City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, next up is public comments. Is there anyone from the public that wish to, Mr. Vauter, if you could please come up, hiding behind that podium there.

Well, first of all, I wanted to thank you guys for allowing me to speak. I've known many of you guys on the council, guys and girls on the council, for a lot of years, and I appreciate the sacrifice you guys make for the betterment of our community and for the growth of our city. You know, much of what takes place here, it really happens without much appreciation and gratitude. Joe, Reese, Lisa, Patrick, Aaron, and of course, Ken, you know, I've known you guys for a number of years, and I really, I'm amazed over the past few years the changes that have taken place here. And I wanted to share with everyone just my simple gratitude for that. I've highlighted a couple things. I'm sure I forgot a few. But one of the things, the street improvements have been amazing. And I've watched them take place over the last number of years. But what's taken place this last year, it's been one of the most beautiful additions that I've seen in the city. You know, the new boat ramp is a real joy to me because it's taking some of the pressure off of Polaris boat ramp. It looks like it's adding some much needed parking. The temporary power station, even though some people opposed it, I really appreciate the fact that you guys have kept your word and AEP has kept their word and the fencing around it and the plants are looking beautiful. The additional pickleball courts will be a nice addition for our community. My brother is an electric car owner and the superchargers that are coming makes him so happy. I send him pictures of all the updates. It's so close to us and I know it was an expensive project, I'm grateful for the fact that they're coming in. You know, the additional parking across from Yummy's in that area, every time we can add a new parking space, seems like the people in our community like it more and more. You know, the several beach accesses that have been improved, I notice that as I go out and do weddings throughout the year, and you notice easier parking, more accessibility for people. You know, I'm sure I've missed a bunch today, but today there's no complaints. There's no criticism from me, no pointing fingers. I just wanted to say thank you, and it really is appreciated what you guys do. Thanks.

Thank you. All right, is there anyone else from the public that would like to speak? Okay.

Can I do a handout?

Yeah, yeah.

My name is Lee Schmidt. I live at 6033 Bryan Parkway in Dallas, Texas. I have a home here on Seamist at the Seamist Condominiums on Gulf Boulevard. The reason I wanted to speak to you today is I have a background in invasive tree and plant removals. I worked for decades in the Grand Canyon on tamarisk removal, the greater Yellowstone region on the pine beetles. and then in the Florida, the Everglades, and the 10,000 islands, dealing with a particular tree called the Brazilian pepper tree. Out of all the places that I've worked and all the major watersheds I've worked, the most insidious tree is this Brazilian pepper tree. It's a form of poison ivy. It covers vast, hundreds of thousands of acres in Florida where we tried to fight it. Once it gets a hold, it doubles every year, basically. It's extremely difficult to eradicate. I did an eradication in front of my condo because about three years ago, I noticed there was a big tree in front of my condo. And it took me two days to get a permit from the city of South Padre Island and the GLO office. It's amazingly efficient here. In Florida, it took us six months to a year to get a permit to take these out. Now, they wouldn't let me use an herbicide here, which is fine, because most of these trees are scattered. But Florida is just overrun with these things. And you're going to start to lose dunes over the next two to three years. And once it gets away from you, you won't get it back. So I did so much stuff on the internet. This looks impressive, but it just took me a little while. But if you go to the third or fourth page, there's a picture of Florida. of what these look like when they take over. Let's see. Oh, it's past the pictures for the CMIST. So it's about six pages back, and there's a small picture up here at the corner where you can see it's a big green field. Those are all pepper trees. Nothing can live there besides the pepper trees. The mammals, the birds, they all disappear.

Oh, wow.

So in front of my place, I must say there's four bunches in front of the sea mist, and that's just on the sea mist. And that's probably covering already somewhere around 1,000 to 1,700 square feet. And it's taken over a lot of the southern part of our dune. And if you go down the beach, and I've had a drone company that does some work for me as a commercial real estate developer, drone the beach, and there's a lot of it coming up. But you don't really notice it because it looks like a native tree. But once you learn about these things and you start to recognize what they do, they also exude a toxin that kills the bushes and the plants around it. So these come in, they kill everything around it, they have a seed that is really easily propagated by birds and mammals in the wind, and they just spread explosively. So you lose your dunes here in South Padre, and it's gonna be a real problem. So the good thing about South Padre is, Like in Florida, we had a really hard time getting to these things because it's so vast. You're in the Keys, you're in the Everglades, you're in the 10,000 islands. And you have clumps of them, but to get to them is just really hard. Here, everything's accessible. You can get to these plants. You can take them out. And the shoreline people here are super efficient. Kirsten and Emily are really easy to work with. And I would like to use herbicides. They won't let us, so we're not going to ask again. But we would like to be able to bring in some heavy equipment companies. And I can bring in some heavy equipment and some drones. I can drone these. I can bring in the equipment. And we can take them out by hand. And then we'll have a bobcat there that you can put them in the hydraulic jump tail to trick them off. Because you don't want to handle them. Because they'll burn you like a poison ivy. So when you have the crews out there, they have to be heavily protected.

OK. Well, thank you for bringing that to our attention. We knew that we had some in some other areas of the island. I didn't know we'd gotten them in our dunes. So thank you for letting us know that.

It's an issue, yeah.

I appreciate that.

Any questions or anything? Yeah, could I have a question?

Well, it's hard for us. This is a public comment, so we can't really have going back. Sure.

Well, I don't know. It's not my meeting.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Andy's next, and then, okay, however y'all want to go. Yeah.

Hello, my name is Tommy J. Saez. I'm a resident here. Regarding the Brazilian peppers, yes, I'm very familiar with them. A really good example would be down at the United States Coast Guard Station. There's a whole field that's taken over everything. Nothing grows. I do have one note I want to say, though. You can actually use pure copper nails, drill it into the tree or bush, and it'll kill it better than anything else. You can get this Amazon, hardware stores, whatever. You can look at that as opposed to a pesticide. That's all I wanted to say.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, Andy. Thank you, Mayor, councillors. It's just about the new decorum rules proposal. I'm just going to read some of the sections from it because I think it's important that they're highlighted in public. For example, no member of the public shall address the council without first being recognized by the presiding officer, in which case the mayor, I believe. A person who wishes to speak during a public hearing or during a period for public comments on an agenda item or a non-agenda item must first complete and submit a citizen's comment request form to the city secretary, clearly stating the subject and the issue on which the person wishes to speak. Now, I just want a timeline on that. Which section are you on? 6.1.

Sorry, 6.2.

6.2. Okay.

Well, again, it's public comment, so we can't bat about it, but I'm going to note it down here so we can discuss it later.

Absolutely. Thank you. Members of one of the other sections, members of the public may be allowed to make comments on an agenda item at the initial time for public comments and announcements near the beginning of a meeting or during the discussion of the specific agenda item, but not at both times. I think that takes away the public's ability to ask very important questions on serious issues. Continuing, there's another section, we're on 6.3 now. The presiding officer may extend either time limit where a large or an unusual number of speakers or the complexity of the item warrants it. the mayor or presiding officer reserves the right solely within their discretion to limit the number of people wanting to make public comments, announcements, or statements during the meeting on a particular agenda item or non-agenda topic if necessary to expedite the meeting in an efficient manner. I agree with that, but 500-page packets don't really help anybody, so it's the size of the packets. On some sections as well, this is concerning to me. On some sections, they specifically mentioned the mayor or the presiding officer. On other sections, they don't when they're talking about the rules of decorum for each section. I'm not a legalese guy, I'm not a lawyer. Is the mayor's station separate to the city councilors? If so, why don't some of the rules seem to apply to the mayor or to the presiding officer? So in certain sections it's mentioned, in others it isn't. So then on a separate subject, reference 5.5, the Jeep, why is it green? So it's off brand. I've always been told very, very strictly that not to vary from the city colors. And if we had a white Jeep, we could avoid the cost of metallic paint. Number two, can somebody explain the cost? Because it seems to go from around 36,000 to the requested 49,000, and I can't figure out how. And then finally, why purchase a vehicle like this when leasing includes factory-trained service personnel and parts to keep it running efficiently? And then after three years, we can just give it back. That seems a far more efficient thing, especially due to our weather and conditions. And I think our city graveyard would seem to suggest that leasing would be far better if we could give it back. Thank you for your time and consideration. I appreciate that. Thank you.

All right. Is there anybody else for public comment? All right. Anyone from staff have any public comments? Anyone from council have any public comments? All right, then we'll move on to item number four, which is presentation overview of the city's financial transparency portal. We have this on the agenda because people often talk about not being able to find things or whatever, and I thought it would be a good idea to have our CFO explain what we do in transparency for our financial reporting.

Good evening, everyone. This is our homepage. This is the homepage. This is gonna be the landing page once you hit the myspi.org. You scroll down right here on the transparency. You just click on there to go to all our financial information. Right here on the financial transparency, this is gonna take you and you're gonna be seeing our year-to-date reports, our monthly reports. Most important, some people do like to go look at our checkbook. So all our checks, All our checks are there. As of right now, we have all the checks there up to July 31st of this year. That's up to when the banks have been reconciled. We're working on financial statements, so that's the latest checks there. You can check, you can go in there and ask for the checks for this current fiscal year. Any other fiscal year that's available there, you can go ahead and ask for that. You can filter. You can filter by if you know a specific vendor, if you have a description that you're specifically looking for. You can go on here and and add a filter, you wanna look for a specific description, let's say travel. And it's gonna bring you anything under description that has to travel. on there. If you want to look for a specific vendor, it'll get you that information as well. If it says EFT, that means that that vendor is set up as an ACH vendor. We didn't cut them a check. We paid them via EFT. Some of these, obviously when we void a check, some of them will say bank draft, meaning that the vendor drafted our account. or we may have paid them via a wire transaction. So this is the checkbook for the city. All our checks, everything that goes in here, even the voided checks, as you can see, are posted on there. Now, if you want to look at financials for the city, you'll just go click here either in a monthly year-to-date report or just the monthly report. And if you want to just say, well, I just want the monthly report. I want to look at... You want to look at... It's set up to default for the general fund. So if you wanna say, well, I don't wanna look at the general fund, I wanna look at the convention center. And I just wanna see expenses, I don't wanna see revenues. and you scroll down and there it has the categories broken up and then you can drill down even further. What makes up Miscellaneous Services? And it tells you by fiscal year what everything is. Besides this information here where it's monthly and year to date by fiscal year, we also have, I'm gonna go back to the homepage, I'm so sorry. In the transparency portal, we also have our annual budgets. All our annual budgets, if you want to go in there and look at past annual budgets, are going to be listed there. Our proposed budget is there. What we adopted in prior years is going to be listed there. Tax rate information. You want to know what our property tax rates have been and what it is right now for our sales tax, for our property tax. What has our property tax been in the past? Right now, we haven't updated. This is the proposed. We haven't updated for 27 yet because we're going to pass that tonight, hopefully. You want to see our annual audit report. It's going to be there as well. You can go in there and look at the most recent annual report that we have is the FY 2025 year ending. We're about to wrap up the year for 26. There's a lot of information. You want to see how much debt we have obligated. And this information right here is as of the fiscal year end. So as of 2025, because obviously 2026 hasn't ended. I do want to... make that point right there. You want to look at what pension program the city has for its employees. You want to contact an elected official. We will give you their email addresses so that you may contact them as well. If anybody ever has any questions, if the public ever is on our website and has any concerns, please give me a call. I'll be more than glad to log on the website and help you, walk you through it, and say, hey, where are you? Let's walk and show me what you're looking for, and we're going to see how we're going to get you that information. but it's very pretty self-explanatory. At the very beginning, the very first time you hit on there, I clicked ignore, but you will get a little training video. We're going to try to put more training videos, but it is very user-friendly in my opinion. It can be very useful. If you're not familiar of navigating a website, please don't hesitate to give me a call and I'll be more than glad to walk anybody through it and assist you in whatever way we can. Any questions? No.

Thank you. It was very informative. I appreciate it. All right, we have next up on the agenda is item number five, approved consent agenda. There's a request to discuss 5.5, so is there a motion to approve 5.1 through 5.4 and 5.6 through 5.8?

I'll make that motion.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

All in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. Then we'll move to item number 5.5, which is approval of the budget enhancement of $49,000 for motor vehicles to purchase a new vehicle for the Convention and Visitor Bureau Visitor Center. Kelly, good to see you.

Before you start, I wanted to comment about the vehicle. For a second, I'll do some background history. on that vehicle, so this vehicle is a vehicle that gets used, has low use, but it's routinely used every day on the island, low mileage, and several years, so our matrix for replacing vehicles is, you know, you come across one way, what's the mileage, what's the years, it hits a certain schematic and it's time to replace the vehicle. Of course, every year there's a lot of new things come up on a budget. You have to find things to cut that you can cut that you didn't intend to. So this vehicle was supposed to be replaced several budget cycles ago. And I opted not to replace it because it had low routinely use but low stressful use. And so last cycle, I kicked it again. So this is the third cycle I would have punted this vehicle. So at some point in time, it ends up costing more to keep a vehicle than it does to replace it. So I kind of ran out of options to keep punting this vehicle. So Kelly had an idea, and I'm gonna let her talk on it, but she wanted to use a vehicle that wasn't highly stressed to have a wow punch for maybe taking to events or being seen that would be a marketing tool. So we looked at several vehicles. They suggested this one. And I was just like anyone else that saw it. I thought, wow, the green, really? But she's going to wrap it. And she'll explain that in a minute. When you wrap those, they're not green anymore. They're not purple or orange. They're whatever they're wrapped. Secondly, if you look at police departments or fire departments or any other agencies that wrap vehicles in their recruiting departments, they don't wrap a standard police car or fire unit. They wrap something like a Corvette or something that has a wow factor. It's something that... Attracts youth and gets attention and I believe that's where she was headed with this and I shot her down again Because I said no the Ford Explorer that's not four-wheel drive is cheaper. Just wrap that and get the most out of it so they went back and told the sales folks and then they re-evaluated and came back and beat the price of the Ford Explorer with the four-wheel drive and the add-on prices and are gonna be, and she can explain that, the wrap, the undercoating, any vehicle we ever buy here is never gonna have that sales sticker price. It's always gonna be more, because we undercoat it. We put equipment in it, and all that stuff's factored in there, and she can break that down and explain it hopefully in a minute. But before I turn the mic back over to her, hopefully I've explained some of the situation on the backside of this car that we're talking about. And secondly, I wanted to, mentioned that we tried this leasing. I heard that come up, and I'll just address that real quick. I've been here 17 years, and when I started, we had the platform that we use today as the platform that we use for changing out all these vehicles we have, which is a lot of vehicles in this city across the board. And we are not... opposed to leasing a tractor or something we know may hit the water's edge, rust real quickly and we can't keep very long, we will lease some equipment like that that's gotta go out quick. But I can tell you that we went to a leasing program and we tried it in its totality, and it didn't work for us, and it'd take a whole meeting to explain why. But at the end, there's a dollar buyout, and then things don't really work out right. When they rust apart, they said that wasn't in the contract, and we tried to build things. So we went back to a whole nother program years ago, and it was a third program we tried. Then we went back to leasing again, and then now we're back to the original program that I remember us using 17 years ago, and it works the best for us. If someone wants to... peel off the layers and talk about the details on why we're doing what we do. I'd be happy to talk to you about it. We're not going to solve it at this meeting. But to pick one vehicle out of a fleet of hundreds that we saw that we service and say lease that vehicle, that's even weirder. So I'm just going to let you know that we appreciate it. We hear you. We understand the color. We appreciate the citizens bringing up ideas of leasing. We appreciate all that stuff. Just trust me. We've tried all this. We don't just throw darts at a board. data and other things to evaluate this. And we just evaluate the leasing program again this year, once again already with a company, and it didn't pan out for us for this year. That doesn't mean it won't in the future, but just rest assured we've tried all these things, and we'll keep trying them for the best interest of the city. Go ahead, Kelly.

Great. Thank you, City Manager Smith. Council Mayor, good to be with you here tonight. Thank you to Council Member Hartwell for taking this item out and allowing me an opportunity to speak about it. As the city manager indicated, this vehicle is now 13 years old. It is a vehicle that we use daily for mail runs. If we're bringing you flyers in your business, we've probably brought it through here. If we're moving around AV equipment, we're moving it on that. We were told by the fleet manager three years ago not to take it off the island. I've got several staffers, mostly young women. We go to San Antonio, we go to Houston, we do trade shows. and not being able to take the vehicle off the island with our teams is an issue. We wanted to do something, as the city manager indicated, with a wow factor. We felt like the Jeep really reflected the kind of lifestyle that we want to represent down here. The nice thing about one of these Jeeps, once you get it wrapped, is we can drive these into the trade show floors ourselves. We had one in Galveston that was a VW van. And we put a margarita machine in it, a picture machine in it. It had a table to do meetings in. We don't expect to do that with the Jeep. But you'll see in the demo that I gave you, we'd like to eventually move on to get a second piece where we would drag it around. And that can be our mobile visitor center. If we're doing an activation for Sandcastle Days, we drive it down there in the middle of the party. If we're up in San Antonio for a fiesta, we drag it along in the parade with us. This speaks to Sal Padre. Agree, the Hulk green was one reason we got a good deal on the vehicle. Nobody wanted to buy it. But we will be wrapping it, putting it into our brand colors. The vehicle itself is a little under $40,000. The wrap is gonna be another 10. And as he indicated, there's some additional items on there, a hitch, the undercoating, just so that we can make sure that we can utilize it in the way that we need it. And I am asking for your approval today on this vehicle.

Well, one thing you were right about, you were wondering if it would get any attention, and I think it does.

Could you show this on the overhead?

Yeah, right here.

The overhead, please. There you go.

Just lay it down on the podium. That's right. No, no. In front of you. In front. Danny knows how to do it.

It's the first time. Oh, there you go. It looks so good.

So the idea would be at a trade show, we would pull in the Jeep. You've got your additional trailer there. You put out some fake carpet with the South Padre name on it. We've got some cornhole games that we're playing. Maybe we've got a margarita machine in there or some rum that we're giving folks. And it creates an environment as opposed to just being a tent with a table under it. And like I said, we'll be able to make this a mobile visitor center. And anywhere we're going, we can pop out the party and make noise for South Padre Island.

It's great, and I saw the one in Galveston. We were at the American Beach Preservation when Christina was getting some awards and saw that and thought it was really cool. It is cool, right? Yeah, this would be really nice.

Can I make a suggestion? Can we put some racks on there so we can throw some surfboards up there too?

Oh, I love that idea. Yeah. That's a great idea.

And I love the tents. I mean, the umbrellas. Got to have the umbrellas. Right. We have the chairs. I like it.

We'd love to have your support on this tonight then.

Motion to approve.

Second. Thank you, council.

Is there any other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. All right, next up we'll move to item number six, which is regular agenda. We're gonna go to 6.1, which is an update regarding the convention center renovation and annex project.

Mayor, council members, thank you very much for having us. I'm Grady Deaton with Broaddus & Associates, the project management company you've chosen to overlook the South Pride-Durham Convention Center expansion. Can somebody put the slide presentation up? I was asked to do two things. Number one, do a little bit of comparison between South Padre Island Convention Center as it is now, the South Padre Island Convention Center as it will be when we're done, and then compare that to our two closest geographic competitors, which is the McAllen Convention Center and Corpus Christi Convention Center, just to show you why we're trying to spend the money that we're trying to spend. And here it is. Current exhibit hall square footage is 25,328. We have 9,000 ballroom and meeting spaces and we have seven breakout rooms comprising 34,328 square feet. If you look, skip SPI plus option B for a minute and look over at McAllen and Corpus Christi, We're way, way down below them. I mean, we're less than half of McAllen. We're about a third of Corpus Christi on exhibit hall square footage. Again, we're about a third of McAllen for a meeting in ballroom square footage, and we're a sixth. a seventh for Corpus Christi. Breakout rooms, we're less than half of McAllen and only about maybe a fifth of Corpus Christi. If you look at option B, it brings us much closer, especially to McAllen, who's our closest competitor. We end up being only about 7,000 square feet short of exhibition hall square footage. We're two thirds of meeting and ballroom square footage. We will have 11 breakout rooms versus McAllen's 16 breakout rooms. Brings us a lot closer to our target square footage and being able to service the types of organizations that right now we're having to turn away. And Kelly can tell you a lot more about that than I can. I have read the Hunden report, and it does say that we need to do this expansion. Wrong one. The next several slides are basically just different ways of graphically displaying the same information that I just gave you. So I'm going to skip most of them. This is what happens when you give a keyboard wizard who's in his 20s a bunch of information. He's a good guy. I love having him on the team, but man. OK. This is a representation of where we kind of stand right now and what we're trying to do. with the new exhibit hall. You'll notice that at the bottom, the large red rectangle, we have expanded that across where the concourse would be. And we've done that to maintain the total square footage, but not have to take out the road that's on the bottom. We have deleted, you'll see the turquoise colored number with number 12 in the middle of it. That was an exterior, well, it was proposed to be a lobby that would cover up a lot of the whaling wall. We deleted that. We would have lost all of the parking along the Orca Circle. We've deleted that. We have changed, we've made a lot of changes to, we're proposing a lot of changes to the drawings based on the philosophy of if it's not broke, don't fix it. A lot of the drawings, and this is what drove the price so high, they were tearing out existing facilities that were in very good shape, that were, in my opinion and the opinion of others, very attractive. They were then going to rebuild facilities that were the same basically, serve the same purpose in the same location, more grandiose, more impressive. It would have taken a lot of operational flexibility away from the city. They would not be able to stay open because there would have been a lot of demolition going on. We tried to do no demolition whatsoever. That cuts out demolition costs. It cuts out the type of shift work and weekend work that the contractor would have had to do to minimize your operational downtime. And so we were able to cut a lot of money out of this. And we'll see how much money. We were told... Option B was at $88 million, and we were told to try and cut this down to $60 million. We are now at the subtotal of the base bid, as you can see, is $46,649,577. We cut about $40 million out of the project. That's a lot of money. And it will be much easier for the staff to keep the building operational. I think we can probably almost keep it completely operational all the way through construction. Because a lot of what we're doing now, there's very little demolition involved. We're actually building new stuff. And so that can be isolated. It can be separated. While we're building the new exhibit hall, the old exhibit hall stays operational. We don't have to do anything there until we tear out the wall in between the two halls, get the new one completely finished, Set everything down for about two or three weeks. We'll have to do that, but we can schedule it based on how the operations and what's reserved. Same thing with the ballroom. If we do the ballroom in the back, that's all new construction. So it's a lot easier to keep it going. I left... Some of the alternates that are down here are things that were cut out to reach the $46 million number. One of them is concourse renovation and enhancements. The other one is an additional These number 11 with the dark orange, those are three additional meeting rooms in that orange air conditioned concourse that goes all the way back to the new ballroom, which is the dark blue rectangle up in the top. some of the items that were cut out to get down to the $46 million number. But a lot of thought, a lot of work. Our team went up to Corpus Christi and sat down with the contractor. We've been working with the architect. We've been working with the convention center staff trying to figure out what they need, what do they want to include in the contract. contract and in the work itself. And this is where we've come up with. And I'm just hoping that the project manager's bonus is based on percentage of money saved. My boss already told me it's not. And that's really all I have to present today. If anybody has any questions, I'd certainly try to answer them.

Yeah, Brady, could you show me again alternate number nine that you're taking out, the dark blue rectangle you said that you're suggesting that that doesn't occur? I'm not sure I understood that.

Yeah, okay. The concourse is zero nine right here.

Okay.

There were two things. I got it. There were, well, but it's important to understand. There are two things that were going to happen in the original blueprints with the concourse. they were going to push the concourse out farther all the way to the edge of the outside sidewalk.

Then they were gonna go up about 15 feet.

And then item number 12 here and that purple area that comes down below it, all of that was going to become part of the concourse. There have been some ideas about what to do with the existing structural steel and such in the concourse. We're planning on keeping that, but it can be made a lot more attractive. And so that's one of the reasons why I said, well, maybe we'll keep the concourse renovations and enhancements. I mentioned that here. These are policy decisions that you guys will make. And then the meeting rooms with the concourse, those are not included in the square footage numbers that I provided earlier. That would get us almost on par with breakout rooms with McCallum.

Okay, well, that was my next question. If we take out those meeting rooms, does Kelly still get her close to 50%?

space that she needs to work in this plan he's got the ballroom which then gets broken out in the four meeting rooms okay it's it's the it's the west uh meeting space that that's on top on the top there number 11 number 11 yes okay all right thank you yes have you recognized me no

Is the 03 still part of option B?

It's which?

Yes, 03. The ballroom is part of option B, and it's included in that. It's part of option B. Ballroom? It's a ballroom slash meeting room.

Four meeting rooms, yes. Four rooms, and the ballroom is there. It's item 03, 7,600 square feet, 3,000,008. And there will be a covered concourse area that allows you to get to it without having to go outside and then go back in, et cetera. Everything that's listed here in base bid option B is included in the 46, 649, 577.

and that you're including a 10% contingency and a 10% mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and finish allowance. Yes. Because the original plans, again, well, the scope was to basically gut the entire building and remove all of the existing MEPs, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing, and redoing them. And we actually have pretty good bones. We have good chases. We have good conduits. We have good plumbing, and so you've added a contingency to fix what we might have to fix when we start doing some stuff and allows us to do some possible betterments.

Yeah, there are some upgrades in here. Kitchen renovations are part of them. We can do $1,350,000 worth of landscaping if we want. MEP and utilities, there are upgrades for some of the existing facilities. A lot of the MEP and utility, which is almost $7 million, is new equipment to service the new exhibit hall and the ballroom and such. And we're re-roofing the entire building. You need it. Yeah. Trust me.

A new roof that we just put on?

Everything. The entire existing building.

Well, good job on that one.

And the reason I recommend doing that is because it puts all of your warranties in one place. When I was vice president for facilities at TSCC in Harlingen, Roofs were the most horrible thing I had to deal with. You can have a leak show up over here, and it's coming from a hole in the roof way over there. If you have separate areas of a roof that are covered under separate warranties, you will hardly ever be able to get your money. Because they're all going to sit there and go, no, no, it's not my fault. It's over there. So it's good insurance. Roof leaks can destroy your building from the inside out. You need to do a whole lot of it anyway. You put it all in one place, and you can quit working. Unless we get a hurricane. And we'll try to build it where it'll stand up to that.

Yeah, those warranties tend to void over 100 miles per hour. Well, that's a very good number. Going definitely in the right direction. So appreciate your work on that. Anybody from council have any questions?

I have one question. Considering we're going to be going to half to a third of the size of the two cities that you pointed out as our competitors, how are we sure that we're going to spend 46 to 60 million and still not be too small and have to turn people away?

If our company is doing a... We're managing a convention center up in Dallas-Fort Worth right now. How much is that worth? $750 million? I mean, we're always going to be smaller than somebody. But this gets us, according to the Hunden report that the city commissioned and that was performed, this meets their minimum guidelines to become competitive in the market that we're trying to be competitive in. And the Johnson study as well. And the Johnson study as well. That's correct. Sorry.

Could you put up that one graphic that shows us and McAllen and Corpus versus, okay, so that one. Okay, so right now we're at a third of McAllen and Corpus, a half of McAllen and a third of Corpus.

Yes.

But if we go up, we're almost up to McAllen, but we're still smaller than Corpus. So we are improving our position here.

Yes, we are. From what I understand from Kelly, we have to turn down a lot of business because we're just flat too small.

I mean, yeah, it's amazing how big associations have gotten and all that. You know, everything has grown exponentially over the last 10, 15 years on association sizes like the police and, you know, district judges and JPs and all that fun stuff. I mean, there's just so many more members now in these organizations.

May I ask another question? Sure. I did acquire the last business report from the Hunden Partners, and after reviewing that, it looks like a majority of the last business that was actually reported in the 359 events was during the summer season when we are pretty much at max capacity. So I think that those are really important factors when we're talking about these things. Yeah. And... When you all had this discussion about the budget and value engineering, and obviously you were looking at budget numbers, where did those interim costs that we had discussed in the workshop come in? Were they provided?

The, oh, for like profit loss and such like that, are you asking about? And operational costs? We're working on those right now. I was talking to Sandra about it just before the meeting, in fact.

That's scheduled for the next meeting, the 14th, September 14th or 15th or whatever.

Okay, yeah.

they're scheduled to do a presentation of what the cost would look like and all of the fun stuff, the nuts and bolts to the deal.

Yeah, we'll be putting together estimates for projected electrical usage, projected water usage. The engineers have to do that kind of study as they design. They're gonna have to go back and re-look at some of their calculations because we are changing the footprint of the building. we can get you really close just by prorating against the current number of plumbing fixtures and the current usage of electricity versus the new equipment that'll be going in. And a lot of the new equipment that's going in is more energy efficient and more water efficient for your toilets and sinks, et cetera. So the additional utilities burden should not be all that great. But we'll get numbers for you for the next meeting two weeks from yesterday, tomorrow, whenever it is.

Do you have any recommendations on the MEP side of things that aren't on the plans that we should probably consider?

Joey has been putting together, the maintenance director down there has been putting together a list. We have it. A lot of it is included in the numbers that we have now. For instance, new electrical service in the panels, two new chillers. I'm gonna recommend that we put in a third. Keep the good chiller that you have now. The two chillers that you have are facing each other. We can turn them sideways and fit the third in the middle. That will give you some redundant capacity because once you add another 30 some odd thousand square feet and you're still operating with two chillers like you are right now, you lose a chiller, you're gonna lose a conference. And you've got one children's work and put it in there and use it for a backup. And there are other things like that. Joey's got some real dinosaur equipment for temporary electric usage throughout the main hall. And he'd like some of that new. There are some other things and we'll bring those to the next meeting as well. All right.

Well, as I said, that number's going in the right direction for sure.

I don't know if we can get it much farther, but we're going to try.

I have clients every day that ask me to keep cutting, so we'll figure out how we do it. Thank you all for the hard work. Anybody else have any questions?

Thank you. All right, great. Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

All right, next up on the agenda is item number 6.2, which is discussion and possible action to prioritize the City of South Padre Island's legislative agenda for the 2027 legislative session. Louie, thank you for coming, and this is what we have to start, the early work.

That's right. Mayor, Council, thank you for allowing me to be here tonight to workshop your city priorities with you. What I want to emphasize on the offset is that this is the start of a conversation around legislative priorities. The legislature is a dynamic body, and as best as we can predict what those issues are going to be for the next legislative session, we know that a priority may change overnight because of an amendment or because of a new bill introduced. And so the structure of your legislative priorities provides us and the city flexibility to address issues that are contemporary to the legislature while ensuring that the city's goals are met. So there's some historical issues that are important to City of South Padre Island and coastal communities that I'd like to present to you for consideration. But more than anything, this is a listening session for me to help understand what your priorities are for the next legislature. And so that we can maximize our efforts in order to make sure that the city of South Padre Island is well represented at the Texas capitol. So first and foremost, this has been a long-standing priority for the City of South Padre Island is support for the second access causeway. And so this is support for TxDOT for continued development and construction of the second access causeway to South Padre Island, including state funding and any actions necessary to advance planning, environmental review, right-of-way acquisition design, et cetera. Last week, you probably saw that the unified transportation plan was adopted by TxDOT. They've allocated $28 million to further the second access causeway project, which is very encouraging. I know that Commissioner Mead plans to be here in South Potter Island next week. to talk about that planning and other work that TxDOT is doing for South Texas. The second item that I have here is essentially a refile from last session, and that's the qualified hotel project. for the convention center expansion and a convention center hotel, as well as the potential for a project financing zone. So the item here is to support legislation establishing or expanding a state financing mechanism, including the designation of an eligible qualified hotel project To facilitate to the convention hotel and expansion enhancement of the South Potter Island Convention Center last legislative session as you were aware project financing zones were were Not popular, the legislative leadership only allowed a select few to pass the legislature, but there may be another opportunity to take a bite of the apple, and so we'd like to see if that's an available option for the city of South Padre Island in the future. The next item that I'd like to present to you is on beaches and coastal resiliency. And so this is support for legislation appropriations and any state programs that provide funding for resources for beach re-nourishment, dune restoration protection, erosion mitigation, coastal resiliency, and other coastal protection projects. So this includes partnerships with the Texas General Land Office, and any other state or federal entities that protect South Padre Island's beaches. Because we know that for South Padre Island, it's not just tourism, it's critical infrastructure for the island. The next item that I'd like for you to consider is windstorm insurance and disaster protection. And this is support for legislation and state policies that ensure continued availability and financial stability for the long-term viability of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association. We want to be sure that premiums are affordable and accessible for coastal property owners. The next item that I'd like to present to you is the hotel occupancy tax. So legislation that supports preservation of the city's existing authority to collect, administer, and utilize local hotel occupancy tax revenues. We want to be sure that if legislation is presented that would materially reduce redirect or restrict or otherwise adversely affect hotel occupancy tax at South Padre Island's voice is present in that conversation. The next item for your consideration is around short term rentals. And this is support for preservation of municipal authority to address the local impacts on short term rentals and be present in conversations that would restrict the city's ability to protect public health and safety. administer registration and enforcement requirements, address occupancy or community impacts, infrastructure and any essential services, collection of applicable taxes and fees, et cetera. The next item for consideration is around municipal revenue and essential services. So ensuring that South Potter Island's voice is present on any legislation that would materially reduce or restrict existing municipal revenues and otherwise impair the city's ability to responsibly budget for and provide essential municipal services. The next item for consideration is around protection of economic development tools. And so this is support for preservation and enhancement of economic development tools available to municipalities. So typically that's colloquially known as 4A, 4B. We want to be sure that South Potter Island's voice is present around preservation any legislation that would restrict the city's ability to utilize those incentive programs, and any financing mechanism or reinvestment tools that are useful in order to drive economic development to South Padre Island. Another item for consideration is around local control. We want to be sure that we're supporting legislation that preserves appropriate municipal authority that's necessary to address matters legitimate to local concern. This includes protection of public health and safety, management of tourism-related impacts, maintenance of infrastructure, coastal resources, et cetera. As you're aware, Local control, municipal preemption are recurring subjects before the Texas legislature. And so ensuring that if there is legislation that interferes with the city's ability to protect the public, you want to be present in that conversation and make sure that your position on those bills is known. School start date seems to be a biennial issue, especially for tourism-driven communities. And so this is support around legislation and state policies that preserve a school calendar framework. This recognizes the economic importance of traditional summer tourism in the state of Texas. The other item for consideration is around public safety and emergency management. And so this is support for any legislation or appropriation, grant program, or any sort of other state funding mechanism that could potentially assist high impact tourism communities with some of those extraordinary public safety and emergency management costs. associated with those peak tourism periods like you experienced in South Padre Island. So those are the items that I have drafted for you. Again, many of these are recurring issues before the Texas legislature that are particularly important to the city of South Padre Island. kind of coastal communities writ large. But I'm here to hear about your concerns and your priorities for the next legislature. And hopefully by the end of this exercise, we are starting on a draft document that can be presented to members of the legislature, including your legislative delegation. so that they know and understand what's important to the city of South Padre Island as we move into the 90th Texas Legislature.

Well, thank you. Your list is, you know, it's the perfect list of pretty much everything that we've got on there. Annexation, is that coming up again in session? And do we still have the Barrier Island annexation? exemption on distance, or I don't remember how the 89th left it.

Yeah, you still have that five mile exemption. I would expect annexation to be an issue. It's kind of a biennial issue before the legislature. Of course, we'll continue to watch that, ensure that if there's any changes to annexation, to annexation or ETJ issues. Even though that bill didn't pass last session, we were successful at making the argument that the city of South Padre Island was a special exception because of its status as a barrier island municipality. And so although that bill didn't prevail, I believe that had it moved through the legislature, it would have moved with a reasonable exception for the city of South Padre Island.

And that's just definitely something that I keep on our radar. And maybe for the audience that maybe doesn't know about it is that Texas has been kind of shrinking the annexation ability of cities over the last couple legislative cycles. and we've had to bring up the fact, and this was six years ago or whatever it might be, that because we're an island and we have this unique thing, we actually have a five-mile annexation buffer versus a normal city has, what, a half mile?

Yeah, so the attempt has been to reduce ETJs across the state, and most recently there's a conversation around eliminating ETJs altogether.

Mayor, I think it's, if I may, I think it, isn't the five mile ETJ around a city normally like in a diameter? So they just typically have more room to expand out?

Well, they've been shrinking it. The overall goal of the legislation has been to eliminate ETJ in its entirety. And then we had a special experience 20 years ago when we had a city across the side that annexed a portion of the island, and it created a whole bunch of controversy. What we have done is we've had a point on legislation to make sure that we maintain what was originally maybe a five-mile, or I don't know how it got to five miles, but they have been shrinking it, but we've been able to maintain our ETJ and hope to continue so that we don't have some sort of issue that we had 20 years ago.

Yeah, if I can comment on that, Mayor, the city of South Potter Island is essentially landlocked. And so it should be up to this city to determine its future. And because it only has the ability to grow north, that should be determinant of the city of South Potter Island and no other community.

And then going to TWIA, I've had some conversations with over the last week, I'm not sure how many people kind of saw what was happening, but TWIA had a meeting yesterday and one of the items on their board meeting, well, it wasn't the full board, but what our legislative board recommendations was to eliminate TWIA coverage, windstorm coverage for second homeowners. And South Padre Island, we know we have a large number of second homeowners that contribute to the economy through vacation rentals, short-term rentals. I mean, if you wipe that out, and there's a secondary market for Texas for windstorm insurance, but it's three or four times more. So if you're paying $3,000 a year for insurance, you could be paying $12,000 a year for your windstorm insurance. That vote got voted down two to one. Now, what's scary about that is a two-to-one vote can flip and go the other direction just by one person changing their mind. And I think that there is, from my conversation with Representative Hunter out of Corpus, He definitely is going to have some legislation, it sounds like, come out and changing up TWIA a bit. It's hard when we're trying to do good and then someone shoots yourself in the foot by proposing something like that. So TWIA is definitely going to be a conversation this legislative cycle. I mean, it always is, but I think it's going to have a little bit more push on it.

Yeah, certainly that issue that you mentioned there, Mayor, and thank you for your quick responsiveness on that when that was identified for you. It would have been detrimental for tourism up and down the coast. And so making your position known and heard on that was really important. Biennially, we see TWIA reform legislation come before the Texas legislature. In the years that I've represented the city of South Padre Island, we've always been present in those conversations. Nothing has prevailed over the last couple of legislatures because TWIA reform is very complex and there are many competing opinions around it. But it's important that we remain vigilant on all things related to windstorm insurance and present in that conversation so the Texas legislature knows how communities like South Padre Island would be impacted by any changes or reforms to that association.

And then the special financing zone, there's a few municipalities that have access to it, and what it does is... you lock in a kind of a rev par or an ADR, and then you can get a rebate as that number grows over a 10-year period, you can get a rebate on some of the state taxes on that incremental growth. And that's how Dallas is funding their $4 billion convention center. That's how San Antonio is moving the Spurs, which we'll be talking about later. uh and creating a baseball field and all that stuff it's very very powerful now dallas got lucky they set their rev par number at the bottom of the uh covid pandemic uh so they've had nothing but but blue sky ahead of them on their numbers uh uh you know and it'd be a little bit but you have a three mile three and a half mile radius on it and that's a It's a really cool tool if we are able to do that. I know that we already do get some rebates back from the state, and so we need to be cognizant of how generous the state has been on some rebates for our beaches and stuff, but we definitely would like to have that conversation on incremental growth.

You know, it's still too early to tell whether the legislature will have an appetite on PFCs, but if there is a glimmer of hope, it would provide a great financing mechanism for the city of South Potter Island.

Rich, you touched the GLO, Second Access, SDRs, the right to, as we know, every legislative session, the legislators are going to tax to these rights on taxes, on revenue, and all that fun stuff. And we're already kind of handcuffed. We already have seen that we're underpaying our employees by, what, 8%? Somewhere around 8% to 18% into comparative markets. And 70% of our budget is employee wages and benefits. And so having happy employees helps the world go around on South Potter Island. Yeah, I mean, your list covers pretty much everything that I would have had. Is there anybody on the committee, on the council that would have anything to add or anything to comment on?

I have a quick question. It seems like there's a lot more chatter locally around data centers coming from the COG, for example. Our local council of government seems to really be positively pushing data centers in the lower Rio Grande Valley region, which is concerning, especially since we only have... five miles of an etj right and just you know to make my point most most cities at their core have five miles to come around to make up their etj we only have five miles to grow in one direction so that's what i was trying to share but so it's very important for us to to make sure that we can keep that etj and and i wish we could grow it honestly but have you heard any What does it sound like at the state level? I mean, I know data centers is a huge thing, and there's a lot of concern around the power in the water and this, that, and the other. Some cities are really excited about it, and others are not. I don't think that our city would be, but I can't obviously speak for everyone. Can you share just a little bit about what you know around that?

Sure, of course. Data centers, I mean, it's a contemporary issue in the Texas legislature. Many of the committees, both in the House and the Senate, just based on what the scope of their jurisdiction is, has been studying data centers through the different lens of their committee jurisdiction. There is some skepticism around the economic development tools. that are being utilized in order to incentivize data centers in the state of Texas. I anticipate the next legislature will have some additional regulatory oversight for data centers in order to codify best practices to ensure that Their land use, energy use, water use, and community engagement is one that meets only the highest standards for data center location in the state of Texas.

It seems that there's a lot of chatter around the idea that it creates a lot of jobs when it's more like there's initially a lot of jobs and then it kind of trickles off, right?

Certainly, there is positive economic impact on the onset, and depending on the type of data center that's created, that could have either long-term or short-term benefits for community. But certainly I think something that's been recognized by the legislature is that that industry needs to do a better job of engaging local communities. And so I know that that message has been repeated multiple times from different state leaders. There are certain communities that have already implemented moratoriums against data centers. and that are approaching the location of data centers into their community with a fair amount of scrutiny and skepticism. All of these contemporary conversations around The benefits and the detriments of data centers I think is going to culminate in legislation by the Texas legislature to figure out what's the best regulatory scheme around data centers and how to ensure that for those that are locating in the state of Texas that they're doing so with community involvement, engagement, and again, best practices.

Not sure if it's totally relevant, but considering that the desalination plant that might be coming our ways outside of our ETJ, is there any way that we could advocate for of making sure that we have a proper EIS done and that we're seeing, what did you say, 26 million towards the second causeway and they're supposed to be at the foot of that causeway. I know we've heard that they're supposed to be pumping three miles out into the ocean, but as we become closer to that, it would be nice to be engaged in a more environmentally friendly conversation with the state about what that regulation looks like. I mean, obviously we can't make those regulations within our jurisdiction, but I think that there's a bigger picture that we all should really be concerned about.

Great. I've made a note of that. And yeah, certainly having a conversation with the state as a broker around it is certainly an opportunity for the city of South Potter Island.

And lastly, can we get a copy of your document? And can you give us a timeline of what that draft looks like and when it will be moving through the process?

Sure, of course. Well, a lot of that depends on you. What I will do is furnish language to the city of South Padre Island for consideration and adoption resolution style. And I can provide you these bullet points for consideration before the end of this week. And so just kind of based on your timeline, your city timeline, and how you work, and then the process of adoption of these priorities. We'll determine on how quickly we can then start visiting first with your legislative delegation and then moving beyond that to relevant committee chairs and other members that'll be influential in municipal issues and coastal issues and insurance issues, et cetera.

October 7th, would that be a good date? I mean, we have our meeting dates of the 15th and September 15th and October 7th. Would that give us a good timeline to get a resolution done?

I think so. That's certainly encouraging for me. It allows us the opportunity to visit early with your members so that they're familiar with what your priorities are before the legislature convenes.

So I... I mean, I would think that that should be a good date for us to shoot for them. And if everybody on the council's agreeable to that.

Mayor, what is the procedure if we wanted to talk to Louie about adding other resolutions, or how does that work?

Well, the contracts with the cities would go through city manager. I would just say that you would get with Randy or whatever if you have something, and then they can figure out the best path for it. Great, thank you. It depends on whatever item it is.

And again, just kind of reemphasizing this, legislature is a dynamic body. There will always be something coming from left field that is going to be of priority or concern for the city of South Potter Island. Those are things that we're going to actively monitor and watch for and have conversations in real time with the city about. You know, what's important? What's the posture?

You know, what kind of what level of engagement is necessary for those items as they arise and we've always kind of had a global look when it like we let TML and Pull pull some fights that we don't use our political capital on We've always tried to be very judicial about about our use on our political capital in Austin. But how many bills were filed last session? Like seven to eight, 9,000?

That's right. And Mayor, what you described has been a beneficial strategy for the city of South Pottery Island. I'm very proud to be associated with SPI, and as I walk into offices, the reception is always favorable. I really enjoy still going into legislative offices today and seeing City of South Potter Island coasters in offices that are actively used by members and staff, and so that's been a a beneficial strategy for the city, let TML fight the municipal fights, focus on the priorities that are important for the city of South Padre Island first. partnership has their retreat this february i think here that's right yeah so um typically known as the valley tour um that's coming up um early in the legislative session it's an opportunity for uh for members of the legislature to come to the rear grand valley and learn about issues every other year The RGV partnership focuses on either Cameron County, Cameron and Willisee County, and then Hidalgo County in alternating biennia. This current biennium, the focus will be in the city of South Padre Island. We expect members of the legislature to and staff and the many stakeholder supporters of the RTV partnership that helped fund that opportunity to be here in the city of Sal Padre Island. One notable change from previous RTV partnership tours to the one that we expect this next year, there will be a lot more downtime for members of the legislature. programmed from the start of the day to the end of the day, the RGV partnership has recognized that the members and staff really benefit from some self-programming, especially when coming to a destination as rich in entertainment and environment as South Padre Island. And so it'll be a great opportunity for the city to showcase its best assets to those members that that that are in town and Hopefully there's gonna be some engagement From City Council with those members.

Well, I know we were a sponsor where we I don't remember what level but we're gonna be a sponsor of it and so That should be a good event

Fantastic. And I've also reached out to Paco Sanchez, who's the CEO of the RGB Partnership, letting him know that the city is ready to be responsive and available as we welcome members of the legislature to South Potter Island.

And then the only other request I would have is I would like to see when we get Kelly her Airstream with a margarita machine in it that we figure out somewhere to put it in front of the Capitol for at least a day or two and we can hand out some free margaritas.

That's an available option and I'm glad that you're mentioning that to me now because it's certainly a possibility. I don't know about margaritas, maybe after hours. Right. But during the day, there's certainly a lot of opportunity and we've seen this in the past with with other organizations that engage the legislature in a special way. They provide some sort of attraction for members and staff to see or some kind of benefit or even food and beverage. And so I certainly think that would be a great opportunity.

We can serve them some Arnold Palmer's or something, you know, iced tea and lemonade. So in other words, Kelly, if you could start looking for that Airstream, that would probably be a good idea.

It will help coordinate with her and the city to make sure that that opportunity is available for you. Great.

I just have one more question, and either Louie or the mayor can answer it for me. As far as the qualified hotel project, I understand that this incentivizes a build for a hotel that could potentially – What is it exactly? We're taking away the opportunity for them to... We're not taking away.

There's a rebate.

There's a rebate. I'm so sorry. I was looking for the word. We're going to give them a rebate on the tax? uh the city gets a rebate that's right the city receives so at this point when we're using you this only came out because you mentioned being judicious about our tax our dollars sorry when we're working with louis here which hotel project are we talking about and it has to connect to the convention center so wouldn't that be in cameron county and didn't they have an rfp out

So I'll start, Louie, help me out if I get somewhere where I'm not supposed to go. So the idea is that there's 27 or 38 municipalities in the state of Texas that have this right to get a rebate back from the state. on the hotel tax that is remitted on a qualified hotel. We had, the state has a thousand foot radius rule and where it has to be located within 1,000 feet of the convention center or similar type product. And we had legislation last year that had an exception to 2,000 feet for South Padre Island. And it also had an exception for not having to be land owned by the city. And so the idea, and I believe Cameron County is showing some pictures, is that they would like to have a hotel that they're on Andy Bui Park, and with potentially, we could use that rebate to help with a parking garage, We could use it to have a skywalk that connects the hotel to the convention center in that manner and collect some or get a rebate back on that to help incentivize or create, make something better, a betterment or whatever it might be. and it's really you know i mean when when i look at san benito having that opportunity and we don't i think that's just a travesty and a misjustice now you said something about political capital and money uh we're not being restrictive on money one way or the other it's the political capital that we have earned up there by being south padre island and being the the the nice guys and the fun guys and we don't come up there and beating up beating up legislator or whatever is that that we have a pretty good reputation in Austin, and that's the political capital that we don't want to, we'll let other people fight fights that we know that are bigger and stronger than we are, and we can just be out here and be, you know, South Pottery Island where we want everyone to come vacation and enjoy us and have a good memory of us.

Right. Yep. Now, the South Potter Island first strategy is certainly beneficial for the city. A few things to clarify, Mayor, and just for further explanation around qualified hotel programs. The city receives 100% rebate of that 6% or 6.25% tax that is captured by the state of Texas for the hotel occupancy tax. And it does that for a 10-year period. That allows for better financing around these sorts of projects. We were successful at getting the exception for 1000 feet because there were some natural barriers around the convention center that would have prohibited construction without without having to do some major environmental impact, which is why the 2,000-foot exemption was provided for the city of South Padre Island. However, we were not successful at reconciling the ownership issue with the legislature, and it was their instruction that that matter should be remediated locally between the city and the county. We asked for that, I guess, yes.

So if we did get the program, we get accepted into this program, it would essentially still be up to the county to decide whether or not we get the tax rebate? Is that correct?

They wouldn't be able to get the rebate.

Okay, so it would only be us. We would have to reconcile some. Even though it's their land, I'm so sorry.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The statute requires that the land be municipally owned, and because in this instance it is not, the city would have to come to some agreement with the county so that it could, if the legislature authorizes this for the city of South Padre Island, that would be a critical issue that would need to be resolved with the county in order for the financing mechanism to then be available for the city.

Or you can have annex, if we wanted to build a theater meeting space or something like that on some different property and it had some land where someone wanted to build a hotel, you can qualify that under the convention center thing, as long as it has 10,000 square feet of meeting space.

Correct. We'd like to be able to sit at the table.

And right now, we can't sit at the table. We're still on the kids' table. And San Benito is not. They're sitting at the adult table. So I would like to be able to sit at the adult table in that situation.

Mayor, before you close up, I want to say a word to Louie real quick about how much I appreciate all that you've done for us. I know you're under contract with us, and some people may think it's an obligation. But you've always been available to, as soon as we call, you jump right into action. And my over 40 years of policing and over 20 years of public safety directing, I've sat on several committees and testified before boards and been voluntold to go to Austin. And even when you're invited, it's a nightmare up there, but you've opened doors for us. You get conversations, and it's been fun. So we appreciate all that you do for us.

And we'll be sure that the members of the legislature know that you're Randy Smith, not Randy Garcia.

I was introduced by the House floor and the Senate floor as Randy Garcia.

All right. Well, does anybody have anything else? Louie, thank you very much.

Thank you, Councilman.

All right, now we'll move to 6.3, which is discussion of possible action to appoint members to vacancies created by resignations of the following Board of Adjustments and Appeals and Planning and Zoning Commission. So we have all voted. And for the Board of Adjustments and Appeals, it looks like we have Doc Young, Cheryl Hill, and Lindy Milner. And then for Planning and Zoning, well, we had two candidates, so this is one of the ones where if you put an application in, you got it. We have April, Pust, and Oscar Garcia. So welcome to the new committees and hope to see you all here soon. Thank you. Next up is 6.4, which is consideration and action on approval resolution number... Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll make a motion to approve, appoint Doc Young, Cheryl Hill, Lindy Milner to Board of Adjustments and Appeals, and April Pust and Oscar Garcia to Planning and Zoning. Is there a motion and a second?

I'll make a motion.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. Then we'll do 6.5, sorry, 6.4, which is consideration and action on approval of resolution number 26-22, adopting the five-year capital improvement plan as required by section 5.09 of the Home Rule Charter.

Hi, Mayor, City Council, Wendy Delgado, Director of Operations for the City. We are here at our last step of the capital improvement plan that's required out of your Home Rule Charter. We started this process back in April, and we had our last public hearing on August 18th. The resolution is there in your packet, and that's just basically the final step to move forward into the next fiscal year. And can I answer any questions?

I mean, we've talked about it. We've had, what, three meetings on this so far?

Yes, three meetings for sure, yes.

Okay.

Yes, and it was published in the paper, and then we've also had the documents downstairs for public inspection and also on the website.

Right. Anybody have a motion or a comment? Motion to accept the resolution.

I'll second.

Okay. Is there any other discussion? All right. Hearing none, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed?

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. All right, next up is item number 6.5, which is a discussion and action to approve and adopt resolution number 26-23, ratifying the property tax increase for fiscal year 26-27. And the reason we have to say increase is...

It's because we're collecting more money.

Yes. We're not raising the tax rate. We're just collecting some more money.

Yes, that is why it's called a tax increase. Sorry. That's the legislature.

So what you...

So this is just pretty much, this is not adopting the tax rate. So we've already adopted the budget. This is just letting the citizens know that we do have what is technically called a tax rate increase because we are collecting more money, both for the MNO and probably the INS. So this is just requiring to be approved by council tonight prior to us adopting the tax rate.

So we've approved the budget. Now we have to approve the way we're going to pay for the budget.

Correct. That is correct. Yes, sir.

Motion to approve.

I'll second.

Okay. Is there any other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we'll move to item number 6.6, which is discussion and action to approve ordinance number 26-20, establishing the adverlim and personal property tax rate of 0.262159 for tax year 2026 and setting assessed valuation at 100% of the fair market value and providing for discounts in the event of early payment and providing for penalties and interest in accordance to the state law.

Now this is adopting the property tax rate officially. There is an official wording for the motion, whoever makes the motion. It was in your packets, how it needs to be made.

Yes, and anybody have a motion they would like to make? Any discussion?

Motion to approve.

Okay. Is there a second? Second. All right. We're going to vote on ordinance number 26-20, an ordinance of the City of South Padre Island, Texas, establishing the admiralim and personal property tax rate for the fiscal year ending 2020. September 30th, 2027, and the tax year 2026, and setting the assessed valuation at 100% of the fair market value and providing for discounts in the event of early payment and providing for penalties and interest in accordance with state law, providing for conflict, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date. Is this a roll call vote, or is this?

Yes.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

I was going to ask Ed. I think that it needs to read, I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adopted tax rate, which is effectively a 2.41%. That's why I wrote the language in there. I think that the motion needs, when we make the motion, it needs to read like that. It's required by the state.

I'm very sorry about that. So I need to restate my motion?

If you don't mind, please, yes ma'am.

Where is it? It's in under. Restate your motion and see what she said.

If I can read it from the resolution, I will. If you guys point me in the right direction. Oh, okay, okay. wait a minute this one or that one it's in the cover page an item background okay okay i move the proposed property tax rate for 2026 is 0.262159 As the proposed tax rate is higher than new revenue rate, section 26.05 of the tax code states that a motion to adopt this tax rate, oh, there it is, sorry. I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.262159, which is effectively a 2.41% increase in the tax rate, percentage by which the proposed tax rate exceeds the no new revenue tax rate.

And do we have a second? Second. Okay. All right. And we need this to be a roll call vote? Okay, all right. So, Joe? Aye. Reese? Aye. Myself, aye.

Aye.

Lisa? Aye. There you go. Thank you. All right, thank you. All right. Next up. is 6.7, which is discussion and action regarding a beach and dune permit for 1202 Padre Boulevard, lot 2C in the Merrimar and Sandpile subdivision.

Hello, Mayor and City Council. This is a beach and dune permit for 1202 Padre Boulevard. This is lot 2C behind the Denny's area. If you remember, in July, we did lot 2D. And so all of the construction will be west of the historic building line. And if you remember from that previous permit, rubble was found in that area because it used to be a previous building. So there's gonna be no mitigation required. The GLO has provided their comment letter and the Shoreline Task Force has recommended the approval. Are there any questions?

26 stories, huh? Big building. Motion to approve. Is there any other questions? All right, hearing none, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Next up, we'll move to 6.8, which is discussion and possible action to approve the city manager... to renew the marketing partnership contract between Visit South Padre Island and San Antonio Spurs for 26-27, 27-28, and 28-29 seasons.

Great. Good evening again, Council and Mr. Mayor. Kelly DeShawn, your Chief Executive for the Visit Sal Padre Island. I've asked our Chief Marketing Officer, Cindy Trevino, to present this item. Before she starts, I will say that I was really pleased when I got to the Convention and Visitors Bureau. You've got some really great assets on the island. And Cindy Trevino is one of the really great HR assets that you've got. She's a hell of a negotiator. And I think for all the questions that you've generated regarding the SPURs, you're going to see what a great job she's done for us and for the island. Cindy?

Hi everyone, Cindy Trevino, Chief Marketing Officer. So I have a presentation on everything that's going on with the Spurs this time. So I'm here today seeking approval to renew the partnership proposal between South Padre Island and the San Antonio Spurs. I realize that several people have had a few questions, and I appreciate those who have reached out prior to this because it helps me definitely prepare for today. So thank you to all of you who have done that. Due to all the chatter, I went ahead and started looking into cornhole. So I'm just kidding. I had to make a joke in order to start this thing. This partnership is one of the single largest marketing buys next to our greenhouse contract, which is our marketing agency of record. When we partnered with the Spurs, we did it at the perfect timing because at the time they did not have the number one player on the NBA. They also hadn't made it to the finals since 2014. This is no longer the case. They made it to the finals last year and have the number one player on the league, which means more visibility for us, and it helps us bring more people from Central Texas to South Padre Island. So we are the official island destination of the San Antonio Spurs, using their reach to increase visitation and brand awareness with the most dominant sports team in San Antonio, along with one of the best players in the NBA, which means more eyes on the team, more eyes on South Padre Island. The Spurs dominate their local market by 54% more than any other Texas team. That means the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, Mavericks, the Stars, Astros, Texans, and Rockets. Again, they dominate their market in their territory. What you see right here is a new asset that we changed. from the other proposal that we had. I wanted more visibility in the arena, and what we worked on is adding an LED ribbon that wraps around the entire arena during their home games. The Spurs have a total of 270 games, and their season starts from October, and it runs through April, possibly through June. Keep your fingers crossed if they make it to the finals. Through our partnership, The last past three years, the total attendees that attended the games was 2,217,155. The attendees per game is an average of 16,500. All these sports fanatics spending money on tickets is a great market for South Padre Island. The total metrics for all of our assets, including social media, we have a total impression of 658.9 million, 105.5 million video views, and 8.4 million engagements. This sponsorship has a value of 1.46 million. This is another new asset that we added to the proposal. As you can see to the right, we have our digital logo, which is only gonna be seen, but it's a big only, through the regional broadcast. And if you look at the map, all the blue part, that is the regional exclusive broadcast coverage. That means if we partnered with Houston or with Dallas Mavericks, they are not able to be in this area. This blue area indicates the area where the South Padre Island digital logo will be seen throughout the regional broadcast. This digital logo is currently valued at 735,000 right now. Again, we partnered at a good time. They didn't have Wimby. They hadn't made it to the finals, so we actually partnered the week right before they drafted the number one player in the NBA. So although we are not being seen on national broadcast, because in order to be seen through national broadcast, you have to directly partner with the NBA, with the NFL, with MLS. Through our partnership throughout these past three years, we have earned organic media placement with the NBA's biggest names, which include the NBA, ESPN, Bleacher Report, Wimby himself, and the Spurs. I have arrows on these screenshots so you can see the amount of likes and views that we had. And just one of these that was posted on X, and the Spurs have a 3.3 million views. follower on x the nba posted and we received 5.2 million views this is again just off of one post and again these are not all the screenshots that we have been featured in So the Spurs social media have a combined of 18 million followers. On Facebook, they have 7 million followers. Instagram, 6.2 million. TikTok, 1.8 million. And X, 3.3 million. The last three years we had been running a sweepstakes for eight weeks. We were doing a spring break escape and we had 11,000 entries. This is a paid social media ad that is run by the Spurs and it had 124,464 impressions. Last year, we decided to target families to see how that went, and we did increase it through entries by about, I believe, 2,000. And so we ran an island getaway sweepstakes, and this was run to target the summertime. So now here comes the GPS. So also a part of this partnership, we never had an activation with the San Antonio Spurs at the arena. And I felt that we needed that. Because we can have an activation, we can promote the island just like you see here. through the Airstream with our Jeep that's wrapped. We can be giving away promo items. We can be giving away information about our partners that you all can also give to us. We can hand out at that time. So we'll have an activation, several activations here at the arena. We can also have a booth inside the concourse areas where everybody is walking around. It's up to us which area we want to pick. And then they also just told me that we can also be part of the next draft party. It's also a plaza area that we have activated before. It wasn't included in the proposal last year, but we did activate there, and there were thousands of people when they were drafting the new players. So they invited us to go back again. So the Spurs also play in Austin. Austin is one of our biggest markets as well. So right here, you'll see the Spurs get Moody. They have three games throughout the season that are played at the Moody Center in Austin. and this is their schedule for this year. So October 23rd, they're gonna be playing there, February 26th and February 28th. These are sold out games, and right here on the bottom of the screen, you'll see our ribbon running through there. We also did this last year, and so wanted to show you that these games are also playing in Austin too, so we're getting a lot of exposure in that area as well. So we also included two suite nights. I was challenged this time during the partnership to start getting more involved with a partnership through the Spurs and our sales team. Our sales team have over, I believe Myra told me, over 40 associations and corporations in the San Antonio and Austin area. Right here on this list, these are our current association and corporation meetings that currently take place in South Padre Island. Through these suites, we will have two throughout the season. We will be receiving 18 tickets, five parking passes, and $500 worth of food and beverage. The goal for this is to be in... It's relationship building to a high value list for future repeat business in South Padre Island. This is a tool aimed at growing meetings and group business to the island and to be in front of decision makers who see where their next conference is going to take place. Here's some other three assets that were added. Another thing too that I mentioned to them, this was one thing that we're gonna take out, and I said, no, I wanna see this first year on the island. So I told them if we can add the coyote. And so they added it back in. So the coyote's going to make two special appearances. I'm hoping that the coyote can be here for our lighted boat parade. So hopefully we can get him on a boat. And then we'll figure out another time when he can come and maybe we can even do a commercial so we can start promoting our partnership with them everywhere and run this commercial in all of our top markets. The college pass. So the college pass is something that they had been running before. But they mentioned this to us because, well, of spring break. We have college kids here all the time. And so they thought that this was something that we should do and partner with by being the presenting sponsor of the college pass. This doesn't mean it is only for spring break. It means that we are targeting college kids, period. What they're gonna do through this partnership is we can have activations. Actually, the SPURs are gonna hold these activations at certain campuses. They can do it in San Antonio. They can even do one here at UTRGV, but they're gonna run it. We can also be a part of it as well. We can join in that activation, collect leads, and again, those leads will be available to all of our partners as well. So the benefit for college students to be a part of the college pass is they will receive ticket deals to the games. They'll get discount tickets. There's giveaways that happen through this as well. So that's what this will create. The other one is... We're doing a five-seat upgrade. So during five games throughout the season, again, this is a new feature, too. We never had this before. But again, I want more presence in the arena. I want our logo to be all over that place, just like HEB and everybody else. So this five-seat upgrade, what they're going to do is in – During the first quarter, the beginning of the first quarter, they're going to go up to the nosebleed sections. And they're going to pick five people. And they're going to be featured on the Jumbotron. It's going to say presented by South Padre Island. And these people are going to win five seats on the bottom. These are stadium seats. that people are going to sit down at and enjoy the game with a better view. And these seats are going to have South Padre Island merch, can have a beach towel, information about South Padre. And so I'm sure they're going to be super excited about this, post it all over social media. And there we go with more posts, more impressions. So I was asked if I ever contacted other sports teams for proposals. Yes, absolutely. In fact, when we partnered with the San Antonio Spurs Phones were ringing all the time, emails from different teams asking, of course, they want our partnership. And so the Minnesota Timberwolves was actually one I was kind of interested in because Minnesota is one of our top visitors. So they sent in a proposal, the Milwaukee Bucks, Texas Rangers, Dallas Football Club, Houston Texans, Rayados soccer team in Mexico, Tigres soccer team in Mexico, Texas A&M, and locally, UTRGV and the Vipers. Hold on. So San Antonio is our second biggest market, following the RGB. And these teams listed are not as relevant as the Spurs. I know this is hard to define, but partnering with another team is basically starting from scratch. Because we have already made a footprint with a team that has a dominance in the San Antonio market, The NBA season also runs through the winter and spring break season that is our booking window, while other sports have a shorter season and do not have territorial rights here in this area. And that is it. So that's what I wanted to tell you all. And if you have any questions, I'm here to answer anything that you all have.

think it's great. I love it. I love that it's factored in on more of the brand awareness of us. And a perfect example of that is this morning on our fishing trips, a couple accidentally came here. You know, the husband says book a trip to Padre. She booked South Padre. He says, Where is that? And she they got here and they said we will be coming back here. And I think the brand awareness is the big the big picture here.

And that's hence the reason why we added TX to the logo because also marketing in the Midwest, they don't know where South Padre is, some. And so, but even in San Antonio, you go to San Antonio, you go to Houston, go to Austin, not everybody knows where South Padre Island is. They keep saying Corpus. I'm like, nope, just a little bit further down. So this helps brand awareness and at a very high impact because of where the spurs are at right now. Mm-hmm.

Well, and I'm glad you mentioned something like HEB because, you know, the amount of logo HEB has in that stadium was far greater than what we had last year. Yes. I'm glad to see that there is a upward movement in our branding because that was one of the big – I have friends that have a box there. And, you know, he says – he'll send me a text like every once in a while. It says, oh, finally saw your logo or whatever it might be. So definitely need to, you know – Push that, and the activation's a big thing. One thing that might be cool, if you do that activation with the Airstream and whatever, is also maybe get with McAllen to get our float up there.

Oh, yes, absolutely. That'd be a great idea.

Because that float's pretty cool, and we get an opportunity to get that up there for whatever period of time. I think that's a cool thing for people to see and such, and we need to use that more often, use that opportunity more often. So we'll just throw that out there.

Great.

Appreciate you answering all my questions and adding those in. Motion to approve.

I'll second.

Anybody else have any other questions?

I have a few.

Your Honor.

Okay, can you amend your motion to approve subject to city attorney approving the contract?

Did you ask Mr. Rico, because there's nothing to the packet telling the council how much the sponsorship is?

Yes, so the sponsorship is for 400,000 and I was able to remove the 3% increment.

And I know the 400, that was a 120 last year, correct?

I'm sorry?

Was it a 120 last year? 300 last year. I had asked to review the contract on numerous times and I think it was sent to me yesterday, but has anybody on the council actually reviewed the contract?

I have not. That's why I had asked for his motion to be amended to have your approval on the contract.

And I'm saying this because the presentation is great, and you're not going to find a bigger Spurs fan in this building, in this city, or within 100 miles of me. So I'm not trying to 100, maybe 150. So I'm not trying to be negative, but my job is to make sure the city is protected. And I want to make sure that we have a chance to review the actual contract, because I never saw how much it was. Usually in multi-year contracts, we either have a termination fee or an availability of funds clause so that in case there's a change in administration, things could be made, things could be modified. But yeah, as long as I get a chance, and I really would suggest and recommend that, because we only have a one-page summary of what the contract is that each council member get a chance to review and to make sure they're comfortable with it. But as long as I get a chance, subject to the city attorney's review, I'll be satisfied. Oh, man.

We didn't actually get a copy of the contract.

No, I've never seen it.

That's why I'm saying that, you know, subject to his approval because I depend highly on Ed for his legal expertise, and I'm definitely not one that can write or read a contract very well.

It would be a good idea for a council to review it.

Yeah, no, I will review it if we can get a copy of it, but I trust your judgment 100%. Thank you. Appreciate it.

May I be recognized? Yeah. How do we approve this going forward when we haven't seen the contract?

Well.

Is it just subject to Ed's approval? Like what if we wanna make a recommendation that we only have, we only do this for one year and we see how it goes and then we can jump into two more years. If it's that much language that we potentially are negotiating in the contract, can we go ahead and approve it still today?

It's up to the board of how they wish to approve it. Cindy, are we on a timeline?

It ends in September.

The 30th. Mayor, can we table this for one meeting? Yeah, sure. Bring it back pending as review. I thought, yeah, I read this as legal review. I'm sorry.

No, I haven't seen it.

Well, so we're gonna table it. We'll bring it back to the September 15th meeting. And that'll give everybody a chance to review the contract. And have Ed, is it basically the same contract as the last one that we approved, or?

Well, it has the new assets. Right, the new assets. It has the new assets. It's a three-year contract. And all the other contracts have always been, have always had a 3% increment. We don't escalate it. We don't have that. Thank you for getting that removed.

You're welcome. Okay.

I'll ask a few questions. I know that we're going to table it and we can have more discussion or just so much less this time. And you answered a lot of the questions that I sent to you and I appreciate that. Since 2023, it's gone up 41% of the spend that we have with the SPURs, which brings us to 7% of our annual tourism marketing budget and 24% of the media buy budget. So I think that those are really important when we're recognizing how big of an expenditure this is for With that being said, we know that we can measure digital campaigns down to clicks, bookings, and ROAs. Can we do better with measurement with this system that you've put together? And can the renewal include... You know, things like annual performance reporting with measurable tourism conversion metrics. Because it just seems that even in the CVA discussion, there was a lot of, you know, we could pay a lot less for a digital campaign for impressions and spend a lot more. or get a lot more conversions, rather, and will we be able to have those conversions in hand? The CBA seemed to also agree that nobody's showing up going, hey, I saw your logo on the Spurs court and I booked a room immediately. But there's no way that we've been able to see that measurement. So is that possible?

Yes, it's possible. And the Spurs also have a survey, too, that they do every year to also see the visitation to South Padre Island. They use Nielsen to do a survey every year. And from 2022 to right now, they increased the Spurs fans have come to the island by 29%. More than 22. From 2022, it increased by 29%.

And they're keeping track. The crazy thing about sports now is they're basically becoming data centers and data collectors or whatever. That's a large portion of their value. It's kind of like American Airlines and their Advantage program. That makes more money than the airlines does for them. And that is the unique thing, because we're tracking credit cards, and then they're tracking credit cards, and they get to see when those credit cards are used at the Spur Stadium, and then you can correlate them with when they're used on South Padre Island and all of that fun stuff. So it's definitely some good data that you can get out of it. And I will say that when we started down this road, of course we were all rookies in this process, But a large portion of this was brand awareness because we've had two, three, five million people move to Texas in the last 10 years and they don't know where South Padre Island is. And that's one of the big drivers that was the original thought process in this. And I don't know how the FC Austin one's going or whatever, but the... the convention center board, visitor board, whatever, they approved this, correct? Correct. Okay. All right.

After much discussion. Okay. And you might have said, and I agree, too, that the contract needs to be vetted, but by pushing this off, it doesn't put us in any kind of jeopardy or anything, does it? I mean, we have time, right?

I believe by next board meeting, by next city council meeting.

Just so we know where we're at. Where we should be good to go. Yes, correct. And when you talk to the Spurs, I think you just need to let them know that it's a clerical. I mean, this is a portion that we just have, we hadn't had the contract yet and we need to review it and then do that. So I think the board, I think this council's in favor of it. It's just we need to cross the T's, dot our I's, or dot our I's and T's or whatever, I don't know. So anyway. Did you have something else, Erin?

What you were mentioning was that, yes, those assets do exist. When we're talking about those assets, what is actually generating those qualified leads?

I want to talk about, I'm sorry, a generated lead. I think there's a misnomer in our language about that. That would imply that I'm getting somebody's contact information and then I'm sharing it across the island with every business. Can't we? No. We don't do that. We wouldn't be a blessed destination if we were giving away people's information. Our job is to drive them to the website, get them to want to come to Sal Padre Island, and after they want to come to Sal Padre Island, then the businesses on the island need to scrap for their business. We talked about for just a minute, and I really want to emphasize how I know we think that Sal Padre Island is the center of the universe. It's a great place, best beaches. We were just in Portland, Oregon together at a conference. Every person that came up to me and said, Kelly, where are you working right now? I said, I'm on Sao Padre Island. And I waited to see if they knew where Sao Padre Island is. And I would tell you, We did this together. Less than half of the people know where we are. And Texas has the largest amount of in-migration into the state from all other states. We need to be constantly educating people that Sal Padre Island is down here on the tip of Texas. So this is not an activity to move people from wanting to book a hotel room. This is an activity to create a image of South Padre Island as a destination that is enough of a qualifier to be in the league with an NBA team and to have our name with these other big names and that piques an interest so that people start coming down. That's this activity. Then we move into the greenhouse media buys. That's where we begin to talk directly to individuals People that we want them down, we're serving them ads. Those ads are what we call pixelated. So God forbid they click on the ad, then we're chasing them around the internet saying, come to Padre, come to Padre, come to Padre, and then they convert. What will convert for you out of these things are the sweepstakes where we're getting people's information. When we get their information, we're not sharing them with the wide world. What we're doing is we're putting them into the text messages that she has that they've signed up for. monthly newsletters, specials, and that's how we're generating ads. I just wanted to jump in there because this is the only destination that I've really heard about this idea of leads, and I really want people to stop and think for a moment. If you gave me your phone number, would you want me to share that with every business on the island? No, you want me to create an environment where I'm helping to incentivize and want to make people to come down here, and then that becomes the pot that we're all fishing out of. I'm sorry to jump in. I can tell that got your wheels going.

Well, because that's not what I've known that we've done, Kelly. What we've done in the past, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but we do collect information and we do aggregate that information into a platform that all of our users and business partners are able to reach. And once you log into that platform, you can take that information, that you've aggregated from events and such, and you can email those people on your own and say, hey, you were here for TIFF. This was a really great week. Would you like to come down and stay with your family again?

What platform is that?

No, but not the chamber. Oh, I didn't know this.

Okay.

Yeah.

There is no platform that allows that. There is a platform, and this is what we're up here debating right now, for specific initiatives that if we wanted to do that and somebody checked the box and said, yeah, you can send me some sweepstakes information, then we give it. The sweepstakes information that we ran apparently during spring break, the last one, I've never worked in a destination that makes leads available like that. We made them available. One business on the island put information out to all those leads and got very little back from that. That's just not how the business runs. Happy to go in that at another time, but in the meetings, you'll hear us talk about the funnel. The top of the funnel is creating awareness about San Padre Island, and that's what this type of buy does. This does not get you the addresses of people in the arena so that we can direct market to them.

I think another time may be better. We're getting a little bit off point of the agenda item, so appreciate it.

Sorry to not have given you that contract, Ed. No, no problem. I just don't feel. We'll make sure that everybody has a contract. And we've always said to them that if there's no money or a catastrophic, then the contract's over. No problem. And Aaron, if you have any, Councilwoman Hartwell, if you have any other questions and want to go after that, we can have a much longer discussion about that somewhere else.

Thank you.

All right, well, we had a motion at the table, so we'll bring this back on the September 15th meeting. Thank you. All right. Do we need a vote for a table? Yes. All in favor of the table to September 15th, please raise your hands. Opposed? All right. Motion carries. Then we'll move to item number 6.9, which is discussion of possible action to approve the media placement by for AJR Media Group for $51,860.37 for the fiscal year 26-27.

We had some resources. Good evening, Council. I'm here to ask for your approval on this purchase for some print and digital advertising. We had some additional resources left. We're bundling those up for the end of this year and for next year. This is a purchase to go into the State Texas Travel Guide and to... buy a page in that. This gets us into three editions of Texas Highway magazines with two thirds of a page. This also gets us into the digital newsletter that has a large circulation And it puts us on a website called Texas Tours and puts us into the AAA Explorer magazine in two editions in both the winter and the summer season. The total buy is $51,000. These are both print ads in these magazines as well as digital ads. And the question that the Councilwoman made in the last one, these are all pixelated and we will know when people see the ads and then when they come into destination and how effective these things are. These are standard buys for tourism in the Texas market. Approval today.

Starting to get me worried about clicking on an ad ever again.

You have to be very careful, yes.

Yeah, this is crazy. All right, anybody have any questions? Is there a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second.

Okay, is there any other questions? Any other questions, Randy or Erin?

No, I think it's agreed by.

Okay, I heard the side conversation. All right, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. All right, 6.10, update and discussion regarding rules, procedure, conduct, quorum. for your city council, city staff, and members of the public. This is just on here, because in case someone wanted to add something, we do have, for Andy's comments, we do have a revised one, and you were kind of, Randy, you were kind of going over a couple of things, but 6.2, we did eliminate, The allowing people to speak at both times, we did eliminate solely within the chair presiding officer being able to reserve rights. We removed solely within their discretion because that was a recommended change. Anyway, I didn't know if anybody else had anything, if they wanted to add anything. not we talked about bringing it back to the next meeting oh and then we did add some stuff because city of harlingen just got through updating theirs uh their their rules and procedures and one thing i found interesting was city of of harlingen had uh you know mentioned some stuff about a lot of the same stuff in here but one of them was they they started talking about cell phones and cameras and recordings so The judge brought that, or Ed brought that up, and so he's added some stuff to that. And again, it was just up here for, because we talked about putting it on here for this meeting. If anyone has anything, if not, then we can just move on to another item. And I don't know if anybody has sent Ed any recommended changes or anything.

First, to make sure I understand, The gentleman, I guess it was Mr. Hancock's, two items I took note of was up till today we allow, the law says Open Meetings Act, public can talk about an agenda item at public comments or during the agenda item. We have traditionally allowed it at both. The first draft of this said not both, but I've changed that. I just think it's... And then again, this is discussion totally up to the council. I just felt that it was better to give the public more time and to allow them to speak about an agenda item at public comments so they can go home if they needed to, or at the... at the agenda items discussion or both. So that's basically reverting back to our current policy, which is allowing them to speak both times if they wanted to. The other thing he mentioned was the extension of time was totally up to the mayor. And as if you could see in 6-3, the blue ink is the new items. It also now allows um by a majority of vote the city council can extend the 20-minute time limit on any single agenda item and if the speaker's comments are expected to be longer than the allotted time they could submit written remarks those are the two items that i think mr hancock mentioned council woman langston talked to me briefly and when i was taking a break from a trial um on a couple of items. She had a question about item 4.3, which I think was a good, I mean, they're all good questions about the recess to cool off. And I guess a specific question about, the presiding officer may call a brief recess at any time in the meeting to allow tempers to cool and permit a private consultation among members or to restore order. And I just assumed to permit a private consultation, we would, of course, implies only two people, but it's probably a better practice to delete that. so that we don't have any type of quorum problem or violation of open meetings act if three or four people are getting together. So I'm going to suggest that that's middle sentence to permit private consultation be eliminated and just basically that you can call a timeout to kind of cool off and restore order. She gave me a typo that I'll fix. There was a question about 6.2, about the city secretary. If you have my revised... And I gave also sent an email which kind of lists all the revisions or the new ones. And again, as the mayor mentioned, most of them were from the city of Harlingen's new policy. And 6.2 in the black, it has said... First, complete a submit a citizen's request form to the city secretary. There was a question about what's the timeline on that. I think I've seen some cities where actually it requires it two days ahead of time. I don't think we should be that stringent. And the blue part below that, the city secretary shall prepare a comment request. I think that can be deleted. It's really kind of repetitious. I don't think she needs to prepare a list. The list would be from the people that fill out the form. I guess the only question would be, do you want them to just fill out the form as they arrive or at any time during the meeting? And this is very common for a lot of school boards, city commissions, to be able to speak, to just sign in, sort of. That's all that's requiring. So I'm also suggesting that that blue part, after 6-2, be deleted. I think there was something else. I think she had a question about whether it would be a good policy to require two signatures on an agenda request item, and I'm gonna leave that up to you. A lot of people, a lot of cities do that to avoid frivolous items, but I don't have any concerns in whatever way you wanna do that. Ms. Hartwell, Councilwoman Hartwell.

Mayor, before you move on, can we discuss some of what you pointed out so that we're not catching up?

Okay. I'm just trying to address Ms. Langston's comments first. Go ahead, sure.

no i totally get it i just i just think since we're here and this is the point of discussion that we might as well figure out what everybody wants to do with it personally i would love to get rid of the two council memorandum considering the status of our council as it stands today um i think that the What you mentioned about the city secretary having a request form is an excellent idea, and I believe Cameron County usually has the paper just kind of out 30 minutes before the start of the meeting, and then they let you sign in, and then you take that and kind of give it out.

I'm fine with that, but I would definitely include a cutoff time so committee members aren't coming up here, as you guys are calling them, meeting to the order or last minute, you know.

I mean, cut off 515 or something like that.

Yes, we definitely need a hard cut off time.

Yeah, and addressed what Andy had mentioned, allowing people to talk both at the beginning of the meeting and in a discussion item. I'm totally for that as well. And then I think he had addressed 6.3 about the 20 minutes total public comment, which I think is pretty reasonable. The one thing that does concern me in here is that it does say that If there are a number of people that want to speak and have the same stance about the same thing, that they elect one person to be their spokesperson, I'm not really sure how organized our people are going to be about that. But I guess we can try. But if we limit them to three minutes and it's a first come, first serve,

Like, what we've done in the past is where, like, when we've had, you know, a large number, like when I ran a meeting for planning and zoning, and it was regarding origins, and there was a large number of people in the room having, you know, varied opinions about origins or whatever it might be. It was one of the longest planning and zoning meetings we've had, is that, you know, eventually, you know, when you see that you have a room that's set up, like, I asked, well, how many people are in favor of this? And they raised their hands. and then how many people are speaking against this and raise hands and then make a note of saying, okay, well, half the room raised their hands against, half the room raised their, and it's just trying to get some.

Keep gauging it.

Well, it's allowing everyone to have an opportunity to put their deal out there, but we don't have to hear the same, I'm against this, we don't need, and I'm not gonna get into what people were saying at that meeting, but it gets their voice on a record in a way, but without having the redundancy of 100 people saying whatever they're saying. And that was just kind of, I think that, but everybody runs a different meeting, you know, and that was just kind of how my logic would work on that. And, you know, one thing that Andy did bring up, which the mayor is part of the council. And so when it says city council, the rules that apply to the city council apply to the mayor. It's just the mayor is the presiding officer, but also the mayor pro tem is the presiding officer, and then this would also kind of bleed into how other committees work, and you'll have presiding officers in those committees, and so that's why you use the word presiding officer, because it's not just for the mayor. So I just wanted to bring that up, because it just hit my in the head that that was one of the things that he brought up, but that's because the mayor is just one member of city council. But anyway, okay, sorry. Mayor, I'd like to see that 20-minute time limit pulled.

I think I finished with what Ms. Langston, Councilwoman, talked to me about. You called me and I only had 10 minutes and couldn't really call you back. I just know I don't have your list with me.

That's okay.

Talk about that.

Yeah, I've sent Ed a whole list of questions, and I'm cool with just not going through those.

Right. What I was going to recommend and remind everybody is if they could send kind of what their thoughts are, and then Ed can correlate it, and then if there's people who want a 20-minute limit and they want it to be removed, and people send what they want, and then Ed can kind of say, well, this was suggested, and da-da-da-da, and then when we get down to a passing of it, because this is not an action item, so we can't even do that, but anyway. We have Joni here, so she wants to speak, so.

I just have a quick comment. I don't, I've been to a lot of these meetings, and I don't see that we've really had a huge problem most of the time about having too many people speaking. The idea that we have to fill out a form, I mean, we are not a huge community, and a lot of people don't attend these meetings at all. So things come up like this comes up in a meeting that I wouldn't have filled out a form because I didn't plan on speaking to this issue.

The form's only for public comments in the beginning of the meeting. So you can come up and speak during items. It's just at the beginning. And it's really just giving a list so we know who to call and we don't have a race up here and then people start arguing. Yeah, just public comments.

Because somebody that's going to speak at public comments are usually prepared to do that. Right. But things come up during a meeting.

And then people want to ask questions. And just like you are now, you'd be able to do if we pass this tomorrow, which we're not going to pass tomorrow.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

I just think we should be encouraging discussion. I agree.

And we're just trying to put some order to the chaos that can happen.

And also during public comments, discussions are not permitted. Right.

Right. And that's the other issue that we have. Yes, just to clarify. We can't have this back and forth conversation.

I did include what the statute does say what you could do. on that. You can make a statement of facts, you can talk about a future agenda item, and there's one other thing. So you can't answer questions, but there are three things you can do under the Texas Open Meetings Act that are very limited. Can't remember where exactly that is. Okay. No, it's just the council member can't ask questions, but they can make what they call a statement of fact, whatever that means. They could also discuss putting it on a future agenda, and there's a third item specifically on how a city council can respond to public comments, three very limited methods of what they can say.

I believe it's to also direct the staff.

I could find it, because I just copied the statute.

OK, so anyway, this is an action item. So a reminder, if anybody has any comments or changes, please send them to Ed. Ed can work the documents, and then we'll discuss it at the next meeting.

I think it's Article 8. So you can stop searching. I think it's Article 8, progressive enforcement procedure, but I could be wrong on that one. All right.

OK. All right.

Then we'll go on to item number 611, which is approval of the interlocal agreement between the Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council and South Padre Island Police Department for Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Training Report.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, Claudine O'Carroll, Police Chief. So this is an approval of an interlocal agreement between South Potter Island Police Department and the Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council. The main purpose for this is while we can report our TCOLE hours, our training hours, which are like CEUs in the private sector, I guess, we cannot report for other entities or other agencies. So while we co-host a lot of training on the island and we're bringing more and more law enforcement Conferences to the island we want to be able to have the police academy through the police academy with LRGV DC Report the training hours. It's a selling point for us with conferences when we host training We try to have other agencies in the local community. We're going to be support Isabel attend we want to be able to report their training so by signing this agreement it'll allow us enter into an MOU with them and in our local agreement so that training can be reported. It may lead to leads with the academy. It'll bring a closer bond. We can provide training for them. They can provide training for us. So I'm really excited to move forward on this. And the first event that they're willing to come down here and report on will be the Conference on Crimes Against Women Beyond the Bounds Summit, which is at the end of September, which we're really excited about hosting. It's only been a few years in the mix, and we've already quadrupled our attendance. So this is real beneficial to us.

Is there any discussion or someone would like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second.

Okay.

All right. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. We're going to item number 12, which is discussion of possible action to direct the city manager in consultation with the city attorney convention center and visitor bureau. and appropriate city departments to prepare a draft park facility structure feature naming policy for the city of South Potter Island. Erin, this is your item.

I'm bringing this item forward to establish a clear, consistent process for naming city-owned facilities and public assets. We currently don't have a formal naming policy, and I believe we should establish objective criteria in a transparent public process before making permanent naming decisions. This policy would also recognize that, particularly for tourism related facilities, A name can become part of our community identity, our brand, and a long-term marketing asset. Importantly, this does not prevent us from honoring individuals who have made significant contributions to our community. It simply gives us a consistent framework for determining the most appropriate way to recognize them. So today I'm asking council to direct the city manager in consultation with the city attorney, CVB, and appropriate departments to develop a draft policy for council to review.

You want to?

Make a motion to approve? Yes, they do.

I have no problems with it.

Okay. There's a motion and a second. Is that what you're?

I'll make a motion to approve.

Oh, no, she made the motion. I'll second. Okay. All right. Is there any other discussion? All right, hearing none, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. All right, now we'll go to item seven, which is executive session. We're gonna go to seven one. We have a motion to go into executive session. pursuant to section 551.071, consultation with attorney 551.071, deliberation about real property. A closed session will be held for discussion of possible purchase possibilities for the park system. Is there a motion?

I'll make a motion. I'll second.

All in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? All right, motion carries. We're going to go into executive session. It is 8 o'clock, and there is an action item on here, so if people want to stay, they can stay. Is the executive session envelope in this thing? It's 8-19, we're returning back from executive session. We'll move to item number 7.1, which is, I mean 8.1, which is discussion and action to authorize city manager to execute a purchase contract. After the city's attorney's approval for the purchase of real property for the city parks, is there a motion to authorize the city manager? I'll make that motion. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. Glad to see the Wendy, police chief, everybody for staying. Thank you.

Troopers.

Y'all have a great day.