City Council - Regular Meeting

thing we'll do is we'll start our um chaplain prayers. Talis and Ezekiel Aola to say the prayers. Our police department was recently blessed with another chaplain, uh Chaplan Zeke, and so I asked him to accompany me this morning so that you'd have a chance to meet him and and he can meet you. And uh if you see any of us, uh along the way, then we can be of any help. I hope you'll feel free to to grab us. Let's bow as we pray. Our heavenly father, the very first thing we do this morning is to offer you our thanks. Thanks for the many blessings that we have in this country. Thank you for life itself. Thank you for the measure of health that each one of us have and and for friendships, for abilities to be involved in useful work, for the honor of bearing responsibilities. We thank you for this city council. We thank you for the citizens of this town that come and who are concerned uh about the various uh issues that we face. Uh we are most grateful that you bear witness to all that we do here. In the scriptures you have said that citizens ought to obey the governing authorities and since you has established these authority folks here in this council, we pray that we might listen attentively. uh participate faithfully. Uh in particular, we ask that you would uh keep these folks in your prayers as they deliberate. We gather again to give thanks to you through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Amen. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. Welcome sir. We have some proclamations to read this morning. Um the first one we're going to read is going to be the military firefighter appition week proclamation. Um I would like anybody involved with that to come up to the front. Stand right up here. Go ahead and stand right over there a little bit.

So who wrote this one?

I've had to practice this one a couple times. Why don't y'all face the front? I'm going to try to get through this one without a terrible tongue twister trouble. But anyway, here we go. Gentlemen, I think this is awesome. The city of St. Angelo is committed to recognizing the contributions of the Military Firefighter Heritage Foundation for upholding their motto of defending those who defend America both home and abroad. For 25 years, the Military Firefighter Heritage Foundation has remained steadfast toward upholding its mission to preserve the history of the military firefighter and honoring our fallen brother and sister firefighters of the Department of Defense, active duty, Guard, Reserve, and civilians and support of those same families by any means possible. And since its founding in 2001, the foundation has achieved remarkable milestones beginning with the preservation of four vintage military firefighting vehicles. and now proudly displays 19 historic vehicles, including the iconic Cayman H43 Pedro Rescue helicopter along the memorial walkway leading to the Lewis F.Garland Department of Defense Fire Academy at Goodfellow Air Force Base. The foundation established the DoD Fire Academy instructor of the year award to recognize the outstanding accomplishments of instructors from all four services and Department of Defense civilian firefighters with the overall Lewis F. Garland DoD Fire Academy instructor of the year selected from five annual nominees. On October 13th, 2006, the foundation dedicated the DoD fallen firefighter memorial. Now honor now honors over 150 DoD fallen firefighters and has welcomed more than 25 families of fallen firefighters to the annual DoD fallen firefighter memorial service. The foundation founded the Memorial Scholarship Fund in 20110, providing $5,000 scholarships to five deserving family members of DoD firefighters each year, totaling $75,000 in annual awarded scholarships. In 2013, the foundation established the Lifetime

Achievement Award and the DoD Fire Emergency Service Hall of Fame, honoring recipients and induct and inductees annually at the Military Firefighter Heritage Foundation Firefighters Gala. To date, 15 lifetime achievement recipients and 100 Hall of Fame inductees have been recognized. The foundation most recently created the MFHF Partnership Award presented to outstanding members of the San Angelo Fire Department and Goodfellow Air Force Base Fire Department, fostering growth and cooperation between these two departments. Therefore, I, Tom Thompson, mayor of the city of San Angelo, on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim the week of March 1st through 7th, 2026 as Military Firefighter Appreciation Week. In the city of San Angelo, I congratulate the Military Firefighter Heritage Foundation for 25 years of dedicated service to military firefighters around the world for preserving their history and honoring DoD fallen firefighters and their families. Somebody needs to come up here and speak.

Thank you, mayor. Uh, my name is Mike Robertson. Uh, I was sitting in a with four other people back 25 years ago when our lawyer gave us the articles of incorporation for the foundation. This past January, I stepped down as the president of the foundation after 25 years and turned it over to Mr. for Rob Lanning, which will leave the foundation in good hands. But over the 25 years we've accomplished so much, uh, not mentioned in the proclamation, back in 2010 or 2006, the military firefighters weren't honored at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emittsburg, Maryland, and the executive director came down to dedicate our fallen fire memorial. I said, "Why aren't they there?" He says, "We're going to change that." So after four years of going back and forth between myself, him, their board of directors, FEMA, and uh October of 2010, we brought 18 firefighters that had died between the 1981 and 2010 into the National Memorial. But I want to thank the city of St. Angelo, city council for your support over the last 25 years. The city has been great to us and we're looking for another 25 years. Thank you very much.

Have anybody here with me bills for the elderly? Susanna, get them up here. Set them up here. Now that we brought most of the crowd up to the front, this works out perfect. March for Meals Month, Meals for the Elderly, was founded in August 1974 through the vision and determination of Mary Alice Rogers, who recognized the need to support homebound seniors with nutritious meals so they could delay or avoid nursing home placement. What began with the delivery of 16 meals from a donated building has grown into a vital private nonprofit organization serving Tom Green County and Iranian County, as well as miles, Texas. Over the past 50 years, Meals for the Elderly has delivered more than 4 million meals to over 10,000 individuals. Or I'm not going to fact check. That's very impressive. Empowering the adults in our community to maintain autonomy within the comfort of their homes through nourishing meals, coordinated services, and meaningful personal interaction. The vision of Meals for the Elderly is a future where no adult is hungry, isolated, or forgotten. Meals for the Elderly is a proud independent organization and a member of Meals on Wheels America. Joining more than 5,000 community-based providers nationwide in the shared mission of addressing senior hunger and isolation, March is recognized nationally as March for Meals, celebrating the Older Americans Act nutrition program established on March 22nd, 1972, which laid the foundation for the Meals on Wheels network, serving more than 2 million seniors annually. On March 10th, 2026, the Daughters of the British Empire will present a check to the Mills for the elderly in honor to in honor of March

for Mills, demonstrating the generosity and compassion of our community. Community Champions will participate in meal deliveries on Thursday, March 19th, 2026, experiencing firsthand the impact of this essential service and raising awareness of the needs of our homebound neighbors. Therefore, I, Tom Thompson, mayor of the city of St. Angela, Texas, on behalf of the city council to hereby proclaim March 2026 as March for Mills month in the city of San Angelo, Texas and encourage all citizens to learn more about the contributions of the Mills for the elderly by following their work on Facebook, exploring volunteer opportunities, and supporting their mission through donations.

Absolutely. Thank you, mayor, and thank you, city council. Um, it's really an honor to be a part of an or an organization like this hearing. I didn't deliver the four million meals, unfortunately, but it's really an accomplishment. And I think this proclamation represents who we are as a city, neighbors helping one another, and it also represents the 600 seniors that will open their door and receive a meal in a smile. So, we are really grateful for Mary Alice Rogers who founded this mission. And we encourage you to please um support Meals for the Elderly. Come be part of the story. Um we want to thank our community champions that are participating with us this year. They've agreed to be ambassadors and help us spread this wonderful message. And so, please um make sure you do follow us on Facebook and we are partnering with Texas Roadhouse and Jason Deli this month as well. So, um please go look for more information about that. Those are some fundraisers we have going on. But we're so grateful to be part of this wonderful city. Thank you very much. You're good. Thank you, sir.

At this point, we'll move into item four, public comment. Members of the public may raise issues or concerns not listed on the regular agenda during this time. To participate, please sign in with the city clerk prior to the beginning of the meeting. Speakers will be called in order they signed in. When speaking, citizens must speak from the podium. Address all comments to the dis. Begin by stating your name and address or single member district number and limit your remarks to three minutes or less. Heather, do we have any public comment? Yes, sir. Uh, Heather Wy. Heather Wy.

Good morning. My name is Heather Wy and I'm a resident of District 3. Texas leads the data center boom. Becoming a technology hub is a phenomenal promise from an industry that is not generating any profits. 95% of companies who have tried to implement AI aren't making any money from it. The quit GPT movement claims that over 1.5 million people are boycotting chat GPT specifically. Cloud storage, AI, and crypto mining are part of an uncertain sector that seeks to push through fast-moving plans which only have taxed local resources and driven up costs in the areas they're in. Citizens have come before this council asking for transparency to try to understand what exactly we're welcoming into our community and seek specific information regarding the ways it will impact each home, positively or negatively. Some of those questions include wanting to know if Skybox will be responsible for their own infrastructure or if rateayers will be responsible because the rateayers are footing the bill with other data centers. If there will be a community benefit agreement, how much water will actually be used? Where will the contaminated water go? And none of these questions or dozens of others seem to have been answered. I cannot find them on the city data center website. Due to a lack of transparency in which I understand that you may not actually have the answers to many of these questions, I urge you to implement a data center moratorum for this city for a minimum of one year until more information is available and a deeper analysis of the ways the data center boom will affect the Texas grid, San Angelo electricity and gas rates, our water resources, our land, and the true benefit to the community. A moratorum would also give the constituents who elected you more time to understand the issue and communicate with you. Would allow a more accurate information from the developers and environmental agencies. And it would pause this very fast-moving industry that has caused significant damages to so many places, especially when this one is so close to

residential neighborhoods and small communities. It is time to pause and allow regulations to catch up with construction. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Heather number two,

Richard Summers. My name is Richard Summers and I live in District 5. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Please refer as you wish to to the handouts that I provided you earlier this morning. I have six questions and comments for the record. First, will Skybox agree in writing to voluntarily comply with the adopted data center regulations? Written clarity on this prevents amb ambiguity later. Second, will Skybox confirm in writing that this facility will not engage in high-capacity computing applications such as crypto mining or large-scale AI training. Those uses carry materially different energy and operational requirements. Will the city confirm on the public record what incentives, if any, are being offered to Skybox and specifically confirm that no tax abatement will be provided? Fourth, if incentives are offered, will Skybox provide community matching commitments to maintain economic neutrality? Fifth, will the regulations incorporate a quantified low frequency low hum standard including measurable nighttime limits and tonal adjust adjustments to protect surrounding neighborhoods not only from loud noise but from persistent tonal disturbance. And finally, the city consultant has indicated a generous horizontal setback at the buildings of 200 to 300 feet and that is appreciated. However, the concern is not distance from the property line. It is vertical massing and skyline impact and there are illustrations in your handout that you can refer to in this regard. A 75- ft structure built straight up establishes

a precedent in an area envisioned as predominantly one and twostory structures. A proportional stepback requirement for upper floors preserves sightelines, reduces perceived bulk, and protects compatibility for future adjacent structures. What is approved here becomes the template for what follows. Now, this is not opposition to growth. It is a request for written clarity, enforcable standards, and thoughtful design. Thank you.

Thank you, Richard. Steph Baka Morning. My name is Steph Bach. I live out at 5222 Buffalo Heights. 52 50 What? Didn't hear your name and your address. I just couldn't understand.

Steph Baka 5222 Greywolf Lane. Uh, I respectfully petition the city of St. Angelo for a one-year moratorum to immediately halt and and to immediately halt and further any further pursuit, approval, negotiation, and incentive agreements related to the construction of data centers within our cities, city limits or extr territorial jurisdiction. Citizen concerns are rooted in the environmental health environmental health and financial risk that data centers have posed in communities across the United States. St. Angelo deserves responsible, transparent, and communitydriven development, not projects that potentially jeopardize our long-term well-being. I am not against the development or the growth of Stangelo. I just want to be heard and uh understand what what direction we're going in. Residents have a right to full disclosure of all negotiations, agreements, and incentive discussions, independent environmental and infrastructure impact agreements or assessments, public hearings before any commit commitments are made, a development process that prioritizes community well-being over corporate interests. Therefore, I call on the city of St. Angelo to uphold these principles and respectfully request a one-year moratorium and a cease to all active efforts to recruit, incentivize, or approve data center developments. Reject any pending or future proposals for data center constructions. Adopt a formal policy requiring public review and environmental impact assessments for any large-scale industrial projects. And prioritize sustainable community beneficial developments that protects our water health and financial stability. Again, St. Angelo's future should be shaped by its residents, not by outside corporations. Um, again, I appreciate all that you do, all the research that Benoy has done, the planning commission and things like that. I just don't agree with the data center. Thank you.

Thank you, Stephan.

Heather, any more public comment? One staff announcement from Carl White. Carl, start the clock. He's on consent.

We're working to get the word out about the first of three public meetings for the the River Parks master plan. This first public meeting will be next Tuesday, March 10, 5:30 to 8:00 PM here in this room at the Mcnes Convention Center. Uh looking at what's going on in the community, there's a lot going on. Spring is knocking on the door and there's lots of different options of different events and meetings to go to. Uh if you miss this one, there will be two at least two other public meetings. The river parks master plan is looking at the conceptual and visionary uh plan to develop look at the parks civic league park all the way through Santa Fe Park um Bart Dit Park, City Park and part of Rio Koncho uh park looking at how those parks connect interact with each other and how they might change in terms of their conceptual development. And it's also looking at how the Concho River Legacy Trail Sculpture Project will fit into um those parks. So, next Tuesday, March 10, 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. Thank you. Thank you, Carl. Any more public comment?

Concludes open public comment. That will I will add one more. Do I have to sign to make public comment? Mr. Brooks, you signed up for an item that's on consent agenda. And when we get to public comment for consent agenda, I have your form. Happy birthday to Shane Kelton. You're a Sammy Hagar song. I believe 55. 55. With that, we'll move into the consent agenda. And I'll start over here on the right with you, Mary. Do you have any items you wish to pull? No, sir. Mary's good. All right. Karen I Karen wants to pull I think that's Yeah.

Okay. Patrick, F and H. Wants to pull F and H. I want to pull item E. Harry, I'm good. Mr. Self, I'm good. Mr. Heert, no sir. We're good. So, I'll look for a motion for all items excluding E, F, H, and I. I have a first from Tommy, second and a second from Harry Thomas. Is there any public comment on those items? Not the items approved. No.

So, okay. With that, I'll look for a vote. All those in favor of passing all items except E, F, H, and I say I. I. Any opposed? Well, none opposed. Those items pass 70. Now we'll move into the first pool item. Item E. Consider authorizing a cooperative purchase of highdensity material bond service treatment HA5 from Andell Construction Incorporated in the amount of 613,412 through an interlocal agreement with the city of Hurst, Texas and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents. Patrick, good morning. How are you, sir? We're good.

I have a question on this one. We're not buying this from a corporation or from a a vendor. I mean, or how it's We're buying this from the city of Hurst, Texas. No. So, the city of Hurst, Texas goes out for bid and in their bid, similar to what we do on several of our bids, we have a piggyback clause.

City of Hurst has a piggyback clause as well. We've been utilizing that piggyback. We have anou with them that allows us to do that. Um, and so we use their bid pricing that's competitively bid um for our for our project. So HA5, this will be the fifth year that we use HA5 in lie of seal coat in those areas that qualify. This year's project will primarily be in the Bentwood area getting those streets taken care of as well as some other little area little streets that have been built in the last couple of years. Awesome. And this is a similar process to what we've done before several. Yes, sir. It's exactly the same. That's all I have. Any further questions from the council? With that, I'll make a motion to approve item E.

Second. I got a second from Patrick. Any public comment other than this? With all that, all those in favor of item E say I.

Any nays? With no nays, item E passes 70. We'll move to item F. Consider approving change order two and three for the Chadman Street CAC project, CACP project, in the amount of $179,37255 and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents. So on when we got into the Chaburn Street project and we started doing the demolition. So, if you'll remember three or four years ago, we actually did the waterline project and sewer line replacements along Chabvern Street in anticipation of redoing this the streetscape um project. When we put in those water lines, we obviously put them at a depth a design depth. As we designed Shadurn Street coming to the north, um those depths were inadequate to to facilitate the depth of the roadway. with the bumpouts and everything, there was a little bit of re-elevation that needed to happen on that on the roadway. Therefore, the water lines were too were too were not shallow enough. So, we're lowering those water lines. That's what change order two is. Change order three um when they actually bid the specifications spit specified a standard signal signal design. And if you'll remember in in uh phase one, we have the enhanced signals, right? The more decorative signals. So change order three is simply the difference between the standard signal price and the the more decorative signals. So that's change order and change order two and change order three. Both of these monies are coming out of contingency. So the total price the total bid amount that y'all approved back when you approved this this contract um is not changing. It's just coming out of the reducing those contingency funds. Patrick

Patrick uh my biggest question was if the um I mean I know we've already approved the amount but if those decorative were needed and where the money was coming from um so on that I mean I know it comes out of our general fund but is that grant money that's going to cover most of those? So the signals are a pedestrian item that's covered by that grant so it's an 8020 match of that different so whatever that differential is we're on the hook for 20% of that the grant is going to pay the other 80%. Okay, that's at least I just I was I hate throwing too much decorative stuff if it's you know unneeded but if the grants cover 80% of it then that's a pretty good return on our money. So correct. Any further questions for the dice on item I on item F.

Sure. Patrick, will this uh add add on to the time that it would take to finish this project lowering the water lines? No, ma'am it will not. Um, so right now Reese Albert is is doing that or they're anticipating getting that done. Um, it will not extend the project. Those are actually being done. Right now they're working on the intersection of Harris in B in Chadurn. Um, so while they're working on that intersection, they're actually lowering the water lines in a different area. So those are working at the same time. Bill, thank you, Patrick. Yes, ma'am. I move to approve. I got a first from Patrick. Second

and a second from Karen. Any public comment on that item? With no public comment on item F, we look for a vote. All those in favor of item F say I. Any opposed? Item F passes 70. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. Hurry up. I'm sorry. Was that added extra comment? I'm looking for legal. All right. Well, over to item H. Consider approving the Central Square agreement for human resource information systems through UKG in the amount of $144,27.50 50 cents with a 5% annual increase during the life of the agreement. Veronica Sanchez, you're on.

Thank you. This um UKG was presented at the last uh budget sector in the last budget cycle. It is a all-inclusive system that allows human resources to utilize that for everything from onboarding through um the end of employment for somebody um benefits, payroll, all of those things. Um the reason this item is on the consent this time is when we did um when this was approved through the through the budget process, the only thing that came to council at that time through a budget amendment was the portion that was needed for that fiscal year. So um contract was executed and the amount the reoccurring amount annual amount needed to come back to council.

Patrick, you had questions? Yeah, my biggest question was the 5% annual increase that we just go ahead and build into that. Um, are we not um with with technology advancing with uh technology companies outsourcing their development work, I'm surprised that we have to pay more every year and it isn't actually an option to go lower um at least lock in a rate for a few years instead of having to have a 5% increase every year.

Actually, city manager brought that point up. Um, I would be happy to go back to UKG to see if there's some negotiation there. Um, unfortunately for the customer, um, anywhere between 3 to 5% is typical on agreements. I just had a conversation with purchasing about that. They see that quite often, particularly for software. I know some of the contracts that we have in HR, not for software, for other things, they do build in some sort of an increase annually. Um, but like I said, I'd be happy to to try to negotiate that with UKG. Um, at the time of renewal, how long are we locked into this current contract?

It's a three-year contract, but we do have the option to um um I'm sorry, to not go with UKG annually if we give them a the proper notice. When um when y'all researching different companies that would work and fit the bill of what we need, was there other ones that were close? Um, yes, there were others that are close. Yep. The reason that UKG was utilized though, um, going back to that budget process was because it was recommended with the current, uh, payroll software that we have to to go with UKG. Those two systems speak to each other and um, in our world, that is huge.

No, and I understand that. Um, again, my biggest deal is just adding on that 5% annual increase. I think that's uh I would like to have seen a better deal than that person. Any other questions? Any other questions from the DAC? I have just one quick one. Veronica, is there a possibility and when you're talking to UKG if we were to if cash flow allowed if we prepaid that say one year in advance uh to eliminate that 5% increase if we could you know whatever the the cost is you know prepay that or not you know go year to year if that would save us that 5% because you're looking at 15% increase uh over three three years

agreement. Yes. Um that that is not something that they usually do, but it's something that we could definitely bring up. Well, sure. It's never they won't do it if we can't if they don't know what we want. Y All right. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Is this something we can table and let her check into this or do we need I think this is only discussed at renewal. Correct. Yes. Your 5% is renewal. I can definitely start those conversations. But yeah, right. This is discussed at renewal. Are we not discussing a 5% annual increase on it here?

Is this your renewal point? It's not yet. Okay. No. So, this could be brought up at renewal but not now. Mhm. Okay. What is the renewal? Um, this contract, this agreement was um I believe signed back in September time frame, right around budget. Yeah, it was right around budget time frame, September, October. I'd like to see those conversations even if if it the time frame is not by their parameters if we um still doesn't hurt to ask and it be as um kind of an iron fist with them. That's a lot of money.

No, absolutely. Yeah, I can start having those conversations with them. Not a problem. Yeah. So, Brandon, at this point, we still move forward with the item. Correct. I mean, it sounds like if we tabled it, it wouldn't I mean, is it going to hurt you and anything that you need or No, like I said, the the agreement is is already in place currently. The 5% that I believe is in question will be for the renewal. That's 6 months from now, correct? And this will come up again in 6 months.

Then we can actually discuss that part of it. Or is this saying we're going to renew at 5% increase come? has to be I mean it'll have to be placed on the agenda in order for us to to discuss it again. What the agreement that's in place right now gives us the ability to renew auto renew that agreement for 3 years. So um if council wishes for me to bring it back to discuss the 5% or whatever that percent is and I I'd be happy to do that. Want to spend any more money than we have to right you know right off off the bat. So I would prefer to see it tabled for at least a few months so that we can start the negotiating. I mean is

but really be aggressive for the citizens and not not spend the money if we don't absolutely have to and then see how much we that they will meet us in the middle. I mean, I I I just don't like the idea of renewing it six six months ahead of time uh at that increase. And so, let's let's barter with them or bargain with them. It's worth it. It's worth a shot. All right. So, are you done, Mary? Yes, sir. All right. Tommy, are we in danger of messing up the deal we have now if we go down this path?

Not the deal we have now. Obviously, the renewal. Yeah. I mean, we would have to try to negotiate that and then council would direct based on um what they came back with. I will say that the implementation piece for this is a lot of work. Um, so just for the the purpose of my staff and the organization and what they've gone through just in the last few months to to try to implement what we have already and then have to go with a different vendor um would be a lot of

that. That's an thank you for bringing that up. That was going to be my next question because we went with them to the point you already made because they satisfied the needs that we had. We had a I'm going to if I understood correctly a bunch of just separate systems that worked independent one of the other. This helped us begin to consolidate those. And then to your point you just then made, it sounds like we could be at risk of starting over again with a new system. I'm not in favor of that. Um, so if my math Am I missing something here, Veronica? Are we talking 5% of $144,000

about $7,200? $7,200. Um, yes. $7,200 is $7,200. But in terms of the bigger picture, just wondering maybe if we're choking on a gnat here. So, let me ask Joe. Go ahead. Is there a possibility with your negotiations you don't automatic renewal, could they go up 10%. I mean, more than just the 5%.

Um, I don't believe based on the contract that we have right now. I think in three years they could definitely increase or decrease, you know, that that annual increase. Yeah. And there is potential for us to do away with current systems that we have that we are paying money for um that we can consolidate that service into UKG. So um there eventually will be some not necessarily savings because we would still spend that we would just put that expense into UKG at the current amount that they've quoted us that we've signed the agreement for. No,

I guess Veronica, my my thing, the way that this request is is written, it looks like we we would you're asking for $144,000, but that's not that's not right. That's not correct. The the $144,000 is already budgeted for that was budgeted for during the last budget cycle. All right. It's just the way it was written. You're want 7,200 bucks, not 144,000, right? Well, the 5%'s already in there as well. Um, so what we need is approval, I guess, for the full year, um, in order to be it, it's a housekeeping item in order for us to, um, have approval through council for this, but the agreement itself at that amount just get a little bit confusing

has already been I can I can stomach 7200. I I count 144,000 that that was approved through the last budget process and Right. So, but we're following. So your ask is to prove this as presented and the five is already included in there. Correct. That's correct. Let me ask this question. If in the discussions of the renewal could they change their price or if we went with somebody else, would the cost of the change exceed $7,200 in total manh hours and time? It could I in man hours and time? Definitely. Okay. Yes. All right. Daniel, you comment?

My heartburn was at 5% as well and that's what Veronica and I talked about. Um I think if anything the 5% is what I'm hearing up here as well. Is that something that we want to get that uh reduced? Actually talked with Bucky on a similar type item uh with it and they did drop the percentage as well. So uh if there's an opportunity to go ahead and table it, bring it back next city council meeting and see what can be done on that 5% with a discussion. I would rather do that at this point. So that would be my recommendation is to is is to do that and come back. Harry,

I guess I have to ask this question and not specifically for HR, but when we make purchases, long-term agreements, typically in those agreements, there is a three to five or sometimes 7% increase yearly depending on the type of agreement that we have. Is that a fair statement, Brandon? I mean, I think that's fair for some things. um like software, but I wouldn't say it's across the board for everything, but yeah, it can be a standard term. With that, mayor, I'll make a motion to approve this as presented.

Okay. Um were there any other comments that want to be made? All right. So, I have a motion to approve from Harry. Look for a second. I have a second from Tommy. Any public comment on this item, Heather? With no public comment, we'll take a vote on this. All those in favor say I. I. I. How many? And those opposed? Nay. Item passes 61. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Veronica.

We will go next to item I. Considering approving a a memorandum of understanding between the city of St. Angelo and the city of St. Angelo Rotary Club regarding stewardship of Mountain View Park Rotary Park and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents. Carl Y. Yes, sir. Do you have a question or you want me to summarize what we're hoping to do? I I think pulled out. Oh, I can't always hear. Good morning. Sorry. Good morning, Carl. Uh, I was just hoping that you could summarize for for us, please. And also we want our guests from the Rotary Club to have an opportunity to speak after your explanation. Thank you.

I don't want to steal his thunder, but the Rotary is celebrating 100 years in St. Angelo. So they're wanting to do something a little more substantial in the community and they looked at different ideas and the idea that we settled on was it was doing a formal adoption through a memorandum of understanding of Mountain View Park which is over the off the loop close to TLCA. It's a neighborhood park and it it hasn't gotten much in terms of renovations or improvements except for a new playground in the last few years. So, it it has potential for uh some investment uh for that park. And so this would set up an arrangement for a formal adoption by the Rotary to do some of those improvements like replacing benches and tables and adding some walkways and uh doing some lighting improvements, maybe adding a shade structure, maybe converting the courts to pickle ball, things like that.

I think it's a wonderful idea and I'm glad to see them here today to offer some comments as well. Good morning, Mr. Mayor, esteemed members of council. My name is Mason Brooks, single member, District 1. And uh I second what Carl said. No, I'm just kidding. The apple does not fall far from the tree. The apple does not fall far from the tree cuz my mom, Susan Brooks, was president of the Junior League when uh Kids Kingdom was built and constructed. So, glutton for punishment we are. But here I am to answer questions you may have. But what I would tell you is our Rotary Club has done a lot of great things in the periphery of the community. And what a great way to celebrate 100 years by this memorandum of understanding between our parks department and our club. For our 75th um we we gave $75,000 to start a scholarship fund. And 25 years later, that scholarship fund has grown to over $335,000 and we've given $171,000 out to uh community uh high school graduates pursuing education and that's only since 2002. We also have a charitable fund and do fundraisers in the community. It used to be Shrimpfest. Uh now it is our betting on Brad Futures Casino Night. And most recently, two years ago, we gave uh the proceeds, all of it, $16,000 to the Boys and Girls Club to further their mission. So, we're doing some good things in our community and growing our membership. I would invite any of you all to be my guest and uh and anybody watching this this live stream on YouTube, but we just welcome the collaboration and look forward to a hundred more years of the St. and Angelo Rotary Club putting service above self in our great community. So,

any questions for me? Mason. Yes, sir. This is outstanding. This takes what what people don't see here is Rotaries make an investment with time, people, and funds, which also removes that from the burden of the city. And as you can tell, sometimes our funds and resources are limited. Yes, we we all have handcuffs like that. But I just want to commend and congratulate the Rotary Club and say thank you for stepping out in a position like this to take over a park and to make sure it gets to his greatest potential. And with that, I thank y'all very much.

Well, and if I may, I'd be remiss. It takes a village. And we have members of our village, Ken Roberts, past president, and Vicky Terrell, my successor, the president-elect of the club here. So, thank them for for being here. And as I depart, if your job was easy, there'd be a line out the door to do it. And there isn't. So from me, Mason, the citizen, I applaud your efforts and commend you for the job you're doing. So Mason, thank you very much. Thank you. I had something, Tom. Oh, just you want to ask Mason or do you want to ask Carl?

Yeah, Mason. Really not a question. I just want to brag on you for a little bit. um years and years ago when you were at Cornerstone Christian School, uh they would do a fundraiser with my company at that time, Red Wheel Fundraising. And the ones that y'all did uh around Christmas, they would go, um ask people to donate and, you know, buy the pies, but then what the what your group did was uh take those all those pies and give them to meals for the elderly. And so I I just love that concept. And you were the top seller I think for about three years there. So yes, a really good pie. And now I'm a professional beggar with the St. Angelo Area Foundation. So I think the writing was on the wall.

Okay. Okay. Let's let's keep it this as good as this is. Let's keep it here. There's a little too much. You can pay him later. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. Goodness gracious. All right. With that, I'll look for a motion for approval. Motion to approve. I have a first from Karen Hessie Smith. Second from who was it down here? Uh Mary, we we get bad if we don't get Mary a second on there. Any public comment on this item, Heather? Just Mason. With that, we'll look for a motion to approve. All those in favor say I. I.

Any opposed? Item passes 70. With that, that concludes the uh consent agenda. We'll now move to the regular agenda. Comments regarding items on the regular agenda may be made by the public when each item is discussed as outlined above. To participate, please sign in with the city clerk prior to the beginning of the meeting. Speakers will be called in order they are signed in. Comments are limited to less than three minutes. Applicants, proponents, and appellants are exempt from the time limit above and instead must limit their remark to less than five minutes. We go to item A, a review of infill and empowerment zone funding since 2019 with discussion and direction of how to structure the program in the upcoming budget cycle. Presentation made by planner Ardanf and planning and development services director Aaron Venoi.

Good morning. Thank you, Mayor, City Council, Mr. Valenuela. I'm Aaron Venoy, director of planning development services. This morning, we're going to have a couple of slideshows that talk about our infill program. Uh, and Miss Ardan Nef, one of our planners, put together an infill team and uh that also had some folks from our neighborhood services uh with Angela Bloss's team to look at our infill and give you all some information. a lot of data forward stuff in here and then at the end I'm going to give some recommendations of what to look forward towards the budget season that's coming up and and infill. Uh but I'm going to turn it over to Miss Nef. Uh she's got some great numbers for you to go through and very excited uh that she can present this today. Ardan,

good morning everybody. So I won't repeat the introduction but Ardan, I've been planning with St. Angelo for about 10 months now. Um, and I thought it would be a good idea to get started with some context for you as well as for the citizens here who maybe aren't as familiar. So, infill development refers to an effort to place homes on vacant lots um in already developed areas. So, up on the screen I have a photograph of like an arbitrary street in San Angelo. We've got um a line of homes and there's two vacant lots. These are infill eligible lots within the city. Um, these lots do not contribute significantly to the tax base. We've got homes around here ranging from a 100,000 to 200,000 in terms of appraised market value, while these vacant lots sit between 10 and 20,000. Um, yet they do ser they are still serviced by police, emergency services, and in the image, we've got a green and a blue line running up above them. That's to symbolize that we do have city infrastructure connected to them. We have water taps, sewer taps. Um if there were a fire, the emergency services would still respond. Um so these infill lots, these vacant lots in developed areas are believed to lower the surrounding property values. They promote crime and they force development to the outskirts of town. To try to mitigate this, the city of St. Angelo approved a $200,000 budget annually over in 2019 to promote development on those vacant lots. Um eligibility was designated with the neighborhood services division based on median income. If the median income dipped below a certain threshold of the poverty line, um areas were eligible to be designated as infill. So we came out with this map. Um we've been operating with this map recently. We've got the Lake View neighborhoods, Black Shear and Reagan towards the center, Fort Koncho, Rio Vista down to the south, and Bair.

Um Brentwood was recently added in 2025. That's the Angelo Heights area. Um the infill eligible area has two funding options. There were $500,000 $5,000 cash grants um put in the hands of developers upon completion of their build permit. Alternatively, we would offer to pay for 50% of total infrastructure costs if that was necessary. So that looked like building out a sidewalk or extending sewer water manes. Um, and these funds were available for single family homes, duplexes, and apartments up to eight units. I did want to note that um the $5,000 cash grants were recently upped to $10,000. That was approved, I think, around May. Um, but for the purpose of this presentation, um, work was kind of paused before we reached that threshold. So, all of the research was done with the $5,000 cash grants. So, moving into project scope, um, we wanted to take a look at the history of this infill funding to provide context to you guys to allow you guys to make an informed data-driven decision about where you want that money to go and how you want it aortioned. Um, whenever we approach this project, we wanted to answer three main questions. First, what did we do since 2019? Where has the city's money been going? Who has it been going to? Um, second, what was the impact of that? How can we try to gauge how well we've done on af um incentivizing affordable housing in the city of St. Angelo? And then third, what if anything should we do next? Um I wanted the project to follow this kind of um image to the right, this flowchart. So we took massive amounts of raw data. We looked at tax information, code violations, crime reports to try and get as big of a picture as we can. Then we narrowed that down. We we combined and made all the systems talk to each other to break it into two main focuses. Um first being historical context, giving you guys clarity on what

happened and then impact analysis, trying to look for metrics to gauge what this has done for our community and then bringing those back in conversation with one another to help give recommendations, which is what Aaron Venoy will help with later on. looking at should changes be made to the eligibility requirements, to the grant amounts, or where we're focusing our money in general. To do that, we created our team. We've got planning, permits, and neighborhood services. We looked at, like I said, just massive amounts of data. Got in contact with a lot of different people. This was very much a village working on this. Um, we looked at all 196 grants awarded, um, with some of them being infrastructure to fund in total about 222 lots since 2019, just under half a million individual tax parcel data points, almost 3,000 building permits, 150,000 crime reports, and 50,000 code complaints. And I did want to take a moment just to stress here um the intent of this project is not to make a claim that we understand the full complexity of incentivizing affordable housing in the city of St. Angelo. Um this is a very complex issue. This is this is deep and it's very impactful to the citizens of St. Angelo and we don't expect that this data can inform you entirely on what to do next. Um, but the goal here is to reach an understanding that by creating uniform methods to to track these measurements through time, we can make informed decisions about that change. We can see how we've evolved since 2019 and hopefully we can bring more clarity to a to a very difficult decision. Um and I did want to note that um this work looking at this data using our GIS lensure to to do it um this work was accepted and featured in a um national com convention to represent the way that

municipalities are empowering decision makers with data informed analysis. So moving into it what did we do? So since 2019, I have taken all of the different infill funds, all of the lots funded due to our investment, placed them on this map of the area. As I said, we've got 196 total grants. Four of those were infrastructure projects. So it runs a sewer extension up a street or it builds out the it's a plat requirement um for a total of 222 lots funded due to our investment. We've spent uh just over $1 million since 2019 towards affordable housing at the time that this study was cut off. And um I did want to make a note. We have Brentwood here and it's got three little dots on it. I didn't want you guys to misinterpret that as though Brentwood has only funded three infill developments. It was added in 2025, Angelo Heights. So for the purpose of this study, we don't really fixate on the Angelo Heights area. Um speaking for the rest of it, we see a few clustered areas. this. Let me see if I can use this. Whoa. Um, we see some overlapping spaces up here in Lake View. That is a an infrastructure project where a plat was um provided services for and it was about a $100,000 investment for 17 lots. Um there's a similar one up north of Lake View. Other than that, we see a few clusters like in the Blackshere area and we see a few spread out as well. maybe the few dots littered around Reagan. Looking at this another way, we graphed out the total funds invested broken out by neighborhood and the total number of grants given. Um Lake View received nearly double the funding of other neighborhoods. And that's due to two separate infrastructure projects. So instead of giving $5,000 grants to one lot, we gave $100,000 to 17. On average,

maybe $6,000 per lot total, but we do it all at once. Um, when we break it out in terms of the awards actually given, we see a relative similarity. If you kind of squint your eyes, the pie charts broken out relatively well between the 40 awards to Lake View, 36 to Black Shear, 37 to Reagan. Um, and then on the other end of the spectrum, we've got Bair and Fort Concho receiving the least funding since the onset of the infill area at 13 and 18. broken out another way, I wanted to show the recipients of the funding. So, up at the top of this graph to the left, we've got infrastructure grants, that's the purple color, and then we've got $5,000 grants, that's blue. 52 different entities have received this funding. Um, and 21 of them at least double dipped. We we see 21 people who have received funding multiple times. Up at the very top of the graph on the left, the one-time grant recipients, $65,000. That's 31 people who have received that funding one time built one home. Everybody else has built at least two homes due to infill funding. Um when I spoke to neighborhood services, they communicated that funding is generally not maxing out. Um it maxed out one time and I believe it was during the 2020 fiscal year whenever we had two massive infrastructure projects totaling over $100,000. So out of that budget, half of it went towards subdivisions of 10 to 15 homes. When looking at the financial impact of funding, I wanted to try and map out a five-year growth. So when we invest in infill funding, we invest $5,000. The average lot that receives that funding increases in market appraised value from $12,000, a vacant lot, to $183,000. That's the median value of a completed infill lot. Um to try to help scale it,

I got in contact with some financial analysts and they advised put that side by side with what happens when we don't invest to give you guys clarity. So compare that number to the 1,800 unfunded lots that I was able to um map throughout the city in the Infill area and those rose only to $20,000. So mapped out a different way side by side um we see infill funded lots in the navy compared to the um unfunded vacant lots in the yellow um with a city tax rate to clarify that this is specifically for funds received by um city taxes upon completion of the lot annually when we invest $5,000 we receive an average tax return of $1,454 each year after it's completed. Alternatively, if we do nothing, we receive an average tax return of 150. So that's our that's our threshold of investing versus not investing if we make the claim that these homes are going up because we are trying to incentivize them. Mapping it out, another way to put this is that within four years of your investment on any given lot, the city makes its money back. After those four years of making your money back, you make a continued 30% return on that investment. So, if I take all of the lots that received funding since 2019 and we we claimed that they reached the median property value um and then we we multiply that out by the tax revenue, um for all 222 lots since 2019, upon completion, we will make um an annual return of $322,000 for that initial investment. um that will pay back the $1.1 million investment um within four years. If we had left these vacant, we would be receiving an annual tax return estimated at $35,000.

When we break this out to look at the difference between St. Angelo as a whole and the infill area, we see something similar to what was listed on the COCDC housing study that we received. Um when we look at St. Angelo, I took all residentially zoned lots, lots four homes. We have about 30,000 of them in the city. Um, the average home value is about $225,000 and the median home value rests at just about $180,000. When I look at infill specifically, I take those seven designated neighborhoods. U, we have about 13,000 lots. That's nearly half of the city being infill eligible. And yet, their average home value and median are significantly lower. we see a median home value of about $60,000 lower than St. Angelo as a whole. So, this is indicative of a of a disparity in in the aortionment of home value throughout the city of St. Angelo. Half of the city experiences a $60,000 lower median home value based on um up-to-date county appraisal data. But when I look at the 133 finished lots that we invested our money into, we see an average and median home value that is much closer to um St. St. Angelo as a whole. It's indicative of bringing a life quality, bringing a bridge to that disparity that St. Angelo experiences so that way we can have homes valued at at a higher amount that that represents the life that we want people living in St. Angelo. Um, I also I found it interesting personally, not to hang up on it, but the difference between the average and median home values between St. Angelo and the Infill area. The CODC housing study cited that having a large gap between your average and your median is indicative of there being a few um specific properties that are pulling the number up whereas most people experience the median. 50% of all homes are valued at 183,000 or lower. Um whereas when we look at infill we see the opposite story. So there are a few homes that that aren't evaluated great.

They get appraised and they're at 120,000. They're small homes. um and they they pull down the median, but ultimately 50% of homes that are completed infill lots are at 180,000. So, just an interesting math tidbit that I liked. But I want to make very clear that um infill development is about more than the return that the city gets on an investment. Um we are trying to understand what the impacts of investing in a community actually are. um and my team wanted to find a way to look for city data that we're already tracking to match to um tenants of of success. What does it mean to revitalize a community? So, we tried to think about it as a coin. So, on one side of the coin, we've got pillars of success. We've got pride and ownership. We want people happy to be living in St. Angel, happy to be living in their homes. We've got public safety, people who can walk to school, elderly people going to church. Um, and then we've got general quality of life, very nebulous, but we want people we want people to feel good about living in St. Angelo. When trying to think about existing data stores that we could use to track those, we thought pride and ownership might be shown through building permits, people who add on a porch, people who fix their windows. Um, for public safety, we wanted to look at crime rates, look at reports coming into the police department, tracking that over time. And for quality of life, a really common way we try to use a well-rounded metric is to look at code complaints. We we try to correlate that to a general um happiness and success in living in the area. Whenever code complaints go down, people mow their lawns, people um there's no noise complaints. So the rest of the presentation kind of tracks those more qualitative measurements. But when we started to break out build permits, our permitting division found that they saw this story in general on a on a small scale. So when we looked at

specific streets that received a lot of infill funding, for example, West 15th Street received maybe six or seven um info grants throughout its throughout its time since 2019. We see a change in the landscape of the street itself. So the top left photograph shows a before the lefth hand column. Um the same street in 2012 and 2022. This is these are all infill funded homes and that development helps to completely change the landscape of the homes that already existed on the left side of this road. So there were already homes in this area and across from them was an overgrown vacant area. People hanging out, people loitering, parking their cars on grass. Um and we we brought homes into these areas, we uplifted the the quality of life in this area. Um in addition, when we saw things like this happening, we saw infill coming into an area. Um we saw that homeowners in the column on the right took more pride in general in their spaces. So this is the same home, same homeowner 2012 and 2022. Um and we see that as info funding starts to go up, they begin to pull permits. they begin to repaint their structures, fix their roofs, and install a new fence. People take more pride whenever they see that the city itself is investing in their community. That being said, um, breaking it out into data itself, the results were a little bit more inconclusive. We handpicked 3,000 build permits for residential additions and alterations since 2019 that had to be combed through. Massive shout out to my team for helping us do that. Um, but when looking at this, we found 274 permits that could be attributed to the infill area in general since 2019. Um, we see it graphed over here on the right. Uh, through time we can see in comparison to the city of St. Angeles

as a whole, it kind of stagnates at around 10 to 20% of total build permits pulled in the city of St. Angelo. And like I said, infill is nearly half of the city. So despite being nearly half of the city, we were only able to attribute 10 to 20% of building permits to the infill area since 2019. The highest number was in 2019, the the first year that we started funding whenever the infill area constituted 20% of all permits pulled in the city of St. Angelo. Um, and it's it's hard to imagine things like this, the outcomes of these things in a vacuum. So, I wanted to compare it to a previous neighborhood case study that we performed in Blackshere um, in 2005 to 2015. It was a 10-year study where they tracked building permits over time. It's one of the few data points that we have of pre-existing efforts and how those played out. So, I just wanted to put a side by side. Um, but ultimately the result of this communicates to my team that having such a large scale area and trying to track building permits through time makes it difficult to attribute results to our effort. It's hard to say definitively how much of this is because we were funding infill. Um, and it's it's hard to say what what our goal is for something like this. What's a what's the correct amount of build permits to be pulled in an area? Crime rates. When we looked at crime rates, we pulled a report from the police department since 2019. Um, it tells a similar story to build permits. Um, despite being a third of the city, nearly half of the residential lots, um, the infill area experiences 40% of all crime in St. Angelo, that was from 2025. In addition to experiencing a disproportionate amount of crime this year, the Infill area has experienced slower decreases in crime since 2019. So from 2019 to 2025, the infill experienced a 30% decrease in crime as opposed to St. Angelo as a whole experiencing a 45% decrease in crime. Um, but that being said, when I looked

at this, this called to me to break it out into neighborhoods. And when we broke it out into neighborhoods, as shown in the graphs on the bottom, we see a direct correlation to receiving infill funding and having a significant decrease in crime. Lake View received the most funding, received nearly double the funding, 40 total grants, and they had a 70% decrease in crime since 2019. Um, Reagan was next at a 40% decrease in crime, and Blackshire was third with a 60% decrease in crime. So, we're seeing that when we invest in an area, there's a correlation between that investment and an increase in public safety in an area. These other neighborhoods are disproportionately taking on um these increases in crime. And I know that some of the numbers are very interesting looking 4 thou 4 4,000% increases. Um I think there's a lot of more research to be done getting in connection with the police department, but these are the reports that we received from 2019 to 2025 of reports in the city of St. Angelo. When looking at code violations, we pulled 50,000 code complaints called in since 2019. um mapped them over each year and we found that in general the city of St. Angelo has stagnated in terms of code compliance um growing by 8% since 2019. So there's really been no significant change in the number of violations called in since 2019. Yet when we break it out and we look at the city of St. Angelo growing by 8% and then we compare that to the infill versus the non-infill eligible area. Um the non-infill area has seen a 30% increase in code complaints while the infill area has decreased by nearly a quarter. So there's a huge change in the number of code complaints occurring in direct relation to our investment in an area. Um, this is a metric that we we like to look at as a general

well-rounded metric of life quality in an area. People take pride. They go mow their lawns. They keep sidewalks clean. They help each other. Um, people are not calling in their neighbors, right? So, it's a bit more of a community feel. So, I was very excited to show this to you today. But up until this point, we've been doing a lot of talking about the impacts and the history of what we've been doing, the route that we chose to take. Um, and I wanted to speak a little bit about what else was there, what alternatives did we have, what could have happened. So, currently today, there's over 1,500 lots that are currently infill eligible that remain vacant within the within the area. Um, people are developing on the outskirts of town. We are seeing what we call urban sprawl. So that's whenever people move to the outskirts and they build high-v value homes at very low density halfacre lots. We annex land in and we we break them out into subdivisions. When we see the footprint of the city expanding to account for low density high-value housing, we see that we are promoting a limited public interaction with central commerce. We are centralizing commercial development inward and then moving residential development outward. that promotes vehicle- dependent communities and it adds strain to our city infrastructure while the vacant lots remain. They are still receiving service. They are still um not contributing to our tax base. This um image on the right is just a visual representation of that. Um we received a presentation from I think um an Olsson firm a few years ago and I drew on that to make this presentation. Um, this came to you guys where the ultimate point communicated at in that presentation was that as you move inward to higher density and commercial developments, relative value per acre increases significantly as opposed to high-v value homes on halfacre lots. Um, so when we look at infill and we look at building out the vacancies surrounding

busy commercial centers, we grow our tax base and we foster community development. We keep San Angelo centralized and we keep them interacting with each other without expanding the footprint of the city and adding new strain onto our infrastructure. I spoke to the budget division a few months ago. I asked them for a very rough estimate. It's hard to break out, fun fact, for a general per acre cost for emergency services. Um, so if I took this very rough estimate which was based on population and square mileage of the city. If I were to take these numbers and say that we are paying this much for emergency services per acre and we take the 222 lots that we have invested into as a city and we assume that they are minimum residential lot size, that's 25 acres or $20,000 um that we were spending annually as a city to keep infrastructure to lots that were unbuilt. So, when we invested into Infill and we completed the development of those 222 lots, not only do we receive that average annual tax return, um across the 222 lots of $300,000, um we offset the existing $20,000 strain for those lots that were receiving emergency services but remained vacant. Um, as an alternative, the outfill, which we consider to be urban sprawl in the planning world, um, building lowdensity subdivisions on the outskirts of town adds to that burden of city infrastructure, um, without addressing that existing cost of the vacant lots within the city. So, um, when looking at how we might inform decisions for the future, I thought it would be valuable to take an analysis of the remaining vacancies. I've mentioned it a couple times, but there are 1,826

residentially zoned lots in the infill area um that have a vacant tax code from the county appraisal district. That is not counting the city overall. There's about 3,000 in the city overall. Um 1,800 remain in the infill area available for funding today. Together, that's about 500 acres or roughly 1 and a.5% of the city square footage total. Um, if we were able to return these 1,800 lots to the tax role and assume that they take on the median value for an infunded lot of $180,000, we would collect $2.7 million annually in tax revenue that we were not collecting prior. We would also address over $800,000 in sunken infrastructure costs, that emergency service per acre to these vacant lots. In addition, there's this untapped measurement that that's very difficult to capture of the impact it has on the community and the way that people feel whenever they see their city investing in their areas. So nearly 10% of the city of St. Angelo is registered under vacant tax codes. Um I provided this heat map to kind of show you where they're at. I thought it was very interesting. Um the hottest areas, the most dense areas in terms of vacant lots are currently infill eligible. um of the total number of vacant lots. We have done a very good job of centralizing infill funding to those areas um at the cost of making it difficult to track those quantitative measurements of their impact. Right? Because it's a half of the city. Um if utilized correctly, infill funding could revitalize these areas, promote safety and pride in our community, and reclaim that existing tax base. And I think here I am taking your questions. Do you guys have questions for me before I move on to Aerin's presentation? So, yeah, don't go anywhere. I think you're going to have several. Um, my first question for you, Miss Nef, how many hours of time did you probably put into this presentation?

Um, yes. I don't need you to be as specific as I've seen. Like, I have a slide for it. No. Um, and I'm sure you do. Probably a um I don't know, a week's worth. This this began I think the moment I came in here, I said, "Is there any data you guys want me to look at?"

And I'm sure most of it was paper. All right, I'm sure most of us favor. So, let me stop there. There's going to be some great questions here. Number one, absolutely fantastic presentation. I want to go down the dice and let let us all go through ask those questions. This is a non- action item, but what this does is somebody took the initiative to show ways that we can make millions. Not worried about some some things in between. These things make a generative effort and change in the success of our city, which is outstanding. So, right now, I'll start with that and I'll go with Mr. Heert. Have you got any comments for Miss Nef?

I've seen this partially back in the summer. Ardan, I was blown away when when you presented it to us back in the summer last year. Even more blown away today. This the the the data. I was sitting in a meeting a couple of weeks ago and it struck me. I didn't know this was coming today, but it struck me as I was sitting here. This person in this meeting said, "Without data, we are just people with an opinion." Which I thought as you're going through this, without this data, all we have is opinions based on the the data that you present to show the return, um the costs, etc. I don't know what Aeron's going to say. Um, but I I would say I hope this information has already been shared um or will be shared with whomever the selection is for our comprehensive master plan. Um, this kind of information would have to be invaluable to them. Um, it seems to me, Ardan, one question, if if we're going to zoom out to to really the 50,000 ft view based on on this heat map that you've got right here, um, again, this may be going to Aaron's presentation, but I'm thinking we we may need to be seriously considering something for all well, a greater amount account for this area that we see on this heat map. I don't I don't want to put any words in your mouth. Is that one takeaway in your

opinion that we should seriously consider a greater amount to be funded for this infill to be concentrated in this these areas uh demonstrated by this heat map? So I think in my opinion um my role in this I wanted to be to present data for the purpose of the consideration of people who get paid a little bit more than I do and think about these things a little bit more than I do. Right? I'm devoting work days to this. I want to be looking at visualizing data and leave decisions up to people who are elected officials who whose role it is to deliberate. So I'm g slingshot it back to you. But I know that Aerin's coming up here for the purpose of using his experience as a planning director to make a more informed claim. The thing that I was kind of maybe trying to illuminate through this presentation is that from an analytical standpoint, from a standpoint of tracking where we've been, having um a very widpread set of data in a lot of different systems that don't talk to one another makes it difficult to to make a claim for impact. um if we are purely looking at this as how can we track what we're doing and look back on it in five years there's something to be said for the fact that half of the city is infill eligible and that we are um incentivizing one home at a time so I think that my view of it I want to remain very kind of to the periphery just to bring data as I can and that was my takeaway while doing this research and everything else will come from Aaron

good answer um um well Um, I I could go on and on. I'll shut up because everybody else probably got questions, too. I'll let let Joe go. I appreciate those brief words there, Mr. Hammer. But anyway, Mr. Self, great presentation. Love the data. We should be looking at data when we make decisions and it's great. My wife uses it in her she's in education and if you follow the data, you can work on your problems or fix your problems or see where you're progressing. So, very good presentation. Very good. Thank you, Harry Thomas.

Well, I'll echo what uh Mr. South said uh impressed by the presentation uh impressed by you uh in making that presentation. You've got the back background uh and you really did a good job on this. I think what it does is is it proves that we made the right decision in 2019. uh this infield project I really deserves uh some more looking at. I I think we can get these some of these properties back on the tax roles. We'll be looking at additional uh property tax. So from my perspective uh I really like the presentation. It proves where where we've been and what we probably should do in the future. Uh so thank you.

Awesome. Patrick,

good morning. Uh the only thing I would have been interested to see is if we could have seen how many lots were built on that didn't receive funding in those areas. I don't know if that's something that could easily be found or not. I would just been curious to see those comparisons to to show how many um or how few were built on that didn't receive funding. Uh as as far as from the the affordable housing side, I know a lot of these builders um I feel like they actually give that back to the people buying them and incentives and stuff like that. So I think the builders have done good have done a good job of trying to make them affordable and utilize that money to help people get into homes. So I think it's had a a good effect on both sides. Thank you. before I move on. That's an action item for you to get Patrick a question on some of that.

I do actually. Um I agree some of the some of the coolest stuff was stuff that was left unsaid. You know, most people the first thing you think about when you talk about infill is well what money do we make without fill, right? What's the comparative what's the comparison? How much were we already building? when we looked at that um 222 lots funded and 274 permits found since 2019 that might be some degree of indicator but I didn't want to focus on that as a central part of the presentation because those were they they were tracked by hand they they had to be associated with the infill and so while it was a fantastic effort by my team I didn't want to centralize that without some more specific research towards the aim of figuring out what happened that we didn't fund

awesome Thank you, Miss Nef Karen.

Like Councilman Heert, I also had the privilege of sitting in the room when we got a little sneak preview of of where you were heading with this and it's a outstanding astonishing volume of information very impactful visually, which I think was part part of your goal because we're visual people and that helps us to understand what's really happening. I am hoping that your work uh resulted in templates that can continue to be supported as more data comes in. Would that be accurate? Do you understand what I mean? Can can forward can other people in planning keep plugging this information in so that we see this information evolve over time?

Short answer is we're working on it.

Okay. Um what was important to me is that we get this presentation figured out because I I understand you guys don't want to know about the queries that I made into GIS. Right. So um I'm I'm preparing a report and the beauty of the fact that we were accepted to present in California in April is that we were accepted for a conference that centralizes on telling people about how you did it. So in addition to this presentation which is about the impacts, we're additionally going to speak on the the how and that's going to involve a prepared report that I'm currently working on of this the step by step of how I went into GIS where I got the information from and how I got it all to to produce these kinds of results. So that way maybe we could receive some clarity. People can come in and figure out what we want to change and there's a visibility to doing it the same way over time and see that aligned with that baseline.

Awesome. not not to speak for my colleagues, but maybe I'm the nerd because I I do want to see the architecture behind it and would would love to know more about that. And that said, it makes me want to hear Angela's piece. I mean, I think that would be really interesting as well, what her contribution to this was. It was briefly alluded to, but it's definitely incredibly important to the whole conversation. And then I'll just stop with another plug for the comprehensive plan because because this is perfect timing and God bless you for that. And so um maybe there's a way to simplify some of it for community meetings. I'm sure you're already thinking about that, but this is super exciting stuff and yay for planning. So yeah, thank you.

Mary, do you happen to know what type of crime it was when you went back? uh in previous slides there um is it you know vandalism or what you know what what kind of crime do you know do you know that?

So what I do know is that we specifically requested um I'm going to forget the term for it but something that does not involve routine traffic stops things that are indicative of being cemented in an area. Um so I think it it does include vandalism. And I think it includes um violent as well as non-violent crimes I think. But that being said, this was a team effort and I'm up here presenting the culminative efforts of the team. Um so this request and some of the analysis was was specifically done by different team members. So I apologize I don't have more specific information than that. It's not the routine traffic.

No, you're you're you're great. I mean this is fantastic present. I mean a rockstar presentation here. Uh, I was mainly just curious. It's just my personal curiosity on it, but no, great job. With that, Miss Nef, we've uh given you a bunch of questions. We appreciate your presentation. Is there a second part to this? Yes. Now it's turn. Yeah, follow that, Aaron.

I'll do my best. So, thank you again, Mayor, City Council, and Mr. Venuela um for this opportunity just to talk about residential stuff and infill. We know that's critical to our community. Um so I've got a few slides here that talk about some of our housing study and then some some kind of conclusions or recommendations to kind of move forward potentially. So within our housing study when the firm did it um they did their conduct their first uh research back in 2019 then again in 2024 uh they looked at the apartment and rental market was very tight. Uh home building activity was very very high and then it's accelerated after 2020. You know we all know that when COVID hit Texas was a hot bed of development for many communities and ours was was like that. Um, we did have two developments back then according to the study, Creek 27 and Wolf Creek that provided a new supply that helped moderate the market and keep prices from surging in even higher. Uh, and then that last thing is the real market is poised to tighten again with added job growth and very low construction of new entry-level homes. And I think that key phrase there at the end is very important. New entry-level homes, excuse me. the in within the study it says the greatest demand or need is 175,000 to 225,000 homes price and rentals from 875 to300 and u as y'all know we just talked about infill and that's where those price those home prices are are at most of them are starting to creep up to this higher end uh just due to different things um whether that's labor market whether that's materials uh cost of lots, uh, all of those things. And I think any of us that would look at a rental market there, um, and you think about what maybe your parents bring in

or a single parent or something that is a very high cost, uh, for them for their housing. And that's kind of what I want to talk about uh, a little bit more is that again, we talked about all these data sets. So, we we went and tried to mine data. There's tons of data out there, but again, they're all in different sources. they don't all talk together and try to mine that data. So first at excuse me first at the at the bottom down here is the US department of housing urbans defines affordable housing as housing which the occupant is paying no more than 30% gross income for housing costs and that includes utilities and that's that's you start looking and wow that's you think about what that is that can it can add up very quickly. So, in this data uh that we were finding that if you had a hourly wage in St. Angelo of $2210 an hour, which is a pretty high wage for St. Angelo, um you would be able to afford a two-bedroom uh home with a payment of $1,149. Now, the challenge is is how many salaries do we have that equal out to that? Not many. Uh, and that's the challenging part. And then you get keep going across and you've have an annual income and you take the 30 30% you end up with just a rent of 5.85. We don't have a whole lot of those incomes. When we get back when we get I show you what our our median income is in just a few moments. This is for the state of Texas. Um, right now the state of Texas average is 27.88. um we are much lower than that here. But if you start looking in there and you start mining some of that data and you start looking and seeing you see these uh uh uh areas down at the bottom of what people are doing, but if you were trying just to live on a minimum wage or

even a $10 an hour job or a $15 an hour job is very clear that you struggle to put a roof over your head period in any city, let alone St. Angelo. So, here we go with within our housing study is this this chart right here. And then this is from the um St. Angelo Realtors uh website. Their their monthly report, the most recent one they had up was from December. They may have changed it today before I've I actually was able to get this into our slideshow. But here on the left side, you look at the median income is 64,146 for St. Angelo. little bit higher, just slightly higher out in Tom Green County. So, $64,000 for a a household to go and spend. The top portion is all right. Well, how many of those uh are family households? How many of those are non-family households that are just individuals? And we have a very higher high percentage of that. And you start seeing the breakdown of what they make on an annual basis. And then you go back a couple of slides and you think, all right, well, how they're 30% of that number and where are they going to find to live in our community. And that's when it comes back to this infill housing and affordable housing, which is a very broad term. It's a generic term, but you have to start thinking about what is your median income for your community and where are we going to house these folks so that they still have a quality of life plus everyone else that is able to live in our community at at their 30% that they have a quality of life. So, as uh we mentioned, you know, around that 225 to 235 is our median uh house price. I think that came down just a little bit uh in January based on some of the January numbers as far as what's selling. Uh, and so that's all the way from brand new houses to uh houses that

have been lived in for a hundred years and reselling. Um, and so that's that's a pretty interesting to see where it is that are uh people are living and what they can afford to buy. And so you it's hard to tell and this is very small over here, but you see what's selling. This is not unusual at any time of the year. These at the higher end that are, you know, half a million and higher, you you're always going to have some of those sales. You're going to have these that are under the 99,000, but it's that 100,000 to to right under 300,000. That's what's selling in our community. Now, what the untold story is is this group over here or this group that's in that 75,000 and under, where can they actually afford to buy a home without overextending themselves and causing calling causing challenges for their families in in the future? That's the challenge of trying to find that affordable housing market for our community as a city government of how we can help in incentivize some of those things. So again, this is over time. Uh you can see um this is from our our association of realtors as well as through our our housing study. You can see this blue color. You can see they're very high back in 2015 and then they start to come down uh and kind of tu uh top out there. And it's because it's very hard to build something between 100,000 and 159,000. It's very hard to do that. It's lot cost, it's infrastructure cost, it's uh labor cost, it's material cost, all of those things add up and which means that pushes that house higher in cost. Then you start seeing the others. Some of them start normalizing, but you also see that the the red and the brown, they start out low. While they're not as significantly higher than what was coming down with the blue, it's going in a direction uh of what our sales prices

keep increasing. And we know that's going to happen because of our property values, what it costs to build a house. But when you see these two going across each other and you see that they come and they're going to meet down there, you know that you have a housing problem in your community. You're not building enough small houses to house the people that can afford them. But here are some of the housing trend types uh that was in our housing study. Um you know, we are our heavy single family uh unit detached, which is okay. I'll have to ask them what a boat, RV, van, I guess that's means you're living in a van down by the river. I'm not sure what, but I'm guessing that's what they measured is that they found there were 62 folks that had an alternative thing besides some of these. Um, obviously we don't have a lot of 50 unit or more. And these are all kind of your multif family types of things. Um, the other thing that I think is very interesting down here is we are not quite 50/50. Um, but that's a, you know, 60/40 split on owner occupied versus renter occupied. So, we have a high renter occupation in our community, which is okay as long as we're finding the right affordable spaces for all of our renters to be able to get into. When that number gets really tight, um, we know rents go up. Uh, and when rents go up, it can be very challenging for folks. I want you to I'm going to leave this on here for just a little bit longer. So, this was in our housing study table number 59, but this is basically a a an FHA mortgage. And you look at that first home price there at $175,000. And then you go, okay, what's the required annual income? And you go down there, $75,000. So, that could be for a family. Can you get a family that makes $75,000 or is that one a a a um just one individual and you're

looking at $175,000 uh cost for a home? Well, as we can tell, we don't have a lot of those homes available for those people to come to, whether they're new or old, refurbished, whatever. We just don't have a lot of those homes. And there's lots of reasons why and that's what we have to do more data analysis of why so we can make better recommendations to the city council and those decision makers say well how do we incentivize to get our house prices down to that market level to get better occupancy which in turns all those other gears of quality of life property values throughout the community that are more stabilized as opposed to you have a real high end that's paying for a lot of folks and then a real low end that's not not able to pay for everything. How do we stabilize those somehow? So, I really like this chart. Um, you know, if you're at 225,000, that means your family household is making $92,859. So, nearly $100,000. But you go back to that slide in your mind that says that our median our median was $64,000. So, we're a long way from that for them to afford a house that we're calling an entry- level house in our community at $225,000. So, that's very important to understand. So, some more data. I know y'all are data overload today, but this was I sat through some webinars this last uh few months, and one of the ones that just popped out at me was a 1% increase in rent. 1%. So, $1,000, you bump that rent up $10. $10. That means a 9.5 increase in crime rate in that neighborhood. And the national data shows that that's because those people cannot afford it and they start doing property crime. They go and they steal your things from your vehicle, from your house, from wherever, and that's an increase. And so, you know, we all talk

about the different things that come into the budget and discussions. And while adding police officers can be a great and impactful thing, there are also other investments than can that can impact those other things like investing in keeping rents maybe a little controlled, but adding better homes, getting that civic pride, adding that quality of life to help increase the presence of just humans, of good people in our community to say, "All right, we're not going to allow the crime to increase in our neighborhood. we're going to keep it held down and our infill data points to that. Code compliances and code numbers were down. Property crimes in areas that we have invested in heavily have come down while other areas we still needed to invest in and those property crimes went up. So, under the for and this is actually for Texas, although it's under the National Association of Homebuilders, $1,000 increase in home cost eliminates 13,000 buyers. just $1,000 in an increase in home costs, 13,000 buyers. In 2024, um under the Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, 22.4 million households are paying more than 30% of their income on rent. And that um and and that among those renters, 12 million are paying more than half their income on housing, also at an all-time high. And that's in 2024. uh family earning the nation's median income of 97,800 needed 38% of its income to cover the mortgage payment of a mediumric new home and that's from the NH NH NHB too many letters and Wells Fargo on their housing index. So what does that mean for our community? It it really means that we got to continue to invest in our infill areas and I would argue that we need to really study our infrastructure areas in our infill area and if that's the

biggest bang for our buck maybe that's where we invest. But I think we need to study that and make sure that we're making the right investment. Um as Councilman Keelley pointed out that there's those homebuilders they utilize some of that incentive funds to draw people back in. So there is something about those incentive funds per house that makes a difference. Another conclusion maybe targeting the funding the funding to impact 20 to 30 blocks at a time. Maybe we've gone through the crime statistics the the other stats and said all right well this is an area prime for us to invest in and we've got an x number of vacant lots and whatever that looks like. Maybe that's one way to do it. Another thing that we you'll see coming up uh here in the in the spring is adopt some flexible zoning ordinance that allows small incremental growth in neighborhoods old and new. And I say and new. And we talked about, you know, Ardan talked about the outflow, the outfill areas. What we've heard from developers is allow us to have a smaller lot size to spread out that infrastructure cost over a block length. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Why can't we do that? Well, our ordinance doesn't give us that flexibility. Let's put that in our ordinance to give them the flexibility. If they want a 35- foot lot, that's going to be smarter for us in the future because we're going to take on the street cost, the water cost, the sewer cost, the drainage cost, and if we can get them into those houses and get the properties built, then we're going to be better off. Another idea is reduce long-term maintenance costs by reducing street pavement widths. When you have very wide streets, they're very nice. And I love a wide street because I need as much room as I I can get to drive down the street, but it all costs every one of us that live in the community to maintain those streets. Y'all know how much money you spend annually on on street maintenance. It's a lot. Um and we would like to do some more study because there's some studies from some some communities that

can show that the amount of money you put into street maintenance, you don't get that back in your property taxes. And we know our property tax is pretty high. So, we need to make sure we're making very good decisions in the future of how that looks. I do think we need to invest in in better neighborhoods. While I liked what they looked at there on that West 15th, part of me was kind of sad because the trees went away. And we're not really good at making people put back at least one tree per new house, some minimum landscaping items for our communities to make people have some civic pride in their in their yard, in their own yard. How do we do that? It doesn't need to be extravagant. It doesn't need to be, you know, really really uh lush foliage. We need to work with maybe our our water utilities department of how can we help incentivize to have more zeros escape yards or drip sprinklers or something like that that makes a better impact for water conservation and yet still impacts our neighborhood. Uh encourage open green spaces within our neighborhoods. Um it's one thing to fill a neighborhood with houses and businesses and things like that. We understand that. But we all know that we like open spaces. There's a reason why we live out here in West Texas. this morning. If you're fortunate enough to to be woken up by your dog and go outside and see the the lunar eclipse, it was beautiful because we have great open spaces and I can be in the middle of town and still see those things. Um I think we should allow housing in commercial areas by right. Uh we have a process that requires them to go through a conditional use to get that. Um maybe that's a proposal that we come forward with uh and see if that's something that our planning commission city council is open to. I do think if we're going to um if we're looking at new development and if it's subsidized, whether we're subsidizing the infrastructure or something, then we need to work out something with them in an agreement that says we must have a certain number of those structures to be

a certain price or a certain affordable and it has to be within the the whole development. It can't be just all right on this block we got five of them are this and five are that. That doesn't really work. How do we work that out? But if that's something that you're looking at investing in, we the community should get something back to help our community to continue to house folks. This one I think is is really critical. Um, looking around, there's lots of cities that have either housing coalitions or something like that. But I really think we need to create a housing supply accelerator committee that reviews our zoning ordinances, our building codes, our fire codes. Are we adopting the codes that allow us to build the right types of houses in the best manner quickly as possible when we need to? Um, what's our development policies? What's our infrastructure policies? um how do they look at how does this independent group look at our development processes for efficiency? I mean, we at staff can can look at it a lot and we can try to prevent provide every efficiency we can think of, but sometimes you need those eyes to come in from the outside and say, "What if you tried this? What if you did it differently?" And I think in conjunction with that house supply accelerator, it's got to be also with the workforce development team because they're going to tell us this is what how much how many people are working in your community and how much money they're making. And if we're making a housing accelerator uh committee that says, "Well, we're going to make $250,000 homes and we can do this all day long because we're very efficient, but if your folks can only afford $150,000 homes, we got to change something. That way, they're at least talking together." Uh there is an accelerator playbook that we could use as a guide. Um and again, I say guide, it's not everything in there does not work for St. Angelo. I am a strong believer in we make decisions for

St. Angelo, not for the state of Texas, not for the US. We make decisions for here. I do think over time that we can focus our capital improvement program uh to infrastructure that grows and sustains our local housing market, whether that's new growth areas or old growth areas. Are we going back and replacing that infrastructure through our CIP program that continues to allow regrowth? Um and again, we got to do things that are for St. Angelo and their neighborhoods before necessarily looking outwards to growth, meaning annexation in new areas. Have we done everything we can? And then one thing that I want to add to this is that St. Angelo is built on neighborhood growth, neighborhoods. Neighborhoods created St. Angelo, if you will. And we have some very beautiful historic neighborhoods. Some of them are in slow or in long-term decline. Some of them are stabilized. But we need to make decisions for our individual neighborhoods. We need to there are some neighborhoods we want to protect with certain things and then other neighborhoods we want to say let's let's find every vacant lot and let's go and grow uh every way that we can. Um but I think those are things that we have to continually to think about of what it is that we want St. Angelo to be. And that jumps right into the comprehensive plan that we're going to get started and hopefully in the next six weeks uh get that through. With that I think that's everything I have. I'd be happy to answer any questions or or give you any quips of the day.

Yes,

Aaron and I'll start through and we'll work down through the bench go here. But number one, thank you for bringing these presentations forward. Uh they're long overdue. I know several of us campaigned upon moving forward with some way to assist private industry and private market with affordable housing, attainable housing. Um I think you've shown us some areas that an investment in what is properly pronounced the infield program which I remember during the campaign there were several people it was the infield the outfield it was it was all over the board but your focus and the presentations this morning have been spot on about ways to increase revenue for the city and assist the builders and in turn that assist people trying to find somewhere to live. Um, with that I'll open up. I'll start down here with you, Mary, and we'll come down the dice.

I'm sure any question I have is gonna be answered. Karen,

I'll sit back right now. I'm not really sure how to frame this, but I I feel like you're trying to show you're trying to show us that you're going to help us build a bridge between the concept of affordable housing, which is kind of a federal overlay, um, language that we've all grown accustomed to hearing, and true attainable housing, which is actually different. And so somewhere in between the two, if you if if we bring Ardan back up to explain it to us, there's probably a gray area where where we drop out of being eligible for subsidies. Does that make sense? So affordable housing programs that contain subsidies. You've talked about some of them this morning and some of the ones in place here in town, but then you immediately showed us that that particular template does not fit the earning capacity of our citizens and therefore they can't attain they they don't have attainable options. So the question and that's what you're talking about with your overhaul of ordinances and expanded thinking is how do we create create attainable housing for our community specifically? And so a long way around to try and try and ask I think can you bring this to us in time for us for it to be a discussion for the CIP for this budget cycle because it sounds like we're going to have to think of it ourselves. We we aren't going to have a lot of federal grants available to us beyond what Ardan already mentioned. Is that accurate?

Correct. Um, and so you have yeah, federal grants are are one thing and then evaluating the CIP. And I think that would just be a a dis a good discussion to have and and maybe through that discussion help us help the staff focus on what is it that you would as a collective group really like to see from that program or how we evaluate that program. Um, and I know Jonathan and I believe Shane's done a lot of work on on the CIP as well as Tina has in her her group, but um, be happy to be a part of that group, but I would I would take my lead from them as well as you guys is saying, well, let's how do we evaluate what should be on that list? Yeah. How do we get there? Yes.

Yep. Patrick, no. Harry,

just one comment. Thank you. Uh I think we've got some work to do, but we're a long ways down the road from where we were just a few months ago. Uh I think uh if you look at some of these accelerated studies from uh some of these planning organizations and you start the basis, you can bring something back to us before we finish budgets that will allow us to invest some more money in some of these areas in the community that need it. Uh and again, I'll go back and say what I said earlier is what we did in 2019. It just proves that infield works. So, thanks,

Mr. Self.

There there's an old saying when you're going down a road, if it's the wrong road, don't keep going down that road, you turn around and go back. Well, I This reiterates that y'all went down the right road. We're going down the right road. It's just as future tails will hopefully help it go down that road further. Mr. I'm sitting here thinking while you're talking, Aaron, we may be in an inflection point as a city. Um, with you all having focused, Ardan having focused now far more datadriven information than I have ever seen in my association with the council 30 years ago up up to now. I don't know that we've ever had this kind of data to to me that's critical. Um, what I would hope in the future is that we begin to focus more on the things that you were talking about during your presentation that help us make things more attainable for our citizens, that make things uh a better um I guess build or a better cost for those that develop the communities that develop the land, that develop build the houses and so forth. That we uh you obviously have been talking to them already with things that might help them build more affordable and truly in terms of dollar amount housing. um that we would continue down that path. But then we also continue to expand our our collection of data to help us understand either what we're doing is helpful or what we're doing is not helpful and that we may need to have a shift in thought

process or direction to the CIP. This is one of those things I'm probably going to get myself in trouble here with what I say, but here goes. I find the CIP to be useless. Um, it it is a collection of dollars that th this is an awful word. It's an awful word, but I don't know how else to say this. That's been almost weaponized to for us to get what we want. And I'm not sure it informs us of how to do things. It's just a list of projects that if it's not on there, we can't do it. Well, to me, that that's silly to have a have something like that. I I honestly don't know how to use the CIP, honestly. Um maybe other city staff does. I don't. Um, I would like for us to almost clear out the CIP and get the things in there that we intend to work on in the next two years, the next four years, the next eight years, the next 10 years. um we can kind of go pluck things off of there, but I I would hope we would do something different with our CIP that then I think could help inform you on what direction we need to go from a planning standpoint to bring these things to fruition that help the the attainable housing, to help the the rent market, to help the crime rate, to help the property values, all of that. Um, so I don't know. I don't know where I don't know where we start that. Honest to goodness. Um, that that that's a big conversation. Um, maybe it starts with a smaller focus group of some sort. Maybe

you had a committee that you mentioned in there in in your presentation. Maybe that's where it starts. Um, I'm rambling. I'll shut up.

Well, M. Well, Councilman Heert, the part of it is that through our comprehensive plan is we are they are going to evaluate the CIP program and and help create um program policies. Um just like they're doing the same with the economic development, help to create program policies. While those are not ordinances or laws, those are the policies to help move things forward. And I think that's a good opportunity to evaluate that. And then as as you say, as you as as we work as a city and a community together on the CIP projects, what are what really is the focus? What really needs help today, tomorrow, 5 years, 10 years and those are really big big, as we all know, those are big ticket items and trying to figure out how to fund those are big deals. So I do think we will be addressing that in in multiple ways in the in the coming months. In my opinion, the council ought to be grappling with those things. We're a policymaking body. We're you guys are the are the subject matter experts. All the staff is our subject matter experts. We we need to be collaborating with staff on where do we go? How much does it cost? How where do we find the funding to help do the things that we need to do to make the community a better place in which to live? and we need to stay out of the your y'all's area everybody's not just yours but everybody's areas the everybody else is subject matter expert I'm certainly not um so

thank you all right with that Aaron um I've got one question now go back to Mary

so all the data and everything that that's wonderful and great took a lot of time to get there bottom line to get between 150 to 300 $100,000 home. That's what's needed by most. Uh that family or that developer is going to have to come up with $30,000 extra to in order to do that. That's what how that all trickled down. So is that that's not going to come from the city? You know, we don't have that. So do we is it's going to have to be a subsidy either on a federal level or regional. And then does that go to the developer or go to the individual? So, who's writing the check? That's that's the bottom line.

I agree. And that's a conundrum that we have. And so, then we have to make the decision, well, do if we know that we're losing money on outfield growth, why would we allow that to continue to happen too, right? And that's a challenge. And so, we have to make some very strong decisions. Um, and if we can find ways to invest our dollars uh in where it's going to bring us the best return as a as a city government, how do we do that? And there's no simple answer.

We don't have the income. We're not getting enough of the those kind of businesses to to pay for all that. Uh, yeah. I mean, it's it's just another way to say the same thing that we've said forever. You know, we we just it ain't there, it ain't there. So, um I'd love to hear what anybody else what any uh their income how to promote that. I' I'd love to hear that. But, uh all all the data still means the same. And and we can't make people start paying their their folks, you know, 40 bucks an hour. Um but but you thanks for all the information and stuff that it is pretty pretty cool patchwork quilt of of data to see. But thank you Erin.

Thank you mayor. I just do want to say thank you to Angela Boss the director of neighborhood and family services u her and part of her team uh helped with this process as well as uh Michelle Morris and our permits and u um department and and Karen Putnham in our development services department. And a big thanks to to Ardanf putting everything together trying to help guide us through this process. It was a a big process and as y'all all heard you know nothing talks together but we have to become datadriven decision makers so that we can tell you where to invest the best. Aaron to the team and to you two nice job this morning. I appreciate it very much. All right we'll move into item B. First reading and public hearing of an Thompson. Yes. We have one public comment.

Oh okay. Public comment on item A. Mike Bernett. Mike Bernett. I can't believe I skipped Mike.

Dude, we'll go to legal on that.

Morning, council. Mike Bernett, SMD1, executive director of Kona Valley Community Action Agency and the chair of the Kono Valley Homeless Planning Coalition. Uh, thanks for a few minutes to talk with you. that uh is right at the heart of what makes our community what it is and that's the affordable housing piece and that's a puzzle. Uh as you all have alluded to the the data shows us uh we're not unique in in Texas. We're not unique in the country. Everybody's trying to figure it out. Uh one thing I know from the time I've spent in community action is that self-sufficiency begins at home. When families are spending more than 30% of their income on housing, uh, they're officially considered burdened. And in Texas, as you saw from the data, including right here in St. Angelo, far too many families are living in that reality. The one key thing to remember in that is that that dollar amount that they're talking about for housing. That's not just your rent or your mortgage. That also includes utilities. And the cost of utilities are not coming down. So, when you factor that in, uh, it's pretty pretty rough on a lot of our families. So when much of your paycheck disappears before you've even bought groceries or filled the gas tank or paid for medicine for your kids comes incredibly hard to move forward. This burden is one of the clearest pathways into homelessness. If you remember, we have around 300 to 350 homeless individuals in St. Angelo on any given night. And it's not because folks aren't trying. It's because the math is not there. The math does not work. the numbers show uh that that you know the what you have to make per hour those jobs aren't here. It it's it's a it's a nightmare scenario that we face that a lot of our families are facing daily. That's why programs like the infill housing initiative matter. Uh they take empty underused lots space that cost y'all money and gives and don't give back but turn them into homes turns them into opportunity turns them

into stability. We've seen the results uh improve. They improve neighborhoods. They strengthen the tax base. And when we bring new homes into these areas, we see safer streets, fewer code violations, signs of a growing and stronger uh community. But it's not just a housing program. This is a collaborative moment. Uh and that what's inspires me the most. You know, I love team building. City of St. Angelo has stepped up big over the last handful of years starting back with the Black Shear project in the early 2000s. Not just investing financially, but partnering with the social social service sector. And we don't do it alone. We the nonprofits partner with our faith-based organizations, the forprofit partners, the builders, the trades, the realtors, the lenders. Everybody is essential to this work. Together, we roll up our sleeves, put shovels in the ground, and help us reimagine what these neighborhoods could be. When the public sector, the nonprofit sector, and the private sector pull in the same direction, that's when real change can happen. And so, I'm excited by this. I hope that you as a council continue the infill project. And this is building hope and stability in St. Angelo. And I thank you.

Thank you, Mike. Is there any more public comment? Yes, sir. All right. We'll move in item B, first reading and public hearing of an ordinance amending the budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2025 and ending September 30th, 2026 for reimburse capital expenditures, storm water maintenance projects and equipment purchases. Present presentation made by assistant city manager Tina Derski. Tina, you're on.

Thank you, Mayor. Tina Deerski, uh, assistant city manager. I'm feeling pretty lame coming up here with a budget amendment after all of that, but here we go. Um this is to this first one is to budget for the seal coat project. The money that we received from Tom Green County so that they can participate in our seal coat project. Um and also um about $34,000 from the state office buildings fund balance for their parking lots. And that's just the second part of the amendment for the expense on the state office building. And then we're also looking to pull uh $269,000 from the storm water fund balance for the purchase of equipment as well as $70,000 for um to cover system maintenance for ongoing construction projects. And that's all I have.

Awesome. Any questions from the DA? Simple budget movement. I have a first from Harry. Second. I have a second from Tommy Heert. Any public comment, Heather? With no public comment comment, all those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you, Tina. Brandon, I'd like to go to legal here. Um, question. Can we move to number eight and do all the appointments? I'm going to potentially have to leave here shortly and go catch an airport. So, can we go ahead and do all the appointments before we go to executive? You can.

All right. Thank you, sir. With that, I'm going to go to item eight. Um, item number B, consider approving various board nominations. Planning Commission Thomas Mitchell Gatlin III SMD6 to a first term ending January 2028. Public art commission Andress Gonzalez SMD4 to an unexpired term ending April 2027. Public zoning board of excuse me zoning board of adjustment Ken Roberts mayor to first full term ending January 2028. Lynon Roberts Kindo SMD5 to a third term ending January 2028.

Move approval. I have a first from Tommy Heert, a second from Harry Thomas. Any public comment on these appointments? With none, all those in favor say I. I.

Any opposed? Item B passes 70. We'll now move into close session, executive session under the provision of government code, title 5, open government ethics, subtitle A, open government chapter 551, open meetings subchapter D. exceptions to requirements that meetings be open under the following sections. Item A, section 551.072, deliberations about real property regarding number one 3501 North US Highway 67. Number two, 3014 McKill. Number three 2918 McGill and four Pauland Park Edition portion of Smith Boulevard section 3, 1.75 acres. We'll go then into item B, section 551.072, 072, excuse me, 071, consultation with attorney regarding Texas Open Meetings Act and public information. We're now close session

It's 11:06. We'll bring this meeting back to order after coming back from executive session. We have already done um item B, but we'll see if there's any things discussed in executive that brought forward. I understand legal there's nothing to discuss. We'll move forward to um announcements and consideration of future agenda items. Does anybody on the dis have anything for future agenda items? With that, I'll look for a motion. Move we adjourn. I have a first from Tommy and a second from Harry. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Sessions close at 11:07.