City Council - Regular Meeting

Please. Seeing we have a quorum, I will call to order the city of Kemah City Council and Kemah Public Facilities Corporation regular meeting on 04/01/2026 at 4PM. The The first thing on the agenda are our pledges. The next thing on the agenda is a moment of silence. And the next thing on the agenda is invitation to address council, and I believe Wayne Dolcefino is first.

Wayne, would you make sure the mic is on when you go up there, the little button on there? Yes, Thank you.

Testing. Oh, there you go. I I really I've been, like, in in media for fifty years, and I can't even turn on a camera, so that will tell you something. Hey. First of all, I'd like to thank your city administrator for coming to the rescue in a several months long battle to get records detailing legal bills for the city of Kemah.

I I always call out people who I don't think are doing it right, so I it's only proper to call out somebody who did it right. But he shouldn't have had to. We fought for months with your city attorney, mister Dixon, who ignored repeated requests and demands for something that I thought was pretty simple, which just is how much did you spend on lawyers, right, and on what cases you spend them on. He should refund you the billing for that because what looked at when I finally got the records, and I think this is something the public needs to know, and for you guys to know too for your own counsel. Since 2020, City of Kenya spent $1,400,000 on lawyers, and that's not counting the several $100,000 that you TML for legal stuff too.

That is a lot of money in a town of 3,400 people. In fact, you're on pace right now to spend more per capita for people that live here than you ever have in your history. Sometimes cities get sued. Sometimes you get caught in stuff that's not your fault. Totally get it. But I continue to argue to local governments that the amount of money they're spending on lawyers to fight legitimate public records requests is just a waste of money. It's a waste of our money. It's a waste of your money. It's a waste of time. And we're gonna get there one way or the other.

We just are. And it's I saw I I really came to see mister Dixon to find out why he always runs away from me and slams doors in my faces, but he's not here. I knew you guys saw what happened in Texas City. I was asking him about chemo records. I don't think a guy like that should be representing any city. And it's not personal. I just think that's not the kind of behavior that a city wants to represent them. So I I came to implore you to look at how much you're spending on lawyers. It's just a lot of money for a city with this few people. And it's a waste of money when you have other things you want to do.

And that's all I have to tell you. Again, I want to thank the administrator for coming to the rescue. They should have had to, Okay? It's nonsense. And too many cities not just you guys too many cities are using lawyers to block requests. It is driving up the cost for me, but more importantly for the taxpayers. It's driving up the cost of legitimate records. I know there are people that ask for a lot of stuff. I know I'm a pain sometimes. I get it.

But I just whoever's on council next, think about that. And think about trying to streamline it in a way that a lot of records are publicly available so we don't have to go through fights, especially with a city attorney who just ignores us. Okay? Thank you, And

next on the list is Robert Kelly, but he's going to speak during the council meeting. And Shalia, did I miss you by chance? No, you did not. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Okay. Next on our agenda is proclamations. Do we have someone here for the sexual assault? Okay. Mayor Lindsey Durant? Lindsey Durant. Lindsey Durant is here to accept

it.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. So first, I wanna thank everyone from the city of Kemah for standing with the Resource and Crisis Center in supporting the awareness and prevention of sexual assault. While April is sexual assault awareness month, the Resource and Crisis Center is here twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, year round, for our community, assisting sexual assault survivors, whether it is, providing emergency shelter, accompanying them to, sexual assault exams at the hospital, or connecting them with local resources. The assault ultimate goal, of course, is prevention. And prevention starts with awareness and knowledge.

And that's why we're here coming together as a community today, to support our our victims as well as spread awareness of these crimes. It I encourage everyone to visit the, website for RCC. It's rccgc.org and see how you can get involved. There's many ways that you can volunteer or donate your time or, even your items to our resell stores. The, the resource in crisis center has actually been selected this year as the, benefiting charity for the run-in Galveston, and we are in desperate need of volunteers.

It's a very large event, and so I do encourage you guys to look in on the website. I also have some flyers here so that you guys can get involved and help us, support our victims and, eventually prevention.

When is the Diva Run?

The Diva Run is on the well,

if it's on the flyer, it's

'20 on the twenty fifth.

Okay.

Okay? So is it okay if I pass them out to Alright.

Is the diva run only for divas?

The volunteers can be anyone, and I'm sure divas can be any gender.

I shop at the store in Galveston all the time.

Oh, okay. Well, thank you. Yes.

And I have donated many, many times. Okay. We love you Yes,

ma'am. Alright. Well, thank you so much for having me and for honoring this day.

Thank you. Thank Okay. Robert Kelly is going to do presentation for WCID twelve record re regarding our upcoming bond election in in May.

I'd to take a moment and thank everyone of you for what you guys have accomplished just in the way of that park. It's coming together. I'm proud to be in Kyma. And I'll tell you, it's kind of refreshing, to say the least. Even Doug made a comment that the packet was down to a staple.

Tonight. I

applaud you. I applaud you guys. The bond, as you well know, did not succeed the first presentation of it. Failed. But there were a number of items that were inappropriately put together on it.

And I will take partial responsibility for that, but I wasn't completely in charge. Now I'm quite a bit more in charge with what we got. So we reduced the bond by the request for smart meters and the valves that need replaced in the actual older part of Kyma. That's roughly $8.01 $3,819,920 removed off the bond. With that said, that puts you at the remaining amount of roughly $6,700,000 That $6,700,000 is strictly to build the Della Sandre water plant.

So with that being said, we will not have a tax increase that will not affect per David Smalling, who actually does financial work for us and our taxation. So we're not going to have an increase in that point. I'm asking you for your support. Obviously, I can't demand it, but I'm asking for the support. It helps every particular cause in chemo.

And to grow the efforts that every one of you guys have put in on a number of fronts, we'll get it done. I believe we will get this done. But this makes it where it's not gonna increase any of the taxation for a person. They can vote yes, but they will see on their ballot when they go sit in there. They will see that it says your taxes are going to increase.

So for that, I have another letter that will be sent out to everyone. Every particular account, you'll receive this letter that tells you that our taxes will not increase on this bond. And I'm allowed to actually send that out. It's appropriate to send it out. I had Chris Richardson make certain, pass it all through the people that would flag me on it. And at this point, I can send that letter out. That will become forthcoming real quick. Any questions?

What did you say was removed? (381) in some change for smart meters and something else?

It once, I'm gonna provide this to each and everyone.

Okay. This is what's for me.

Okay. From the last one.

Just so everybody's aware, even if this bond passed, it's probably eight eight months before they get the bid package, the funding, funding, everything done. And it's going take about a year to do it. So we're looking at the '7 before completion, best case scenario. So a lot of these projects we're working on here in Kyma, if this project fails in May, it's going to hold us up and probably run some people out of town because we're not gonna have the capacity to facilitate the water needs for the projects that we're wanting to come to town. I would ask for everybody's support as well to make sure we get everybody out to vote yes for this bond because it's instrumental in the future of chemo.

Well, agree with that.

Line is so much of the effort that every one of you have put into this, we don't want to do an all for naught. So I want to do it exactly right the first time. If anybody wants the hard numbers on what the valves would have cost and what the smart meters have cost, I have it for each and every one of you. You guys wanna set up it? Not a problem. I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, Robert.

Next on the agenda is mayor comments. First of, Easter holidays coming up and city offices will be closed. They close at noon on Thursday and reopen Monday morning. We hope everyone takes this time to slow down a bit, enjoy the weekend, and spend some meaningful time with their family and their friends. But from all of us up here, we wish everyone a happy Easter. I also want to remind our residents that we have elections, they're right around the corner. Early voting starts on a Monday, April 20 and then it's closed the next day for what is it? San Jacinto Day. Yeah. So early voting starts on the twentieth.

It'll be closed on the twenty first and then it opens again on the twenty sixth and goes through the twenty eighth. Twenty second. Oh, twenty second. Yeah. Okay. So open on the twentieth, closed on the twenty first, open again on the twenty second, go through the twenty eighth, and it's all down at the community center. Kemah Community Center, 800 Harris Street. But all of these, locations and times will also be on Galveston Votes website, and I also assume that our it'll be on our city website as well. The past two weekend, we had a great example of the community coming together. We had trash dash.

More than 30 volunteers showed up on a chilly Saturday morning and collected an impressive 1,797 pounds of trash, and what, seven shopping carts? Oh my goodness. Okay. But afterwards, a lot of the participants hung around. They went down to the park and spread mulch under some of the playground equipment. So we appreciate that. We're grateful to everyone who pitched in. Keeping Kyma clean and beautiful is truly a community effort, and it shows. We also welcomed, more than 250 children and their families at the Easter Extravaganza on Sunday afternoon. Events like that, don't happen without a lot of people coming together.

And, I wanna extend a special thank you to the Lions Club who helped us a great deal that day. All of the volunteers that came out, the police department, and an extra Easter bunny at that, and public works, and all of city staff, they all spend a lot of time getting ready for, all of these things. It's a very memorable day and beautiful weather. Kids have had a blast. Lastly, we will be holding a special meeting, a city council meeting on April 8 at 4PM. So that is next Wednesday. And I need four of you here to have that meeting, gentlemen. And I think that's it. We also have council member comments. Councilman Bratis.

I just wanna say thank you to the residents who came out and helped on Saturday and for the Give More Foundation as well because, I mean, we had 1,300 pounds of food donated for that foundation, and then we did 1,800 pounds of trash. And we we didn't even make a dent in this town, honestly. There's there's probably that much more still out there that we probably need to go out and get. But it was refreshing to see young kids out there smiling and and and participate in the event. Gives me hope that the next generation might start giving back to the community as well. So I just wanna say thank you.

Councilman Oliver?

I'll echo that statement

to thank you to the residents that came out and helped and all the volunteers for the Easter egg hunt. It's always well attended and good to see everybody having a good time. That's all I got.

Councilman Meissinger?

Just to say that we did not buy a helicopter, and we did not buy was it a Ferrari? I literally got calls on. Lamborghini? Okay.

We did not.

That's all I

have to know, Wallace. We we didn't.

And and councilman Wallace is not here tonight. And councilman Saldanha?

Well, today is beginning of autism awareness month. So

We're all in blue.

Caesar may have asked us all over blue. So a couple of things. Last year, I requested a few things. Requested that the PD get trained to deal with people with special needs or neurodivergent people. I asked that the boardwalk up sensory friendly day and that restaurants start working towards being sensory friendly. The third one was very, very hard, and we're gonna expand on that now. And this year's ask and, oh, by the way, the PD did go get qualified, and the word of luck. Thank you guys for having a century friendly day.

We had century Easter egg hunt too.

We did. And Kylie was sick. It was a raising word. And so this year, I'm asking to expand on everything. I've already talked to the chief. I sent him some information on some additional training. He has already contacted them. He's already gonna expand the training. This time, it won't just be somebody telling how to treat people with special needs. There'll be a doctor involved on how to recognize certain behaviors. Reached out to the fire department who's also gonna take part in the training and dispatch. And then expanded over to the community center and hopefully have, you know, thirty, forty participants. Thank you very much for that. It's very important. You know, if you look at the news here recently, in the past week, two autistic children drowned because they are very drawn to the water.

When we built our home, it was very important that taught our daughter how to swim, and we were never we would never have broken around. And so now she swims all over lake. You know, so it's very important. You know, maybe water education will be a future thing. But so this time, again, we're asking for expanded education.

We're also asking we're also gonna try to work on criteria to lay out for sensory friendly businesses around town. And if they achieve these sensory friendly items, they will we can deem them a sensory friendly destination, which then we can make a map to special needs parents and and and and organizations that they come to our town and see where they can go that their children will be accepted and and and know how they can how they treat their children. On on all that, it's been noticed that we've done these things. Thanks to Cesar. The office of the governor's disability group called us and asked us to be part of a a panel, and they're gonna be on a Zoom call next Monday.

And they're they're actually using Kyma as a template. I've got a degree that's sent through Friendly City. Wow. Yeah. And so, like, again, that can't shrink from the governor's office. Again, thank you, Cesar, for for championing that. And when look you at the agenda, it's all about what is chemo doing. And and the effort is to make chemo the very first sensory friendly city in the state of Texas. So we're working on that now. So it's all very good. Everybody knows that's dear to me. And I appreciate everybody's help on that. And, you know, I'm always on board to help.

Milo, does that ask a question?

Yes, sir.

Has anybody checked with EMS to make sure that they're dealing with the autism?

Yep. Chief chief is banded over

there. Okay.

Yep. And thank you for that. And he's gonna It's important. I mean, if you look at it last year when I talked about this, young man that got shot because he was an autistic child, a young man that didn't know how to interact with a PD, and it's just sad. You know, those things are gonna be prevented. So, again, thanks chief for for taking and Cesar for taking the bull by heart on that.

Any other comments? We will now go to the next item on the agenda, which is the city administrator's report. We'll turn it over to you, Cesar.

Thank you, mayor, and counsel counsel for for the the kind kind words words for our team. Our team's worked very hard. We've been very busy last couple weeks. Whether it's playgrounds or speed humps or flashing signs Caesar. Or cleanups or Easter events, Kudos to our team and to our staff for

Hooded lifts.

Taking the left. Yeah. Hooded lifts and construction and you name it. Seemed to be a hot button. I didn't want to address something that I apologize for not being here for the very beginning of the meeting. I missed the comment that was made in its entirety about our open records request. Yes, we have a large influx of these requests, but we don't treat any of them any different than any others. So kudos to everybody that's involved in them. I can tell you about one we're dealing with right now that's redaction alone is over 100 pages of things to be redacted. We're being very careful with how we release these things.

But kudos to our our partnership through our city attorney's office, through our city secretary's office and all the work that goes behind it. I understand we were commended for how we deal with one in particular. Sometimes we gotta just roll up our sleeves and do the work. And it's a lot easier to do that when we're not having to deal with other distractions and things. So thank you all of you for your continued support on that. I do think that, I just wanna commend that. It makes a lot easier to respond to these if we get what we're really being asked for. Right? When we don't have to decipher things and figure things out. And sometimes it takes time out for us to pick up the phone and call the person and say, hey, listen.

What are you actually asking for? And that was the case of the point with the one I mentioned earlier. And just suddenly a lot of things that are going on. I will say, as a staff and as a team, this next item I guess is we are tiny but we are mighty. From our PD, finance, just everybody, everybody, I can't say enough. We are a very, very resilient team. We deal with bumps and bruises and we keep moving forward. So thank you all for your continued support on that. I did want to echo to say thank you for the efforts of some of our residents to help us recruit. I do want to commend both Ms.

Shalea Thorne who was present there the cleanup, and mister Langford, who was also present and helped us recruit volunteers. It is a true team effort. Not one person picked up those 1,800 pounds by themselves. Not one person collected that entire effort by themselves. Even as we were going around certain streets to go check on trash and certain things, you had residents coming out and saying, hey, we heard you were doing this and we picked up around our general area and, you know, around our block as well. So it's a testament to the spirit of Kyma and thank everybody that was involved in that. Easter was great. I had several people who told me that that was probably the biggest one we've had. I've now been here for two of them. Patty's been here for three of them.

And every year we hear the same thing. Soon we're going to run out of space. Think that was something else that was mentioned. We may have to move this thing over to one of the larger parks, but right now it is still accommodating what we need, but we'll see what will continue to happen. Who would have thought we had acrobats at our Easter event? It was truly great. So thank you, everybody, that participated participated in that. With that said, we have a pretty short agenda, but a couple items of some importance. So thank you again for the continued support by everybody. Thank you.

Next on the agenda is reports from staff. Do we have any that are going to happen tonight?

None tonight.

Next is number 10, consent agenda to approve the minutes of the three eight eight two zero two six city council regular meeting.

So moved. Second.

So we have a, motion by councilman Darren Bratis, a second by councilman Dustin Oliver. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously.

Number 11, consideration and possible action to approve resolution 2026 Dash '17. 2026 Center Point Energy G R I P suspension resolution. A resolution by the city of Pima, Texas suspending the 04/18/2026 effective date of the proposal by Center Point Energy we time we first time implement we interim grip rate adjustments for gas utility investment in 2025 and requiring delivery of this resolution to the company and legal counsel. This is just putting off for how many? Is it ninety days?

Forty five days.

Forty five days.

This is an item that was tabled from the previous meeting. We were recommended to pull it at the previous meeting. Our partners with TCAP recommended and their attorneys recommended that we bring this forward. The only remedy we have for our residents is that we can buy them forty five days time. So it was recommended by us as a staff to bring this to you to try to provide the reprieve of forty five days to our residents and businesses on their electricity bills as much as possible. It's going to I

a motion to approve resolution 20 six-seventeen.

Motion by Councilman Aaron Bratis, a second by Councilman Doug Mysinger. Er. All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. 11 b, consideration of possible action to approve ordinance twenty twenty six dash zero two. An ordinance the the the the the the

the

penalty clause, providing a savings clause, providing for publication, and providing an effective date. This will be the first of two readings.

Make a motion to approve ordinance two zero two six dash o two. Second.

So we have a motion by councilman Darren Broadus, a second by councilman Doug Meissinger. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 11 c. Consideration and possible action to approve an amendment to the interlocal collection agreement and or resolution for tax assessment and collector services with the office of Galveston County Tax Assessor and Collector. She addressed us at the meeting.

She said there was gonna be an increase.

Yeah, there's gonna be an increase in, is it May?

Was like $50 she said, I think.

Is that what she said?

It's it's under a thousand dollars. Make

a motion to approve and amend it to the interlocal collection agreement and resolution for the tax assessment and collection services with the office of the Galveston County Tax Assistance Director Collector.

Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion by councilman Darren Broadus, a second by councilman Dustin Oliver. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 11 d, discussion and possible action for the city council special meeting to be held on 04/08/2026 at 4PM. We need four in attendance, and that'll be next Wednesday at 4PM.

Just an action item.

All of you come?

Can be here.

Natasha, this has to be voted item.

Next Wednesday, week from today. What's the meeting? What are we discussing? Vanessa? Yes.

We also have a special guest coming from the governor's office.

Oh, that's right. I knew there was something else. Okay.

Is it four?

Yes,

sir. It's the day we start

the renovations in the

back room.

Are you swinging

So do we have a motion? Do have to vote on it or just discuss it? Okay. All right. Well then you'll schedule. Everything's grouped.

Agenda's already posted, mayor.

I beg your pardon?

The agenda's already posted. Gotta go

in. Okay. We will now adjourn at 04:31 for executive session.

Mayor, do wanna

session.

I'll call the meeting back to order at 04:55. We do not have any action items from executive session and unless there's any other comments or anything to talk about, we'll adjourn. We'll adjourn at 04:55.