City Council - Special Meeting

that everything that we say and do would be pleasing to you tonight and that it would be in Santa Fe as it is in heaven. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I honor the Texas flag.

I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.

All right. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you all for coming. I know this is a special council meeting, and so we're borrowing time from you. So I appreciate everyone being here. We'll go ahead and pick up at 4 Business 1, Consideration and Possible Action Adoption of a Resolution of the City Council of the City of Santa Fe, Texas, Approving a Contract for the Removal of the Existing Playground Equipment and Installation of the New Playground Equipment at Joey Tambrella Park. authorizing the city manager to execute the contract and related documents on behalf of the city. Council, unfortunately, and I don't remember what the name of that company is. Premier. Premier. They did not have enough time to bring us a quote, so we'll need to postpone this item to our next meeting to give them some more time to work on it.

I'd like a motion to postpone. Second.

It's been moved and seconded and postponed. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, nor a roll call, please.

Council Member Marks? Yes. Council Member Schroeder? Yes. Council Member McKamey. Yes. Council Member Jeanette. Yes. Council Member Dickerson.

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Item number two, consideration of possible action, adoption of resolution of the City Council of the City of Santa Fe, Texas, approving a contract between the City of Santa Fe, Texas and Organic Natural Energy, LLC, for the installation of a standby gas generator at the Runge Park Community Center in an amount not to exceed $39,465 and authorizing the city manager to execute the contract and related documents on behalf of the city. Mr. Zepeda.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So after we went out for proposals, all of the gas generators and installation over at Runge Park came back, and the lowest bid was the Organic Natural Energy, LLC. And... Per the grant, we have to select one of those three, and that's our recommendation to go ahead and move forward with the lowest bidder.

We reached out to every company in Santa Fe that does generators, and they were the lowest. They're located off 646 North, just so you guys are aware. I think that they're lower in the town because they were in Lake City, and they relocated to the city of Santa Fe. Awesome. And just to remember, this is from the grant from GLI. So this is at no cost to us.

Unless for some reason change orders make it go over $40,000, then we have to.

I believe our match was at the most $6,000. But that was under the higher estimate that we gave them originally. And this is coming below that. So in theory, this is going to be a zero cost to the city.

council yes I move to approve the resolution approving a contract with organic natural energy LLC and the amount not to exceed thirty nine thousand four hundred sixty five dollars for the installation of a standby gas generator at the Runny Park Community Center as proposed Senate second it's been moved and seconded to award a to award a vendor contract to organic natural energy LLC in the amount of thirty nine thousand four hundred sixty five dollars and

for the installation of a standby gas generator at the Runge Park Community Center. Is there any further discussion?

DAVID BURRAGE. One question. When we say gas generator, is it propane, LP? CHRIS RODGERS.

Natural gas. DAVID BURRAGE. Natural gas. CHRIS RODGERS. Yeah, it'll be pumped in. All right. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Lori will call, please. LORI ROWE CALL. Council Member Schroeder? DAVID BURRAGE. Yes.

LORI ROWE CALL. Council Member McKinney? DAVID BURRAGE. Yes. LORI ROWE CALL. Council Member Dickerson? Yes. Council member Jeanette? Yes. Council member Marks?

Yes. There you go.

I'm number three, consideration and possible action. Thank you, Rudy. Thank you, Rudy. Consideration and possible action, second and final reading of an ordinance of the city of Santa Fe, Texas, approving the sale and discharge of fireworks within the city limits of Santa Fe, Texas, providing a repealer clause, a severability clause, and an effective date. Ms. Georgia? Yes.

Manny and I did not make any changes, but I was made aware that there may have been some questions about the permitting process. Council.

Do y'all have any questions for Georgia?

So Georgia, I have a question around because it appears it's so cost prohibitive or just anyone to come in and do this. Should someone come in and want to pursue this? and once our staff has interacted with them and spent hours, spent time discussing with them what's needed, how to go about it, engaged our staff to look at where they're going, and then that person decides, you know what, it's just too cost prohibitive, we're not gonna do it. That's a waste of time for our staff. What are the considerations for that?

So the applications that we have for a lot of our other processes that we already have in place, We'll have a checklist that is provided with that application, and they'll be able to answer a lot of those questions on their own once we get it posted on the website before they ever have to make contact with staff. Once they submit the application, there is a fee that is due up front. After that fee is submitted up front, Maney will be able to handle a lot of those things that are done in the field. So if after they get through that application process and we come to find out that their zoning is incorrect, their site is incorrect, they don't have enough parking, so on and so forth, and they have to forfeit that fee, then we have already recovered the cost on them forfeiting that fee for the application.

Okay, so staff's time will be covered then?

Yes.

That still sounds like a waste of time.

Council, any other questions? I did have one. I had a person ask, could this be put in a building?

No.

cannot be put in a strip center, cannot be put in a present standing building. No. Okay. It has to be portable. Yes.

It will be taken out after each time.

Yes. 747 after.

Any other questions for Ms. Georgia? Okay. We do have a citizen, Ms. Michelle Johnson, if you'd like to come up and speak. Give you three minutes to address council.

Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council again. Um, I know most of what I wanted to say was I said last week, but I will kind of reiterate, um, our sales has always been in the county. As long as we've been in the business, uh, we've had locations around Santa Fe, uh, but we had to be, we were forced to move out because of annexations. Um, this did cause a hardship and inconvenience on our business. And at the time, we felt like we were just being attacked because it was done more than one occasion. Most other businesses would not be affected by an annexation. Sorry, I didn't really plan on speaking tonight. But now by allowing the sales in the city, it's like we're being attacked all over again. Our works industry, we have to follow a lot of other rules and regulations, like we can only sell so many days out of the year. We have to be so far from certain things that other businesses probably don't have to abide by. Which I know, that's part of business. You have to follow the rules and regulations. uh but upon you know being forced out further and further in the county and then we're established in our building now we bought the property we pay you know our permit fee is the property tax every year so uh so yeah now just like being allowing and i understand capitalism freedom all that but we've been doing this for 30 years and it just seems like it's just like an attack again like okay Y'all had to move and move and move and shut down. And now we're just going to allow anybody to come in. And now we have to compete with ourselves because we can't just be out that far in the county and then there's other vendors in the city. We have to try to do that also. So now we're competing with ourselves, which It will affect us, but it doesn't affect us as much as it does our managers, because now they're not going to make as much as they normally would. So now that money is split between two households or three households versus one. So like I said, that's my main thing is we've been forced out so many times, and now it's like, okay, we're just not being taken into consideration again. Any questions?

How long ago did you move to the county?

Pardon me?

How long ago was it that you had to move outside to the county?

Well, there was, we used to have to, we could be up to the city limit line, and then there was a 5,000 or 4,980 rule or 5,000 foot rule that was on the records for the state, but a lot of the cities and counties were not regulating them. And then I do not recall, maybe it was 08, when that was removed, the governor signed a bill that the cities can only enforce up to their city limits. They couldn't go past that, like into the ETJ. So that did allow us to come back into the county, but still not into the city. So we've always been in the county, forever.

So you talk about the annexation having to move you. Is that what you're referring to?

Yes. So we had locations in the county, and I don't have those dates. I should have had those.

So it wasn't that you were in the city limits and had to move out. It's that you were too close once we annexed.

Yes, we were in the annexations.

You're talking about 646 South. The ETJ.

Yes. Well, yes, we had locations. We had one on Highway 6. We had one on 646, and... And those properties were the ones that I spoke about last week. We owned those. We actually had purchased them. So, you know, at that time, once the city annexed, they were not viable for our business, so we sold. And then, you know, there's other vendors out in the county, so then you're like the locations are limited. So, you know, but now we do own property in the county. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your time.

Yes, ma'am.

You bet. I got to ask you again. What brought this up? To sell fireworks in the city of Santa Fe?

The sales were something that was brought up during the strategic planning. So if we're going to allow it to happen, then Naturally, if you're gonna allow something to happen within the city limits, the same way you're gonna get access to it, we need to figure out how we're gonna regulate it within on how you get it.

First time I asked a question because somebody said it was freedom. Do you remember that?

Yes, sir.

So the freedom is allowing them to discharge fireworks in the city limits.

Yes, sir.

And the freedom to sell.

and the freedom to take away business from other people. We've never allowed it before. Nobody else in the county allows it. They went out to look at two cities and they allowed the discharge but not to sell. Did they give a reason why they didn't allow the sale in their cities?

So the other two cities that allowed discharge and not sale will be Lake City and Dickinson.

Yeah, that was in the last meeting.

My department side looking, they don't have the open land space to allow for that. We do.

The open space to discharge.

The open space to allow for sales.

And discharge.

Well, they allow discharge.

The key part of the freedom part to me is allowing of discharging, not selling.

Well, they allow for the discharge within those two cities.

Yeah, I'm talking about here. If somebody said the reason that they wanted to start looking at that was because of freedom, the freedom is to allow the citizens to discharge in the city, to me. That's the key point there.

To me, it's for sales tax.

In strategic planning, that's what I brought up, sales tax.

You ain't going to make any sales tax off of that. How do you know?

I got a question. When we did this, how come these people had property? How come they wouldn't, grandfather? I mean, they already had their business within the city.

No, they never had it in the city. They were in the county with annexation.

But they were in the county. The annexation pushed the city limits within that 5,000 foot boundary, which was the state law that prohibited them from being there.

Right, but she said the cities wouldn't enforce it. But since they were already there and established. Couldn't the city say, okay, since y'all are already there?

The county wasn't establishing the 5,000 foot.

And I think it applies to several things. When the city annexed, like say you have an RV park, we had to go down the number of RVs that people owned. Let's say there's one on 646 South. They had to cut down the number of RVs that they had because the city annexed them. It's just kind of a natural progression when you annex. You come under city ordinances.

But you didn't tell them they couldn't have it. Because I'm sure they went zoned.

Well, they weren't zoned. I mean, they can't have it. If they're not zoned, yeah, we took their property in so they can't, you know, back in 2008 or whatever year it was.

Did we tell them to take the trailers off?

I'm not sure. I wasn't here at that time. I don't know that any of our staff were.

He said we incorporated the annex by the RV park down south. He said we cut them back, but did we? Since, did we tell them to remove all the charters? No.

No. But different, I mean, different than fireworks is a little bit different. I was just trying to give an example. When the city takes over, well, it is, but I don't know that y'all were elected at that time or any of us were here for that decision.

But for me, unless I'm misunderstanding it, and we may just be beating a dead horse here, one, they were never in the city limits. They were always in the ETJs. When the city did the annexation, they didn't take in their property. They just moved within the 5,000 foot limit of the state law from the city limits to where they can sell. So our annexation brought the city limits too close to where they were. Didn't bring them into it. So now they're falling under state law that the county has, but they're in the ETJ.

It's not for the city to decide, go back and change 20 years ago. way that that i have kind of tried to to interpret is what was the purpose of not allowing the sale of fireworks in the city to discourage the discharge of fireworks in the city right if we make it hard on people in the city to go buy them they got to go buy them out in the county maybe they won't buy maybe not as many people will buy them and come and light them or you know pop them in the city limits So if the reason why we disallowed them from selling in the city limits is because we were trying to discourage them from popping them in the city limits, if now we're making it legal to pop them in the city limits, then why wouldn't we allow them to sell it in the city limits? And that's the spirit of the law. I mean, let's face it, that's why we did it. We banned selling it in the city limits, hoping that it would discourage people from popping them in the city limits. Well, if we're getting rid of that and we're allowing them to pop them in the city limits, then what would the motive be to disallow the sale of them in the city? I'm not in favor of discharging either. Okay, fair enough.

And somebody always says, well... The majority of the citizens I talked to, they didn't want this. And I can guarantee if you put a survey out, you'd get the majority of the citizens of Santa Fe does not want even the discharge.

Not one city resident has come up here to speak against it or mailed any formal letters or made any formal comment about it as far as I know.

How many times have you seen citizens out there that come in to speak against something?

Not enough.

Exactly. Not enough. Not enough.

you can just go out there and look at the amount of fireworks pop when we have these deals all over this city and get a pretty good feeling of what fireworks the yes or no of fireworks in town they won't they don't care i mean it is unreal the firework and i'm hoping that how what the stars over six bring some of that down and we get a big crowd out there and it brings some of that down but it's just crazy the amount of fireworks for a town this has a no fireworks ordinance that this popped on july 4th and especially new year's it's just it's astounding uh the money spent and then You've got people out there in the county just right outside, you know, off 28th on O is one. They have $50,000 light shows at least out there. It is...

My opinion is that our requirements in order to sell in city limits would be so restrictive that it would be a preventative on its own. I don't think we're going to get, I mean, people say they're going to do it. People say they're going to come to a party and, you know, like three people show up. Yeah. With the record check. That was intentional. I just think that when people actually start going through the process and seeing how difficult it is, that they're just going to not do it. And I get that we're going to have the fee up front, but I don't think that's going to be enough. I mean, not worth the trouble for a lot of people. They'll see the checklist and check out altogether.

And there's not a lot of open lots for it to actually happen on. And so one of the discussions that we had had during our direction and guidance was putting a limit on the number of permits that we could issue. Well, once you actually start looking, there's not a lot of lots that you can put it on. So if one person comes in and pulls all five permits that we've got the number for, We really don't even have five lots that would have the adequate number for parking and the power and everything else. So we are pretty restricted.

So I'm okay with the firing of fireworks or shooting off of fireworks. I just don't think the sales would do anything. Our requirements are too restrictive for most people.

What would you put the limit at on permits for? What would you all think the limit on permits would be?

Well, I mean, like George said, I mean, there's only a certain number of properties in the city that are eligible.

They're going to limit themselves, right?

So they limit themselves. I mean, it's not like they can set up in front of every gas station, every, you know, I mean.

Well, then you've got to, the property owners would have to be willing to lease out or rent out their property as well. So, I mean, there's no guarantee that will happen either. I know they're planning something.

I know they're making it go outside the county because I'm looking at three acres. Three acres just added two more connex boxes there, putting gates around it, and they've got two more set behind it. So they are gearing up for July 4th. I'm for it. I'm going to be for it because I don't think we're going to get that many people, and I just want to see. We end up getting $700 sales tax. I'll come up here and say I was wrong and be the first one to say, let's erase it. But I know where my vote's going to be. So whatever we're going to do. DAVID BURRAGE.

Council, any further discussion? I'll entertain a motion.

I move to amend the proposal to allow discharge but not sales of fireworks within city limits.

Second. It's been moved and seconded to amend the reading to allow discharge but to not allow the sale of fireworks in the city limits. I don't have formal language on that, but I think that gets the point across, doesn't it? Okay. The amendment of vote for would be to not allow sale. Vote against would be to allow the sale. Board roll call, please.

Council Member Marks? Yes. Council Member Schrader?

No.

Council Member Dickerson?

No.

Council Member Jeanette?

Yes.

Council Member McKinney?

Yes. Okay. The ordinance is amended. So I will entertain a motion on the amended motion.

I move to approve the amended motion.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the ordinance as amended. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, Lori, roll call, please.

Council Member Dickerson? No. Council Member Jeanette?

Yes.

Council Member McKinney?

Yes.

Council Member Schroeder?

Yes.

Council Member Morris?

Yes. motion passes so because the because it's been amended does there have to be another reading of it or no all right very good Thank You counsel All right, now we will go on just about a five minute recess to reset down at the tables for the budget workshop. all right we'll go ahead and call this meeting back to order item number four presentation discussion and direction further development of the city's budget for fiscal year 2026-2027 preliminary outlook with department requests and proposed capital expenditures mr collins

So I just saw a different screen than what we were seeing earlier. So I was just a tad bit confused. But be that as it may, I want to start off. I know we kind of left in a, I think we were at the library when we left off is where we were going to start off. And I may be incorrect, but we'll go to that in just a moment. we don't want to go back to tonight what i would like for us to establish is our capital budget to have that complete if we can establish that tonight in addition to that to go through the have left I know that I have went through with each of the department heads and cut any items that we thought that that we were able to cut so we we did that but the one thing to notice tonight is these were the what we established at the last meeting for capital one thing that I want to say that I think was mentioned is that as city manager you know Y'all know that I'm extremely conservative in the way that I do business up here. And I know that we have the ability to spend up to three months of our reserves that we have. I think that that's a good thought in theory. But for me, I like to have a healthy budget. reserve balance just in the case of emergencies so at minimum it is my sincere belief that we should have at least four months you we just don't know what can happen if we have a bad hurricane another type of natural disaster god forbid another disease outbreak whatever the case is that we will be in a really strong financial position as the city and I know that's very conservative on my end, but that is at minimum, you know, I would like to be at four. I would prefer to be at five. But I just wanted to make that clear for tonight. I just would, I can't in good conscious go down to the three months. I know that that's our policy, but I think that what we try to do and as the council, y'all try to do is go above and beyond. what our policies sometimes what we've established in the past. So we do have the ability to do that tonight. So if we went to five months or four months of reserve, we could do quite a lot of bit of capital that we could add to this list. I know that Right now if you'll go down Rudy so right now if we were to adopt the no new revenue rate and Add the no new revenue rate at the current budget. We would have to go into our reserves at three hundred thirty three thousand We would have roughly six months of reserve in the bank for next year. That's not point three So we're right at that level if we we could do we could put a lot into capital and still be at the five months if we and we can play with it tonight I'm not going to play with it but we can input those numbers so you can guys can see live our citizens can see this live of where we are financially but sorry you're good so yeah I just wanted to state that out front before going into this. I definitely think there's a lot of projects. We've had a lot of deferred maintenance over the years. There are a lot of things that we do need to go after, but we also have to remember on the other side of the coin is that we have to have the staff and the time to go after some of these capital projects per se. So just bear that in mind. So if we can get to the top, I just want to read kind of through it at the last city hall remodel. So my proposal for this year is to up that I know to 125,000. And so we had it for 250. So kind of split that over two years. And so that would be to upgrade this building. you know if we want to stick hard things to it it's not my suggestion to do that i think that we need to look and get concrete pricing like i know that we've talked about breaking the exterior of this building but i think a lot of it needs to be internal especially with the break room and maybe restructuring some of the offices in here just because i mean anybody who is coming to our offices here they would understand that just the alignment of how it currently the building is it's just not productive for the modern workspace and so you go ahead okay last Thursday we're six and a half months over right six point three six point three where is this projection at so now with these changes is this five or four now this is um what does it say that four and a half four and a half okay so these are some of the changes that we made if you if you can go back to that thank you so what we did we put a hundred is it can you get to the top email if you don't mind scrolling up so 125 000 for the remodel here um we went from 50 to 150 000 in park improvements um i think that you know we've got We've got Rungi that we've got to take over and that we've got, you know, I know we're getting the million dollar grant, which is in here as well, but we're getting that from the state. So that comes back, you know, We didn't put any maintenance into Runge this year, did we? Other than the grant. Outside of the grant? Well, no, it's going to be inclusive in that $150,000. Okay. No, I mean last year. For last year? No. We just had the grant. Now we've taken over. We need to have money in there. That's correct. So we're upping our parks budget to $150,000 to be able to do some of that needed maintenance out there. And then, of course, we kept the $30,000 for the camera and the lights at Joe Timberlot Park. The $160,000 we kept for the two vehicles for our police department. Of course, we have to keep the $43,000. roughly for the handheld radios. And then we kept the $400,000 for our street paving. We kept the $35,000 for the emulsions tack trailer, the $98,000 for the asphalt roller, and then the $10,000 for the street sweeper. And then the $45,000 for the loader, which we did last time. And then I increased our storm sewer for about $50,000. i know that we just did 600 000 or we're currently working right now our vendors are our contractors are on projects in the city but i do think that increasing that to 50 000 just to try to go after some additional drainage projects uh would would definitely be helpful as you all know 50 000 won't get us too too far but it'll help uh with with drainage overall so i think it's important to go back to having a strong drainage budget um Yeah, and I'm just going to restate it for the public again. This year, we kind of focus on departments every year. I think this is a big year for our public works department with drainage and with roads. Um, 400,000, we're doubling our budget. We're going from 200 to 400,000. We're definitely not going to be able to solve a whole lot of problems, but we'll be able to solve double the problems that we were this year. So I think that that's a great step in the right direction.

While we're in that department, Rusty, I'm going to talk to you for a second. With the additional budget to do the repairs and stuff, are we seeing the right equipment up there that he's going to be able to do that with? Or do we need to add something?

The only thing and it's a big one. We've added the tack trailer. We've added the street the skid. Did we add the roller? Yes, the rollers in there. I don't think we need the chipper. That would be for next year. Yeah, I know. Bill, I did say we're on that mower. He's on the last leg. That's something we cannot get behind on is mowing. I know spraying right now, spraying is helping mowing. But, you know, remember we were going to take that tractor and take that tractor to Runge Park to repurpose it. Mm-hmm. as part of that and give him new this is this is here's my deal that tractor right there we run it on these roads we're running it all over the town it's stationary it says at one spot we use it for one thing we get into hell uh we get we okay this we we get into this time next year and that thing implodes uh transmission goes out the drive goes out in yeah and we're looking at 15 grand that's what scares me if we're going to go all in on roads How much left? How much do we have left? So we've got a little bit left.

We can, what, we're going to four months?

So this actually leaves us at, what is it, 4.7, almost six months of operating now at the end of 2027. It brings us down. The reason why it went back up is because we added the grant, the million-dollar grant. We added the expense here in this capital, and right there I added the grant money to come back.

So add the $115 for the side mower. All right, and then let's go back to the dashboard. And so that go down just a minute. And so that brings us that what? Five point. I'm sorry, guys. I can't see it. Five point eight. So we're still, you know, I mean, doing very well with that. And so if we want to go back to the capital and then let's go to if we can go back up and I just if we can just do this just to kind of.

We just got that excavator back. And we're used to it. Remember we talked about getting rid of that thing. But we don't have an excavator in here to replace it. Not until next year. What's that plan going to be?

We can do that. Our discussion around that was once we got it back, we were going to auction it off. We were going to get rid of it. It's back.

we can we can auction it off and then and and purchase something with that with the with the proceeds that we um take in for that so that's really what you know what the plan is right now um what do we think we could get for that where did billy say something it was oh it blew my mind it will i'm going to tell you i have been shocked at what we've been able to get from these auctions just from just the vehicles itself i mean it's below my mind so um but i do think we would be able to won't if we if we get rid of that i i think that let's keep that that's a carrier unit that you're going to get money for correct I say that if we keep that excavator for next year on there because we don't want to do get in position like we've done with our police vehicles in the past where we buy everything at one time and then everything's coming up you know I would like to like we talked about talk to Dickinson about that shipper

and see next see if we can come into something like an interlocal with them have a team on both sides that are trustworthy people and we can do something like that and split that cost uh the county's actually talking about that too are they that's all we that's all we did was in our local contractor back then correct we were the we were the person i mean we were it and then we helped all the smaller cities but it's a good it's a good way to it is because it's not something you're going to use all the time no no they might have they might have a little storm over there that takes trees out they need it and then the same here or we have a problem or you have a project or something you know we're going to do this

you know it's just but i don't want to do it when you're adjusting you never want to get behind on ditches that's safety no so we'll keep the 115 in for that if we can keep if um let's go just play the excavator by here yeah let's go up if we can and let's look at some of these other um items keep going up keep going up um let's see if we move the entire city hall remodel at 250 000. Have you gotten a price on the exterior yet? So I have not gotten a price on the exterior yet. I would be curious to what that is. But I'm fairly certain within 250 we could. have this redo this whole place this this building i don't know it it well i i say redo it redo it um in the most cost effective way functionality yeah for functionality it's not going to be perfect this is we're not going to turn this in i'm not talking about building sides for hall but yeah you know you're putting a good facing on this to change the appearance of this building

i think that's going to cost your whole 250. i mean i just i think it's more expensive than you think yeah i mean but i'm cool with doing half i don't you know this the inside of this building has to be changed for the employees correct for the people public for us i mean We're more professional than our surroundings indicate. Correct.

And I'd like to see that change.

Correct.

So let's go back to the dashboard with moving that to the 250. Can y'all read that 5.6? 5.6. So we're at five and a half months with the full 250. and with the $115,000 for public works. So we're at $823,000 that we would be pulling from reserve with the no new revenue rate, which is a tax cut for all of our citizens, just as a reminder to those out listening. A couple of quick questions.

I'd ask Rudy at the last meeting to look at the difference of increasing the homestead. and going with the current rate. And if I remember right, the voter approval rate was even a rate decrease from where we're currently at. So I'm curious if there's a wash there.

We can take a look at that if you want.

So if you want to go to the current rate, what is the F?

That is going to be F. That's the current rate.

Which is still below the voter approval rate. We're at 2.26 with the voter approval rate.

And if you look at the tax table, it's going to show how much that is across the board. This is the tax increase at the standard rate of $5,000. We changed that $5,000 to... Sorry, let me move this right here, exemptions, bam, to 10. And it shows right now, oops, this is at the maximum for homesteads. So I increased everything by 10% but By not increasing it.

There's no sense in even looking at that.

Right.

I mean, everybody's property appraisals go up.

If it's going to go up to the maximum of 10%, right, this is what it's going to look like. And this is the tax change. You can see that it is more progressive where you see the lower income people get.

It's a tax change decrease or an increase?

It's going to be an increase regardless because everyone's taxes are going to go up 10%.

And that's at our current rate?

This is at our current rate. but it would typically be 10% across the board, but as you can see, it's actually less for people.

If their property is less than $350,000, it's not as high per se, but still, I mean, if your property is valued at $100,000, I mean, it's a $12 increase a year.

We could even look at it if it would... and that would cost the city $29,000. TODD BANDUCCI- To hold the rate where it's at? TODD BANDUCCI- To increase it to $10,000.

TODD BANDUCCI- Hey, go back a second. That's in the green right there.

TODD BANDUCCI- This right here?

Yeah, the bottom number. That's all that person would pay in city taxes?

TODD BANDUCCI- For $1 million, that would be the increase.

Oh, OK.

MR. Rudy, go back to the dashboard where you can change the rate.

MR. And here is the rate, and here is the curve, and here is the decrease or the amount that we would have to pull from reserves.

MR. With the current rate.

MR. With the current rate. That's correct. Which shows a no increase in the debt rate or the M&O rate.

Is that a reserve or what? 725. I'm sorry. It would put our reserve to 5.8. Is that what this says? 5.8.

Sorry. 5.8 still with the city hall remodel input? That's if we go to the tax rate that we're at now and we gave a $10,000.

What's wrong with that?

well i think i think what's wrong with it for me is that well it would even be a tax increase for our homesteaded properties but our businesses have no protection and our secondary residents have no secondary residences have no protection and so essentially what you're doing is you're just taking some of the burden off the the homeowners and you're transferring that that burden over to the businesses And business is tough right now.

Are we talking about with the homestead?

Yeah.

Well, I'm not looking to do away with that. We're still staying at over 5.5%.

I mean, I would prefer to stay at the no new revenue rate. And I mean, I'm OK with raising the homestead exemption. I mean, what's the difference? What's the difference between $5,000 in revenue for the city? What's the difference between a $5,000 and a $10,000 homestead exemption?

What does that cost? That's going to cost about $30,000.

So it costs the city $30,000. Is that at the no new revenue rate?

That's the no new revenue rate.

So it costs the city $30,000 for every $5,000 in homestead exemption. It costs the city $30,000.

And this is going to be the tag at the no new revenue rate. This is how much more people will pay.

Right. Yeah, because it's on average. So there's no guarantee that everybody's taxes will go down. It's just on average. It's an average based off of these values. With the broken tax system that we have, that's the best way that we can make sense of it.

Here's my concern with the no new revenue rate, right? The no new revenue rate, in theory, gives me the same dollar that I had last year, right? In theory.

No. Because you have added value and you have improvements.

Right. Which is. And they consider more than your yard an improvement. Yeah.

No, it's not. Turn it into a house.

And that amount is going to be about $120,000.

Any increase over that is minimal. Other than.

What did you say, Rudy? And that amount. I don't have those numbers in front of me, what our improvements and added values are estimated for this next year. It's $150,000.

So, yeah, it's $180,000. But if you take out the. If we went with the $5,000, it brings it down to $150,000. If you went to the $10,000, because that's what we just changed it to for the homestead exemption, then that's $30,000 extra. That brings that revenue down to $156,000. But if we put it back to $5,000, that brings up to $180,000 in added value.

I mean, I like doubling the homestead exemption. I mean, it sounds cool to say we doubled it. I mean, really, it's such a low number that it's not moving the needle a lot for the homeowners or the city, really, either way. but it's certainly trending in the right direction. You know, maybe one day we can have a $50,000 homestead exemption. You know, we can get sales tax up. We could, we could definitely do that.

Um, it creates a better, uh, progressive tax structure, which is what a lot of cities are moving towards so that the lower income people pay less.

So my concern with no new revenue is, The cost of doing business is far outpacing the money we're getting from that, and we can't keep up. We're digging ourselves in a hole.

Well, we say that, but every year that you and I have been on council, our general fund has grown every year.

so so we're not digging ourselves at all but every year we come in here and kick how much off the capital budget down the road we're fixing to make up for it to the tune of about 850 000 which is another reason we the no new revenue is going to hurt even more we've got this we just had a business close armadillo cafe uh we've got another one that just cut its hours back

I think it's awfully hard to justify a tax increase when we are sitting on double the amount that we're required to in our savings account. So we're going to take more money from you to put in our savings account to sit in the bank.

And if we can, I know that we're having a great discussion on this, but tonight it's not really about the tax rate. I don't mind if we can move back to the budget because that's where we're here for that.

It all comes down to it. I agree with what you're saying. On Capital Projects Council, what Seth would like, and I think it would be good for all of us, is to let's make a formal motion.

in second tonight to approve the capital project list the only question i have on the capital is the 400 000 on streets is that enough to start concreting some of these streets as well and not repairs no we've got to move that direction we would have to go into a million dollars with the edc

and which i think that we potentially could do is we could work with the edc next year on trying to to concrete some streets but no 400 000 we're also hopefully going to be working with tech stop maybe on some safe routes to school grant correct correct so but i mean you know if we want to increase this 400 000 um You know, we're at 200 now and we doubled it. I mean, do y'all want to look at just that number to see what five does or no? Well, the only thing that I worry about is capacity. It is capacity. That's the other thing. It is capacity. We're not going to do so many roads.

That's correct. We need the equipment so they're not. Correct. Yeah.

But our guys wouldn't do the concrete anyway. No, not the concrete. Yeah.

Well, okay.

I'm going to pick the first street and get concrete. Council, I think this capital plan looks pretty good to me.

I'm on board with that right there. Perfect. But you're not going to get near it because what you want for that $250,000. I know. I don't want to add any more to it.

And I know that's the thing, but if you give us $250,000, it'll make a world of a difference. No, no, no. I'm not saying take away from it. I'm just saying keep it. It may not get us, it's not going to get us exactly where we want to be, but it'll heck get us a lot closer than we are today.

I'm just saying it's been most of that inside before you do the outside.

So if I can answer John's real quick, because he asked the 150 for the parks will go towards all of our parks. It doesn't, we're not specifying that this goes towards Runge, Behringer or... That's separate. That 30,000 is already separate, is in a separate account. That 150 would go towards upgrades. So for some of the things that we've done that we've had a little bit of deferred maintenance on, whether that's playground equipment, whether that's bringing up some of our sidewalks out there to ADA compliance, just some of those issues that we can tackle with that 150,000. And then, as you know, guys, with Behringer, it's

a blank slate right now speak up back here yeah four yes what do you need really what is the number one back to the top one thing that's catching my attention is that new air conditioner one of two end of life yeah i don't see a dollar figure there but we we completed those too didn't we yeah they're already done okay um so

Just knowing that how many people, I've done 10 new families from last Tuesday to today, and every one of them had four or more kids. They're all coming, they all live in all our new subdivisions, and I mean, I'm not asking for a lot. I mean, you guys give me what I can have and I'll do with what I can. So I think the parking lot is going to be the next big thing for us. It's got to happen. It's where we just don't have, I don't even have stripes on the parking lot. So they're just parking everywhere they can.

In addition to that is we were redoing this playground equipment. I know that it wasn't approved tonight, but when we do approve it at the next meeting, we are going to have a major influx.

just in the amount of people that bring their houses how much of the is there any like crossover because i know the librarian a ton of crossover i mean that they're they like to like the parking lots on this side of the building if i may and what we were planning was uh the millings or whatever i can to get a a sidewalk from those parking lots around the back of the building or something like that well i just meant because because uh john's or timbrella park and the library share a parking lot i didn't know if there was any crossover with the funding because they both utilize the same space no so that's that parking lot yeah that hundred thousand would just be just towards that but they would both get the benefit absolutely and one of my concerns too when we're and i know i've talked to seth and them but i've had three babies running between the cars last week And it is scary. We've got to get a fence up there. We need to do something. We've got to get a fence up there. I know we're getting rid of the playground, but when we do that, we've got to do. Because one of my little kids was riding the bike through and they hit the chain. So I don't want to do a chain thingy.

The fence separating the parking lot from the playground equipment could come out of that $150,000, couldn't it? That's correct.

where it will yeah so just something but um for a hundred thousand i'm willing i mean i have to go the back road to bucky's all the time too so i know how bad that road is and so that road's gonna be taken care of by the county one day i think y'all had started like doing 50 000 At one of our meetings, we were going to do $50,000, $50,000, $50,000. So whatever that would bring in. The biggest complaint is parking with my parents. That's the biggest complaint.

That's what I see. Can we see what $50,000 for the library would look like?

I don't know. Did we assign the millings that Billy's going to dig up?

We can find the millings. We've got to put a top on it. You've got to get something on that avenue. 50,000 each year. Yeah, that's perfect. Right there. Yep. All right. Yeah.

Let's go to the dashboard. The 50,000 ain't going to move the needle.

It's not. Yeah. Your bathroom. Are you talking about the outside? But what will 50,000 get her?

pretty partial parking parking lot. Well, I mean, we're not going to halfway do it, it'll get her a decent parking lot. But I mean, I think we do 50 this year, and then just see the utilization. And because we're going to have to build on the other side of the building. I mean, that's where they're going to have to walk. I mean, it's going to be a decent, you know, track.

And I need another Billy and I were talking I've already got the one driveway going because of the construction we did when I first got here. so further down the road a little bit there's some junk trees that need to go away that are dead but we need to put a driveway right there so yeah we definitely need a second access point off of avenue s like to come into the library yeah um 5.5

These budget projections also include an estimated $240,000, $250,000 worth of budget savings every year. Kind of like what the mayor had said before, every year we do not spend all the budget money, but we put it back into reserves. And that's what it does account for. Correct.

so and that's just with capital that's if we keep the budget as the same which we really went through and i would say you know very very went very extremely lean this year uh with within each of our departments but if we can is everybody good with the capital budget as presented as of right now we're at five five yeah we're five and a half months yeah we were at six three yeah if we did little capital yeah Y'all good with that? I move to approve the capital improvement plan as presented.

Second.

So we haven't formally... His question was about the million dollar grant. So none of that money has been formally broken up into specific amounts, but it was the understanding that it would be used to rehabilitate the rodeo arena, the cover pavilion, the community center, and the little league fields. and some proportion of dollars. And it's just, it's a moving target, and I know that maybe people are a little frustrated that we haven't kind of assigned that money, but we're just working on a moving target, and I'll give you a perfect example. We had gone to Centerpoint, and I asked Centerpoint to help with the lighting for the Little League. And we thought it was a home run, like right at center point, of course. Well, their company's policy because of liability and just the legal world that we live in now, the litigious world that we live in now, they've gotten away from really wanting to do any type of electrical or power. So they said, we don't really want to do that, but we'll help with the rodeo arena. So then we can take maybe money that we had planned for the rodeo arena and move it over to the little league. So we're, and then we've got any else that's coming in and they're helping us with, so we're working on, we've got T-Mobile that's in the loop. So we're working on some other grants. We're just, we don't want to paint ourselves in a corner because we want to be able to stuff money wherever the people will let us stuff it. But, but, um, that's the overall goal. It was given to us by Dr. Greg Bonin, uh, through Texas parks and wildlife for rugby park. Okay. So, okay, so everybody's good so we have a motion and a second on the floor to approve the capital improvement plan as presented Is there any further discussion? Hearing none Lori roll call please councilmember McKamey.

Yes councilmember Dickerson Yes, councilmember Schrader. Yes councilmember Jeanette.

Yes, ma'am Yes motion passes thinking council

all right and if we can i mean is everybody good i know it's at 706 now but are y'all good with going on into the departmental budgets so what we'll do is we'll just go through where we left off i believe we left off with the library yes and

Do we have another one of these budget workshops planned?

We have a few all the way up until the end, but as far as the departmental ones, this was scheduled to be the last one for the departments. I believe if...

we can amend that though i mean if we have to come back and i'll leave it up to y'all council if y'all want to go through now y'all can we have access to all of this if y'all want to go through it on y'all's own and bring any concerns that you have to set them i know that rudy sent it out last week to each of you if you had a chance to review um all of those budgets and as you remember we cut 75 000 from each of those budgets from last year so they are very uh very lame So if there's anything, I personally don't think any of you guys are going to have any objections to anything in those budgets as where they stand right now because we're definitely working on very lean budgets. We've been very conservative in our approach this year.

Is there any particular department you want to take a look at since we have them all up here that you think stands out?

Public Works.

Public Works?

Is that their parts budget or repair budget? This is just their public works budget. That's correct. Yep, if you click on there.

so let's see here and as you know we have to go through each of the uh each of the uh accounts but our each line item but um i just want to go on exit way to repair for 65 000. so i do so if i can go back the only change that i want to make that's been brought to my attention is if you go back to to the left to the emergency aid like if we could do that so and uh and testing um I would like to increase that budget by $1,500 to buy necessary equipment to make sure that it's up to date. That was brought to my attention this week. And so if we can increase that by $1,500. Just one time? For one time, yeah. You got to explain what this stuff is? For AEDs. AEDs, that's correct. And then a tourniquet.

I got a question. We're buying this equipment. Yep. When are we going to address this building, those sheds out there? When are we going to actually sit down and get serious about addressing that? Because, I mean, we've all gone out there and seen it.

We definitely can't. I don't think it takes that much money. And one thing, and I'm not sure if you know and you probably do, we don't own that building. We have an agreement. Oh, that's the water district. That's correct. So if we make any improvements, we would have to get approval from the water district to do so. I don't know that they would have hesitation on us improving their infrastructure, but that is their infrastructure.

I found the pictures from when... We built the sheds at the West County building. We built all those sheds on each side and put all our dump trucks in.

If you want to keep going, so we'll keep, all right, so office supplies, $1,000. That's what we spend about every year. Ship and returns, $400. Their uniform replacement, $6,000. Small tools and equipment, items under $2,500, we spend, average about $1,500 a month on that type of equipment. janitorial 200 bucks a year not a big thing uh sign replacements 12 000 um and i hope that you guys have taken notice of the signs that we've replaced we've put our new logo on those signs and i think that they came um it was you know different than what i had initially envisioned but i i think they really came out nice so we're really proud of those um uh you know for cold patch sixteen thousand five thousand for those chemicals so that's for doing the uh the the uh yeah lawn or maintenance and then the uh gravel fourteen thousand uh nothing for the computer repair maintenance no do subscriptions um equipment rental two thousand dollars um keep going um the herbicide program just to keep up with us five hundred dollars every year um and i think that's uh and that's back to their capital that four hundred thousand is back to the capital this is all that capital yeah so the rest is all capital on that but where's the one for the mechanic that's under 528. can we get to that sure that's going to be under

There it is right there, sorry. I can't find my own stuff. So this is... This is for their internet and for PC. This is citywide. This is all IT. Anything that's not of a specific department, we consider it citywide. Everybody takes part of it. It goes into this department as well.

Public works. Mechanic.

Mechanic. That's going to be under the 50s. Hold on a second. building maintenance and repairs.

And we did change some of the account numbers on there, so if y'all will be patient with us on that.

Building and structures, OK, public works. Yeah. That's in there every year? Yes. What does that do, just repairs? Yes.

Building maintenance and repairs?

OK, for building.

OK. Just buildings. We'd like to get the homes and the signables. I'm not saying maintenance.

I'm saying public works. Mechanic.

so ground maintenance we have vehicle maintenance yes yeah right here so all motor vehicle maintenance not pd included 4500 and then a thousand for our water truck and then that's just for pickups

I guess I can cut to the chase.

He spent a lot of time working on PD vehicles. Where does that money come from?

Out of the PD's budget. The PD wanted to keep a schedule since they've got a fleet manager, which is Captain Leno. They already have a fleet manager, but if they didn't, like many of these other departments, that's when his department takes over.

And we can go to the police department and look at that specifically, too. But this is like for great old 25,000, which y'all were well aware of.

I was looking specifically.

Well, great old 25,000, slope over 12,000, side over 7,000. Your budget's gone. Yeah. Your budget's gone by June. Mm-hmm.

He does a good job at keeping it up, though.

Well, I mean, we spent that within the first couple of months of our new budget this year. More than that.

this year we did with the great all because of what happened but typically but we have that stuff up the year before it was two dump trucks we lost the motor in the dump truck lost the line on those had to have a new top that's fine for keeping a a healthy reserve budget is for when those big items that are you know not see i don't understand why we keep a reserve budget don't put it in here

Because we know it's gonna happen our Equipments aged well We don't Know what you put it in there. You can always have it, you know, it doesn't go We can we can wait you're looking at stuff that you're officially inflates the budget Okay, and I'm trying to look at it something right there. That's just not that's not That's not realistic It has not been realistic for, I guarantee you, go back the last three or four years, it's not realistic.

You can increase this.

I mean, that's what we're here to do. The bottom line is it looks like at the end of the day we're going to be pulling out of general fund anyways. That's right. So if you increase this budget, we're automatically pulling it out of general fund. If we don't and we have to, we're pulling it out. Either way, it's going to be pulled out of general fund.

That's true. Whether it's pulled out in the beginning or the end. I just like seeing it. I would love, I would love for it really to look like this. If we have the nice new equipment at all, we go three years and we're all under warranty and we're changing stuff out and that, yeah, there you go. We're heading in that direction. Your cradle repairs, that right there is your oil changes.

so he doesn't billy said that he has these numbers in place because he sometimes doesn't use all his 35 000 and then he directs money as he needs from different line items in his department over here but we can definitely increase this i mean i mean we can pull it like we've always done it i don't want to inflate the budget but what i'm saying is

That's just not realistic. It has not been realistic.

And I agree with you. I don't think that it's inflating the budget if we do move some funds into this. But it depends how much of you guys want that to come before you.

I'm hoping we don't have anything on that paper this year other than oil changes. Because that ought to be under warranty for at least three or four years. Tools and equipment, slow mower. Those are the two that, at $1,500, that's just maintenance on trailers, skid steers.

Is there any area in here that you guys believe that we should increase? I mean, this is the time to do it.

No, I just had that one question.

Yeah, I mean, we can leave it like it is. But I'd love to see us get to where that is actually a realistic increase. But it's 35, I mean, we're every year. I haven't looked at the numbers, but every year we're over $100,000. We're right at it.

Well, you know, under maintenance, maybe we could add $5,000 to the budget on there. I just leave it like it is. All right. Well, then let's keep going. We'll just keep pulling from general funds. All right. Keep going out. All right.

And there's $600.

Yeah, that's for library rent. I don't think there's a lot more on that. Can we go to the... public safety real quick and then we can show you know what that maintenance looks like on that and the police budget department we did you know with with that with that department there is not very much that you can make more lean than where they are right now you know just at what they're required to have so if we can keep So if you go back one for me real quick, just the annual, like, you know, the Sprint Car Inspection, the SEAS Vehicle Towing Services have to have, fingerprinting have to have, psychological evaluation you got to have, the, you know, drug fit for duty got to have, random fleet drug test got to have, copy paper, they use a ton of it, they got to have it. I mean, all of these items on here for the office keep going. Postage shipping, $600. Business cards, they've got to have those. Printer cartridges keep going.

I wasn't questioning the whole police department. I was questioning that one issue.

I got you.

He's also one of Billy's employees that's pulled off and doing stuff to work on those vehicles.

Well, I mean, we just don't have a separate mechanic for the police department.

Billy's the one that gets dumped on all the time, and I'm getting tired of it.

I tell you, that's why I don't like the scene last year. We had those two employees. Now we sure could use that employee. Hey, I got a question for you, Chief. What do we do with the old flags? Do we do a ceremony down here? We donate them to the VFW. Gotcha. The ceremony. The VFW is not open anymore. So we turn them over to Officer Cannon, who is a veteran, and takes them to veteran organizations and donates them. Great. That caught my mind. I've never seen the line. Do I have a motion?

What's that? I'm sorry. I thought maybe I heard a motion. Go. Okay. Just continuing to go. With the coloring books, we cut that down. I know like in promo materials for some of our parades and that type of thing, it's just an area that we could cut, so we did. Keep going. 911. Yeah, right there. All right. Tires. I mean, brakes right here. This is what you want to see. Oil changes, battery replacements, and then upfitting costs. You know, we're at $50,000 essentially for the police department every year. All right.

Do they also pay part of his salary?

No. No. No.

That's a portable point.

We can. We have the ability now with the new software to start separating out percentages of salary based off of hours. But that's a little bit more complicated. We're not quite there yet, but we can start looking at that.

The point of the whole thing is the hours he's spending on these vehicles, he can't be on the streets where he's supposed to be helping Billy.

Well, I mean, he's a full-time mechanic for the most part. I mean, he's got to be. I mean, we've just got too much of a fleet. I know that, but he's just too, I mean, it's too encompassing. We have to. I mean, our fleet's at this size, unfortunately. Well, here's my next question.

Can he refuse those? If this guy's going to be a shop employee now? You know, where are we brand and employee in the road bridge or road street park? We can do that.

And we can, we can, we can. We looked at that last year. We did. We switched things around. We did because I wanted to have a balanced budget. And so I did that. I took away those two positions that were brought forward.

And we talked to you about doing them during, you know, peak season. you know two part-time employees and we kind of said that wouldn't be cool yeah we can add another if you could add another operator like a level one and then he can advance one person see what how much good to our lowest um our lot equipment operator and see what the lowest one is and then add it into the budget just for just to see because you know i know that he's had people deal too this year that have missed time

we we and i know that he has people that have a ton of vacation and that he has to schedule that stuff out it sure would be nice to get somebody new that's at zero you know that has to come and and he is one guy uh down right now um so we're we're in the process of hiring um a new position, and I do expect that this year we're probably, I haven't been told this, but I'm guessing that we're probably going to have some retirements this year just with terms of service. So I'm guessing that, but if we can add that in and just see what that does to us. I mean, what does everybody else think about that?

Bob, what do you think? Well, Billy beat the bullet last year again. He had the opportunity to have two employees. I mean, is it something we need to talk to him about? He's paying the price.

No, and I think that he is paying the price, but he was trying to be a team player. I understand. I get you.

We get top every other places we need to.

Well, we're making investments in public works. Let's do it in employees. I mean, it'll be, you know, where we add an employee. Because here we go.

We're sitting here talking about something, and I'm just thinking ahead. I'm thinking about when we have that paper and we have that road work. You're going to need a person when we're stockpiling material or something, when we're milling these roads, that payloader. that sets there. You're going to have a person there. That's a great place to put a person, a new person, you know, and then you're not losing a person on your road crew.

So we're at 5.4 at 975,000. We would pull out a reserve this year and we would get to add, you know, another team member out there. So we're at 900 less.

We've taken 900.

Yes. Almost a million, 975,000.

But a new employee would, as you can see, a new employee would decrease this curve quite a bit underneath our three months' worth of operating by 2031, all things being equal and that's with you know with the three percent um and that's that's at our projections right now true sales tax growth so as far as projections with sales tax i mean real sales tax growth as of right now so this is our sales tax right now uh we are looking at um five percent eight percent nine percent going forward This is what I'm projecting. And it increases. And it increases. I'm only projecting 5% this, that 2028, 2028. 2027 is already set at about 5% this coming year. I think we're going to start doing that. Yeah. So I predicted that...

If we do that, it just adds to the general fund. And then we've got more money. That's what we have to think about doing. That is, you know, Mr. Mark said, Councilman Mark said at the last meeting, you know, we could come back every year. If that sales tax revenue comes back up, we can use it towards capital.

We talked about this one time a couple years ago, if y'all remember. And we talked about having the money. And then when we got to the end of the year, using some of that money... and find the capital improvements that we needed, you know, like the equipment we needed. And this basically is doing that. We're just taking out the one time right now.

Right.

You know.

So if we were to change 2028, that's next year, everything starts moving back again, and then we can project 8%? Yeah.

Like you say, next year we'll have 6%. And then we want to get back to 5%.

It goes down to 2.9 by 2031. And that's our lowest point. And that's, we're right back in the game again. So it really depends. Everything really predicates on. All right.

Do y'all have any other questions on any of the departmental budget items?

Okay. I mean, do we have, I know you talked about what these department cut this and that.

Uh-huh.

Do you have do we have anything in our back pocket that we think that? Possibly it's been money that we might come up You know, we always seem like budget for the budget in the month later. We're asking for And we've gotten better about that.

Yeah. Our air conditions are good right now. Um, I think that, I mean, of course there are things that we, that if, if, uh, if an emergency or disaster comes up that I'm going to have to come through and ask you for, but I think outside of the budget, I mean, we've done a good job and I feel like our meetings have gotten a lot shorter. The reason y'all kept seeing items that you approved is because I could only approve every 5,000. Well, now that y'all give me 50,000, I'm able to prove it's in the budget. checked it's done that's why so i'm hoping that that has really helped that y'all have seen the difference i know i've seen the difference i've been approving a lot more than having to come before you guys uh to do that um i i don't see uh you know anything in that budget i think with with the capital with increasing that that's going to help a lot for some of the areas that we do see like with parks we didn't really have a a a significant parks budget and so now we're

I got something in the board. Go ahead. Did we put anything in there for wildflowers? Well, that would be a minimal expense.

It would come out of that $150,000. Wildflower seeds are cheap. I know somebody that would probably go and sell them. We can get you a little back. Feed the pigeons and sell the wildflower seeds.

That new Indian bluebonnet has a lime color.

Those Aggie maroon bonnets look very nice.

You didn't hear about them? They're not here.

Council Member Dickerson, did you have any other questions for the departmental budgets?

See what you started, John?

What I want to say, I can't say.

So just to remind everybody, these numbers as a fund balance, it does include the $500,000 that we've reserved in our overall fund balance for the emergency reserve. So just to keep that in mind.

Is that inclusive? It includes it.

It includes it, yeah. So I'm confident with this budget. I think that with what we have, I think that we'll be very successful this year. Our citizens will get to see that we're really putting a lot of effort and a lot of money back into our infrastructure, and I think that that's crucial for them. And so hopefully with a lot of these projects, we'll be very successful next year, and they'll get to see some good changes.

yeah that'd be nice all right council any further discussion take a motion moved and seconded thank you gentlemen thank you very much mr collins appreciate you thank you department heads i'm going to go ahead and change this to version four going forward and i'll send out this version to everybody