City Council - Regular Meeting

No, no, no.

I called him. I said, hey, I'll come get you. He's like, oh.

I said, are you going to go today?

He's like, no. I said, I'll come get you. I'm going to be over on that thing.

I wasn't, but.

of work on those and here's why yeah it's just a bad design all right we will call our workshop to order at 6 p.m you can see everybody um uh first a reminder from misty on my notes over here please let everyone know you need to stay as soon as the meeting's over because everyone has to sign the election So that requires all the signatures. Check. I'm off our list over there. Anybody have anything on the minutes from the last meeting? All right. We need to order the November 3rd, 2026 general election for this year. Is there anything we need to do or just we're just going to say that we did it? It's not like it's a discussion So when we do the consent agenda we are ordering the November 3rd 2026 election Yeah, is there anything we need to know besides it Alright then our duty has been done I'm gonna skip number four because we want to leave our time to talk about that Number five is consider the resolution to approve tariff authorizing an annual rate review mechanism, which is we called RM as a substitution for the annual interim rate adjustment process. So I will let Craig talk about this, but the energy folks don't think they got enough money. They think they got a bad deal. It's page 34 starting in your notes.

Yeah, they found that they found a rate increase. April 1st, um, under the arm and tariff requesting, um. say they were entitled to a system-wide revenues of 291.1 million dollars and so um the application was reviewed by the steering committee that we belong to for all of the atmosphere cities and they did their initial review and felt that that was excessive that it should have been reduced Based on their studies of all the same numbers and everything. So they went into negotiations between the 2 of them and both sides have settled it. The amount to be 260.5Million. And so what you're doing tonight is you're basically just authorizing that we're accepting that. That settlement and that will increase, um.

$44.02. Were you looking for the average commercial?

Yeah, I was trying to find the RRM savings per account. So it does save, by going through that process, it does save money from the 291 because normally it would be an automatic approval. But since it was contested, they went in negotiation and lowered it to the 260. So the increase for the average commercial usage will be 13.37 cents or 14.15% per month. That's $44.82 for commercial. Questions? As part of belonging to the steering committee, normally it would just be an automatic thing, but since they contested this one, it resulted in some savings.

That committee, how large is it?

The steering committee? They will represent cities throughout. I don't have the list. There's hundreds of cities, a lot of big cities. Yeah, because otherwise each city would individually have to deal with this through the PUC. And we just renewed that a few months ago.

Yeah.

All right. Now we need to discuss proposing a tax rate. been calling for and setting a hearing date on proposed tax rate and then did you find out whether or not if we do the now because dealing with that tech stop meeting and stuff so i haven't had a chance to dig back into that but i'll definitely get an answer by tomorrow so first tax rates so i'll just go back to the top

So, y'all got the budget draft budget was sent to you Saturday. And, uh. This year, the overall property values. Overall property values were up because we had 174Million new construction added to the current or the kind of properties. However, those properties that are on the tax roll this year for next year will actually drop approximately $72 million. This year, those properties were valued at... 1,597,157,157,948 dollars for the coming year. Those same exact properties will be valued at 1,506,850,412 dollars. So the existing properties that are on the rolls today are going down a total of just over $72 million.

This is a MCAD thing? This is the appraisals.

That's a miracle that it's gone down.

No, the decrease is driven by...

I think the biggest thing that drove it is after COVID, we saw huge property value jumps. Okay. Because economy, sales are down, prices are down, and so you're seeing that effect.

That didn't happen to me, though.

Yeah. You're the only one that did it. You're the only one that did it. But, yeah, I know.

But they didn't go up as much as they normally try to.

Yeah. I mean, so citywide, our values, if you take the new construction away, is down. Like I said, it's down. I don't know if I put the percentage in this or not, but so when it calculates the rates, which this is all done according to the comptroller's forms and everything. So it calculates three rates. There's the no new revenue rate, and that is the rate that does not raise any more money than the current year. There's the voter approval rate, which that's the rate that would raise three and a half percent more. For operations and maintenance in the current year, and then there's the, which that's the rate that would raise 500,000 for the coming year. So those are the 3 rates that were required to calculate by state law. Um. So for this year, the no new revenue rate is 53.5326 cents, which is actually a 2.5% increase in the rate. But for comparison purposes, that spreadsheet I gave you, so this year, the rate of 50.9937 is projected to raise, let me get the right one here. 8,144,499 on the current properties are on the role today. The proposed tax rate of 535326 on the properties that are on the role today, not the new construction, because that's how this is calculated. Would raise 8,066,562 dollars, which is a decrease of 77,000. Nine thirty seven and that's because that's allocated to debt. That's not considered in the no new revenue because it's only calculated on maintenance and operations. So, on the properties that are on the books today. Total not individual because this is going up, but I know there's a couple of you are going down and you're going to save several 100 dollars, but it's just individuals, but city wide all the existing properties today, the value is going down. So. So the rate that would raise no more money on existing properties is the 53-53-26. That's what's recommended in the budget. The 3.5% increase plus unused increments for prior years is 56.6946. That was what again? 56.

That's the voter approval rate.

That's the rate you can raise it up to without requiring an election to approve it. And then the de minimis rate is 55.5504, which is actually below the voter approval. So it really doesn't matter this time around because the voter approval rate would raise more than $500,000. So what's recommended in this year's budget is the no new revenue rate. And all of the additional revenue that is in the projected budget is for properties that are on the tax roll for the first time. So that's all new new value. There's no, none of the money that's being raised in the coming year for the budget will come from existing properties. It'll all come from new new construction.

Of course, so if we didn't change the tax rate, how you're going to cut 386,000 dollars to enter the general fund budget.

Yes. How much is the new construction going to contribute?

It's actually contributing $935,363, but $865,000 of that is all that's going to the general funder. $77,000 is going to debt service. It actually lowered the debt service rate about a half a cent. And what the analogy you have here is it's just kind of taking the numbers all the way back to 2017 and breaking out that terminology so that you can see each year how much is total revenue, how much of that was from existing properties, how much of that was from new construction and things like that. So you can kind of get a picture of that. But basically, under the truth in taxation laws, the legislature does not consider it a tax increase unless you raise more money on existing properties the subsequent year. So, if you're raising equal to or less, that's not considered a tax.

No, that's just for existing properties as a total, but as the total, so everybody's.

Yeah, individual properties are some people are going to see.

could go up if your revenue collected is at or below last year's, it's considered a no tax increase.

Yeah, because taxes equals rate times value. And so here they take it citywide. What is the rate times the total city value? That's your taxes. If that number goes up over the current year versus the coming year, if that goes up, it's a tax increase. If it stays the same or goes down, it's not considered a tax increase. Because again, you're looking globally at the whole city because I mean, you have variation across properties. I've looked at probably a dozen properties. Just a few people have commented online and then all of yours. And the only person I found that's gone up is him.

but we will have to just to be clear in my mind 935 000 of new revenue because of the new construction not included in this could you explain that charlie how do you explain to me today how we benefit from that yeah

It allows us to do the things that we... Yeah.

Well, so if we go back to, since I've been on the council, we've been trying to get new construction to bring in new money so that we can do things we haven't been able to do without raising the taxes. So in essence, that's what we're doing this year. Anything we're doing in the budget that are things that we definitely need to try to do will be funded by new construction solely in this budget. None of it will be put on the existing properties as a whole. Again, I want to qualify that because... See, and that's where the media, and I've been doing this for 20 plus years, and it irritates me. Either way, they focus on the rate, and they'll say rate, tax rate, county or city is lowering the tax rate, and everybody goes, my taxes are going down. Every year I've been in this business, if the tax rates gone down, taxes have gone up because the values went up higher than the statutory caps and you had to lower the rate down. I've never seen anybody lower the rate to lower taxes. So but I've seen the rates go up and revenue go down. And just to put it, you just want to see a classic example of it. You read the paper. Today, there's a story in there from Waco, and it says city of Waco to hold tax rate flat. So it makes it sound like they're going to keep everything the same. Well, their no new revenue rate is 72, 72 something, and they're keeping their current rate, which is 75.5. So their values must have gone up because they would have to push their rate down to stay at the no new revenue rate. So they're actually raising taxes, but the headline says they're going to be flat. So it's all about the semantics, but tax rate is one part of the formula. So you have to do both of them to get taxes.

As a result, we're going to be revenue neutral. It's going to just keep the level.

Well, revenue neutral on the existing properties that are on the tax.

Yeah, that's.

This year. Yeah. For years, we've been tasking credit to economic development. Economic development. If I'm looking at new construction values year over year, I'm following the trend. That is increasing and of course, we've seen big, big increases lately. Um, but with this taxation model. The way that he's proposed a budget, the rate goes up though. Our tax bills for the majority. Sorry, Tim. For the majority of everybody, but everybody, but me well, and again, it'll depend.

I, so I calculated mine. Mayor's office. I calculated mine. I calculated his, um. We both went down about the same. Both our values went down. Mine went down about $100,000, but my taxes are going to go up $139,000 because I was still catching up on the 10% cap. So my value still went down, but because the rate changing, I'll go up about $139,000 next year. He comes down.

So that's what I said. It's every property's difference. It's a negative $68 a year, in other words, savings for the average. Is it $68 a year? It's $108. All right, thanks. It's all right.

Well, that offsets the $160 that we did for the street, remember, guys? Yeah.

Or it helps to offset that, right?

Yeah, so the average home value in the city dropped from 331,000 and changed to 295,000. So if you take the old rate, the 50.9937 times the 131,000, That gave you an annual tax bill of it's like 1,609 dollars. I want to put it in here, but I think it was in the email I sent you. I put it. You take the coming rate times the new value, which is 295,000 to change. It's 108 dollars less for the year. Good. So on average property based on the average homes, that's your homestead, the average homestead appraisal, an average home would see a $108 drop at the higher rate. again that's not intuitive but but that's just relating to us right and everybody else staying because i think the county is right and everybody yeah everybody else is going above the vote we would so far we're the only city i know that's doing the book the no new revenue right everybody else is going up towards the voter approval right But this is one of those windfalls you don't get very often. And we can work kind of hard to get here. And so it doesn't make sense to throw a third of it. Actually, because it's reduced for the general fund, Basically given up 40% of it and that's what you're talking about.

So we would lose permanently lose part of our. Development efforts that we just went into if we were to adopt a lower rate.

So that's also because because every year going forward, we're capped at 3 and a half percent. So you'll never get it back. Once you give it up, you'll never get it back.

And so what I know we tasked him with, but what we've been asked as councils. economic development. I've been preaching that for a while, that there were several ways to get out of the proverbial pothole we've been in with infrastructure, and that is the number one driver would be economic development. But because of this quirky, broken property tax model, we have some of that economic development at risk. And that's scary. And if that doesn't tell you to call your state legislation to say, hey, we need property tax reform, that makes sense. That's common sense. This is, you know, we're playing this where's the peanut game is shameful.

Well, and if you look on this table, so one of the things I broke out was you have four years where the revenue went up. But again, we, we increase taxes numbers there, the new construction, the new construction was the new stuff, the tax increase what was on the existing properties. You can see that each year there was a pretty good jump. It was the year we issued debt service. The 115,000 was the tax notes for the fire engine. The 553 was the 2019 CEOs we did for streets. the 300 400 was the 2024 and then the 1 171 000 last year was the ceos we issued Would you say 300,000 for 2025?

What was that again?

Increase for 2020. Well, the amount for debt was $1,171,000. The $300,000. The $300,000? That was the, those were the 24, more for streets. We did another $5 million for streets because we were doing a utility bond and council decided to throw some more street money in there. So if you look at the bottom there, I kind of broke it out. Total new revenue for debt service and total new revenue for M&O. And so over basically the 10-year period here, the debt service revenue has gone up $2.1 million, and the M&O revenue has gone up $3,190,000, which is about $319,000. What our costs have gone up in the general fund. You just kind of take an average.

All right. Does everybody have a good handle on it now with that explanation?

And keep in mind that what you're doing tonight is just your intent to set a rate. You're not locked in. You can always lower it. You just cannot raise it after tonight, whatever rate you pick tonight.

so that will be the only thing that we really have to talk about discussion everything else is on the consent agenda so the public hearing is down to be on the August 18th uh City Council meetings and right now the vote to approve the rate and the budget is on August 25th and he and Craig's gonna check because to make sure that if you do the no new revenue rate do you have to

Yeah, I know when they first created it, you were not required to do a public hearing if you were adopting the no new revenue rate. So he's going to double check so I'm going to check that because there's software we have and it automatically generates all these reports and everything. And when it generated the notice, it doesn't say anything about the public hearing. It says it will be adopted on and it encourages people to come. Now we can have a public hearing. Nothing prohibits us from having the other thing is when you've done the motion in the past to raise the tax rates, you've always had to do the you know, I make a motion to Raise taxes by setting a rate of whatever you won't have to do that. If you don't, then only right? Because you're not raising tax. So you won't have to tell everybody what a scoundrel you are.

Thank you motion. And, uh, before I break this to go up here, everybody. Tomorrow night everybody's good. Yeah. Okay. 530. Okay, everybody get their orders in. Yes, sir. all right well we're adjourned until 6 30. take this from here

I'm going to take a different walk. So we'll kind of see where I'm really adjusting things.

Personnel supplies maintenance

And people always say,

I think I had to explain it to Micah. Although, it's where it was, you know what I mean? I didn't bring it to you. I know. Mine actually, mine went down. That'd be great, wouldn't it? I guess I need to come back to Marcus and Micah. Whoever's planning that, they just got it wrong, you know? How do you explain it one time? It's like, Micah, right? And then you go the next time, and the bag of groceries cost $33, but all of a sudden it's $2.9. You know, whatever.

You'll have a lot of agricultural, like plowing and doing field work. It'll kick it up.

Mine's too big to park in a garage. two weekends in a row cleaning out the garage and purging getting rid of things that

There's always, oh, we can give this to the kids when, or we'll have a garage sale. We'll get rid of this. This has still got good value. We should sell it.

None of those things are happening.

I got so sick of, well, Julianne coming back from college, all of her stuff was piled in there. We're getting stuff together. I want to do something this time.

Okay, 630. We will call the meeting to order. Tonight we have Mr. Sam Shreffler to do our invocation for us.

Lord, we're grateful to live in this community. We thank you for the privilege of doing that. We realize that as citizens of this place, there are responsibilities to go with that. These that are gathered here today are taking additional responsibilities. We ask you to help them in those things that they do. May they be given wisdom for all the business that's conducted here and in all meetings. We pray, Lord. that you would help in this meeting to have what needs to be said to be said, what needs to be heard to be heard. These things we ask in Jesus' name.

here here here okay uh the city council invites citizens to address the council in any matter including items on the agenda except public hearings that are included on the agenda comments related to public hearings will be heard when the public hearing starts please limit your comments to three minutes the council is not permitted to take action on or discuss any item that is not on the agenda when called to speak please state your name address and what you are speaking about We had two, but now we only have one. So, Kendra, you're up.

I'm not a public speaker, so I apologize. I'm Kendra Hernandez. I live at 110 West Billington Drive. I moved here like five years ago or something from Yellowstone National Park. Anyways, with my house, I have some issues with flooding. And so I just came here tonight. Just because it's actively threatening my neighborhood and specifically my home. Um, so I wrote something because this isn't an unavoidable act of nature. It's predictable failure of municipal infrastructure. So, due to the physical layout of the city of Robinson, the restricted water flow up from upstream is being diverted directly to my home. Um, to the ditch at my house, a bunker in Billington, that local ditch doesn't have the capacity to handle the volume when there's extreme rains. And so it leaves my property vulnerable to severe flooding, which it's done multiple times. Um, even prior to my purchasing unbeknownst to me, and through my own research, I found that not only the city, but the state has known about this issue and they're fully aware of it. Um, and. Yeah, nothing's really been done except for some sometimes they they'll clear the ditches sometimes, but provided that the reason provided by the city is the lack of right away to access and clear some block ditches that are a couple blocks away from me. I guess there's 3 properties that are private and I'm not quite sure, but I know that bureaucracy isn't an excuse to let. Citizens homes flood and under the local, the Texas local government code is 251.001. the city of Robinson holds the explicit legal power of eminent domain. So you have the authority to condemn and acquire. Public or private real property, including temporary drainage easements for necessary public works and ditch clearance. Um. And so, furthermore, according to the city's own charter, the Robinson street department is strictly responsible for the drain drainage system maintenance and ditch grading, but ignoring the bottleneck, the city's feeling its own operational mandates. This failure also runs directly counter to the goals of Robinson Stormwater Management Program, and the city can't claim that they're unaware of how bad it is, since I've previously submitted explicit photo and video evidence of this flooding directly to the city on multiple catastrophic occasions. So I just feel like the system's failing, data's in your hands, and I feel like the city has the legal obligation to act on it. Um, so with me coming here, I'm just formally, uh, submitting those records. Um, I've already emailed. Uh, I believe it's Mr. Kaufman is his name. Um. And then also my alongside of these remarks, so I'm just asking, um. Oops, sorry, I lost my spot. Um, so under the Texas tort claims act, the civil practice and remedies code is section 101.0215. Storm sewers and drainage are municipal functions where immunity can be waived for negligence. So, my submissions from 2025 and 2026 combined with tonight's record established an indisputable paper trail with prior knowledge. So I'm just requesting a written update from from y'all. Um, what's your address? 1, 1, 0, West building to drive.

I just.

trying to secure the easement so that way my house doesn't flood again. I'm a single mom, and I have custody of kids that aren't mine, and I just can't afford another flood.

All right. Well, we appreciate your information, and it will go to the proper person. It's already gone to the proper person.

So you're on the corner of Bunker and?

Billington.

Billington? Yes, sir.

All right, switching gears over here, Chief. Presentation and consider accepting the quarterly investment report ending June 30th.

Okay, so this is the quarterly investment report for the quarter that ends June 30th. Let's see, the beginning book value and market value was $67,680,649. The ending book value and market value is $67,719,749. The average quarterly yield was 3.91%. The rolling three-month treasury was 3.74. Six-month was 3.72, and text pool was 3.65. The quarterly interest earnings were $646,369, and the year-to-date interest is $1,981,833. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions from the council?

MOTION TO ACCEPT.

I MOTION TO APPROVE THE REPORT AS ADJUNTED. I SECOND.

ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. ANY OPPOSED? ALL RIGHT. AND NOW WE HAVE THREE ITEMS THAT ARE ON THE CONSENT AGENDA. approve the july 21 2026 city council workshop and regular meeting minutes to approve ordinance 2026-014 ordering a general election for the city of robertson on november 3rd 2026 to be held as a joint election with mclennan county and uh approving resolution 2026-009 are A tariff authorizing an annual rate review mechanism known as RRM as a substitution for the annual interim rate adjustment process. Motion, please.

Motion to approve consider general items as stated.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Done. All right. We are back to the proposal of the property tax rate. We have had discussion. Is there more discussion? Okay. Would someone like to make the motion for the, is there a motion in here?

No, I didn't. I mean, the motion would just be to whatever you want, what rate you want to propose, and then also.

You want to do it? I want to do it. All right. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Chair's got this.

Motion to place a proposal to adopt a tax rate of 0.535326 on the August 25th, 2026 agenda. Call for a public hearing on a proposal tax rate to be held on August 18th, 2026. And vote to approve. AND VOTE TO APPROVE RATE AND BUDGET ON AUGUST 25TH, 2026. SECOND AGAIN. SECOND?

YEAH, SECOND AGAIN. OKAY. MISTI, WAS THAT ENOUGH IN THAT MODULE? OKAY. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. ANY OPPOSED?

YAY.

OKAY. SO NOTED. ALL RIGHT. UPDATES AND FUTURE AGENDA. YOU HAD SOMETHING YOU WERE GOING TO SAY.

just that so text not notified us today that as part of the i-35 project starting midnight friday they will be shutting down all north and south mountain lanes of i-35 valley mills until 5 a.m sunday morning and so all traffic will be routed off the highway um I think the last point to get off is around New Road. They can get on the service road. They're recommending alternate routes to either take 77 or Loop 340 around in both directions. But the flyover, the Direct Connect flyover there at Valley Mills that goes over and connects to Northmount, they're going to be taking that down this weekend.

Anybody want to bet that it won't be open until 5 AM Sunday?

They hit those pretty accurately.

The other thing is that if you use Primrose to get to the HEB, it's going to be closed until August 22nd because they've been putting in drainage and it's going to go under that. So they're shutting it down also this weekend and it'll be shut down for a couple weeks. Yeah, this time it's going to be shut down because they put all underground drainage and it's going to go under there.

Yeah.

So we can expect... Stay off by 35. 35, Loop 340, 77, Moonlight. Stay at your houses.

Our suggestion is just get your family and go somewhere for the weekend. Yeah.

Okay, anything else? All right, 641, we're adjourned.