City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

What we're, I guess this is the beginning of the city council meeting. It's 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 7th, 2026. And we're going to go ahead and call it to order. The roll call is we don't have a quorum right now. We don't need one. But Councilman Hinton will be here, should be here for our council meeting. So we'll go ahead and do the invocation. Thank you.

God and Father in heaven we come before you this afternoon so very thankful for all the blessings and truth that you give us that you bestow upon us and also the opportunity to serve each other and serve the city of Mount Pleasant we ask that you give us wisdom strength and courage to identify the right thing to do it and follow through we ask that you give us appreciation for all the truth the blessings that you give us and also for the opportunities we ask that you make the most of this time This evening, as we serve our citizens here in Mount Pleasant, that we do everything to your glory. We ask this all in your Holy Son's name, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you, everybody. We're going to go ahead and move on to just the item number one, which is the workshop. It's a presentation and discussion of the compensation study, the budget, and the strategic planning.

Mayor, Council, this evening we have the presentation of our long-awaited compensation study. We have Shane, our consultant, and I'm going to give him as much time as he needs, and then whatever time he does not use, we'll go over strategic planning. The good thing is we're not going anywhere, so if we need to schedule another evening, we could certainly do that. But Shane, I'll give you as much time as you need, and we certainly appreciate you being here.

Absolutely. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Mayor and Council. So first I want to call attention to a handout that you have up at the diaries. And what this is is every position, that's right, every position in the city of Mount Pleasant, by department with the current midpoint for each of those positions in the current step plan. They're ranked against the full cohort of the market, as well as they're ranked versus the seven rural cities within the market as well, which I'll go over those, but they are Bonham, Corsicana, Jacksonville, Nacogdoches, Palestine, Paris, and Sulphur Springs. And then the DFW adjacent communities are Ennis, Greenville, Rockwall, and Waxahachie, okay? And what you'll see there is your midpoint, the rank, and then each individual city where we were able to get a good match for the position. And then at the very end, there are two columns. One is the 50th percentile point for the full cohort. The last column is versus the rural communities at the 50th percentile. So you can look at your midpoint versus the 50th percentile, which is essentially the midpoint of the pyramid. And I'm going to give you these details because we're not going to go through each position in the presentation. But you've got these details that's been presented to you before in some other format, but we tried to boil it down as simple and straightforward as we possibly can. And so you have that. Obviously, this will be in my final written So what I'm trying to accomplish tonight, and I'll be as efficient as I possibly can, what the request is tonight is acceptance that the analysis is complete and defensible, and we've been through a lot of meetings, some of you yourselves, one-on-one as well as several group meetings, an endorsement of the study as the foundation for subsequent policy and budget decisions, and a record that you've reviewed this. It is not a request for you to adopt anything. That is going to be a discussion between Rob and Candace, Holly, your department directors, and yourself. It's not a request for approval of any raises for anyone. It's not a selection of a director model or anything along those lines or a commitment to any specific dollar. So what we did, we did three main things. We looked at your internal structure, We looked at what the market said for each position, and then we looked to try to target a response. And if you remember early on, I pointed out some structural challenges with your existing step, predominantly with compression and issues with promotion. promotion premiums not being sufficient, and compression being where there's just not enough range and you have a lot of people that are already up close to the top of the range. And I proposed an entirely new structure for you, but I'm going to tell you right now what this is tonight. After all the meetings that we had, I set that to the side and just simply looked at what if we moved positions to a different grade that is more fitting to both the market or the compression issues vertically that we have. You know, political and budget realities are what they are, and my job is to give you a product that fits your reality. And it became very, very clear to me that your political and your budget reality, based on the feedback that I got, was going to be very, very difficult for the city to absorb anything else. And so we've just gone as grossly simple. The recommendation and the alternative will be in my final report so that staff wants to hang on to that and then present it to you at a future date and we update some things. But what we do propose tonight or what we're going to throw out there should fix some of the short-term issues, but it's going to leave you with some of your long-term issues, okay? The full city cohort, we went through them here, Bonham, Corsicana, Ennis, Greenville, Jacksonville, Nacogdoches, Palestine, Harris, Rockwall, Silver Springs, Black Batch. Of the non-metro sub-cohort, Corsicana kind of on the border, Bonham, Corsicana, Jacksonville, Nacogdoches, Palestine, Harris, Silver Springs. You have each of those individual communities in your detail list there. And then what we tried to do was match a midpoint to the 50th percentile midpoint for each of these within the marketplace and see what that looked like. So what is in the benchmark are base salaries, okay? I have certification pay. I have incentive pay and things like that. By and large, y'all are more competitive on the health insurance side and on the TDRS side. By and large, your certification pay and education incentives are pretty much on par with most people. There's some that are higher, some that are lower. But really, it wasn't enough to make a difference for the challenge that you're facing. So the overall population, and this is full-time employees, okay? This is not your part-time. A base payroll of about 11.1 million over 172 employees. And you see the breakdown here. 11 directors, 87 civilians, plus your telecommunicators. 32 sworn police, 33 fire. This changes up and down depending on the week. For example, I just recently found out... you know, about some other major personnel changes. The market position of your civilian, so we've got three buckets here, below the peer 50th by more than 2.5%, above the peer 50th percentile by more than 2.5%, and within 2.5% plus or minus. Of your 17, you had 17 positions on the civilian side that were below the Pier 50 by more than 2.5%. You had 15 that were above the Pier 50 by more than 2.5%. You had 12 that were right kind of within the sweet spot, if that's what you're It's not uniform anywhere, okay? Your overall kind of comes out a little bit lower because of where some of this falls in the volume. You know, So here's a list of some of those that, or all of those that are currently below the tier 50, if this does not include police and the IRS, okay? So senior telecommunicators, defense services people. Some of this is some match issues as well, but kind of get the idea, okay?

Some of it's not accessible, yes.

Oh, 100%. This is yours. I'll be sending out this. Yeah. And I'm not going to label it because this is getting down into the weeds. It's not even, you know, and you can have those slides.

Yes, we'll also share it with all the council members.

That's right.

Staff already has it. Yes, we will share this. You'll be able to blow it up as large as you want.

I just wanted to point out those positions, okay? And more than likely, there's a quality control issue that I found on one of the public works positions in the foreman category that I need to take one more look at that I wasn't comfortable with and probably move up a little bit. Within the 2.5%, a lot of your utility technicians, three, they're off, but not by much. Operator ones are typically okay, and this is fairly consistent with feedback that we've received from the department. And then we've got some that are above. recommendation that I'm making what it did was take what they current the midpoint for their current grade in the current step plan and look at where the 50th percentile was for the marketplace and what grade they should move to if that's going to be the case what we also look for is for where there is clear progression

Making sure that the subsequent grade that they could move into actually is worth a lot. And when they changed it, it resulted in like 10, let me look at that again, forgive me. who's going to verify something for us.

Yeah, 10 changed to different grades on the civilian side. We also created two separate grades for the telecommunicators. They just didn't fit well within the overall.

And then we did some very specific things with the police and the fire department. So what we've got is 42 positions on the civilian side, 14 were below the 50th at more than 2.5%. 16 were slightly above, about 2.5% or more. The average gap was a little bit above because some of these were about 2.7%. telecom, senior telecommunications was below. Your other telecommunications was with a gap of about 2.4.

Before officer positions, we were close and not quite good.

This depends, again, how we look at the market matters. Several different ways to cut the data. compared to what we're doing. Same thing on fire. Some were good, some were not. I've already kind of shared some. So police officer and sergeant land close to tier 50 if they're using that cohort.

But remember, you're marked on the rural side, but your overall market for officers is quite large.

And then we also needed to make some changes because there wasn't enough of a promotion framework from sergeants, for example, to lose their incentive there.

And you end up with a chance of losing people mid-career going into leadership and going to leadership and we want to avoid that sort of thing. It's one thing to recruit new officers, but it's another to retain them as they become experienced and qualified.

Usually with that, there's tenure, which also means that the community is stronger as well, which is absolutely vital. So your overall, these recommendations, and we'll deal with police and fire in a second, we're only looking at about $60,000, okay, just to make the grade changes on this ability. Again, it gives you some short-term relief, but it does not fix the long-term structural problem. Okay? It doesn't answer your concerns about steps. Because, again, redesign, all of it looking very, very positive. No way y'all are positioned for a situation like this. On the fire side, We had 18 incumbents. The current midpoint was about 57.6. Proposed going to 68, but here it's right about 56.5.

We combined all three of the first of the fire grades, AA and BB, are blended together.

There was no 66.5. Driver engineer. The midpoint currently is about 65.5.

The goal is not to beat the market on all these positions. It's to be competitive.

And we see the rest of it. Overall, the gap summary, the current versus here, proposed is much more competitive. especially if you get people that they get more experience and that they're in the community. They've got some community ties, so as long as they're not driving them away, you've got better... Go ahead. Oh, it looked like you had a question. On the police side, current midpoint is 65-2. The tier is 74-1. We're supposing to take them up at the midpoint to about 75. Sergeant, 83-3 right now. The marketplace is at 95. We've landed with around 91. The lieutenant's at 98 versus 100. Looking at going up a little bit higher here, but some of this is because of promotion premium making it. that this is where we were compared to the past. Your assistant police, your assistant chief physician, that's going to be something that y'all can work right off the bat. Thank you. One of the things that FIRE requested and made sense was a debt position that was for them to both pay for their probation as firefighters and then move them into the FD2 classification, which is a combined classification of the old FD2 classification. FD2, which is the DVD classification of the police, officer 10 step sergeant uh lieutenant that was that works for what they're looking they catch they top out sooner but they reach their back

So what this does for us on the police side, officer to sergeant previously was about 10% premium.

This takes it to just around 24%. This is for someone in the middle of the grade. Sergeant to lieutenant was only 2.3% currently. This takes it to about 24%. That's real life. And then, of course, going to a system case, it would be 20%. Again, it's something for y'all to figure out where you want it. Because I didn't have to do it. Firefighter to driver right now is less than 1% premium. This takes it to about 15.4%. Going from driver to a captain was less than 3% premium. Now it makes it less than 5%. Going from captain to deputy chief was less than 3%. It's about 13.5%. The cost is greater on the fire and the police side to make the recommended change. You're looking at, on the police side, about $140,000. This, even as expensive as that is, represents a 6% increase on the police salary and about 8%. your director this is a little bit busy you've got this column here this is the director position this is their current salary here's where tier min mid and max and then how it compares to the mid or max City Manager is not in this because that's a negotiated. So your Assistant City Manager and City Secretary is just under $131,000. The minimum for that is $11,000. Almost $11,000. The minimum is $11,000. Any of these that are above the minimum, so you've got your chief of police, he's right just a little bit above what he is going to the back. That's probably it. Your fire chief, based on his tenure, he was just above the back. And again, tenure starts. The director of finance, that position, $10,000 per month of the cohort. Human resources, $10,000 per month. That's 50% for the peer group. The director of utilities, about $2,200, close to $2,300 below the midpoint of the cohort. And The men here is not the best measure because your scale is a little bit larger. The director of public works currently is sitting at about $1,600. The duties, though, include parks and recreation and other things that a lot of other public Your library director, the minimum here is a little bit . Not all libraries are . Our library . You've got about 3,500 . And airport manager, it's another situation. A little bit above the max.

However, you've got 137 aircraft based at this whole airport. And you've got an employee that's got, you know, one of the top players in the marketplace, honestly.

And has extended its career in service. So I looked at three different looks just to get a feel for cost and share that with you. If we said that all the directors at least need to be at the pure minimum, what would that cost?

It would cost $136,000.

If you move them midway between the peer minimum and the peer mid, it would cost just over 96,000.

And if you move them to the midpoint, the total cost would be about 160,000.

I've shared with some of your peers, Mayor, before, Y'all made some changes a few years ago, promoted people after some of the things that have happened in the past. We're a few years past that, and the key, I think, to think how to think about the directors, because it's a little bit harder than rank and file employees, the market minimum is the market minimum for doing the job. When we worry about certification, and the paper qualifications matching up with the person serving the position, it's not that those things aren't important, but if the person is doing the job and performing the job, you've got to be very careful about not paying them competitively because those positions in particular, Everybody knows each other and everybody is looking for their next best one. And you can end up with somebody disappearing on you very, very quickly. The things that tie them or their loyalty to you their community and their loyalty to their staff and their loyalty to each other. Your directors have built a very good culture here of working together and collaborating together. I do this with cities across the state of Texas, and there's some good staff out there, very good staff. I've never seen the level of intercommunication between directors that I've seen in this place. And that is impressive. To see a library director and a utilities director, a police chief actually aware of what's going on in development services, that is highly unusual. You've got a really good leadership team. And I would encourage y'all at the very least to make sure These directors are paid at the minimum. If your budget can allow it, I think that it's worthwhile. The other thing, if somebody is not performing to the task, that's a management problem, not a patient problem. And then you've got to make a hard choice to potentially replace them. But if they're performing, the minimum is the minimum. And then you can make decisions about experience, certifications and things like that and your city manager can develop performance criteria that allows them to to increase it so i would just leave that with y'all and encourage you to really really contemplate because they're a good bunch as a team they're hard to replace and uh it's going to be impossible to replace at these times

So total investment, civilian telecom, we're looking at about a 1% change here, around $60,000, 140 on the police side, 188 on the fire. If you just went and made sure that the records were at the minimum of the tier, about $424,000, which is 3.81% of the total. Okay? and it would be another $61,000 to move them all to the land.

So what this report is, we looked at your structural and market issues. Recommendation for very, very targeted, as conservative as possible. If you remember back in February, I believe, I suggested that any structural change would not be more than $600,000. Your worst case is looking at maybe $480,000. And $424,000 gets you a long ways down the road. It really addresses your police and fire for the long term. And it goes from a short-term perspective, really starting to address the civilian challenges. And the civilian challenges that remain is just fixing the compression issues that exist and then just getting some better classifications. And that's not gonna be anything super expensive. But this entire process, the goal has been to keep this as conservative as possible And I don't think it's much more conservative than going to 50% of rural markets, your peers within the region. And you see what those rankings are when you look at that. They're lower the number, the higher they are, the higher the number. So when you see eight of nine, that means they're the eight lowest rankings. but this is not talking about automatic cola automatic raises of colas not a recommendation to increase every employee's pay not a specific budget proposal and no commitment to an implementation timeline although i would suggest if your budget allows it This has got to be probably one of the key maintenance and operations things that has to be addressed. And we know this from the feedback that I've received. Number one, that y'all already knew about, that y'all could look at this.

Number two, the feedback I got from y'all individually, from your directors, and from the community as a whole and my life support team.

And I guess just before I take questions, I would just say, number one, y'all have been great. Councilman Corbell and Redfern Faulkner, y'all have been deeply involved in the committee. The senior leadership team here of Rob and Candace and Holly, they have been extraordinary. I'm sure they're sick and tired of me already. And then finally, the directors have been nothing but collaborative and helpful. They didn't come in with big asks. In fact, and certainly none of them had any input on anything I had to say or look into related there. In fact, some of them did leave. So just thanks to all of you. I've really enjoyed working with the city.

I look forward to giving you a written report and I'll answer any questions.

I'd like to say thank you. This is the best presentation that we've had. It seemed to have been simplified, easier for us, or easier for me to follow. I appreciate it. It gives me a better look at things where I can really concentrate on all the issues individually and take a look. So I appreciate it, and I'm really happy with it. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Thank you.

And ditto. I missed a little slide. So basically what you're suggesting is 424.

Yeah, if you could do that, it'll go a long ways for you. Don't forget that some of that, you know, doesn't all come just from the general fund because sewer and water is going to have some specific provisions to it, but Rob will take you through all of that.

But no, this gives us the guidelines. what to do now, plan for the future.

Great.

And it puts us to work.

Excellent. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you all for your participation.

I'm good, and I hate to ask the one question that our taxpayers are probably going to ask. With that and with the budget, and maybe for you or Rob, were we talking about a property tax increase in order to meet that, or are we just talking about making sure the rest of our budget balance, you know, balances to meet that? I know that's what everybody that's watching is in that direction.

I'll go ahead and answer that question. That is an important question. We talked about it during this study. We want to make sure the budget balances and we are able to offer the same level of service that we currently have and for better. A lot of, if you recall, when John was here with our audit, what he talked about is that if we do look at taxes, not summarizing, but if we do look at taxes as an increase, it's because we need to make sure our debt service is covered. That's our biggest issue with our debt service. And it is, if you look at our debt over the last five years, it is increased. We couldn't borrow anything else if we wanted to because we have, I don't want to say we're overextended, but we're definitely at our best. So our first and foremost priority is to make sure that we pay our debt. So if there were to be any increased taxes and we don't know what that looks like yet, we don't have all our numbers in, it would be because we have to pay the service. because those payments, they're not an option.

And our new sales taxes that we should be getting, would they be able to go towards that debt services? I know all of this stuff is separated out.

Our next budget workshop will have all of our numbers, so the tax assessor will be here as well. The reason she's not here tonight is she will not have the accurate numbers built after next week. So what we don't want to do is bring information that's not accurate, and then that gives us a springboard from which we jump forward and really determine and look at everything. There will be a needs, and then there will be a wants. We need people. We need this. We need that. We want X, Y, and Z. Well, the wants are going to have to go first if the budget doesn't allow it. So to answer your question, and I don't mean to sit on the fence, we don't know what that tax rate might look like yet because we don't have all the numbers. I think would be premature of me to say absolutely yes.

Would you like me to just highlight kind of where the city sits? So one of the things, and I presented this earlier this year, where you sit in the 32 communities within 100 miles of here, 9,000 people or more, you have the single lowest maintenance and operations tax rate by an order of close to 10 cents. Your debt rate is second to lowest in the entire region, and that's compared to a city that has a bunch of industrial value that's able to artificially drop down their debt rate and get a lot more debt service just because they have a lot more value. So I think it really does come down, as Rob said, to priorities and clearly communicating with the public and helping them to understand These things cost money, and services cost money, and just like the inflation we all experience in our personal lives, so does this building and all the staff and everything that goes into it, much less supply chain costs, et cetera, et cetera. So as your value grows, that puts downward pressure on your tax rate, which is good. But at the same time, you can get a little bit low compared to the needs and wants of your community. So hopefully this strategic plan that Rob's working on is gonna help identify some of that. And then y'all have the hard task of just helping people understand you want and need this. This is what it costs. Here are the mechanisms by which we can get there, and then the chips have to fall somewhere. And that's a hard conversation to have, especially in this political environment today.

Yeah, and I just – the one thing that I know is up in the air, and I'm sure we can't do any projections on it, but I'm sure our sales tax next year is probably going to look completely different, at least mid-27 by the time – Well, we've got a lot of businesses coming in, so it would be nice if – I'm sure we can't project it. But it's not doom and gloom that I see for our sales taxes and even our taxes. I think all of that money is going to start coming in. So I mean that's – I just saw a little – the last presentation just seemed a little bit more doom and gloom about sales taxes and where we fell and all of that stuff. And it's going up. I mean, all of our stuff is going up. So, I mean, that's all I'm saying is that it's more positive, I feel. And it's probably your job to pull out what you do pull out for us to be able to recognize what we are going against. But to me, it's more positive than what we're looking at.

Yeah, I would say this. Your payroll is getting police and fire addressed pretty strongly, and then certainly on the utilities and public works side as well as another important place, and then your directors. That positions you really well for the future. Everything else is just structural changes, and it's fairly marginal from a cost perspective. What's really challenging for y'all is on the revenue side. And some of that is a little bit, when I say self-imposing, you know, when I say council, I mean the long longevity of council, regardless of how long any individual members may have been here or whatever. But don't forget that as certain things increase, it drives your tax rate down and the temptation to take the no new revenue rate is very, very high. And the thing is, costs keep increasing. And that's not a doom or gloom thing. It's just we've got to still plan ahead. And the only warning I would say about sales tax is sales tax is very, very volatile. Take windfalls when they come and invest them in key things. But your property tax base is your stable growth. and base expansion mechanism that's out there. And you can do that through new growth, getting in good industry. Even if you're evading it, getting good pilot payments in exchange for it, awesome. And then that takes pressure off of your residential and small commercial and small retail. Or you grow the base overall, and if you're not having to evade it, it takes the pressure off of everybody, but don't bottom out your tax break. And just keep in mind that these other rural communities that your tax rate is low compared to, it's the rural communities out of that bunch that y'all are absolutely even lower, which is concerning because a lot of those communities are in the same boat y'all are in, and as we talk for years, they're struggling with some of the same issues, and yet you're even lower than they are, and their taxable value is not that substantially different. So I would just encourage you on the economic development front to bring in good industry that increases your property tax base and then educate your public to really understand how property tax works and how small incremental changes that get spread out across a larger group can have a massive impact on the things that they want. If they don't want certain things, no problem.

Yeah, and I know Shirley's probably going to clear this up, but my only contention with raising property taxes is the appraisal district is already doing that, right, with whatever increase that they put in place.

Not necessarily, because you have the no new revenue rate mechanism in place. And what that does is it basically says whatever you took in in M&O revenue last year, you get to get that same amount on the same properties that existed last year. So they inflated a bunch. Number one, residences are capped. They can't raise more than 10% in a given year. Number two, it drives what we call the no new revenue rate down. And so a lot of people end up with a tax decrease or they pay the same bill, but they're just paying it on a lower amount. They're paying it on a higher amount, but at a lower rate, and they're paying about the same thing. It's really, really important that you that someone dig into what exactly those effects are. And that's when the tax assessor comes. I assume that they're going to be modeling your no new revenue rate based on preliminary values.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I've asked for is what, in the last three to five years, what have we collected in our property taxes? This, this, this, this. And that's a great thing, too, is how much do we actually get to use of it, right? So that would be interesting for me because I don't understand a lot of this stuff.

And, Mayor, that's not unusual. Honestly, a lot of county commissions and councils simply do not. And the state of Texas hasn't made it harder. The legislature the last several years has complicated the process even more in the name of helping us, but it's actually muddied the waters and made it more and more difficult for people to understand how our property tax system actually works.

Yeah, and I think that presentation from Shirley is probably going to to give a lot of people peace on actually seeing the numbers, right? I mean, that's what we've been all about, is just what is being spent.

That's right. And against what kind of value, because what you'll find is your tax rate probably, I would guess, 10, 15 years ago, is probably 10 to 15 cents higher than it is today.

James.

Yes, ma'am.

Did I hear you right? I was taking a note that our bond debt is... lower, one of the lowest ones of the community. That surprises me, and that's where I was wondering because I did know that I think it was Paris, that Paris did not have as much debt as we did. Of course, Paris is much larger than we are.

Yeah, and they've got a debt rate that's almost twice what y'all have. They're like 15-something cents.

You're specifically talking about M&O debt rates, correct?

There is no, well, the INS, M&O rate, their M&O rate is higher than y'all. Their second, their second.

And while he's looking for that, Candace is in the, if she hasn't already, is emailing this presentation to each of you.

When we start working on this budget, that's always something that we come up and start talking about is what our bond debt is.

And that's going to be your interest. M&O is what we're talking about here that pays for your day-to-day and your small projects. Your public debt or your tax notes, the things, the bonds that people have voted on, and the tax notes that you go and get privately, those are what we call public debt. That's what you're paying for. Everything else, your revenue bonds and your certificates of obligation and maintenance and operations, that's paid for by the maintenance company.

And also, I think when we meet with Shirley, I know that they passed the state where inventory on businesses is not turned in as tax anymore. So I know we'll be getting that level.

Yeah, they capped it at 120 business personal property. And this isn't a bad change, but it is going to have an effect. especially for a community like y'all's where you have a lot of small businesses, the state cap the valuation at which business personal property can be taxed at $125,000. And so for small businesses that have less than $125,000 in equipment, machinery, and things like that, they will pay no tax on that $125,000. What that does is shift the tax burden to everybody else. Anytime we narrow the tax base, it pushes the burden out. But I think you may have had pretty decent growth in value, which that will help. Just understand that the increase in value does not give you an automatic tax increase. The no new revenue rate is a circuit breaker that tells tax payers, hey, are they trying to sneak in a tax increase on me? That number lets them know whether or not, and that's whether to have a conversation. And it tells you whether or not it's like, hey, we need about $500,000. We need about a million more. This is a tax rate that we need to stop getting. Are you willing to go to this, et cetera, et cetera? And taxpayers now have, they get the opportunity to vote on any tax increase that's more than three and a half percent above that number. So you have flexibility in that.

You just have to have hearings, make sure you communicate effectively why you're doing something that actually works for the public.

And let the chips fall where they do. I just think the conversations and the, that I see across the state getting one side of the council or a county commission trying to sneak something in, which obviously angers people, or they're not educating their public, or the public gets up in arms and elected members don't know how to effectively help. And so all of that can be resolved through good communication and transparency. real information and real data. And a lot of these conversations do not get had. We're seeing the same thing with data centers.

Shane, just for clarification, and also the public does not have this companion reference per city, per detail sheet, and we will make this public. But just for clarification for the public and also for us to have this, looking at page two, and I'm just going to take three, one random out of the civilian streets foreman. It is for the rank versus full and rank versus rural. It is three out of 11. Can you just for clarification, is one the best? Is 11 the best?

one is the highest of the beer group. And if it's against 11, 11 of 11 would be the highest.

So for Streets Foreman, we are 3 of 11. And then let's take another one that's high, Utilities Technician 3, which would be in the next section. It looks like it is a 4 out of 12. So would I like to move down to Firefighter?

That's correct.

We are a 10 of 12. Yep. And ADE police officer is 10 of 12. Yes. I just wanted to clarify that because I think it's important that we recognize the areas that we're really like. Those are not the only two, but those are pretty consistent in fire entity.

Sure.

Thank you.

And again, with a few caveats on the police and fire, that's based on this peer group rather than looking at it with the cost of living adjustment.

And I see current MP mid, so these aren't actual salaries of the people that are getting them, right? These are mid-salary ranges for that position.

Yeah, I had to compare positions versus positions. If I started looking at each individual employee, number one situation. We're looking at where do the positions based on your current pay scale match up.

So is it all their salaries averaged out to give us the mid?

No, no, no. We have the range.

The step?

That's right. The step plan. That's right. It's basically a combination of step five and six. That's a mid point.

Okay.

Does that help a little bit?

It does. It was just, as far as making decisions and stuff like that, it just was a little confusing for me not to see the actual salaries that, like, is there a gap between this service tech that's the same rate as this service tech?

That's being addressed in details, and those are personnel things that staff...

Okay.

Yeah. If y'all set the policy and get the overall macro structure... then it's on them to make that fit within your HR policies and everything else for the individual employees. And the recommendations are going to be in the staff side of that report.

And if it would be helpful for council to see, let's just say, the starting salary for firefighters in these cities and also for officers or library assistants or custodians, we could get that as well. I believe you have that.

Actually, I think they already have been but well, I think Council's concern would probably they're a big part of their only concern is our history with with what had happened in the past. So we want to make sure we actually do match up with the market and absolutely pay fairly. But out of that, that's kind of what they've been looking for is, are we paying somebody what they're worth? And that is, I know, probably their biggest concern. Are we paying people what they are worth?

A lot of what may have happened in the past came outside of the pay structure. And then anything that happened within it, frankly, may have worked itself out over time because of inflation. And there's been some catch-up. And then I think y'all resolved, you know, this council and then maybe a few that came, you know, in an election or two before, y'all have addressed some of the individual things on a personnel basis, and particularly at the director level. And a lot of that has been resolved. The structural challenges that you have are just structural challenges. They're not driven by the structuralists. The personal choice challenges that may have existed have largely been negated by themselves or by leadership, by this stage, and by time.

And I would add that one of the things that we really want to do is not just look at the dollar amounts, but we also want to create that grade and step program. It's a great tool, but we want a policy that says we can use the tool this way, we cannot use the tool that way. And if I or anybody else on staff wants to misuse that tool, we have to come to council and ask for permission. Very publicly, very transparent, very accountable.

What constitutes eligibility for an increase in the step? What constitutes, what is our promotion policy? Where do they land? Do they get a guaranteed minimum 12% increase, or is it just up to whomever at that point? No, I really like so-and-so. Let's make sure they get a 20% pop and land them at another grade and all that. You can have a very defined process that's clear about what is allowed. You don't want to take away your autonomy from your city manager. And department directors are at the same time setting the boundaries. It's very, very important. Set the boundaries and hold them accountable for staying within it and making good decisions.

Any more questions, suggestions?

Thank all of you. We really appreciate you. Rob, thank you.

Yes, sir. I would just add that the staff has enjoyed working with Shane. We're very glad that we had this opportunity. We think the information he's provided has been helpful. I agree with the two council members that spoke this evening. This has been the best, clearest, basic presentation that we could have, which is exactly what we needed moving forward. Thank you for everything.

Thank all of you. Thank you.

We can either take a recess. This 30-plus minute presentation I have, I will not be able to squeeze into three, and I'm not going to push it. So I will table mine until we have another budget worksheet.

We're going to go ahead and take a recess until 6.05. Give everybody a chance to. Councilman Hinton, hopefully, will be here by then. All right, we are going into open session. We were able to do the budget. Okay, let's go ahead and go into public comments. The City Council welcomes citizen participation and comments at all Council meetings. Citizens' comments are limited to three minutes out of the respect for everyone's time. The Council is not permitted to respond to your comments. The Texas Open Meetings Act requires that the topics of discussion deliberation be posted on the agenda not less than three business days in advance of the council meetings. If your comments relate to a topic that is on the agenda, the council will discuss that topic on the agenda at the time that the topic is discussed and deliberated. Do we have any public comment?

Mayor and members of the council, my name is Kyle Mooring. I am the primary complainant in an ongoing federal whistleblower investigation, and I am from Mount Vernon, Texas. I've come before you for nearly a year about one thing, whether the city's own records and processes can be trusted. The city has publicly acknowledged a vendor impersonation theft of more than $1 million in city funds. When I requested police records about that theft, the City withheld them. On June 30th, the Attorney General ruled the City failed to submit them for review as the law requires, so the records are presumed public and the State ordered them to be released. That is not my opinion. That is the State's ruling. And this is not an isolated problem. When I went in person to inspect an internal controls letter, the City told me I would have to pay $72 before I could even look at it, a condition I do not believe the Public Information Act authorized for that inspection. When another requester asked for that same fiscal year 2025 audit letter, the one documenting the city's own material weaknesses, the city stated it had no document of that date. Yet in his audit presentation to this council, the city's own auditor, John Watson, identified a communication regarding internal controls and directed council to see letter for internal controls findings noted related to the city. That same internal controls communication is also cited in the city's own ACFR. Separate from that audit letter, I still have not received records the state ordered released. On June 2nd, Attorney General ordered the release of the Walmart Store 131 records, including an October 2025 email from MPFD Deputy Chief Rodriguez. More than a month later, the city has not told me it has challenged the ruling in court. And the council should sit with one more fact. On July 1st, the city manager named Rodriguez acting fire chief during the transition after the fire chief resigned. His October 2025 email is part of the records order released, and his name appears in the fire inspection discrepancies I have documented. These are not technicalities. Public records are the foundation of every oversight process, an ethics review, a police referral, an audit. I backed every concern with documents, with the city's own statements, and now with the Attorney General's own rulings. So the question before this council is no longer whether there is enough to justify review. There is. The question is whether this council will continue to leave these matters unaddressed, even though they concern public funds, public records, and the trust of people you represent. Mr. Vine, I will say this directly but narrowly. I have read the Prado report, a prior outside investigation involving a department you led before coming to Mount Pleasant, including its recommendation to sustain a finding of failure to supervise. Some members of this council may not be familiar with that report, and I am not asking this council to relitigate it tonight, but one finding is directly relevant. The investigator found that the city's own IT search did not produce complete email threads. That is a records integrity problem, the same I am raising tonight. Independent outside review can surface what internal assurances cannot. That is precisely why we need one here. So I'm asking the council for two actions tonight on the record. First place my formal ethics complaints and these public information concerns back on the council agenda in the open. Second authorize an independent auditor or outside investigator to review the city's public information practices. How records are searched produced preserved and charged for and how the city has handled attorney general rulings. Transparency is not a favor to me. It is the foundation of public trust. I'm asking you to act on it. Thank you.

Any public comment?

No?

Alright. go ahead and move on to item number two or uh we'll go this is the consent agenda items on the consent agenda are approved through a single council motion which applies to all items listed consent agenda items are considered routine not likely to require discussion or deliberation and may be discussed prior to making the motion there will be no separate discussion on these items unless the council member requests an item be removed and considered separately Item number 2, consider approval of June 16th, 2026 meeting minutes. Item number 3, consider pay request number 37 for Drake Construction, Southside Wastewater Treatment Plant. Item number 4, consider approval of engagement on Brooks Watson and Company PLLC to perform the financial audit for September 30th, 2026. And item number five, consider ordinance 2026-15, a budget amendment increasing allocations in the general and utility fund for the placement of an interim finance director. Any discussion?

I have a question. Number five, Rob, I think you sent us an email on that.

I believe the minutes.

Now it's considered an ordinance for the budget amendment.

Oh, I'm sorry, yes.

Do we want to pull it off consent?

I do not believe I did say anything.

Can I bring that to the regular agenda?

Yes. You have to have a motion to remove that motion.

All right, so let's go ahead and make a motion for the consent agenda with removing item number five, moving it into regular agenda.

So I make a motion to approve item number two, three, and four of the consent agenda.

I second.

I second.

Madam Secretary, you can vote, please.

Yes. Aye. Aye.

Aye. All right, motion passed unanimously. Let's go ahead and move on to the regular agenda, and we'll push item number five into that. Consider Ordinance 2026-15, a budget amendment increasing allocations in the general and utility funds for the placement of an interim finance director. Discussion?

Just refresh me for somebody.

HR Director Holly Motley will speak to that thing.

Good evening. So I spent some considerable amount of time estimating what it's going to cost to keep our interim through the end of budget and finding places to pull money to try to cover that. So half of it comes from the utility fund and the other half comes from the general fund. And we pulled from salary savings out of the... administrative and the TMRS cost with that as well and the money from both sides for the employee recognition fund and the contractual fees and services which would be the legislative and full-time salaries also from one of the code enforcement positions that was that we had cut and utility side as well for the pre-treatment Are there any more questions?

We appreciate it. Thanks for all the work. Thank you all. All right. Let's go ahead and get a motion on that.

I make a motion that we approve ordinance number 2026-15 for the budget amendment increasing the allocations in the general and utility fund for the placement of an interim finance director.

A second. Madam Secretary, you can vote, please. Aye.

Aye. Yes.

All right, item passed unanimously. Let's go ahead and move on to item number six, discuss and consider resolution 2026-14, authorizing the award of grant administrators to provide TWD application and project-related administration project delivery services for the Texas Water Development Board water supply and infrastructure grant program, and that's our assistant city manager, Whips.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So, Councilmember Hageman, our utilities director, Marshall, our wastewater, our water treatment plant foreman, Ed Turner, and utilities foreman, Romero, they all met over the course of two days. reviewed all the bids that were submitted for grant administrators and engineers. So the first one is for, I'm just going to say this one for you if it's okay. The first one is for the grant administrator, and it was awarded to Traylor and Associates. All their packet information is in there, but both bidders along with the scoring sheet and all that on how they did it is in your packet on number six.

Questions or discussion?

They're going to manage the grant .

And that's no money out of our pocket, right? They get a portion of it.

They're going to, once we get this approved and get the ball rolling, they will start all that paperwork.

Motion?

Yes.

I make a motion that we consider the resolution, adopt the resolution 2026-14, authorizing the award of a grant administrator to provide TWDB application and projected related administration for the Texas Water Development, Water Supply, and Infrastructure Grant Program.

I second.

Council Member Corvall.

Yes.

Aye.

Aye. All right. Passed unanimously. And just to reiterate, it's not the grant. It's not costing us anything. No, it's not. Okay.

All right. Awesome. Let's move on to item number seven.

Discussing consider resolution 2026-15 authorizing the award of grant engineer to provide TWDB. Sorry, my head's tired. Application and project related professional engineering architectural surveying services for the Texas Water Development Board program water supply and infrastructure grant project Same thing all other packages information there all the scoring sheet for all of the Engineering and again, they did me for two days.

I was very proud of them. It's done for y'all and they have recommended the award to go to Kate Dawson.

Question? Discussion? Motion?

I make a motion to approve Resolution 2026-15, awarding Tate Dawson and Grant Engineer to provide TWDB application and project-related professional engineering architectural surveying service for the Texas Water Development Board Program water supply and infrastructure grant projects. Is there a second?

Second.

Madam Secretary, can you get a vote?

Councilmember Faulkner? Aye. Councilmember Korbel? Yes. Councilmember Hinton?

Aye. Passed unanimously. Thank you. All right. We've got item number eight, discussion of City Mount Pleasant noise ordinance, and that's going to be our police chief.

Mayor, members, council, chief walking up. If you remember a few months ago, we had our public works director get up and speak on mosquito spraying. There was no action required. It's for information. We are going to do that from time to time. This is a topic that we've picked.

So in your packet I've included several different ordinances that kind of address noises within the city At the back of the packet is some state ordinances, but in the front a couple of pages with city ordinances We do have the main The city ordinance we use is 130.25, which is unreasonable noises. And the highlight there is basically that if it annoys, distresses, or disturbs the quiet, comfort, or repose of any person of reasonable sensibility within the vicinity or hearing thereof, or as to endanger or injure the safety or health of the person, or as to interfere with the physical well-being of the person, then it can be declared a noise ordinance. Obviously, all these ordinances require discretion used by the officer that we're responding to a call or hearing noises that they think may address it. I believe there's a ruling years ago that says the police officer can't be a victim to a noise. And so we obviously usually respond to calls for service regarding mob parties and stuff like that. And then they go out and listen to see if they can hear it, because it is a misdemeanor, it has to be committed, and then the president will take the action. Anyway, so that's kind of the bread and butter of unreasonable noises in the city. If you continue down, I've included another one which enumerates some specific noises. It kind of addresses people honking their horn for fun or for no reason. And it goes into several different paragraphs documenting different types of noise. It actually even addresses mufflers or other devices on vehicles. which is actually later on in another ordinance covered in the vehicle section and the traffic section. But it talks about construction and when construction equipment can run. It actually gives times of dates for that, times of the day when it can begin. It talks about peddlers who are out yelling on corners and stuff like that. I mean, it goes into all kinds of stuff. Not all of it. Now obviously some of it, we do have a constitution related to public speech. So like a peddler yelling on the corner on South Jefferson. We're probably not going to take any action because it's a pretty loud area anyway. It goes into animals that are on people's property. So basically your dog that barks nonstop all night and stuff like that allows the officer to take some action. And then, as you see, it goes into mufflers with prevention of noises and public nuisances. And then, like I said, I included some applicable state statutes. So I guess, theoretically, or in totality, when I look at noise ordinances, I can say over my near 30-year career, they are sometimes difficult to enforce because the officer needs to witness the violation. and like your loud party complaints and stuff a lot of times they will issue a warning and they'll tell them to knock it off don't make us come back and usually that results and so if we go back then they have to hear it again and so The officers try to be patient with our community and those who are having family events and gatherings. And so they do respond to these calls frequently. There were a lot of them on July 4th. A lot of those came in as shots fired, but they were fireworks. We do have a fireworks ordinance as well, but they are busy responding, especially on holiday weekends to some of these loud parties. One of the complaints I do get a lot of times or with some regularity is loud mufflers. officers do drive around they do enforce that but it also requires them to not be engaged in something else when they hear it and then to find that car that echoed down main street or sorry I call it main echo down Madison or Jefferson be able to catch up to them find out which vehicle it is and then take some enforcement so they do do that when they find it and when they hear it and when they can identify who's doing it But they also have to be not engaged in something else traffic. If they're driving to a call, traffic is always secondary to responding to that call from the service.

So do they receive a ticket, like if they've got open exhaust?

That's at the discretion of the officer. We don't mandate what enforcement action they take. They're on scene dealing with the person. There are fix-it tickets if it's something like a damaged muffler or a muffler. Most of the ones I see are just cut. Yeah, so if it's been modified, they can issue a fix-it or they can issue a warning. Sorry, we don't have fix-it tickets. They can issue a warning or they can issue a citation. Sometimes our officers... I would say generally a lot of times our officers try to be patient with our citizens. They may issue a warning and say fix it. And the next time they get pulled over, they can actually pull that history and see. They do this with, for example, they do that with no driver's license often. They'll check with dispatch to see if that person has already received a warning for driving without a license. And if they have, then they may take that vehicle or they may issue citations, but they try to be patient. So that may be, that's a tool that's at their discretion when they're on the scene dealing with it. A lot of times it depends on that engagement and that conversation they have with the individual.

And on the noise complaint, is there any time that's excluded, like from 8 in the morning until 9 at night?

No, that's one thing that's good about our ordinance. There's no requirement it has to be after 10 or 11 o'clock. It's basically... it's unreasonable okay so the officer I mean like I said if it's noon but it's unreasonable they can take it so I want you to give me a scenario so I've got special elderly night one was very very ill

And one of our cute little neighbors was a young man that just loved to rev his motor like at ungodly times. Came home late and left early. And they were continually complaining, and they were asking me what to do. So can you kind of give a scenario for our elderly community? population on when they go to bed at 8.30 at night or 9 o'clock at night? What do they do?

Well, I have a couple of recommendations. First is be patient. We live in a city, right? And so that's one of the things of living in a city. We're in Fort Rockton. I do understand their concern and their frustration with it. But again, the issue is the officer has to be there to witness it on the traffic violation. And so we've had that scenario where the individual had very regular hours. And so the officers were able to, because they knew of the hours, they were able to show up as they left for work or be in the area and they could hear them coming from a quarter mile away. And so then they took enforcement. But it is very difficult when it's irregular. Our officers are busy. We have a high call volume, and they're pretty actively engaged. And so it's just a matter. It's very difficult for them just to sit in an area. And nine times out of ten, I've done it before, nine times out of ten, if an officer is sitting there, that's when they do not show up, right? Actually, I'll say 99 times out of 100. And so that just ends up being the luck of the draw. So if there's a time frame in the obstacle area, Our officers are really good about saying that I'll be out there as I can if they're not on another call for service and I'll try to hear it and take some enforcement action. Because they do understand that it can be frustrating for neighbors. So they're happy to address it. It's just irregularity is our challenge.

Well, thank you. Because I really think that if I can refer them to this YouTube to watch it, that would help them with their patience.

Well, yeah, and the best thing they can do is – so our officers kind of work districts, and so if they talk to the officer, they can call dispatch, talk to the officer, and just say, here's kind of when we hear it. That officer will be – is likely to be very engaged and say, okay, I'll pay attention and I'll come around. And so a lot of times people will call me and I'm like, I don't – I'm not the guy who worked in your area or the gal who worked in your area. And so the officer is happy to come out and talk to that neighbor and kind of get the lay of the land and then respond.

Is there a current noise ordinance not working? Does it need to be updated? Is that what?

Not that I'm aware of. I actually think our noise ordinance is broad enough to give the officers quite a bit of discretion, which is good. Some cities want decibels. you've got to carry a decibel meter, and then it's how many feet you can get close before you can turn it on. So I kind of like our ordinance. I actually recently sent it to another chief who was looking at their noise ordinance, and he's like, oh, that's one of the better ones I've seen. I like that one because the more restrictive it is, the more difficult it is to afford. So I like the reasonable standard. Our officers have homes and neighbors too, so they really care about the community. So I think that reasonableness for them

Are you getting complaints? Is that why we're looking at new ordinances? Are you getting complaints?

No, we're not looking at new ordinances. This is just one that is sometimes not commonly understood or even known about. Even in my neighborhood, I hear loud music. I choose not to call in unless it's 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. But I know what the ordinance is. My neighbors might know. So if they know that there is an ordinance that's in existence, That helps protect the neighborhood and improve the quality of life. This is just sharing that with the council and with the public. So, no, we are not recommending that we change it. We're just sharing it so everyone is aware that we do have it.

Yes. And I choose to call in, and they do a great job. That's why I was asking about the hours. It's because I almost feel like it's a Koresh and achy, breaky heart going from like 7 in the morning until about 2 or 4 in the afternoon, and I start to lose it. So I give you guys a call.

Well, and – And anecdotally, that's what – anecdotally, you know, it is difficult. I've worked graveyards, and I've slept during the day, and my neighbor mows the lawn that wakes me up. But there's nothing unreasonable about somebody mowing their lawn in the middle of the day, right? I would say the general feeling in the community is mowing your lawn at 4 in the morning is probably not reasonable because most people are sleeping. So we occasionally get complaints where it's like, yeah, we're sorry, but the officer's like – I can't do anything about it. It's kind of reasonable, right? So I like the reasonable standard, and I think our ordinance is broad enough to allow that. It does tend to – it seems to cover everything, though. Right, yeah. I mean, the only specifics is, like, construction, right, which is – I think it says 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., which is good. It gives our businesses that direction when they have construction on their sites. So it's good to give them some direction like that. They can look at it. They don't get – we can do that.

Come on out, Steve.

My question is, if we recorded it, can you use it?

Like a video recording for people?

It may give the officer some more information to act on, but it needs to occur in their presence. They may or may not determine that in their presence, but a recording, even like body camera, it tells a story, but it's a student that And so the officer may say, well, I can't tell where exactly you're standing or where you were or how loud it is based on the microphone. It's good to give them that information, but they may still go over and give a warning, right? Unless it's really out of bounds, they may be like, okay, that's it. So it never hurts. I mean, we record everything.

I just didn't know if it was, you know, legal or anything like that.

If you're in a public place recording people or in a public place, it's legal to record it. Yeah, it does. It will timestamp it, which can be helpful.

I think that's what your wife did the last time. She recorded and played it for him over the telephone.

But your snoring is not a public nuisance. It's only her nuisance, right?

Yeah. Does the 7-to-7 rule include lawnmowers in July construction? No.

So if you look in your packet, and you don't need to look in it. I'll find it for you. It's actually, it's under, it's on page 200G. It actually talks about demolition, retention, repair of any building, street, or public utility. That's where, it's specific to that ordinance, which is basically, and only with the permit from a chief building official. So it really talks about construction.

Because in July, I mean, you can still be out meeting at 9 o'clock.

Correct, yeah.

Mowing and stuff.

And I would just say in July, the officer might be like, it's seven o'clock, but it's so light outside. I'm going to allow it.

Thank you, Chief. Again, we'll bring topics like this to council and the public from time to time. We'll highlight things and also help explain things. And if there's anything that you would like brought, definitely let me know and we'll bring it forward next time.

That's great, Chief. Thank you. We appreciate it. All right. Let's move on to item number nine, discuss possible direction regarding city charter review timeline process and topics for consideration. And that's our city attorney.

Hello, Lee.

Hi, Mayor and Council. Since the last council meeting, we had had a meeting with a couple of you to discuss possible items to consider for the charter review process. In that process, we realized that because the city was looking to try to be ready for the November election, for the charter election. And unfortunately, because of just the way the days fell between the last charter election and when this election is in November, there's not a full two years. And that's what would be required under the Texas Constitution in order to have a charter election in November. And so the soonest the city could look at doing the charter election would be in May. And which would, I think the advantage to that would be also, though, that it'll give the city more time to get feedback from the community and so on on proposed things. Revisions to the charter, the type of things that were being considered and will be, I think, promoted as a as possible items for the charter election would be potentially adding recall provisions. considering forfeiture provisions and the charter for attendance and things of that nature, and sort of strengthening some of the requirements under confidentiality. and other sort of provisions that are in presently in the city's ethics code, but that you might want to include in your charter. And so, and you know, whatever is on the potentially considered by the council would be included in a ballot that would be passed by the, by the council to be included on a, in the election in May, as soon as May.

So are we going to set up, I know you were talking about a board committee. Is there a timeline for when we're going to start reviewing that?

Candace, would you like to cover that?

So I plan on sending y'all an email tomorrow addressing that, appointing at the next council meeting, y'all appointing two council members to that committee. And then if you can provide citizens that you would like to be a part of the committee with their contact information so that we can get the committee part started and to move forward with that.

So you'd like for us each to give you one name?

and it can't be Steve. That it can't be Steve.

Yep.

All right. Any more questions? All right. Go ahead and move on to item number 10, discuss and consider acceptance of resignation for council member Melanie Knight-Tafoya, place two, and calling a special election to fill the vacancy of place two. Gonna be our assistant city manager.

As you can see, Councilmember Tafoya submitted her resignation, and it is placed inside the packet. And so we will need to fill that position, that place, and it will be on the November ballot. So we have until July 17th to get all of our stuff together, and then that's when citizens inside the city limits are able to start getting their name on the ballot for the November election.

So what is the, you know, like I know there's always a cutoff deadline. So July 18th is the first day and August the 17th is the last day.

And that is posted on our website.

Questions, concerns? Good to go.

All right. We're moving on to item number 11. Oh, yeah, sorry. Let's go ahead and make a motion.

I'll make a motion to accept Councilman Knight's resignation and to go ahead and call a special election for the field that I can see a place to.

I second.

Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please?

Yes. Aye.

Aye.

All right. Item number 10 passed unanimously. We'll go ahead and move to 11, but 11 is removed.

And we will go ahead and move on to... Do we need an actual... To remove it?

You didn't say so, right?

Are we on item number... 11.

Do we need a motion to remove that? Yeah, we were just removing it.

I didn't... Yeah, I believe that... I think that the city management wanted to remove this item or table it until the next council meeting.

Yeah, it was removed. I was just making sure we didn't need a motion. Do we need a motion to remove it?

You can certainly do that. We'll play it safe. That's fine to have a motion to table it.

Nope. Remove.

Lee, we're wanting to remove it from the agenda until we have a later.

All right. Can I get a motion? I make a motion to remove Resolution 2026-16. Authorizing the amendment of the sanitary landfill agreement between the City of Mount Pleasant and Pleasant Oaks landfill increasing commercial gate rates and other fees effective October 1st 2026 from remove it from the Meeting agenda All right, ma'am secretary please Yes Yes

Item passed unanimously. We'll go ahead and go on to 12, discuss and consider resolution 2026-17, adopting the City of Mount Pleasant's procurement policy. And that's our city manager. Bye.

Mayor, members of council, good evening again. Effective September 1st, 2025 Senate Bill 1173 amended the state law to raise the competitive procurement threshold for municipalities from 50,000 to 100,000. The city intentionally restrained. We did not change our policy because of recent history. And we wanted to maintain internal controls, transparency, and also this is an effort to continue to build public trust. However, the current policy, it's still at 50,000. The current policy has created practical challenges for certain purposes, specifically vehicles. We know those vehicles are over 50,000. And it requires special upfitting for public safety and operational use. Vehicle purchases, again, exceed that $50,000 mark and that threshold. And when that does, it requires the staff to go out for bid. And when we go out for bid, we have to advertise it. We have to pay for it. So what we are suggesting is that we raise the city in the city's internal threshold to 100,000. It would align with the purchasing policy that was revised by state law while still requiring competitive pricing practices. The proposed change would also allow staff to use more efficient procurement processes to purchase under $100,000 while maintaining accountability and compliance with industry standards and best practices. Formal request bids, as I mentioned earlier, require legal notices, including advertisement in local newspapers, online posting, a required period before bid opening. This costs money. This costs time. And if we were to change that, we believe that we still have good internal control. We're still being accountable. And we're also being compliant with the state. So our proposed amendment is expected to reduce administrative costs. unnecessary publication expense for purchases below $1,000, reduced staff time associated with this, but we are still going to get the best bid, the best prices, and try to maintain local business. So our recommendation, and I'll be happy to answer any questions, but our recommendation would be to approve the amendment to the city's purchasing policy to raise the competitive procurement threshold to $100,000, which is consistent with the Senate bill 1173 state law an option if you prefer is to maintain that 500 threshold but make vehicles an exception that could create a little confusion but that would be acceptable i've got a question

Did we consider $75,000? Would that still allow you to buy a vehicle if we moved it to $75,000? No.

So a police vehicle is going to be close to $75,000 with upfitting, which is almost $100,000.

Over $100,000, yeah. And they're over $100,000 now.

So did we consider that? Yes. In our opinion, because it would be close to $75,000. It's not that much.

And this will help us shop more locally, right?

We can do it either way. We just won't have to have sealed bids and post it for the next amount of time or have it open for two weeks. So if we're able to find something that's local with free bids, we can move out of that.

And this kind of goes hand-in-hand with our vehicle. Getting out of the lease program. Yeah, yeah, getting out of the lease program. So hopefully that will help move things along.

Do we have a policy in place to make sure that we do as local as every time that we can?

I mean, to keep making sure that there is there is not a policy that says you will check locally every time. That is that is.

All right.

Mayor, may I add one other thing? So the policy that I think you're seeing is out of Chapter 20, which is out of the previous employee handbook. And so technically this has already been like superseded by the new handbook because you all were just covering HR matters in the handbook. And so the way that the resolution is worded is to address that you would be reinstating basically this policy. And so you don't presently have the policy even though the staff has abided by it, so.

And it's one of those things, not that it would happen, but it could always be changed.

Yeah.

Nope.

Sorry. Yes, the state did say that cities can adopt stricter policies. And that's what we did initially. We did make it a little stricter because of our recent history. But what we also don't want to do is create more problems for itself, which is costing us more money.

I was about to say, yeah, it's probably costing us more money.

And frustrating.

Yeah.

I agree that it needs to be changed. It makes sense what we've heard, so I'd like to make the motion to go ahead and approve Resolution 2026-17, adopting the city's purchasing policy to raise the competitive procurement threshold to $100,000. Madam Secretary, can you give the vote, please?

Aye.

Yes.

All right. Passed unanimously. Go ahead and move on to item number 13, city manager's report.

Mayor, members of council, good evening again. Just very briefly, longtime fire chief Larry McRae submitted his resignation last week. All of you received the information about that. After dedicating more than 50 years of service to the city of Mount Pleasant, with over 40 of those years serving as the fire chief, Having known Chief since 1997, I can personally attest to how much he contributed to the community, to the county, and also to the public that he served and the lives that he changed. In a city like Mount Pleasant, it's extremely easy for someone who's been in a position that long to become larger than life. I think that's exactly what he did, so we thank him for his years of service and his contribution, and we wish him well moving forward. Deputy Chief Mauricio Rodriguez, he's here with us tonight. He's been named Acting Fire Chief and will lead the department during the transition. Rodriguez is a 27-year-old veteran of our fire department and has served as Deputy Chief for the past eight years. He also has experience with the Madison Fire Department. Farmers Branch Fire Department holds a Master's in Firefighter Certificate with a Texas Commission on Fire Protection and graduated from the East Texas Fire Department. I would encourage residents to take comfort in the fact that we will not see a decrease in service, either in the city or in the county. Our department is staff. Not much has changed other than leadership, but I have full confidence we'll move forward as we did before. This week I'm speaking with fire department leadership to determine who the best internal candidate is to proceed as the interim fire chief. The goal will be to have that person in that position for six months before that position is advertised inside and outside. And we will have a full chief selection process. So again, that will be about six months out. So whoever is chosen, and I will decide that Friday, that will be in that interim position for at least six months. That's the plan. Second subject, staff's currently working on our first budget draft. And, Council, I would like to have another council meeting, a budget workshop. But we probably ran out of time tonight. So I have another budget workshop meeting at our July 21st meeting. And if that doesn't work, we need to do it a different time. If that's not good for you, we could look at making that adjustment. Chief Tax Assessor is really difficult. We'll be here that evening to share with us the updated and expected tax numbers for next fiscal year. currently working with Anderson Town Crossing and we'll be bringing in our financial consultant Hilltop to talk about the tax increment reinvestment zone. I think we're getting close to the point where that becomes a topic that comes to council. The plan is to create the downtown district prior to the TURS. That way the downtown district can be a beneficiary of the tax increment reinvestment zone. Money that's being reinvested, some of that will come back to the downtown district council. That will be a process that will happen.

And for now, emergency coordinator is also? It's also. Okay. All right. Awesome.

Last thing before you have a question. If you've been out to the Academy box store last week, last Friday, they poured half the slab. The other half the slab, weather permitting, is supposed to be poured this Friday, and the walls are expected to be constructed by July 22.

When you're talking about a downtown district, would you explain exactly what that is? Are you talking about the central business district?

Creating a downtown district. This is what Lynn talked about a few weeks ago with Main Street.

Okay.

Will it be, though, that district that's now central business?

It will include.

Okay.

That's all I have in a report.

all right all right on the council comments council comments limited limited to announcements of upcoming events recent council member activities or requests to add agenda items for the upcoming meeting anyone have

I'm good tonight also.

All right, we're going to go ahead and move into executive session pursuant to Open Meetings Act, Chapter 551, Texas Government Code. The City Council will recess into executive session to discuss the following. Consultation with Attorney, Texas Government Code 551.071. concerning lawsuit style towel mooring versus city of mount pleasant cause number four four four three seven in the 776th judicial district court titus county texas so it is 652 we're moving into executive session

Oh, okay.

We are back from closed session. It is 7.24 p.m., and we are adjourning. Can we get a motion to adjourn? No?

All right.

With no action. Your mic. Your mic. It went off. There you go.

I'll make a motion that we adjourn.

Do you have a second?

Second.

All right. Madam Secretary, could I vote, please?

Yes.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. All right. Pastor, your name is? Adjourned. 725.

All right. He needs one.

Go down to Kills on Wheels and get us a...