City Council - Regular Meeting

I've got six o'clock. We'll call this regular meeting August 26, 6 p.m. to order. Ty, can we get a pair?

Father God, we just come to you. Lord God, we just ask for rain right now, Lord, that you would send it, Lord, and that it would quench this thirst that we all long for, Lord God. Just pray that you be with us as we make these decisions and go over this workshop, Lord God. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Justice. Justice. Justice.

Okay, we'll move on to the consent agenda approval of amendments from July 27, 2020.

Motion we approve them.

Motion second. Any further discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Move on to public comment.

I don't have any comment sheets and no, the only thing I've, the only thing I've got is September 12th is farm to table. Need to get a head count. Who's going so if we want to participate and get a table or 2, just need to know that. So I can call the chamber and get that done Friday. I will be out of the office. and won't be back till Saturday afternoon. And on another note, Sarah and I did have a conversation with the auditors this morning. It's looking like middle of September before we get our audit presented. They're still working through some things. And so that's where we're at in that. So all we can do with that.

at least it'd be nice to know that we have a table if we're going to get one yeah so just let me know that's all i got okay we'll move on to let's see approval of minutes so we did that or number public comment item two city of dollar one 26.7 budget workshop number one

All right. Set time of year. In your binders in front of you, the first page is the schedule starting with tonight, which is budget workshop. And later on, we will possibly, if approved, set the dates for the public hearing and the budget for September 14th. Tomorrow, I will file the budget, proposed budget, that we will kind of walk through tonight a little bit. which does not mean it can be changed, but I've got to start the 30-day clock for it being accessible to the public. So I'll file this with her tomorrow and we'll get it out front. 24th, budget workshop two, and we will propose the tax rate. We'll kind of talk about that here in a minute, which will be a roll call vote where everybody's got to vote yay or nay. and another budget workshop 14th another budget workshop and uh first reading of the ordinance of the proposed budget rate excuse me tax rate and the first reading of the ordinance for the proposed budget along with those will be the public hearings for both of those uh we only have to do one public hearing then on the 21st we will i will need to do a special meeting if i can get some of y'all to do the second reading of the budget and the tax rate just to make sure we hit all the timelines and stuff they say you have till september 31st you don't you've actually that's the last day september 21st okay and on to next page is i got the slides up on the projector you want to kind of follow along or they're in your book kind of key factors this year's budget we did propose that we are going to propose a pay increase three percent average across the city department heads will be based on performance so as long as my rules kind of they have to their budget as a their department as a whole has to stay at three percent how they give you that up that is on them What really helped us this year, we had a 0% increase on health insurance. So everything stays the same. And the tax rate I'm proposing at the next meeting, this is not the proposed, but this is what I'm proposing, will be 42.084 per 100. That is a decrease of a penny and a half, basically. On the next page, I've got added two positions. One is a full-time position. We had a part-time guy helping in the garage. He is retiring again. And the garage has asked they need more help in there. And they think they have a guy that is already doing a lot of work on our trash trucks and stuff now. and i basically paid him a salary this year already but um if you have any questions about our staffing i'll be more than happy to answer them before we go on because you some part-time guys right yeah they were working 2 or 3 days a week and it's more and more. It's our fleet ages. We, they need more help. You considering a guy from. So, I don't think that's I'm not sure. I can't remember his name, but we, we haven't used Roberts. On our tracks tracks in a little while it's a different guy. really it's it's a pretty tight budget but we did manage to put a couple of capable things in there um 300 000 to keep up with their sill coat uh i mean i think that is if we don't do any other capital items that's the one thing that we have to stay on top of because we'll never get caught up and i think we do a pretty good job in the city of our streets um fire equipment uh replacement of equipment it did jump they needed a couple of items so they went from 35 000 to 53.6 uh dumpsters it's not really an increase we were doing some things the auditors didn't like how we had things categorized so we took basically their two dumpster categories and combined them into one and that's pretty much what we spend every year on dumpsters We need to buy a trash truck. It's gonna be about $275,000. And the PD, their in-car radios and some of their portables are aging. And it's gonna cost about $32,000 to replace those. So that will be a bigger upgrade. That's just on the general fund. On the water side, $50,000 to replace water meters or the radios on the water meters. uh i'm trying to get us going to rehab two lift stations a year and that's going to be about 122 000 per year to do that uh and by the time we get through with all the lift stations it'll be time to start back over with the ones we did we're doing this year and um 35 000 for fire hydrant replacements that'll buy us about five hydrants a year let them go no i'll

I'll have a class and teach them how to rebuild those ones. I know he had several that we needed to go do.

And we could probably get hydrants. Some hydrants are a little bit cheaper, but I stray away from that. I only want Mueller's. They seem, or what's the other brand? M&H. M&H. Only those two.

Those are the thing in the town that you don't have to buy.

Yeah.

Replacement parts except for those two brands. That way you... They're not having an inventory. That's pretty expensive.

Yes. Any way you go.

Next slide, please. As you'll see, we'll kind of talk later about, you'll see a big drop in revenue from last year to this year in the budget on the general fund side. What we're proposing is going to be basically 9.1 million dollars which is down from 9.7 last year and this has to do with more of a bookkeeping deal that we'll kind of talk about just here in a little bit on the water fund side we are proposing we think we're going to have about 5.19 in revenue next year which is a huge jump The rate increases have helped tremendously, and kind of like we talked about last time, for the first time in how long have you been here?

Well, just doing this position for the first time in four years.

In four years, we've actually put money from the water fund into the pools, which is outstanding. It's the first time I've ever been where the general fund and the water fund are kind of standing on their own like they're supposed to.

You might mention what you told me. About setting money aside for those other unions. Yes, sir.

And you'll see why you see that much in revenue. The expenditure line is quite lower. And what we're planning on doing is taking basically that extra $800,000, and we're earmarking it for capital projects down the future. We think we're going to be able to, here in the next couple of years, do another water tower. Our water tanks over here at the water department need some major, major repairs. And we've just taken that. What were the items that we did? Oh, and we're starting to put money because we've always talked about the line that comes that's going to Chicago. That's got to come under the railroad that project alone. The last time it was even thought about was almost a 1M dollars. So we're starting to earmark monies just for those projects in general. Overall. What I'm going to propose is the total budget of funds combined $13,586,838. That is an increase over last year of half a percent, not even a full percent. We've combined some positions, and I think even with taking the tax rate we have we're still going to be able to do all this and be okay for the year these questions on the overall part of it you know the next one is going to be the edhc budget the edc board approved their budget the other night that will come to y'all for approval on september 14th when we did the first reading of everything um we feel we were I don't want to use cautious. What's the word I'm looking for? Conservative. With the sales tax number and stuff that they have. And Sean worked some numbers around to lower his budgets and cut where he could. So it's going to be just right under a million. The airport, we're not seeing the revenues we thought we would see from there. So again, we conservatively put that budget of kind of what we brought in this year. uh and it it's about a hundred thousand dollars less when it comes to that we only spend the money out of that that we kind of bring in it kind of self-sufficient i mean so it's not just a whole lot we can do unless we get a lot more revenue with that next slide cemetery uh went down a couple thousand um That's just a conservative number. It kind of all depends on how much our population decreases, whether that number comes up or not. We don't want that. Rio Blanca, the lake fund went down about 8,000, and most of that is just Coliseum rentals. We forecasted out, and we think we'll be pretty close to that number next year, just based on past trends. Next is the fleet fund. We went up 3,000. A lot of that just has to do with supplies and costs of equipment and things. So not a huge increase there. Community development stayed the same. And that's our bond payment. It does go up a couple thousand dollars this year, but all that money is part of the tax rate. I think we have about a two cent that just services debt off the tax rate. And that basically covers that. The next one down is another bond we have. And that's our biggest bond. It went up a thousand dollars just the way the interest rates work on that. A hotel, I can see hotels have done wonderful. We think we're going to be probably about 16,000 over where we were last year. Um, we should court fund. It's doing very well. Um, they, uh, I mean, it's in a delicate way. They, the, the release. yeah more staffed which results in more money for the courts and uh the scholarship it went down a little bit that's just due to interest rates uh right now being a little bit lower because if you don't know that fund was set up it basically has to hold a million dollar principal in that fund and then we just we divvy up the interest off that correct

Yeah, you can't spend any more than the interest. So it's scholarships are based on how much money you earn. And we struggled just to fill the scholarships that we had. Because we actually got more because I think before we were always at two. Yeah. Two, two, two.

okay um your next your next pages is about a three two or three page little kind of summary that kind of goes more in depth of why we did what we did in some of these funds um the main one that you kind of see is was the discrepancy from last year to this year in the general fund itself and that was due to it was an auditor's deal, and if I don't explain this right, let me know, is, okay, last year we budgeted like $850,000 in sales tax. Basically the way the auditor saw it is it was hitting our books twice. So we pulled that out and it really won't even hit our balance sheet, right? It just goes straight to them. Yeah.

The back balance sheet.

Yeah, so we didn't really get money. It's just not showing up on ours. The general fund looks like it's. 800,000 less and that's why we also did. We do some administrative reimbursements from the different departments and Sarah got with some people and. We felt like we were overpaying, some groups were overpaying, some groups were underpaying in certain areas. And we kind of walked around and talked to everybody that handles those departments, uh, funds and, and administrative tasks. And we kind of moved money around there. And you'll kind of see that in that first little, uh, table right there of where we did. that the big ones were the water franchise fee and the sewer franchise fee since they are doing better and we do a lot of the girls do a lot of stuff for those two services we felt that those administrative fees needed to be raised to help cover some of the costs and you you can kind of see in that second table right there

The third page really has to do with our insurance. The biggest change we made to our insurance or property insurance, excuse me, is

we went with a we had a thousand dollar deductible with a wind and hail buyback program we did change that to a ten thousand dollar deductible that saved us what uh it's 15 about fifty thousand dollars excuse me not that much excuse me about forty five thousand to be on the safe side uh and in the line items we did earmark ten thousand dollars if something does happen for that to cover um so i i just felt that was just a little bit better worst case scenario buyback

the most we would be out, be like 100,000 if there was just a catastrophe to cross every single piece of property we had. So with the amount of savings we saw and the amount of claims we have on our property, it seemed a better rate for a manual basis. We would recoup more money in that time frame than we were actually spending to keep that low deductible.

Yeah, because if we have a claim, if we have to use that claim on every building we have, a lot more problems than just that $100,000 that it would cost us. There were really no big changes in automobile. And on the next page, it kind of shows you what we earmarked the excess revenue for in the water and sewer fund for The amounts that we did, you know, the 225,000 this year is going to the for the Chicago street under the road. Uh, water, water and rehabilitation and 80,000, and then we would like to put 300,000 in reserves to get to that goal of having 1.3Million in reserves on the water fund alone. Because, I mean, in the best case world, and we're headed in that direction. I mean, those 2 funds supposed to set on their own and not intermingle at all. So, that's really. a broad overview, and behind that is actually every line item that we have in the budget. I'll be happy to entertain any questions you have right now. I urge you to go through the budget and see what you have. I mean, I'll be honest, there's not a lot of wiggle room in this budget. If you want something added, we're going to have to cut something and get it from somewhere.

Any questions? And this is just the first review and everything else. But I do like the plan, so we're not borrowing money. We're setting it aside to do a project.

I think that's a big deal. And I think that cities across the state, which there are some cities that are doing this, are catching a bad rap of borrowing, borrowing, borrowing. We don't do that here. We try to set monies back. Yeah, we do. We do have some bond payments. But if you... bond payments are really low compared to other places where they're in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars years that they're making into bond payments uh y'all have done a great job of keeping costs down and not having to borrow money but now we're getting to the point where we can actually set monies back and pay cash to do these projects instead of having to borrow so

What is your thinking on backing off a penny and a half on the tax rate?

That was not a call by me. It was just like, we are audits not done and this is our penalty is we have to take the no new revenue rate, which we will lose 80,000 dollars in tax revenue for that. I've been on the phone with office multiple times. They are not backing off of this. We've sent letters from our auditor saying it's not their fault that we're not done yet. It's a culmination of a lot of things from over. It's not an internal issue. It's an auditing issue. There was a lot of issues with past audits. Yes, they stamped and passed and served as an audit, but they were not done correctly. So now he's basically he's auditing two years to try to get a baseline to see where we are at this point.

And that's why your question us and 26 other cities, 140 went up 140 cities that received 4 letters. They're in the same predicament. There's not enough auditors to do these. They don't like to do counties. We have, like, 20 something components. And our audit and the county has 1.

and they don't like to do audits to cities so it's hard to find one it's hard to find one and the other cities i've talked to i know in just in our region there's auditors coming out of austin dallas houston to do these cities auditors because there's nobody around here to do them we got lucky and i called 10 other auditing firms before i found one that said yes and then when he got here It's been work for them.

I'll just say. And why does the state not realize that? They don't care. They don't care. They don't care.

Politicians. Yeah. And I could get on that soapbox, but...

i'm not going to the state will do anything in their power to make it look like y'all are doing everything to to waste money and and make their taxes go up and stuff like that i was city manager and they proposed this these changes because what they've done they stripped local control completely from the cities we don't before we used to have enough money that we could save we could go pave our own streets we we can't even do that anymore They were stripped completely of that. And why they got the de minimis and or the no new revenue rate?

No new revenue rate. That was our penalty for not having our audit done by May 1st.

So if you want to raise taxes more than what the no new revenue rate is, you have to put it to election of the people.

Yes. And I'd ask you all to pay attention to what's going on in Austin next legislative session because I have a feeling it's not going to be good. Now they're trying to do it to the counties as well. So I'll be happy to answer any more questions.

Thank you. Good job, JJ. Questions?

I'll move on to item three.

Discuss or act upon scheduling the public hearing for the fiscal year 2026 budget or 2027 budget for a regular city council meeting on August 24th, 2026.

I need that amended to September 14th.

September 14th. Okay. Not August, but September 14th. September 14th. Okay.

Make a motion reschedule. Public hearing for the budget for September 14th. Second.

No motions? Second. Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Hearing none. Okay, moving on to item four, discuss or act upon. Scheduling a public hearing for fiscal year 2026-27 tax rate for the regular city council meeting. Is that going to be good on August 24th? September 14th as well. Yes, sir.

Make a motion we accept the public hearing for the fiscal year 2026-27 tax rate for regular city council meeting on September 14th, 2026. Second.

Motion and second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Aye. presentation on economic development, corporation comprehensive plan.

good evening mayor and council in front of you you've got a comprehensive plan for the edc i brought to you guys a strategic plan for the city back in february i believe it was these two are different but they still work together comprehensive plan is a long-range community road map it helps us define land use infrastructure housing transportation quality of life and how economic development should fit together over time The strategic plan, however, is more action-oriented. It identifies near-term priorities, responsibilities, responsible parties, timelines, funding mechanisms, and performance measures. In short, the comprehensive plan sets the direction, the strategic plan turns that direction into execution. So, this economic development comprehensive plan focuses on 1 central goal cultivating a resilient local economy. We've implemented some things over the past few months that includes the beautification housing workforce development. and uh and and been able to uh define our strengths uh stable population strong labor force participation short commute times major employers dual rail service airport capacity scalable utilities and our strategic location with three major u.s highways It's not just about recruiting industries though, and that comprehensive plan kind of explains that. It recognizes that housing, workforce, infrastructure, downtown vitality, community image all affect our competitiveness. So that's the purpose of putting together the comprehensive plan to augment and complement the strategic plan. Will answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Next up. Discuss and act upon neighbors caring for neighbors program.

Mayor and council, this program is fairly new. I've met with some of the churches in the community and some of the pastors, putting together a volunteer group, looking at some of our residential sectors and taking a look at what needs to be done for those residential sectors to be able to help those citizens. This program introduces a community-based exterior home support effort. Again, it's made up of local churches, volunteers, and community leaders. Its purpose is to offer no-cost exterior assistance to residents whose homes may benefit from visible improvements. I met with Habitat for Humanity in Amarillo about five or six months ago, and really wanted to work with them. They don't do much outside of Amarillo because now their Habitat International has kind of locked them into specific areas. So, in order for us to be able to work with them, there's other measures that we have to do to be able to have Dalhart be part of them. However, they did offer us some cost savings in some areas if we need some materials. they can give us 60% off the cost of those materials if we needed to get some. The message is framed as a friendly voluntary invitation rather than a formal notice or requirement. It emphasizes that there is no pressure, no obligation, and that any work would only be considered with the homeowner's interest and participation. The areas of focus are yard cleanup, painting, or touch-ups. If they've got a front porch that might need to be addressed, getting in volunteers for that could be beneficial to the homeowner. A fence that may be down, getting that erected does make a huge difference, not only to the neighborhood, but the community overall as a whole, and other visible improvements. There are several ways that the homeowner can reach out. to take advantage of the Neighbors Caring for Neighbors program. I'm also building a spreadsheet that allows us in real time to be able to have each of the churches and volunteer groups take a look and see in real time what projects are available and they can actually sign up for those without duplicating signups since it is in real time. So I'm working with area groups on getting that created as well. Overall, this program communicates a neighborly supportive tone and positions the program as a way for the community to help residents improve exterior property conditions at no cost. I'll answer any questions you may have on that program. Is this something you suggest to a person that has a trashy yard? Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. And so I built a metric system that we take a look at. What is the problem on a scale from 1 to 5? 1 being, oh, this is easy. This can be knocked out pretty quickly. Low hanging fruit. Let's go ahead and knock this out to Building's going to have to be demolished. There's going to have to be a lot of planning done before we can approach the residential homeowner. And then the other side is cost. What is the cost to be able to do this? One being help, you know, get some folks out here to help mow the lawn, edge it, clean up some trash. No big deal to, again, demolition those costs that may be involved there. So I'm able to actually go around from, you know, the neighborhoods and start evaluating potential homes and be able to leave a flyer, leave the ball in their court if they want to accept the help or not, then they can contact us for further information to move forward.

Any other questions? Not all entertain a motion.

Make a motion that we accept the Neighbors Caring for Neighbors program. Second.

The motion is seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor?

Any opposed?

All right. Discussing act upon. Seven. Discussing act upon execution of film friendly Texas agreement permitting the city and EDC to use trademarked film friendly Texas logo on our websites for marketing purposes.

So, Joe had signed this agreement initially now that I'm in the position, I need to have an agreement with them so that we can continue with the agreement with them to be able to utilize the logo on our website to promote now hard as a certified film friendly community. The license is non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free, and limited to just this specific marketing purpose. We've got to use the logo in its official unaltered form and comply with the agreement's trademark requirements. And the initial term is for four years, so every four years we'll have to sign this agreement, automatically renew it annually unless terminated, and there's no cost to charge to either party for this.

Make a motion that we approve the Film-Friendly Texas Agreement.

Motion and a second. Any further discussion?

All in favor?

Any opposed? There are none. How do I discuss and act upon approval of our next-gen business program authorizing a pilot grant pool for four student businesses, authorizing staff to finalize program documents, conduct outreach to promote the program, review applications, and administer the program?

Right now this is going under a 60 day public hearing notice. It's not a project, it is a program, so there's different stipulations that have to be followed for that. This was taken to the EDC in July for approval. Basically, with trying to build workforce, a workforce pipeline, this is part of our big, what we call our big three. One of them being the industry insights tours from classrooms to careers. I'm working with Dalhart ISD on and then also the business roundtable that I'm working with Christy over at Frank Phillips College on for adult. cross training and upskilling programs that the school offers that can help some of the employees that are out there in the workforce. This one is for ages 16 to 23 year olds that are going to school in Dalhart, have recently graduated or recently graduated from Frank Phillips College or recently graduated from another college and is coming back to Dalhart and is interested in opening up a business. Basically what this does, is this gives them seed money to be able to start the business. Very competitive process. They've got to write a business plan and fill out the application and do some other things for it to go through the process of approval. Not everyone's going to get approved. We're going to take the top four. There's several metrics that have to be met and a scoring criteria to be able to choose the top four in the categories. And basically what it does is it gives them seed money though. It'll be a full fledged mentorship program that they'll get for 9 weeks of the 12 week program of learning how to market to customers. How to budget 1, what are projections? How do I scale my business? How do I. utilize online tools such as social media and other tools out there. So there's nine weeks of mentorship that they get. Within that nine weeks, on the ninth week, they actually have to write a full Business summary of what they've learned in this program, how it's helped them and how they can actually build off of this program because the goal is not for them to just run a business for 12 weeks during the competition. By the way, the competition, they're only competing with themselves when they get accepted in the program. They're not competing competing against each other. the goal is not to just run a business for 12 weeks and oh that was fun that was great now i gotta go find a job the goal is for them to take take that 12 weeks of what they've learned and what they've built and be able to continue on with it and build something that uh that they can utilize for uh you know for for a lifetime um Again, there's a lot of metrics that's within this whole program that we've identified for year 1 and then for subsequent years thereafter.

Do you have a question?

Okay. Any questions so far on that? What it's designed for or anything like that? I have built the $12,000 in the budget for this year. The 60 day public hearing notice will expire September the 7th. In the plan from September to November, that's the application period. From November to January, that's when a select ad hoc committee just for this comes together and start scoring the applications and putting together the top four. And then the interviews start in January and then the award is given to them sometime in May. And then the program will end beginning at the end of June and run through, I believe it's August 24th is the 12 week timeframe at which they'll afterwards they'll give a presentation to the EDC board. Runs about 7 to 10 minutes for the presentation, then they'll give a community wide presentation where the community can actually come out, see what product or service they're offering and then they can talk for about 15 minutes in front of the community and explain what this program has done for them and how they're going to continue on beyond the 12 weeks. So we're building businesses through this as well.

Any other questions? If not, I'll entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion that we approve the Delhart NextGen Business Program.

Yes, sir. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Pardon?

Keep working.

I'm not. Yes, sir. Act 1, Resolution 202620, a resolution of the City Council of Dallard, adopted in the 2026 updated Dalham-Hartley Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Yes, sir. This is just something that we have to go through at the medium every few years. We go through the meetings over the course of about six, eight months, getting everybody in Delman, Hartford County, all the fire departments, police departments, cities, anybody that has a stake within there and kind of go through and see what new buildings we've built, where storm shelters are in case there isn't. A hazard that we have to deal with and just kind of update everything It's kind of boilerplate every few years and it kind of keeps us if we don't, we can't apply to TDM for grants or anything like that. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

I'll entertain a motion.

Make the motion we adopt resolution 2026-20. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion?

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Out of 10.

Discuss or act upon the second reading adoption of ordinance 202607, an ordinance amending the City of Delaware Texas Code Ordinances Chapter 14, Finance and Taxation Article 1 and General by adding the section entitled credit card payments and processing fee, establishing a fee to recover expenses incurred by the city and processing credit cards for payments, providing effective date, providing a savings clause, providing a repeat and Providing for publication.

Yes, sir. This is a second reading of what we've effectively called the credit card ordinance. Basically, we'll charge 3.5%. Anybody wants to pay water bills or fees at City Hall, we're going to recoup some of our costs. We offer you pay check, cash, cashier's check, any way you want. Not a big fan of it, but it is costing us $150,000 a year. Yeah, I thought we did this two years ago. No, this has been a problem. You would think you could just be able to go and pay one patch off these, but that's not the case. It is a whole ordeal. I think we just got an email that we're fixing to order new machines to do that. Sorry.

at all any other questions move to adopt ordinance 2026-07 okay motion on second any further discussion all in favor any votes all right make a motion we adjourn let it go all in favor we are adjourned You need to do more.