City Council - Special Meeting

I'm going to adjourn a long time. Thank you. So, is it cool? We'll go ahead and call this work session and uh personnel meeting to order and welcome uh everyone's welcome. Glad to have all of you. So, what's the first item on the agenda, Scott? Budget discussion. Budget discussion. All right. So, we're going to go into the budget discussion first. Uh we don't have a city manager today, so uh we'll let the mayor pro tem take over. Go ahead, mayor pro tem. What you got? All right. We're actually Shannon and I sitting here going through all these printout stuff trying to figure out which one's which. Yeah, he gave you about four different choices, didn't he? Yeah. I mean I think there's about seven different. Seven different. I mean, I mean, I kind of started out for me. All right, go ahead.

there's so many differences on every single one of these that, you know, and without Tyler to explain where or what his position is. Yeah. I'm not sure how this is going to work out. And that's just being honest. All right. That's terrible. I mean

I never seen a situation like this where a city manager [clears throat] just up and quit in the middle of a race. I mean, a race driver jump out of his car in the middle of a race would be tough, wouldn't it? Car would be riding out on the track by itself. The original one that he was presented to us that one if I remember correctly, we were not we were just about agreeing with everything that was there, the original one. What last What except for the salaries. I want to say April 2nd. And then Original budget April 2nd. That one like I said, it was the salaries, and that's why we I said, "Well, let's come up with solutions so we can hash this out. But then when me and Shane were talking the other day, trying to figure out which one is it really right. Don't know. So, that's where I'm at. Here's Here's the good news. We don't have to have the budget passed by June 30th. We still got plenty of time. But I would First thing I would do, I'd try to secure a an acting city manager to where we could move forward with you know, running the city and getting someone in here to take care of the employees and take care of the scoreboard. I think that would be the number one priority and just skip over the uh work session for the for kind of adopt the budget or get the budget ready. We still have plenty of time. How you doing, Mr. Attorney? How are you, sir? Wherever your search bar is. But that would be my recommendation that we just go into executive session to talk about hiring an interim city manager to get the city up and running. And then follow up with another meeting after you do or maybe get an an acting city manager to run this place. And then you can follow through with what are you talking about in the

upcoming budget and getting everything in perspective cuz we're still operating on an old budget. We're not in no dire straits. No one's going to jump out the window now. We just got to get get it organized. That's all. Talked to Mr. Attorney Mr. Attorney agrees with that we should be organized to have someone running the city, right? I agree with that. Thank you. Thank you. I think the only thing that I would add, if it's all right, Mr. Mayor, is that you do want to make sure you comply with the Local Government Fiscal Control Act and have the budget submitted to the clerk by uh June 30th.

and I think you're on track. Everything has to be done in the interim. I understand that, but then right now the biggest concern for this board in this city is to get someone here to run the city. Mhm. So, that I would need a motion. John, how would we have to have a proposed budget from you? The statute The statute says 10 days. I mean, typically the practice has been 30 days to set it out and then on and then you have to have the public hearing before um June 30th. So, the practice has typically been to submit the budget prior to the May meeting, set the public hearing in May. It would usually be really a 30 days, but the statute does not require that long. So, It is 10 days.

Yeah. That's right. That's what I was curious about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to get it the last minute, like 10 days before the adoption of the budget to have the public hearing. But And in the interim, we need to have a budget presented to the folks, but we need a city manager, an acting city manager, someone to fill in to run the city to help us with this whole

Right. Although there are various drafts of a budget and a budget message, and that would comply with the statute, it doesn't mean that the council's all in agreement with that. Like that could be submitted and ultimately a majority of the council will have to approve the budget, and that doesn't mean they have to approve the budget that the manager submits. I mean, there's a lot It's My impression I wasn't at the last budget retreat, but my impression is there's a lot that's agreed on. There's some things that still need to be tweaked, and so you could and you know, have that budget submitted. You do need a budget officer, and the statute say the city manager is the budget officer, so he needs to submit that, but I feel like the council's on track to meet all those things, but I I would want or I would recommend that that, you know, Yeah, we're nowhere near out of trust. We're nowhere near out of, you know, being ready to have a budget approved by June the 30th. We just need to get organized and move forward with getting us an interim manager in the meantime. And for me, I mean, just kind of looking at the the different variations, to me there's a lot of back and forth. Well, there's a lot of data that's changed. Numbers have changed, and I'm not sure what where I mean, once you kind of know what your revenue's going to be for your Avalon, you know, you you kind of go with that. And I know it's not set in stone, but it's figured about three or four different ways in here and between the different budgets. But that's the whole

That's kind of some of the questions I The question is not the mother chase. It's going to be from uh Teresa is the tax office giving us a total value of what our city's going to be able to be taxed for in this upcoming budget year. Once she gives you that, then you can

before the time to set the budget, but now I've looked back on on the audit from, you know, I'm pulling data from the audit from the last Only thing we can go by is what's on the actual on the tax books now is what what each property is valued at. And then you set the tax rate according to what the total values are. I mean, some of these I think were set off of the TR report from 25. I think some of these were set off of the Everything's changed. Just like it has down there is 100 is 300,000, 700,000. They've already got things up to [snorts] date as far as the new reevaluation stuff. It is in their control. Not not the new reevaluation is coming in a year or two down the road, but it is what things like the homes being built and things like that. They're on the books now. She would be the only one that can give us that information. With a city manager or without a city manager, it's got to come from her desk to tell us how much money low is the value of our city is worth. And then you go set the tax rate accordingly. Of course, you know that. You've been here a long time. You're a professional. But we need help to get an acting city manager on board to help this council get to where we need to be by June the 30th. And I would suggest that we table this deal about the budget session, move directly into going into a executive session to talk about the situation with the city manager job up and leaving us in the middle and we've paid him all this money. Mr. Attorney, I'm very disappointed in this whole process. He has not He has failed this whole city and along with the board and the whole city. You know, it's okay to resign. It's okay to take another job, but how do you fulfill your obligations? Or they need He needs to be sued for leaving not doing his obligations. And that's the truth, and you know it's the truth. Things are Things are in disarray, right, Scott? We need to adjust this thing and get it straight. All of us. I'm just Scott All of us. I'm just talking to him directly because he

is the mayor approach to him, and he has a lot of responsibility that we don't see. He works his butt off trying to get these things together, and I appreciate it. And what a smart man he is. So, that being said, I think we need to make a motion to uh do this later on and then go into executive session to discuss hiring an interim city manager if that's okay with the council. I don't have anything else. Anyone else? I'm sorry. I don't I didn't mean to take over and interrupt you. I just know, you know, the first budget was balanced. The issue between us was the increase at the police department. And then Shane brought up I I might have been mistaken about going across the board the 3%. I like that idea, but I think that was the fourth budget, and it took the two two cents out of city. And I'm just now the last budget, the one Tyler sent out last night, I haven't I'm still going over it. Uh it's it You know, it's going to take some time to study this thing correctly. I mean, I understand what you're saying, Mr. Mayor, but he keeps sending these different types of budgets and things like that. He's no longer in the picture. I don't even pay attention to what he says, what he's I'm disappointed. We need to move forward with what we have, and that's us. That's all we've got, and we got to move forward and get an interim manager. That's not That's the first priority we need, and then we can continue down the road with this budget. Nothing's dire right now. Nothing's as Everyone's going to get paid. Every Everything's okay, but we just got to We just have to move We got to move forward. Mr. Travis, I don't know if you I know you said you're just now kind of getting to look at the

last one sent last night. Yeah, the one late last night. But something that's puzzling me is just for example, admin salaries. You know, on the on the administration salaries, that was the one sent last night was some sort of pay increase, raise. But if you look at the salaries, there's a decrease of $114,000 from last year. I I noticed that.

So, I mean, how are we going backwards? So, I'm not sure. I mean, so there's a couple other departments that are going backwards in the salaries. So, I'm not I'm kind of lost on these budget proposals that he sent out, to be honest. Because a lot of numbers are not not making sense. That's why I suggest we table this and then have another work session after we get an interim city manager on board. We've got to go to work. We got a lot of work to do, and we can't city's not going to be able to stop just because he's gone. We got to continue forward. And we've got to get this budget adopted. I realize that more as much as you do. But we got to move forward. Number one, table this if you can until we get an uh interim manager and then that way we can get the we need to get all the figures from Lisa. She's the finance officer. She should be able to give us anything that we need, Lisa. Anything that this council needs, you should be able to give it to us in in a relatively short amount of time like clicking a button. And that way they can get all the actual figures, how much money we have to operate with. This is only a $7 million budget. You can do it in your head. But we got to move forward with it. We can't stop. And the only way we're going to move forward with this is to eliminate this right now. Just table it until we get the information from Lisa. And only Lisa because Lisa is the finance officer. Who else is going to be able to give us our information other than her? And she can work with the tax office and the water department and everything and she can come you can you can come up with something looking at the old budget and and relatively just simple and add the increases that you need that you feel like we need to take care of the things that this council has been talking about for the past 2 months. And they've Y'all are doing a good job. You're trying to do it the right way. You're studying hard. You're working hard. And I'm proud of each and every one of you. And whatever we come up with, that's going to be the budget. But we can't do it ourselves. But we're going to have to depend on Lisa as far as the finance officer. Correct?

She'll be the one to give us the information we need and she can send it out in email form to y'all and y'all can study it. And I'll just when we get to the meeting, we'll talk about it. I don't mind going into executive session and talking about that. Um I don't mind going into executive session and talking about the city manager. But is the interim uh manager the person the candidate here that we can interview? idea. I don't know nothing. Same the gentleman on the back right there. Well, instead of um let's take it by step. Let's go interim manager and then discuss budget here in short. We need to table the budget.

instead of you know, continue to talk about it, I guess. Yeah, let's let's just continue the work session for the budget and let's make a motion to go in executive session where we can discuss That's pretty much what I said. Okay. Then let's make the motion. May I hear your second on that? Yes. Make the motion. I'll make a motion that we close the budget budget meeting right now and then go into executive session for the purposes of discussing city manager or personnel business. An interim manager, yes. Interim manager. Yes. I got a motion. Have a second.

Second. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Thank you. I'm sorry to have to dismiss y'all, but we have to talk about this executive session. But thank y'all and thank y'all for being here. Thank y'all for being interested in the city. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.