15th from 1 to 6 and the wake will be from 6:00 to 7. I just want to add that um this city, this county has lost a great leader, a great advocate, a great pastor and just a great person all the way around and just someone that shows extremely extremely great leadership qualities and he will be dearly missed. That's all.

Thank you, Mr. Raiden. Yes, ma'am. Um, I concur with Miss Moore on the loss of uh, Pastor, County Commissioner Craig. It's a huge void for our community. Um, we will keep his family and his church members in our prayers. Uh, moving on. You know, I love this time of the year, this tradition. I was reminded of it. This will be our sixth year offering this community dinner. And I am so happy and blessed that we're able to do this again. It's literally a free community Thanksgiving dinner. We cannot do this without the coordination of our city manager, uh, parks director, Mr. Albertson. Thank you, sir, for all of your help with this. Um, and I'd like to invite everyone out to come and join us. Um, it's just a great Thanksgiving dinner for everyone to come and eat in this time of the year and what's been happening in our country over the last few months. Um, I feel like this year will be extremely special. So, thank you for that, Mayor.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Ray. Mr. New. Yes. So, um, don't think I have anything prepared, but I do want to say like the, uh, remembrance and everything for the celebration of Pastor Commissioner Greg, like those that weren't able to be here live listening to that choir. I mean that that's something I'm gonna remember for rest of my life. It was they they was very touching. They did an amazing job. Beautiful voices

every Sunday. Every [snorts] good they very good. Um so I definitely appreciate that. And then also this is impromptu as well. Um I do want to tell being at the um Long ISD's bond groundbreaking today. Councilwoman Moore was there. Uh Ray was there, Kristen was there, you know. Um I want to like just give a shout out to our development services team. They have a lot of high-profile projects right now. And so this the LD groundbreaking wasn't just one groundbreaking. It was three. I mean, they were shuttling us around. Uh we were throwing green dirt everywhere. Mhm.

And so the the amount of the projects that they're doing on just the LID, then you have fresh, you know, fresh is not just a single store. That's 10 stores in one. I mean, it is a mass it's it's an amazing and massive facility uh there for experience. Then on top of that, they have not one, not two, but three brms coming to Long View on top of that with a very highly critical opening date for all these uh which is very appreciative. Then you also had Sprouts on top of that which is also here and we're so thankful for them and opening with that. And then of all the different things we also had Amber Meadows which is um a affordable housing apartment complex over off of uh Fairmont and speaking to them. They they raved about the city and the work the development services and they are looking for like if there's potential projects in the future. They do they do uh development all over the state of Texas and they raved about it and so we need affordable housing. We're doing a housing survey study right now and so again, development services is knocking it out. Uh and then no pressure, uh Michael, the 9inth Avenue Foods is coming in. So, um yeah, so we got that as well. So, appreciate y'all.

That's right. [laughter] So, just want to say appreciate you. A lot of it's going on, a lot of development, a lot of excitement. So, appreciate y'all and we can't do it without you. So, thank you and your team. That's all. Mayor, Mr. Barill. All right. Uh first off, want to say congratulations to the Spring Hill Lady Panthers. Uh they won their regional championship in volleyball and they'll play in the state semifinals uh against Eagle Mountain November 15th in Fort Worth. So encourage you to get out and go support them. U want to give it up to the Big Blue Brigade. They finished third in the state of Texas and uh military marching band. And you got to understand, you know, you're talking about 200 school districts and we already mentioned two big things that are happening right there. Plus what uh Mr. Connelly mentioned in regards to Pineree uh with the football team. Excited for uh Spring Hill. Again, they had a uh veterans uh program this week, invited veterans out, and it'd be interesting to know how many veterans come out. All told for all the programs that was going on that the schools put in. Uh, I know I went to Pine Trees because I wanted to see my granddaughters participate, but they involved every campus in in throughout the school district. And I think that's great. And man, the respect and the attention that the kids pay to it, it's it's a valuable lesson. It's well worth it. And thank you to all our veterans uh for what you've done and those that are serving today. Thank you. Uh, now holiday decorating contest. I've got to I've got to rig this. So, it's time to get ready for the annual Long View Holiday Decorating Contest. This is open to all residents and businesses within the city of Long View. The best part, it's free. Uh, but there's multiple cash prizes and gift cards for categories like people choice and creative excellence. There's even a travel and trophy for creative excellence award winner. Uh to enter, you got to all you have to do is upload your photo of your exterior decorations by Thursday, December 4th. Community voting and a map

of all entries will be available so you can have a self-guided tour. And uh if you worried about getting around, I got my buddy Sydney here. He'll Uber everybody around. U we'll talk about it later. I forgot to mention it to you.

[laughter] Voting runs Monday, December 8th to Sunday, December 21st. You can vote online via Facebook worth one point or in person. Visit Long View Marketplace and it's worth five points. Winners will be announced on Monday, December 22nd, just ahead of Santa Claus getting here.

Uh, next thing I've got is there's a 42 domino tournament. They don't play straight dominoes because I've got a trophy for that. And I guess that's the reason John and the people at Green Street Recreation said we'll play 42. Kind of take me out of this. Uh but it's happening Saturday, November 15th from 9 to 12 in the morning. Uh Green Street Recreational Center. Early registration is at 8:15. And here's the most important part. You'll be on time because there's a pancake breakfast that'll be provided. You can sign up as a team or just show up and be partnered with other available players. There are prizes for first and second place. It's free for all Green Street Recreation uh members and for non-members it'll be just $5.

That's it. Excellent. Mr. Allen, thank you. Thank you. Okay, Ray, if I show up at Broton Center, can I get a drumstick [laughter] for your Thanksgiving meal? Yes. And you can eat it in the game room. Okay. [laughter] Well, I'll bring my milk with you.

Exactly. Absolutely. No, I just um No. Oh, yes. I want to understand this is our only meeting in this month. No, you come back in two weeks. I'm just kidding. Yes. Don't say what? Yes, it is. [laughter] Yes, it is.

All right. No. Um, we're doing fine. I appreciate the meetings and we city manager. We need to get on overtime for tonight. [laughter] There's not in the budget, sir. Well, going to have to amend it then. All right. No, we're doing fine. Thank you, Mr. Allen. Anything?

Uh, one thing. So, I want to say y'all said all these nice things about Michael Shirley. Uh, imitation is the best form of flattery, but it's not from that. It's from He broke his foot. He's wearing a boot now, too. So, anyway, Michael, um, I did want to mention though, uh, I really want to applaud what council did with the first two items in the fire apparatus program. And I can't say that enough. We have for as long as I have been here, we have never had a system to replace fire apparatus. And it has been oneoffs. And you should take some pride and solace knowing that you've set that on the right path moving forward. And it may seem like just a thing that we did, but it will have a longlasting input impact on this community. And last, uh, welcome milk. I'm so thankful for the partnership we have with Leco. Um, 9th Avenue Foods has been every bit that they were tonight and it is the largest capital investment in Long View in its history. So,

yeah, thank you. It has been a very exciting couple of weeks for us. So, let's we'll just keep on rolling with that. Um, thank you. Thank you to the Woodland Hills Choir. That was really special. I thank you for setting that up. Um, my announcements tonight, I want to thank everybody that contributed to the Long View food drive. Last Friday, we took in over 5,000 pounds of food that was shared with our pantry partners. Um to date, we have raised $24,000 towards a $30,000 goal that will be split between those six nonprofits that are seeing very high numbers this month. So, if you are interested in contributing, we are still accepting food donations at the library. The Thanksgiving drive is coming up and um we are accepting money through the end of the month. So, thank you for those that have participated and those that will participate. Unity Honors nominations are open now through November Nope. Yep. Open now through November 30th. You can find that on our website there. Please take some time to um nominate someone who deserves this very nice, very prestigious award. This is um a very nice event and uh if you go look at our past recipients, you will see how uh important they are in the community and the work that they've done. So, please consider nominating somebody there. uh homeless resource day. We are beginning to take donations starting December 1st through Monday, January 19th. Again, at the library, those items are listed online. Um we will be in the future looking for volunteers to participate in the point in time count that you heard talked about earlier. So, if you are interested in getting more involved, now is the time to reach out and contact one of us on how to do that. Uh Christmas tree lighting is happening at Heritage Plaza Saturday, November 22nd from 4 to 7:00. That's a really fun event. a community event that there's lots of things going on for your family. And so if you have any kids, this would be a great time to take them and enjoy the magic of lighting that big Christmas tree together. The Christmas parade is happening Thursday, December 4th, 6:30 to 8 in downtown Long View. Would love to see you there. That's always a lot of fun. And uh happy Thanksgiving. I hope

everybody enjoys the holiday with family and loved ones um and just enjoys being together. So, thank you guys for being together with us for two and a half hours tonight. Good job, guys. And we are adjourned.