City Council - workshop

Okay, good morning, everyone. We will call this meeting to order. Ms. City Secretary, will you call roll?

Mayor Pro Tem Kaylin Paxson.

Present.

Council Members Roland Barrera. He's participating by Webex. Can't hear you, but I see you. Okay. Okay, Sylvia Campos. Here. Eric Cantu is running 30 minutes late, but he will be here. Gil Hernandez.

Here.

Everett Roy is absent. Mark Scott? Here. Carolyn Vaughn?

Here.

City Manager Peter Zanoni?

Present.

Our interim city attorney, Buck Bryce, will be here shortly. Okay. We don't have a quorum, but we can proceed since there's no action to be taken. We will get quorum in about 30 minutes. So quorum, sorry?

Don't we have six? We have six. We have two, four here and two. Yeah, but virtual.

But we can still proceed, Peter. Okay. It's fine.

Thank you, Rebecca. That will move us on to our next item, which is briefings. And item one is the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget workshop, all funds, budget overview, and general fund proposed budget. Good morning.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council. Good morning. Amy Rodriguez, Director of Management and Budget. Today we will be going over our all funds budget summary as well as the general fund and in more detail So to begin our FY 27 proposed budget focus is on police and fire and Streets parks and of course long-term water security and wastewater management This is consistent with community input and the City Council's priorities This slide shows our overall proposed budget which equals 1.4 billion the total operating budget is at 1 billion and the capital budget is at 450 million and You can see here that these dollar figures are excluding transfers between funds, and so that we don't duplicate budgets for transfers between the funds. Our total operating proposed budget has increased over the FY26 adopted budget by 8%. and the FY27 proposed capital budget has decreased over the FY26 adopted budget by 7%. I'll go into a little bit more information on the all funds summary later in the presentation, but we'll shift focus now to the general fund. As you know, the early projections, our early forecast for FY27 general fund budget was a $900,000 revenue shortfall. We reviewed that earlier in the year in the budget development process. What you have is a proposed balanced budget that was achieved through savings in the current fiscal year. an increased sales tax forecast. We're currently forecasting to end the year 2.4% better than budget for sales tax in FY26. And then we have some increased fees for some services and then some reduced cost in the general fund to balance the budget. And this is one of our favorite slides that we see every year. This is our FY27 general fund pie chart. We did receive requests from the community during the budget development process to show fire and police numbers separately. We do still show the total public safety as a percentage. But I would like to speak a little bit about how we look at this pie chart. The black outer ring is our revenue sources and how we fund the expenses. And then the colorful slices inside are the expenses that we have and the programs that are funded. So you can see our primary sources of revenue, our property tax and sales tax. And then you can also see our primary largest programs for our expenditures. One of the analogies that I used when we were presenting this chart to the public in July was that it really is a pie and so that black outer ring represents the crust of the pie and then all of the expenditures that are the pie slices have to stay within that crust and so it is a great picture of living within our means. The general fund proposed budget has increased 3.5% over the FY26 adopted budget from $346.7 million to $359.1 million. So as I mentioned previously, our two primary sources of revenue are property tax and sales tax. These charts represent the trends that we've seen in the last six or seven years for revenue growth. So this first chart represents net taxable values, and you can see in tax year 21, which would be FY22, there was a slight increase in values, and then it jumped quite significantly in the following two years. Whereas in the last three years, those values have stayed relatively flat. property tax does represent 30% of our general fund revenues, so that does impact us significantly. For FY27's revenues, that is based on tax year 26 property taxes, and we had originally forecasted a 1.3% increase in that revenue. That was based on the preliminary values that we received from the appraisal district. When we received the certified values July 25th, it had actually, the net taxable values had actually come down 1.5%. For sales tax, this growth has slowed in the last few years, but we are seeing a consistent 1% growth in sales tax year over year, so we'll be maintaining that level of growth for FY27. Currently, we're at projected .98% for FY26. Now this slide shows us a historical property tax rate. Just a reminder, in FY 2019, we increased the tax rate by two cents, and that two cents was dedicated specifically to residential streets. And then in FY 2020, we increased the tax rate by two cents. That two cents was also dedicated to residential street reconstruction. In FY23 and FY24, the tax rate decreased. And so that last note, it really just shows that we raised the tax rate by four cents and then decreased the tax rate by more than four cents. And so we've kept the same tax rate for the last four years. This proposed tax rate does not reflect any increases to the tax rate. But it is just a reminder that our tax rate is currently lower than it was prior to dedicating the 4 cents to residential streets. And so that 4 cents is still dedicated to residential streets, but it reduces the amount of revenue received in the general fund for maintenance and operations. And just to note, we have about $30 billion in taxable property values. That would result for every penny in the property tax rate, it does result in $3 million of revenue. This slide is an example from tax year 2025, which is our current fiscal year 2026 revenue. It's an example of a property tax bill for a homestead property that resides in CCISD. As you know, there are many taxing entities that receive property tax revenue. It is not just the city. And you can see the breakdown based on the tax year 2025 tax rates for each entity, how much of that total bill comes to the city compared to other entities. The dollar bill I think is a great graphical representation of that. The city property taxes for every dollar that you pay are 27 cents comes to the city. So for every dollar that a resident pays in property tax, 27 cents comes to the city and the remaining 73 cents goes to other taxing entities. This slide shows the top eight cities in Texas, and we're looking at the tax rates that were approved for FY26 in each of the cities. and applying that to the average homestead. So when you look at the average homestead in each of these cities, which would account for cost of living changes or differences between the cities, and you apply their property tax rate, you can see the comparison of what an average homestead owner would be paying in property taxes. And Corpus Christi would rank seven on that list. And then as a reminder, these are our main exemptions that are available to our property owners. The homestead exemption is at 20% with the $5,000 minimum. And this is the state's maximum allowable exemption for homestead. Then we have our over 65 and disabled exemption at $62,500. We have our tax freeze for age 65 and disabled. And essentially, once they qualify for that tax freeze, that citizen would not pay a dollar more on property taxes after that. And then in FY27, we'll have a change in the business personal property exemption. That exemption is changing from $2,500 to $125,000. That is a change that was initiated at the state level, and it was brought to voters in November, and it was approved by voters. And so that impacts our revenues for FY27. I'll transition to our revenue changes for general fund revenue fees for service. We do have changes for the fire department. We have changes for code compliance, parks and recreation, and solid waste included in the proposed budget. Just a note that the change for solid waste is not on the monthly bill. This is related to services at the landfill and the transfer station. The fire department will be proposing to increase emergency call service revenue. This is something that we've done every year recently and it is to adjust for inflation. There is a calculation that is done each year for ambulance inflation factor and this year it is at 2% and so that is what is proposed. The fire department also recommends new fire prevention permit fees specifically for battery energy storage systems and plan review the emergency responder radio communication system plan review the emergency responder radio communication system plan inspection. The high piled storage combustible fire sprinkler plan review and early assistance meetings for a total of $23,000. in the proposed budget. Additionally, the fire department would like to establish a cleanup of hazardous materials fee. The minimum would be $100 up to full cost recovery. And currently the proposed revenue is $2,000. Code compliance is recommending a citation fee. That would be on all code citations. with a proposed revenue of $55,000 at $20 citation. The Parks and Recreation Department is recommending an increase to the after-hour kid power daily drop-in rate. It would increase this rate from $25 to $35. And this is a fee that is eligible to be paid by the Texas Workforce Commission for the citizens that qualify. And currently, the majority of citizens do qualify. The Parks Department did review the prior year's daily drop-ins, and out of all of the families who utilized this service, only two did not qualify for Texas Workforce Commission. The Parks and Recreation Department is also recommending changes and updates to their field rental fees. So they do currently have a field rental fee of $60 per hour, and this is for private or for-profit organizations. And then with a $20 per hour increase if they require lights at the fields. What's changing in the Parks Department is they will now have natural grass fields as well as artificial turf fields. And so they're establishing a different fee for the type of amenity being utilized. So the natural grass fields rate will be coming down from $60 an hour to $35 an hour. And then with lights from $80 to $55. And then on the artificial turf fields, it would be $55 an hour with lights, $75 an hour. The next section there is related to nonprofit and use agreement rates. With no lights, they are proposing the rate to be $8 an hour, and with lights, $12 an hour. And these would be based on agreements that would be in place with the various nonprofits in the area. Still significantly less than the private or for-profit rates. The total proposed revenue increase is $438,000. The Solid Waste Department is recommending that we establish a minimum disposal fee So this would create a minimum disposal fee of $30 per visit. It would apply to the CFA Valenzuela Landfill as well as JC Eliot Transfer Station. For commercial customers, they will continue to pay the per tonnage rate that's already established, but they would have a minimum of $30 going forward. And then for residential customers, if their loads are greater than two cubic yards, they would pay the $30 minimum and then the current per ton rate. That said, brush is excluded, recyclable materials excluded. The pictures on this slide represent what two cubic yards looks like. So if you have a standard, I think 5.5 foot truck bed, you would not exceed that two cubic yard. And then this small trailer would also stay within that two cubic yard threshold. Additionally, the solid waste department would like to create a fee for purchasing compost or mulch. That new compost facility will be opening soon, and so they would like to establish a fee to begin collecting on the sale of compost or mulch. Next, we'll talk about general fund mandated expenditures. Just as a reminder, an expenditure increase that is mandated is something that we're obligated to do, either by the state, by a contract, because of a capital project coming online requiring maintenance and operations. So we'll go through the mandated expenditures that we have included in the proposed budget now. The police department, we've included 4% increase effective April 1st. This is according to the CBA agreement that's in place. We also have maintenance and operations cost for the south side substation as well as the northwest substation that will be opening. For the fire department, sworn firefighters will receive a 4% increase October 1 according to the CBA agreement. We also have an increased cost for the firefighter occupational cancer screenings. This is mandated by the state. And then we're including an increase for maintenance and operations for the fire station eight and 10 that will be opening. And then the last increase for fire is to their EMS billing contract. This is a, um, as a percentage of revenues collected. And so those revenues are going up and the contract will have to increase as well. For the Parks and Recreation Department, will be including cost for security services at the new Washington Coles Park, as well as the final phase of the athletic field maintenance initiative. This was an initiative the department began implementing in FY25. This would be the final phase of that project or initiative. They'll be adding two positions, one vehicle equipment and operating supplies. It's 235,000. The solid waste department has an increase for their contracts for recycling and landfill operations. And then the city secretary has to mandated expenditures the first is digitization and preservation of birth records this is paid out of reserves that have been accumulating from a fee established by the state for vital records and preservation and retention. So we'll be digitizing birth records going back to the 1880s up to the 1950s, and we'll improve the storage of those records. We've also included funding for the upcoming November election. Next we'll go over our enhancements to expenditures. We do have increases proposed for police, fire, and the city auditor's office. Additionally, we have funding for market adjustments for 100 and 200 pay plans and a cost of living adjustment that would be effective October 1 across the board for all civilian employees. The 100 pay plan employees are non-exempt hourly employees. And the 200 pay plan employees are salaried professional level staff. And so they would be brought up to market with this adjustment. The police department, what we have here as an enhancement is the police academy. This would begin in July of next year. So the funding is about $552,000. It represents three months of fiscal year 27. We also have funding already in the FY27 budget for the current academy that is in progress. And then we're proposing to convert a police officer to a police lieutenant. But that did not result in an increase to their overall base budget. For the fire academy class, we have a budget for nine months of this academy, and then we also have already in the budget the cost of the current academy for the fire department. The fire department has requested to add a heavy vehicle mechanic to their department, but they have reduced and anticipate a reduction in their maintenance cost, so it was a net zero impact to the general fund. The city auditor's office had a peer review approved at $30,000, as well as a professional certification incentive pay at $6,000. That was approved by the audit committee, so that is added to the budget this year. For general fund reductions, we do not have any cuts necessarily to the general fund, but we do have some reorganization that resulted in savings to the general fund. So we'll go over that now. Just a reminder, the council did approve a mid-year budget adjustment that resulted in annual savings of $1.7 million going forward. So the Planning and Economic Development Department will be transferring two positions to the HOT Fund. This is a Special Projects Manager as well as a Convention and Cultural Program Manager. These two positions are dedicated to the Convention Center and Convention Center Complex area. We would also be transferring a Planner II position to the Development Services Fund. The Parks and Recreation Department, this restructuring has a net zero impact to the general fund. We would be creating a special revenue fund called Gulf Beach Operations. We would be transferring the cost of Gulf Beach Operations out of the general fund into that special revenue fund. It is a net zero impact to the general fund. And then we would also be transferring some of the costs that are in the SHOT fund, the state HOT fund, To the new special revenue fund and this fund is to be funded by the beach parking permit revenue received a Few other departments to go over in summary with With no changes in the budget, but just wanted to review them at a high level our animal care services code compliance the health department and the library department and So Animal Care Services does not have any changes recommended in the FY27 budget. They do have still some additional ARPA interest funds that are assisting with funding new positions that were added in FY25. And then the spay-neuter funding will continue in FY27. We currently have $250,000 authorized in the FY26 budget. A portion of that will be remaining at the end of FY26 and will continue funding that program into FY27. The increase to their budget of roughly $200,000 is related to pay increases and benefits. For code compliance, there are no changes in the operating budget in FY27. They do have a decrease compared to FY26 adopted budget, and that's due to that mid-year adjustment that we did reducing four positions in that department. I did want to mention, staff, after proposing the budget, as I mentioned earlier, when we received the certified property values, they came in much lower than we had initially anticipated. Although we had wanted to restore the abatement funds of 300,000 in the budget, we had to take that out to balance the budget. And so after proposing the budget staff went back to the drawing board. And thought, well, perhaps we could fund this by increasing the solid waste fee. So I do want to reiterate, this is not in the proposed budget currently, but it is something that I wanted to suggest. that we could increase the solid waste fee by 30 cents a month, and that would result in $300,000 that could go towards abatements or vacant lot cleanup. Or we could increase it 50 cents a month, which would result in $500,000 to go to vacant lot cleanup. For the Health Department, there are no changes in the operating budget for FY27. We do anticipate continued partnership with Nueces County, and that funding is budgeted at $1.8 million. Their expenditure budget increase of roughly $300,000 is related to pay increases and benefits. For the library department, there's no changes in the operating budget. They do have an increase of $400,000 and that is also related to pay increases and benefits. We'll be looking at all funds again and we'll go through all of our various funds in our operating budget at a high level. So for the general fund, the total general fund budget is increasing 12.4 million. You can see that most departments do have an increase to their funding for FY27, and that is primarily the pay increases that are proposed. The code compliance department does decrease, as I mentioned, and that is the mid-year adjustment where we reduced four positions. And then the planning and economic development department is decreasing. That also is related to the mid-year budget adjustment. For the enterprise funds, you can see the water fund is increasing quite significantly, and if you think back to the total operating budget increase, that makes up the majority of the increase in our operating budget. I know that we've had two other workshops already that was focused on water and wastewater, but just as a reminder, the $53 million increase you see here About half of that is related to debt service requirements. And then we also had increases in operating that were related to our new water source projects coming online. Aquifer storage and recovery is increasing. by $0.4 million. Drought surcharge exemption is the same. That budget has not changed over the prior year. The raw water supply fund is increasing by $700,000. The Choke Canyon fund has not changed over the prior year. The gas fund is increasing by $5.8 million. The wastewater fund is decreasing by $1.9 million, which is also consistent with what you saw at that workshop. The stormwater fund is increasing by 4.1 million, airport funds by 4.2 million, and then golf and marina funds are not changing over the prior year. So now to go through the special revenue funds and just as a reminder, special revenue funds, um, really those funds are determined what can be paid for with those funds are determined by the source of funds. So it's a special revenue source that is dedicated for a special purpose. So for our hot fund, that expense is increasing 1.1 million public education and government fund is decreasing by 0.3 million. The SHOT fund is decreasing by half a million. The Gulf Beach Operations Fund is the new fund that we're proposing to create that would be funded with the beach permit fee, and that is at $2.5 million. Municipal court funds are not changing over the prior year. the parking improvement fund is increasing. And just a note on that fund, that .7, roughly $700,000 in the fund, parking improvement fund budget is to close out that fund. So at mid-year when we transitioned parking compliance or parking enforcement to the code compliance department, This parking improvement fund was forecasted to be closed in FY27, and this would close out that fund. We are anticipating being able to allocate the majority of that fund to the street maintenance fund in order to increase the revenues there. The street maintenance fund budget is decreasing $12.5 million, and that is directly related to the revenues that are coming in. So the street maintenance fund is forecasted to completely utilize its fund balance in FY27, and the total proposed budget is $37 million. For the residential street reconstruction fund, That budget is increasing and one of the really great things the department has done is improved their in house ability to complete residential street reconstruction and so they're able to complete more miles by still utilizing the contractors, but also completing additional work in house. Our health funds are increasing by 0.3 million. Our dockless vehicle fund is increasing by 0.3 million. The Metro Comm Fund is increasing by 0.5 million. And then the Law Enforcement Trust Fund does not have a change over the prior year. Special Revenue Fund continued. We have our TERS funds overall. The current TERS proposed budget is decreasing 2.6 million. The Type A and B funds, you'll notice a shift there. The Type A funds are decreasing while the Type B funds are increasing. So just a reminder, the Type A funds will be working to close those funds out as we no longer receive the sales tax revenue for those funds. We have the new authorization for the 1.8 cent sales tax that is now in Type B, which is why there is an increase in the Type B funds. We have our also Bay learning center fund with no change our development services fund with no change our convention center complex fund is decreasing 2 million. The park development fund is decreasing half a million our tourism public improvement district is not changing local emergency planning committee is not changing. Crime Control and Prevention Fund is decreasing 100,000 roughly, and then the Corpus Christi Housing Corporation had a budget in FY26, but we do not have a budget proposed for FY27 at this time. Next are our internal service fund expenditures. These are city departments that provide a specific service to all other city departments, and so these funds receive their revenues from other city departments to operate. Our contracts and procurements fund asset management for fleet and facilities, our asset management equipment replacement fund. That is also referred to as the VRF, or vehicle and equipment replacement fund. We contribute, all city departments who purchase vehicles contribute to that fund for those vehicles replacements in future years. And we have our information technology fund, the engineering fund. our employee benefits funds, as well as our risk funds. There are no improvements in these funds this year. There's no reductions in these funds this year. We are maintaining current service levels in all internal service funds. The primary fund increasing is our employee health benefits funds, and that's due to claims cost increasing. And then the last grouping of funds is our debt service funds. You can see the first two here are the seawall and arena debt funds. Those two were related to the type A sales tax funds. With those funds being closed, the debt service has been paid off and the debt funds will be closed as well. The general obligation debt fund, this is our voter approved debt, is paid out of this fund. It is increasing by $13.6 million for this next year. I do want to point out there's not much change in the water and wastewater debt funds, and that is because we have not yet issued the debt that's planned for water and wastewater. So once council approves that debt issuance, it will amend the FY27 budget accordingly. The gas system debt fund is not changing significantly. Stormwater debt did decrease slightly, and then we have our airport and marina debt funds. This slide shows some of our main primary funds and their projected ending fund balances. We have a financial policy that this city council does approve by resolution each year. And so our reserve policy, according to that, is listed on the far right column. The general fund proposed ending balance is just slightly higher than it was in the prior year, but this year our ending balance is right at our 20% reserve requirement at 71.3 million. The water fund ending balance, gross ending balance would be 66.4. The reserve policy would require 59.2. The wastewater ending balance is 27.9, and that is right at the reserve policy. The stormwater ending fund balance is 17.9, and they would require 9.1 by policy. The gas fund is at 9.3 million. They do require 10.9 by policy. The Hot Fund, Shot Fund, Street Maintenance Fund, and Residential Street Fund do not have a reserve policy. Special Revenue Funds do not have a reserve policy. But those four funds, ending fund balances are listed here as well. As you can see, as I mentioned, the Street Maintenance Fund proposed ending balance is zero. For the Fire Employee Health Benefits Fund, that ending balance is 1.4 million and the required reserve is 1.4 million. For the Police Benefits Fund, their ending balance is budgeted at 2.3 million and the required reserve is 1.5 million. And then for the city care, this is our civilian health benefits fund. We do currently have a budgeted deficit in the fund, and our reserve requirement would be $3.7 million. And again, this is due to higher claims costs in the last several years. I would like to just quickly remind everyone that currently in the proposed budget we only have utility bill related fee changes for water and wastewater. So the average customer citizen would resident would pay $2.48 more for water. And $1.87 more for wastewater every month. That total increase is $4.35 for the average resident on their monthly bill. That utility bill does also include storm water, solid waste, and gas. All three of those do not have an increase proposed in the budget. This slide is summarizing or providing information on our budget workshops. Like I said, we did already complete with CCW two workshops in July. This is our third budget workshop on all funds and the general fund. Our fourth workshop will be focused on public works, streets and stormwater. And then our final workshop will be on our capital improvement plan as well as any potential adjustments to the proposed budget and a budget wrap-up. The chart here shows the proposed budget input sessions. Just a reminder, we did conduct three budget development input sessions in June and July, and we have these seven proposed budget input sessions that are taking place right now. So we've already conducted four. We have three remaining, and they are on Mondays and Wednesdays. And that concludes my presentation. I do want to take a moment to thank my team. They have worked many long hours to develop this proposed budget. They've coordinated with every city department, 28 lines of business. They've been learning a ton and working very hard. Um, also want to thank all of the departments because this is a huge collaborative effort. that takes engagement and input from everyone. And we do have representatives from the departments discussed today here if there are questions for them. Thank you.

Amy, thank you so much for your presentation. It's a huge operation and I appreciate the time and the effort put into making such a clear presentation and for all your help with the budget workshop. So we'll go to Council Member Scott first.

Thank you, ma'am. All right, I've got a series of questions, really just educational, right? So just use little words, short sentences for me. Walk me through the increased sales tax forecast. What was it originally? What is it now? Why did we increase it?

Sorry, I'm trying to find the slide.

Yeah, way early in the slide. Oh, I don't get it. Early in the slide process. Yeah, these questions will be based on the slide order.

Okay. So on slide 10, we had the chart that shows the sales tax increase. Originally, when we developed the FY27 forecast, we did that with data through February. When we estimated how we would be performing for sales tax, we had actual data through February. So as we move through the budget process, we received additional real data, right, and how our sales tax was performing, and it continued to perform better than we had anticipated. And so we did adjust our re-estimate for the current fiscal year based on that and adjusted our FY27 forecast for sales tax by dollar amount. We are still forecasting a 1% growth, which is what we did originally, but because our current year is performing better, it's increased overall.

Okay, if you don't mind. We were growing at, I'm looking at 24, 1.6, and then 25 was 1.9, right? And then it began to slow down in 26, but at 0.98, and so what you all are saying is, hey, it was a percent last year, we're going to budget 1% increase this year?

Yes, and we believe that to be a reasonable and conservative budget.

Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, I said I'm good. I would hope that our economy grows faster than 1%. All right, just for my education, so the general fund is $360 million. The proposed budget is $360 million, which is a 3.5% increase this year over last. Yes, sir. And 30% of that is paid by property tax, which I think is in a slide. And how much is paid by sales tax?

Sales tax is at 21%. Okay.

okay um and you told us that one penny equals three million in income on the property tax right sorry property tax i want to tell you that um the emergency call revenue is worth every penny i have a good friend who had a fall and was bleeding out says the The EMS guys get there. He said they were calm. They were cool. And he said at one point, he goes, man, I think I'm going into shock. And the guy goes, oh, no, you're already in shock. Then he touched him and said, you're going to be fine, right? I mean, they project calm and a sense of success. And so now it's worth every penny, every penny. And I appreciate what they do. So in the budget is a 3% increase to employees, non.

Civilian employees.

There you go, civilians. Yes, sir. And then the CBA is 4% for police, 4% for fire.

Yes, sir.

Got it. I will tell you that we were at a, I think, Carolyn, you were, and we were there with Kaylin at a Flower Bluff event, golly, six months ago, and they were desperately in need of, some abatement on vacant lots because of the homeless problem. And I remember sitting there going, I remember that budget conversation. We didn't put any money in abatements. It's kind of ultimately nobody's fault but our own, the council. And so I support an opportunity to put funds in the abatement program. I don't know if it should be $300,000 or $500,000, but I would personally be open to a conversation because I don't want to be in a conversation to it. for an area of the community, through no fault of their own, has some issue that we could help with. So you're telling me that, can somebody walk me through the residential street fund future, sorry, and the street maintenance fund future? Can somebody, because it looks good, right? What page is the, I didn't write the number down. Residential street fee. Do we know that number, page number? should be on slide 45 okay so on 45 it looks sorry so many pages so you see this street maintenance fund goes down right 12.5 and can somebody kind of walk walk us through why it goes down just so we and you've told us before but act like you haven't and then And then we have a moment of celebration on the residential street reconstruction fund because it goes up $11 million. But my sense is there's a conversation that's up $11 this year, and then it's not up again. So I'd like somebody to kind of articulate that so we all can be transparent.

Sure.

Well, Amy's getting that, Councilman and members of the Council. So next workshop, we're going to be in-depth on the streets, but we'll give you. Okay, that's fine. But let's answer it now. We'll give you. That's okay.

Yeah.

We can answer a little bit of it. So there's two funds, the street maintenance fund, and that includes things like pothole repair, in-house work on milling and overlaying, traffic signals. So it's the entire operating fund. And that is going down. It was the budget in the current year was 46, I mean, 49.5. It's going down to 36.9 or about 37 million. And the street maintenance fee used to be deposited in that fund. That's primarily the difference. And then the residential street reconstruction. This is where our rapid paving program is. And this is where we do neighborhood streets. And Ernie can talk a little bit more on this fee if he'd like that one where we're using the remaining fund balance essentially. And so it does go up as councilman mentioned. So it's 16 million and it's going to go up to 27.5. Um, and, but as the councilman said next year, there won't be any one-time fund balance. And so that fund will have a pretty significant drop next year.

You know, I wrote that note, and then later on I saw it's going to be discussed next week, so that's fine. Next week's fine. It reminds me, by the way, I wanted to notify my friends in the room that I have a work conflict out of town next Thursday.

Okay.

And I think I'm actually driving during our workshop, so I may not be able to participate. So I just want to give you a heads up.

Thank you. You can write your questions down, one of us will. I know.

All right, so keep going. So why is the hot up and the shot down? Is that generally speaking, or is that going to be discussed in the future?

No, we don't have another discussion scheduled for that. So for the hot fund, there is a required transfer to our convention center complex fund that does increase. We have some other minor increases in expenditures over the prior year throughout the fund. But overall, revenues are not increasing. So we'll have to manage that closely in the next year or two. So we do have our projected ending fund balance for the hot fund of $1 million. And we cannot continue to utilize that fund balance other than for one-time expenses. So we'll be monitoring that.

Okay. But basically you're telling me we're projecting flat hot and flat shot Revenue. By the way, somebody was talking about SHOT somewhere in the last couple days, and I thought to myself, I have no idea what they're talking about. Now I learned. Thank you so much.

Yes, sir. And so SHOT is decreasing because of the seven positions that we're transferring to the new Gulf Beach Operating Fund, and that's critical. If we didn't complete that transfer, the SHOT fund would be in a deficit.

So the SHOT money goes over there with the SHOT, well, with the seven people now?

no the shot revenue stays in the shot fund but the expense will be moved to the gulf beach operations fund which is appropriate for the the the items we would be moving and that allows us to operate the shot fund um balanced right where our expenditures are not exceeding our revenues got it i think you'll somebody was talking about that last just earlier this week okay um convention center complex fund decrease what's that about The primary reason for that decrease is our capital improvement project transfers. And so last year we had a significant transfer for capital projects. That's not continuing in FY27. It was one time.

Okay. Okay. And then tell me what this picture is on page 48. The middle photo.

Oh, that's Clearwell 3 in construction.

I thought that is a really interesting, what's that labyrinth?

yeah that's a uh the clear well is after the water is produced at owen stevens uh it's it's it's put into this this deep well in the ground this is a tremendous improvement that we really need to highlight as we go through these next couple of months it was completed just recently but i believe it replaced the clear well that was built in 1950 wow that's a it's obviously outdated i forget the number of gallons that fits in this clear well nick's not here right now but

But it's a tremendous upgrade at Owen Stevens. That's what they look like inside once it's capped.

That's what this one looks like. I think the old one was just a big, like a cellar, like just a square box. So this has a labyrinth-type system in there. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you.

That's really interesting. Council Member Cantu.

Thank you. I've got a lot of questions. So let's start with coal compliance. Um... So there's no funding for vacant lot cleanup?

Not currently.

Didn't we pass something like $2 million, $3 million or something like that a couple weeks ago?

No.

It was for sidewalks, for low-income houses.

The CDBG funds that were approved.

And it was supposed to be for to tear down houses too, correct? Correct.

that is a different i believe that's a different purpose i don't i'm not as familiar with it but i believe those are inhabited homes that would require uh remodeling or reconstruction or improvement oh wow that was our community development block grant our hud monies that we get annually so we do have money for home restoration minor home repair and and major home repair and there were monies for sidewalks of a million dollars in that budget

I was giving people the wrong information then because I thought it was to tear down some houses, like abandoned homes and stuff. So we have no money to tear down any homes that need to be teared down?

Not currently. Not in FY26, the current year, and we don't have it currently proposed in FY27.

So if we want to keep crime down and keep drug dealers and drug users out of these houses and make our neighbors safe. We don't have any money to do that. How much does it cost to tear down a house, more or less?

Michael Dice has that. Oh, here we go. Yeah.

Yvette Wallace. Thank you.

So good morning. Yvette Wallace, interim director of development services. So it depends on the cost of the house, but the lowest cost for us has been about $500 for the smaller like shotgun row houses that we have. To tear them down? To tear them down. $500? Approximately for the smallest one. I mean, we've had larger scale ones that have cost us to $300,000.

So 1,000 square foot building?

1,000 square foot building is probably going to be about $800 to $1,000. They're not really large costs for us to do the demolition.

To tear it down?

To tear it down.

Really? Mm-hmm.

The majority of the cost is mowing properties. Correct.

The most costly thing for us is board ups and abatement of properties because we have to continuously maintain those properties. So a demolition is a one-time cost for us.

Does the city do it, or we get a contractor to do it?

We have contractors, or we had contractors. Since we haven't had any abatement dollars, we're trying to rebuild that contractor bank now.

That blows my mind. That's only $1,000 to tear down a house, and that's crazy.

Some of the structures that we're tearing down are barely structures, too. They've had so many fires on them.

I'm just saying, I just thought it would be more money.

Councilman, in this year's budget, 26, so last summer... We recommended instituting a fee for vacant property that the owner would pay a nominal fee, and that was going to generate the revenue.

But I think the problem is that the owner is either passed away or it's in limbo with an estate or nobody cares for it, and that's why nothing ever happens.

Some of them are, but there are a lot of vacant lots where the fee would have generated enough revenue. But the recommendation in this today is... a minor increase in the monthly solid waste fee, which they're in the business of keeping the city clean. Yeah. So for 25 cents, that would generate 300,000 at 50 cents.

Would that be able to... can we use that money to cut the grass too now? Yes.

Yes, sir.

How much does it cost to cut a yard more or less?

So right now it's about, for an occupied property, it's approximately $250 per occurrence. So every time we go out there, that's what it costs us. Okay.

$250? Yes, sir. Okay.

But right now, as we're doing this, we're not having no money put to one side for this, correct? Correct. Correct. Okay, so how much money do we need?

So right now we currently have a backlog of about 2,600 properties, 600 of those carried over from fiscal year 25, and that is about an average of $880,000 in backlog for abatements that we have right now.

We need to find that money because we get phone calls every week about tall grass, houses falling apart. I mean, I went to one last week, and, I mean, who wants to live next to that? Like, it's terrible. Okay, so we can still talk about this coal compliance, trying to get money in there, right?

Yes, we can, yeah. I think that fee is a good option. I know we don't like fees, but for 50 cents per month, they can generate 500,000 and it's, and we, and what we hearing is in our pre budget workshops, the three that we had as well as the, every workshop we've had like one last night in district four, everybody's asking for monies for, for keeping our lots clean.

We've got to, we've got to do something with this. I mean, this is like a must, like you have no idea the emails, the phone calls we get and people are so upset that, you know, people take pride of their homes and their yards and stuff. And then you have a, house next door falling apart with, you know, taller than me and grass. I mean, it's crazy. Um, okay. So then I'm going to go back to parks and rec. Um, So we're going to the rental fees for the fields. We're going from, say, natural grass with lights from $80 to $55 per hour.

Natural grass with lights from $80 to $55, yes.

What are we going lower for?

It's so we have I'm currently we have rates only for the natural grass fields, but we will have artificial turf fields available now and so we're creating 2 different fee structures. A lower fee for natural grass fields and then a higher fee for the artificial turf.

Mister Mister dot here. Um, have you got a report back to us about the fees that these, um, people are charging parents and like to, to like all the monies they're making on the weekends? Like, you know, we were giving them fields for $55 an hour or whatever the case is, but they're making 20, $30,000 in the weekend, um, on the backs of us. And that money could go to, um, tear down some houses or something, you know? Right. Um, have you figured how you, how you came back with us with that report? We can get that.

I mean, some of that is private people putting on tournaments, so we don't have access to their records or anything. But I think what we're trying to look for as we move through our progression of baseball field rentals and things like that is we want to put a cap on some of those fees that they charge to get in. I understand that they're renting the fields.

I know they got to make money. I get it. I understand that. Ten thousand dollars in the weekend. That's pretty crazy. Yes, sir. You know, this will be nonprofit and helping the children. But it's a lot of money. And then, you know, we still got to keep up with our fields, you know, and it's just can the city can the city charge to get in? I mean, if they're charging, can we charge to get in the field?

We don't host tournaments or anything. I mean, little leagues would or nonprofits or even private facilities or private companies. I say private, but somebody that rents the field, that's not a non... We would... We could at some point in time. I don't think we're ready to do that yet. You mean to charge on behalf of the city when somebody has a tournament?

Yeah. I think that could be a possibility. And instead of them, you know, I know they got to make money and we could give them money. But I mean, there's there's a person reach out to me and gave me some financial papers from another team or something. And they made like twenty eight thousand dollars in two days. Twenty eight grand cash money. It's a lot of that's a lot of money. And even if we even if we could. try to get some, you know, start charging them or something, you know, at the gate and we split it or something. But that would help our fields. That would help a lot of different things.

Yes, sir. We're definitely looking at that. And as we progress through our baseball field maintenance agreements with different, I think that's something we're definitely going to look at.

And there's really good leagues out there who's trying to make a difference for the community and not charge and not do stuff, but, I mean...

And, Councilman, before we started this process, I guess two years ago, I mean, the leagues basically had the fields, so they did what they wanted to do and had tournaments. That's why we're starting to take over taking care of the maintenance as well as, as we progress, I think we could have some kind of cap or some type of share when they have big tournaments like that. I understand I was charged $45 to park one day, so I get it. And I think that's what we're trying to progress to.

On city property?

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

That's rented to, you know, that we rent out. And that was two or three years ago, but I understand what you're saying. Not recently, that hasn't happened. It was two or three years ago.

Maybe it's $20, but still. Well, regardless, yes, sir. That's a lot. Yeah. I'll come back. Thank you.

Councilwoman Vaughn. Okay. I hope no one takes offense if I target your department. I'm just nosy, and I have questions, so I'm going to ask them. And I'm going to start with you first. But first, I want to say something about abatements. I do think that we have to put money in for abatements. We have to. I don't think we have any choice. That is one of the reasons our city is so dirty because of all these vacant buildings that sit out there. The thing I want to ask you is you said something. I guess we maintain the properties. Why would the city maintain the properties? Why would the owner not maintain the properties when you tear it down?

Yeah, so the owner is either unable or is absent, like they don't live in the community. And so the maintenance means it's not just a one-time mowing cycle, you know, it's three, four, five times a year. So we're not scheduled maintenance, we're not like manicuring it, but As the grass grows in the past, we would go in and cut it. And it wasn't just one time a year.

So what's the solution where we can, if they're not available, someone owns that property.

Right.

What is the solution?

Right. What we had done in the past is when we did mow the lawn or board it up, we put a lien on the property for that exact amount, plus an administrative processing fee. And when that property sells, if it does, and years on the road, we might get some of that money back. And it probably won't.

So we don't even know if they're dead, if they had somebody that owns their property. We really don't know any of that. And I don't know how you find it out.

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, some of them we kind of know from talking with the neighbors what the situation is. But the issue is we need money to pay the contractor. So billing somebody in the future... to hope to get repaid in the future. It doesn't give us the money we need today to do this.

Okay. Well, I think if you hear us up here, there's consensus that we want to put some money towards that because we've got to clean this city up.

Yeah, I know. Councilman Campos and I talk almost every week or every other week on yet another property. So right now the solution is the fix would be this nominal fee on the solid waste bill or we'd have to cut $500,000 from an operating department. to put it into this because those are the only two choices that we have.

And we can do better than that. I know you can come up with something. Surely, Mr. Sinoni.

Right. Yeah, we're going to come up with something.

Get a trick out of your back. You can do it. I have confidence. Okay. Now I want to ask you something. It's not an attack.

Okay.

Okay. I want to know what your budget was last year and what it is this year. I want to know what the mayor's budget was last year and what it is this year.

Okay. I'm looking at the city manager's budget. So it's a little over $3 million last year. This year it's $3.2 million for the whole city manager's office. And let me get the mayor's, the office of the mayor.

Just for reference, this detail is in our proposed budget book for our listeners, our community, on page 109.

Thank you for that. It would have been so nice if we could have got this before the meeting so we could really went through it, because it's really hard when you get here and you're given all this information. Yeah, no problem. Not criticizing you, but...

I understand. The presentation I know was just provided to you this morning. The proposed budget book is... You should have copies of that already, and it is available online for all of our community members as well as at all of our library locations, just so that they know.

Okay. Okay, so the mayor's office budget, that includes three positions, and the 26th budget was $554,000. It's $589,027.

Yeah, is that mostly due to maybe employees?

There's three employees in there. Yeah, that's the primary driver of the cost.

But there's actually more than three employees. Isn't one employee, there's four, and one's paid by Parks and Rec?

Let me have Amy answer that. I know that was the case. I don't know if we changed it.

So we did have a position on loan from Parks and Rec for the mayor's office, but it was put on hold in FY26, so it was held vacant for the current fiscal year.

So is it included in the budget, though?

It is included in the Parks and Recreation budget for FY27.

Well, we shouldn't be funding the mayor's office from Parks and Rec. It's clear that they need money. And I know that there's a position moving to somewhere else communication. So for me, I think that's a way that we could cut. And she still has three. Okay. What do you spend that much money for?

I'm sorry, say it again.

What do you spend that much money for?

It's mostly the salaries of the executives and support staff.

Okay.

Yeah. We do have one in the 26 budget. I may actually have gone to the 25 budget. We froze one of the assistant city managers.

Okay.

So we defunded it, and we've kept that vacant and defunded. Now going on, this would be the third year.

Are you sure in your department?

Well, yeah. So that one assistant city manager position was filled, say, seven, eight years ago. Now it's frozen and vacant. Okay.

Okay, not picking on you, just want to know. Okay, I'm going to take them as I try and go forward. Okay, the fire department. I'm going to hit you all up in the police, by the way. Love you. Support everything that you do, but I have some questions. You've got to love how she prefaces it. On page 17. Nobody else is going to do it up here. I'm going to go there. We love you for it. Okay, on page 17. What were the fees before? Anybody? Anybody? On the battery energy storage systems, what were the fees before?

So Brandon Wade, Fire Chief, I'm going to have our Fire Marshal come up and explain it, but those proposed fees, we did not have.

You didn't have any of these?

Yes, ma'am. So I'll introduce our Fire Marshal.

Okay.

Good morning. Good morning. I'm Tony Bettis, Fire Marshal for the City of Corpus Christi. So these are new revenues. We do have review fees specifically for the battery energy storage systems. for the fire protection systems, but this review would be more of the equipment that's used, the site, and a review form that our engineer is going to look at. And right now we're doing it anyway, but we're not being paid for it.

You're not being paid for it, okay. How about those radios?

Okay, so that is, ever since you've all done it, this has been a big deal in fire marshals' offices across the state. It's in the code that our radios, it's not only for fire department, also law enforcement, inside of a building needs to work. the radio needs to be able to communicate so on new construction and even some old ones it's in the code that the radio has to work and there's a scan and review that happens to make sure that the radio works to get the fire final for the building to open right now it is required and we receive the report we don't charge anything to review it so we want to be able to review the report okay so to review it it would cost you twenty two hundred dollars No, ma'am. So that is a projected annual, like based off of the ones that were.

Okay.

Yes. So I can give you the exact for the emergency responder radio communication system. It would be $227 for a review. And then at the final, at the fire final, we'll do the inspection and that's $466. Okay. And so that's basically for last fiscal year, what we did, we didn't charge for, but the ones that we did.

See, it's important that the public hears this, if anybody's listening. Okay. The sprinkler.

The high-piled storage. Okay. So those are very unique. So high-piled storage, we do have an operating fee for that in our fee schedule now, but it's the same thing that we get submitted a review to review the plan, and we do it, but we're not charging for it. And so this is going to be like all the Walmarts, Amazon, any storage facility that has the higher risk, which is combustibles that are above 12 feet. So we need to be able to charge to review that plan.

Okay. I understand that.

And that one, too, just to give you some insight, because I see how the $10,000 sounds like a lot, but it's $454 per application. That would be what we reviewed and didn't get paid for in the last fiscal year.

Okay. See, that's important that they know what it is. I mean, I wouldn't have known that it's for places like Walmart. The early assistance meetings.

Yes, so we participate in those already, and myself and our fire protection engineers are in them every week. So a lot of departments charge developers early in the project to get consultation and figure out how they're going to do their project. We attend them all. I think we can ask Yvette, but I think we're one of the only departments that doesn't charge So we've been attending these for years and never had any, and it's just our time of being there and providing consult for these new projects.

I understand that.

Yeah.

Okay.

And that's the, it's on average. So that, again, that would be what we attended in fiscal year. It's a hundred dollars an hour. Most meetings are only an hour.

Okay. That's very reasonable. Okay.

And they're very productive. We can solve a lot of problems early in the project before they need that. Sure.

Okay. On page 18, the hazard material, are y'all not charging anything now for that?

So with that one, we are charging what we're doing with that. We're looking to update that ordinance because right now with the new technologies, lithium ion batteries, whenever we have those fires, our turnout gear that the firefighters wear get exposed to the heavy metals and everything else that's in those type of fires. But the code is not or the ordinance is not written clearly to say that we can charge for the advanced cleaning that we need to do for that gear. because it's contaminated, and we have to send it off to special cleaning when we go to those fires, and that costs more. So to ensure that the language is accurate, that's why we're looking to put that in there. So we do get reimbursements for hazardous materials incidents, but the ordinance is not clear about us going and getting advanced cleaning in it, because we're keeping it. We're not disposing away of the turnouts. We can do that. So that's what we're doing for that.

All of those things are reasonable. I just wanted to... check and see what they were okay um i do have something down here on your i don't know what page it is i think it's 32 maybe not yeah um it's 32 okay so i know you have to have these things the classes i'm just i'm looking at the numbers so i figured it up it's nine months you have 49 in the class i'm assuming and that's 241 502 a month to hold these classes

No. So what that is, that's cadet class 49.

Okay.

That's the proposed class that we were, that we're currently in a hiring process for.

Okay.

So that is for nine months of being in the academy. Cause they'll start in January and then nine months is the fiscal year. So that's about how much it will cost for roughly 34 cadets.

That's what I was going to ask you. How many? All right. I saw class 49. I thought there's 49.

That's for their salaries and salaries, tuition, the instruction pay.

Thank you, Mr. Sinoni, because that was what I was going to ask. What does that cover?

Yes, the whole thing for them to be able to go into their salaries, benefits, and getting them in the class.

Salary and benefits. Yes.

That's it? Because they're hired. Well, and then we have to pay tuition for Del Mar and books and all that stuff that goes with an academy class.

Okay. So when you see this, it looks like a lot of money. So the public needs to know what it is. It's a big investment for them. Yes.

And that is straight for attrition. That is a class to cover our attrition for retirements, resignations, the vacancies that we have.

Okay. Yes. Okay. See, that wasn't so hard. I just wanted information. Now the police. Okay. Who wants it? The police. Same thing, basically. 31. You didn't have a whole lot of charges, I don't think.

No, ma'am.

No, no.

No fee or fee increases.

No, I didn't see any of that. Okay, so I'm asking you about your class. How many are in the class?

Right now, we have 34 cadets in our class.

Okay, and so this is basically the same. It's for their tuition, their salary.

That's correct. It's seven and a half months. It falls from this fiscal year to the next fiscal year. They start in July, and they start in July. last month, and it'll spell out in March of next year.

How many did you say there were?

We started at 43, I think I have 34, 35 left. 35 right now, currently. 35 left, okay. I'm sorry, Mike Markle, Police Department.

I just think that we all need to know what this is, because you see those big, big charges, and what in the world are they doing?

No, I appreciate you asking, you're right.

Yeah, because y'all are the biggest part of our budget, and I understand that. And by the way, I support the police and the fire. I did not attack you for that. It was not an attack, it was for information, so... Thank you. I think that's it for you. No, no, no. I want to ask you this. How important do you think the abatements are?

It's funny you ask. I was just about to compliment Mayor Pro Tem and Development Services. So right now, it's super important. Right now, you tie up police officers. We get volunteers to do it right now. We're knocking down houses, but they're doing it on a volunteer basis. And it takes a lot of work to get people together, a lot of after hours. You're spending the money to do it, I assure you. Anyways, because we're spending a lot of time. It's very, very important. So you support it? Absolutely. Yeah, I absolutely support it.

Because there's crime. Homeless go in those buildings.

Well, we work in broken windows theory. We know when dilapidated properties come into neighborhoods, it draws crime. And crime draws more crime. And then, as Councilman Cantu said, who wants to take care of their property? live next to a property that's not taken care of so of course we support it we support better quality of life um there's a monumental effort going on like i can say that wholeheartedly in the bluff flower bluff area um councilman premier pro tem paxton's been out there leading the charge with that with with uh tracy and development services and a whole bunch of folks from my group so okay and it's it's a lot of effort a little little money would help okay thank you yes ma'am it's time

You know, can I save that for my next one? Because I'm not going to have enough to go through it. You're going to say, yes, you can. Thank you.

Councilwoman Comper. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I don't have many comments, but I do want to compliment the street department on the job that they're doing as far as us investing in in their department and being able to get more streets done and fixed, I just wanted to say thank you for that. But again, I think the, and this that I feel right now is one of our biggest issues is the abatement problem. And it's great to hear that the police department is pitching in and things like that, but I also was trying to be somewhat creative, because I know one of the things I'm always harping on is those darn shopping carts. I don't know about all the other parts of the city, but In my area, in our area, we have so many. So I was thinking, is there a way that we could do something with the companies that allow... For me, it's trash, it's litter. Can we figure out a way to maybe charge them for not being proactive? Because HEB, as far as I know, they started doing the shopping carts where they're not able to go past the parking lot. So, you know, that's being proactive. I'm just trying to figure out a way so that we can be just less trashy. I also want to make sure that I do support that creative storm, storm, what is it, storm?

Solid waste.

Solid waste for the 50 cent increase. Like you said, I mean, like Councilwoman said, Vaughn, about being creative. I think we need to be a little bit more creative. I also have thrown this idea about having a community shed, and you said that, we don't have any money, but I think we could if we all kind of pitched in and figured out a way to address this issue, because that's the thing that when people come into Corpus Christi, they see all these high weeds, you know, buildings, you know, falling apart. But I was thinking too, you know, when people pass away, the problem with these properties is that they're held in a state, you know, they're just held in the court system. I'm trying to see, is there a way that we can help them or at least address them or shepherd them to, attorneys that could help them resolve that issue because they just stay in limbo. These houses are there for years. I think in my neighborhood, there's two houses that have been there abandoned for 10 years. It's a long time. So what is it that we can do to be a little bit proactive? I would love to see maybe a committee come together and see how we can be how we can tackle this code enforcement or abatement issue because that's one thing that I know Corpus can really benefit from is to receive that kind of attitude where we help one another. I was just telling policemen here that even I, I mean I live right across from people that end up being hoarders and things like that and I personally try I, you know, we offer to help them, you know, do their lawn, I mean, their, yeah, the lawn and what have you. And they're still, so anyway, we've got to figure out a way to be a little bit more creative. And I, again, hopefully we can tackle, these shopping carts to see what we can do. So anyway, but good, good news on the street department. Hopefully if we can, I think the main message that I want to get out is that we need to start reinvesting in ourselves just like they did. And maybe, you know, the code department could invest in themselves and, buy some equipment and not have to hire maybe a contract person, but maybe just have a few people that are on our permanent payroll. So anyway, just a thought, thanks.

Thank you. Before we go into the next round of comments, I just have a couple of questions. On page 19, we're talking about a $20 citation fee. Would that, is that proposed per occurrence?

That is my understanding, but I'll defer to that Wallace. Okay.

So good morning. Yes, it is. It's for each citation. So right now we currently anticipate that being about 2,500 citations a year. So over time we anticipate that that could generate $55,000 a year towards abatement. Okay.

I'm concerned with that one. I just, you know, as Chief Markle said, we've been, and your staff has been very helpful. We've been very actively involved in that scene. And there's such a wide range that goes into the citations. So I'm leery on that. I agree with the sentiments here. I think what we're hearing today is absolutely an abatement program is a priority. I'm just, I'm not sold that's the way to get there. On page, thank you, Yvette. On page 20, we're trying to increase the after-hour kids power from 25 to 35. I'm gonna be, I'm not gonna support that. That was something last year I didn't agree with either. don't think this is the climate for it i think we've had a lot of fees throughout the city increase i think it's it's it's it's not the time for that so i'm not going to support that i don't think that's where we would look for that revenue

Mayor Pro Tem Paxton, if we can, this one, this has changed since last year where we can bill the state for this. So there's only a few. If you don't mind, let's have Robert explain it real quick.

Sure. Thank you, Robert. So I would just, and going back to Councilman Scott a minute ago, I'm going to make this very, very simple. This is the way. So we have a client that is work with Workforce Solutions. When they come in, Workforce Solutions, helps that family pay for child care while they're looking for jobs or working or going to school. They will pay us $35 a day from the state after our kid power. Now, if you're registered in our program, it's $109 a month. So in the daily rate, as Amy said, we only had it twice to pay. It paid out twice. Somebody paid $25 twice this year that wasn't in Workforce Solutions or in our program. They were just walk-ups, meaning we're not signed up for after our kid power. I have a doctor's appointment, I can't pick up my child, they would drop them off for that $25 fee. We're looking for that $35 fee, very, very minimum. I think over five years there was a total of five people that did that outside of workforce or our clients that we have that pay $109 a month.

And is the $109, is that goalpost moving? Are we keeping that the same as last year? That's the same.

And it's, that's the same. Yes, ma'am. $109. $109.

And that's like a membership for the season?

That's for the month.

The month.

So every month they're going to pay $109 a month. We're going to receive $35 a day from the kids that their parents are in the workforce, clients, and then anybody else that walks up that doesn't usually use our service would be a walk-up fee of $35 this year. So there's no impact to our actual clients. It would be somebody that, you know, for whatever reason needed to stay late.

I appreciate the explanation and it sounds like the majority of your users go through workforce, but then there's still the possibility and the option for those who don't. So if the group here has no qualms with it, I understand, but I don't think it's a good time as far as my endorsement of that increase. So thank you though for that explanation. On page 21,

I'm sorry, Mayor Pro Tem, if I may add to this conversation. I want to be clear for the benefit of our community because I know this was a very sensitive subject last year.

Exactly.

Of that $89,000 that would increase in revenue with this scenario, only $20 of that would have come from a private citizen. So the 99.999% of that funds comes through Texas Workforce Commission.

Thank you for that. On page 21, we're talking about the rental fees. We are discussing here the fee for the nonprofits going up. I don't think with the year that we've had and we've been in huge transition, I think there's areas that we are seeing a lot of improvement under the new transition, but there's still a lot of areas in full transparency that need a lot of work. I'm not in support of that portion. I don't think our nonprofits should be charged anymore. We have a lot more to sort out. We have policies that need evaluated and potentially changed. I don't think we're at the place to do that this year. I just don't. I think we need to continue to internally do some housekeeping, make sure this process works for everyone. then take a fair look at it once things have calmed down. So I'm not gonna propone for that. On page 22, that residential fee, is that new at all? Or is this a proposed one?

Sure, Phillip Aldridge, Solid Waste. So the way it's written on there, It could be a little clearer. When a resident comes in, if their load exceeds two cubic yards, then they would pay a minimum charge. One of the problems that we have in solid waste at the transfer station is the cost to operate has gone up 29% over the past five years. In order to recoup some of that, we went out and surveyed other transfer stations to see how they do at other municipalities. One is through a minimum charge for commercial customers. And another one is a volumetric cap on residential customers. So instead of going to all of our utility holders, we have 91,000 accounts and raising their monthly charge. We just, it's more of a pay for service. Just a small handful of people that come in will pay for the additional fee.

And there's not going to be a change to the litter critter, the bulk pickup seasons.

No, no. We'll still have once a month litter critter. Every second Tuesday of the month. Brush and bulky, no change there.

Okay.

Let me just add, so our residential customers who come in with a pickup truck, there's no fee. What's happening, though, is somebody appearing to be a residential customer may actually be a commercial customer and is bringing in like two, three truckloads in one drop-off event. And that's kind of not within the rules. And so this allows us to recoup some of the funds for really non-residential disposal. It could be a commercial account that's disposing of used appliances or equipment that they've just done at a commercial job under the guise of a residential account. So it's just to keep everybody within limits that were established to make this work.

Thank you very much for that. Peter, I... I I'll be honest. I'm a little I'm surprised I see that there is One option or one opportunity of a map to get to where we want to go But I am surprised because I felt like there was a lot of feedback in the direction of supporting an abatement fee and for you know, I don't want to make $300,000 sound like that's a small amount but in the scheme of our budget and I'm surprised that there was not another option for that. My thoughts is if we propose this 30 or 50 cent fee, it's gonna be a while before that account is actually charged to use. Would I be mistaken there? Like we may start to implement that now, but when would we see the benefits of that? Well, not now, but in the budget.

It would be on the October bill, so it'd be immediate. It would be immediate. And we tried, so as we were developing the budget this summer, we had $300,000 for abatement, and that was before the Friday-Saturday when we got the certified tax roll, where we lost $3 million in revenue. And we had several things included in the budget to address some of these community and council priorities. So the choices we have now is to cut something to fund this So we know it's just right now that apartments like parks and code and library are at the bare minimum. If we start cutting, then it's going to be a noticeable service change. That's why we're recommending this small 25 to 50 cent monthly adjustment that would give us the funds we need for the abatement.

And that's monthly, though, just for clarification. Monthly, right, exactly. One of the things we had talked through code enforcement throughout our efforts since January was that perhaps there could be something for immediate relief through CDBG.

CDBG, right, is that what you said? So we do fund code offices through CDBG. And the other issue is that it would have to be... the eligible census tracts, so it'd be tough to kind of say this isn't an eligible tract, this isn't. So we funded the code officers instead of the abatement services. We'll continue to, you know, look, the budget, we have several weeks still. That 50 cents per month or 30 cents per month seems reasonable. Our issue, if you go back to the beginning of the presentation, is our revenues continue to decline in the city. And we have one of the lowest property tax bills in the state and so it's just as we. As you continue to as we continue to cut departments service levels become parent and we have complaints of library hours even code enforcement officers. Issues at our parks so it's it's just that we're at we're in a tough spot now where things that we have cut we've got 21 million out of the budget in the past 3 years. It's noticeable, but not as noticeable as this next level of cuts that we would have to do. So it's really a revenue conversation, I think, at this point.

I appreciate that. I realize the budget constraints that we're under. I think it maybe needs really positioned that this is a huge priority and that we think we've identified a good map there, but we recognize this is a priority because we invite everyone to come participate. But then I know we have that slide at the beginning that says residential streets, code enforcement, things like that that are their priorities. But to connect that to this is our action, this is how we're gonna get there. to really emphasize that okay um another question is we've had some communication about the program as far as certain areas have extreme challenges on the ditch mowing procedures was there consideration or anything on that so that'll be in our storm stormwater operation ernie is uh can you talk a little bit about that like in flower bluff the ditches are more sand based and Several places around town, actually.

Right, so I think Ernie's adjusting how they maintain and manage those ditches.

Yes, Ernie Delagarde's interim assistant city manager, director of public works. Yeah, so you've seen the budget. We did put an increase proposal there for, I believe it was $4 million. in the budget to take from the fund balance availability to increase that mowing. Currently, we did do an assessment of the entire system. We did define all the acreage, all of it that is either city-owned right away, everything that we used to do in the past, and then everything that we reduced from the network that was the responsibility of the abutting landowner. Part of the assessment was adjacent ditches next to high-speed areas, ditches that are not accessible, hard to mow. And so that acreage we defined, and that was the reason for the increase ask for the increased budget that we're proposing for the next fiscal year. Another thing that we are assessing is compliance to the ordinance, public works, stormwater, is the only, besides parks, is the only operating department that has true mowing capability, whether it's slope mowers or batwing mowers or even zero-turn mowers. We're the only department that has that and we're the only department that is dedicated to mowing right away in the city. One of the challenges that we are having or one of the checks that we have to verify is compliance to the stormwater ordinance because that money has to abide by the stormwater fee. But at the same time, we're the only department that has mowing requirements. capabilities so a lot of that we have to go in and cross-reference so to make sure one we're compliant but two we're addressing the need within the right-of-way because on the street side of business and on the traffic side of business we're responsible for the right-of-way thank you for that explanation to sum it up possible action this year say again to sum it up possible possible action and yeah so possible action is if uh... council approves the uh... additional uh... budget increase uh... we will be able to mo uh... the portions of the right away that we're getting feedback from the public uh... asking us to most of the week we can in we could increase our are more capabilities back to what we used to and then also address other locations in the city that are of the same nature, hard to access, ditches that are dangerous for the public to mow, but yet, you know, it's everybody in the land. So we would take on that through the stormwater operation.

Yeah, and Mayor Pro Tem, to put a number to it, in the current year budget, we spend about $4 million on vegetation management, mowing, And what Ernie is referring to is we'll increase that by $2 million to do these additional mowing areas that you and I and several council members have talked about.

Okay, thank you very much for that. Ms. Amy, I believe that that was your full presentation, right? I only bring that up, one, to compliment you, that was incredibly concise, and two, to say I know we all just got the budget book, so if there's additional questions, we're super ahead of the 1 p.m. deadline. ask them here. So councilman can too.

Thank you. Um, how many, um, houses do we have on the list that need to be tearing down that we already have the authorization to do it? Bar park young to me, the exact, just more or less.

So as of today we have 60, 60, 60.

So it's like 60,000.

Approximately. We have 60 properties or 60 houses that have been through the BSP process that are slated for demolition.

Six, zero, six, zero. Okay. And then how many houses do we need to cut grass?

So as of today we have, oh, so there's the difference. So occupy properties has 894 that are pending vacant lots of 736 vacant buildings with mowing is 795. Wow.

Yeah, we have a big problem. We need to fix this. And this 50-cent deal, I get it, but we need relief now for those people because it's bad. Can you give me a list of all the properties in District 3? Sure. And I would like to, you know, political season's coming up, so it's going to be pretty stressful, so I don't mind driving a little... tractor to cut some grass, you know, and put some music on and find some relief. I would like to do that. And if you could give me maybe a couple houses that I could pay to demolish, I would like to do that too. So give me a list of that stuff. We'll do. We need to do something. And there's people that have been reaching out to me that they want to go out and volunteer and cut grass and do whatever they can do. You know, I have like two zero turns in my warehouse, so we could do it. I would like to do that. So give me a list in my district for that. Solid waste, real quick. Why are we not in the business of commercial dumpsters? Just curious. There's a lot of businesses out there.

So sure. We had the agenda item earlier this week. So one of the slides that I had, the reason we're not in business of commercial dumpsters. So there's three local companies, and you've heard of them all. They're the big guys, you know, Republic Waste Management, Waste Connections. Those are multi-billion dollar organizations nationwide. And for us to go in and compete with them, it'd be pretty tough. So the initial cost for us, we would have to, you know, we'd have to invest in trucks. We'd have to invest in dumpsters. And then who would go out and sell the service? We don't really, we're not, we're a city. We're not really set up to go out and compete for business with, You know, people that do that for a living. So we wouldn't we wouldn't really be successful. One of the sides that I had for us to provide front load service just to the city departments, it was about triple the cost for us to just pay, you know, competitively bid. It's a really competitive industry.

And then there's no fees to go to the dump for residents, right, unless they go over two yards?

Correct. So we did a lot of in-depth analysis. So every year we come up here, we say, you know, we got 136, 140,000 visitors. Yeah. actually only brought by 32,000 unique individuals. And 85% of those people, we code them when you come in to get residential or commercial, so we track everything. And 85% of them brought in less than two cubic yards. So instead of making everybody pay for the extra waste, just the people that use the service.

Got it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You're welcome. I'm going to go back to the mayor's office. Um, so correct me if I'm wrong. We have a total of four people.

There are three authorized positions in the mayor's office in the budget. There is a fourth position that previously was on loan in the parks department, but that was, um,

put on hold and fiscal year to get rid of that position can we give it back to them never look back at the mayor's office again, I mean I don't think 4 people or even 3 people that's a lot for for mayor's office and for being a city manager ran on city, I don't think the mayor's office should have that many people working and this is not a full time position. You know, this is just all part-time community work, you know, and I don't see why we have so many people in that office. You know, they're all great people. We could put them somewhere else, but it's just too many people. I think Joe McComb had two people at one time. You know, I just don't understand why we have so many people in that office and we need to fix that. And then what are we spending in the mayor's office as in for, you know, I don't know if they could do it, but lunches or dinners, you know, flying places, sending flowers to people. I don't know. Like, do we have, is there a budget for that kind of stuff?

There is a budget. I do not have it with me. But every organization has a line item budget, right? So we do have budgets specifically for salaries or supplies.

Nobody has that? Yeah, Amy, on page 115, the operating expense is the sum of all of some of those things. So $65,000 is the budget for 2027. Yes, so the...

What the city managers referring to is it shows it broken out by category. So we have a budget for personnel operating and then our internal service allocations. Um, so yes, the operating budget is 65,000. $65,000.

Okay. How much is the city council budgets?

This is actually combined budget for mayor and city council.

So it's combined for all of us.

Well, on this page, it is combined.

The two constituent offices are in the secretary's budget? Yeah.

So on this page, the city council and the... Mayor's office are combined on page 115. But we do have it tracked separately, so we can provide that to you as a follow-up if you'd like.

You could do that. If you could send to me and Carolyn. And then the other employees from the mayor's office, I mean, I'm sure the city secretary needs more help. I mean, she has a lot going on. So maybe we could transfer them to work under her or something. But I don't understand why we have so many people work in the mayor's office. That's just... Pointless. And then. My favorite animals. So we have no changes to operating budget with CCAC CS right.

Correct.

So we're not trying to do any more than what we're doing right now?

We currently do not have any increases to the services provided in the department.

Okay. The spray and neuter funding, it's still at $120,000?

That's what, yes. So we currently had a budget in FY26 of $250,000. The department expects to be able to utilize about half of that, $130,000. Do we have enough money for that? So then the $120,000 would be carried over from the current year.

And we'll have to keep an eye on that. So for next year's mid-year budget adjustment, if additional funds are available, we may need to add more to the spay-neuter program. And then...

And then on page 52, on the input sessions, it has updates and all that stuff. You know, I really don't think we should have all these input sessions. We have so many city employees at these things. We have, in my district, we had like maybe five people and we had like 20 some employees, you know, and I just think it's a waste of time. I think we need to have it at one location like the mall and have everybody go at one time. And, you know, you could probably gather more people at the mall who wants to. It's already there shopping because come and stop and talk to us or something like that. But having all these different sessions, I think it's just it's it's a lot. I don't know how the island is, but in my district, it was not nobody there. Everybody wasted time there. You know, and it's just I wish all the people on Facebook that talk so bad about it, they should have shown up and and talk to us there. You know, there's so many people on Facebook that have an opinion. They should have their opinion there, too. But I just I just felt, Peter, that we shouldn't be doing all these, you know.

Yeah, we're seeing a pretty big drop in attendance. So we've already talked that we need to kind of revisit how we do this for next year, especially because it's just not. We're all about communication. I'm the one that started these seven years ago, eight years ago, but they need to be reimagined.

I think it's a great idea, but people have shown up, you know. Right.

Well, it takes a lot of staff resources, as you mentioned.

Yeah.

We're going to revisit it for next year and come up with a new plan.

And then how much time do I got left? Talk to me so the time can stop. Hold on. Let's see. 28.

parks washington uh close park security service 239k what is what is that the security guard it's the uh security services contract it would be for security guard 24 7 armed security at the location 24 7 yes sir wow yeah this is a new 10 million dollar amenity and we just want to and we may phase off the security just like we did at cole park not knowing what

vandalism and and just misuse could look like we want to protect the 10 million dollar investment so this is for the first year if it looks like things are safe and we don't have any issues we'll back off on this even through the year that's all for now thank you yes sir do we get a third time if you need one councilman scott

Okay. I think I'm brief. So I ran out of time. I want to talk through the concerns with the police and city care fund balances. Is that a concern for us? I mean, I don't think it's ever a good thing on page 49, I guess.

Health care are you talking about? Yeah.

I mean, if there's a plan to bring that back based on whatever changes you're implementing, that's one thing. But if, you know. Am I going to be here? Well, I may not be here next year. But if the council is here next year and that gets worse, that would be a bad thing. So what's kind of walked me through this?

Rebecca is here. Rebecca Castillo, the Director of Human Resources, can speak to that.

Thank you. Councilman, while we're approaching the podium, you can see we have three categories for our health benefits. We have one separate for fire, one separate for police. and then all the civilians are in a final one. But that one is running negative, and we've been trying to bring it back to the positive. We don't like this, that it's negative. We have a couple of changes recommended in this budget to drive down costs, to include a new clinic service, and we expect that'll help drive down costs, but we've put in more money from the city's side, substantially more, from the general fund and other funds, into the fund to pay for healthcare. And we have an increase to what the employees would pay as well to try to bring in revenue to drive these costs down. Rebecca can talk a little bit more about both of those.

Yes, Rebecca Castillo, HR Director. Great question. Yes, so, you know, unfortunately, Amy had mentioned the claims. So I just want to give a bit of history of how we are where we are today. So from fiscal 22 to present, our claims went up 63%. And that's just specifically in the city care. Throughout the past few years, we have tried to look at how we are going to get back into getting to the positive for our fund balance. So last year, we made 22% increase to city employees premium. This year, we also are doing 15% increase to civilians premium. We are reducing the HSA premium um, contributions that the city does. Um, we are, we are way ahead of the market of what we currently are doing today. So we went back to, um, the seven largest cities as well as just kind of looking at the book of business. And so we were trying to get more aligned in that perspective. Some of the other plan changes that we looked at, um, was next level. So our current facility today, which is we have our concentra, would be moving away and we'd be looking at next level to come in and help. And this is going to be a huge benefit for us because it's going to be looking at employees and their dependents or families to go in at any time at a zero cost to them. So we're hoping it's going to drive primary care, urgent care for these, for our employees. And so when we looked at and We're going to discuss this more on Tuesday because it's on the agenda. But speaking to a little bit today, we did a lot of research for the past two years trying to figure out what can we do for our employees? How can we better benefit to our employees? And so we're hoping that these things that we are implementing, we're going to see that in the next two years. We do have a three-year plan of trying to fund the balance. And so we're looking in fiscal 29 to get into a positive.

Okay. Because we're at, what, 800,000 in the fund balance, and we're projecting a 6.4 million in the fund? Yes.

That's a big jump, right, I think.

It may be relative. I forget how much we spend annually, but it just seems like a big jump.

If I may, Councilman. So the $800,000 deficit is what we had anticipated when we adopted the FY26 budget. We're actually expecting to end the year closer to $11 million deficit.

Oh, Lord. Okay.

So we are seeing improvement with the changes being made in FY27. We are putting about $4.5 million back to fund balance.

So much worse than we anticipated. And it's claims and people get sick and we want to take care of our employees. Totally get that. Mostly. I mean, we want to take care of our employees. I think some of the things like you're saying, this next level, is that a location? Is that a concept?

Actually, it's a clinic. So we went out to RFP to look at the different local, national for this past year. Initially, my benefits manager actually started looking at this a year before as going to health conferences to try to see what our municipalities are doing. So it was in talks prior to me even getting with the deputy city manager and city manager of us looking at it a previous year. hadn't done anything but really wanted to do research to see how this could benefit our employees. And so then when we were working on our budget for this year, we then went to do a more thorough analysis of how this would work for our employees. They're also actually working with other companies here locally. So you're looking at the port, you're looking at CCISD that will actually be utilizing Next Level.

Okay. So... We thought it was going to be $800,000 negative. It ended up being $11 million, which is news to me, I think. You may have even told us about it, and I don't hear everything. But that's alarming, right?

It is. It's in our monthly financial reports that we provide to the council. So it's something we're trying to manage. I saw a headline in the San Antonio paper that they have a similar problem.

Yeah, I don't think we're unique.

Right, but we are trying to manage it, and it's a delicate balance because we want to provide the benefit to the employees. When I started here, one of the biggest complaints from all employees was the health care program. They said it was a disaster, catastrophic. And I tried to use it my first couple of months here. And sure enough, that's what it was. So we improved it tremendously. So we're competitive with other marketplaces here and other cities in Texas. But we do have we have a long range plan to bring this balance back to negative. I mean, back to positive. Right.

Because you're going from you're projecting 11 down to 6.4. That's a big. So we'll all, those of us, those, those, whoever that is that are here next year, they need those that come back. Whoever comes back, correct. Wants to remember that you said we're going to go from 11 to 6.4.

So we look at this every month and Rebecca and her team look at it probably several times a week. Some of it has some of the explanation is some employees have had large, very large claims, cancer claims. And the stop loss doesn't cover some of that? That's correct.

So you can have right now, currently up to date, we have 75 employees that are sitting on our plan that we paid $17.9 million that have not hit our stop loss. So it's just, and it's continued to increase. And some things, it could be a one time. And so, and we do monitor when we see claims come on to understand, you know, are they getting the health care they need? Are they getting the resources they need? So It is something that we look at on a weekly basis.

I appreciate you. And then, Councilman, before we get too far down, the next week, our next week City Council agenda, the contract is on there for next level. So we'll be talking to the council some briefings ahead of that next Tuesday.

Okay.

But it's an innovative program. How many clinics are going to be in the city?

There will be two. So there's one going to be at the Everhart location, and then they are in build at another location further on the south side, Saratoga and Walmart.

Wow. Yeah. So as a family who has endured an MD Anderson experience, I'm grateful for the coverage that you provide, that we provide our employees. Mm-hmm. Number one. Number two. I got it. So what you're telling me is there's a lot worse than we anticipated. For the most part, it's not just life. But do you have a plan to get it from 11 to 6? That's a good thing. And so next year they can go, we hit our target and we're on our way to zero. So I got that. Two other things. Thank you. Ernie, after the week we had last week, if you'd have had the ability to volunteer to mow something, You could have counted on me now You might want to check whether I'm going to smuggle a six-pack of beer in that's probably violates City Code but if you could man if I could just mow grass occasionally right and just It doesn't yell at you. It doesn't say bad things about you. It's just there and then you mow it. So anyhow Yeah, call me Sunday And then lastly totally off the subject. Does anybody working on additional dog parks? I don't see it in the budget is that not because the Bales family is Has offered to donate. Did anybody reach out to the Bales family? I think I totally dropped the ball there.

We haven't heard about that one. Have you heard about that?

Okay, I'll follow up. Thank you. That's totally off subject, madam.

No, it's okay. If there's somebody interested in donating a million dollars.

The Bales family is interested in donating a new dog park in honor of Denny's contributions to the community.

Okay, if you can give me that number, we'll contact them.

I'm sorry. Thank you.

That's wonderful. Thank you for bringing that up, Council Member Scott. And also, if you volunteer, I think you're completely on your own time. So I don't think it's a matter. Yeah. You might have to ask Markle if that constitutes operating a motorized vehicle. We do have Councilman Hernandez online who would like to comment. So if we can pause and go to the online comment.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, so real quick, on the binary choice of raising fees in order to cover the cost of the abatement, we can do better than having that binary choice, Peter. We did away with the parking department. We reduced the amount of code enforcement officers. There are you know, savings from that that I think we could have used for this. I understand that you have some budget challenges from other areas because of the reduction in ad valorem tax revenue, but I think there's still, you know, we need to be mindful of what we actually need associated with that. Secondly, I haven't received the line item budget. So, Amy, when do you expect to send that out?

Yes, sir. I sent that out, I believe, two days ago, but I can resend it so that it shows up at the top of your inbox.

Okay. Please do because I looked at it this morning and I didn't see it. So who did it come from? Did it come from you or did it come from someone else?

Yes, sir. It came from me.

Okay. Okay. I'll go ahead and look through that. Hold on a second. I need to look at my notes here. We had a special convention center shot, I guess, reimbursement.

Where are we with that? I'm not sure what reimbursement you're referring to. Jennifer Buxton will join us to answer the question.

Jennifer Buxton, Planning and Economic Development. Sir, are you talking about the public finance zone, the PFC for the convention center? Yes.

Yes.

Okay. We're still working with our consultant. The comptroller's office, we're down to verifying payer tax IDs and making sure, double checking that we have the right hotels and whether or not we're collecting or they're going to be able to set aside all the money that's possible. and then we're developing the scope for the project development so we can go and get somebody to start, well, just that, developing the program. So we are moving forward.

Okay, when do we anticipate to have that budget in place? I mean, it's been over a year.

So the budget won't be in place. That clock doesn't start until they've approved a project. So we're going to have to go through at least a year's worth of project development. And I'm sorry, let me go back. In the FY26 and I believe FY27 budget, through sales tax, at least sales tax, there's been money approved for that project development process.

Okay, well, we need to get on that because it's, you know, If we're gonna have that funding available for our convention center, we need to make sure we start moving faster on that project.

Yeah, we agree, Councilman. Just a quick update on that. So the state just approved the map, the boundaries. Was it this week or last week? Michael Dice was telling me.

Yeah. We had a meeting and the map had been approved and we were just down to a couple more verifications on property tax ID, yes. But the next step is to bring on a firm for the project development.

Okay.

Okay. The last thing, and I'll have more questions once we have, once I can review the line item budget, but specifically on the, on your pay increases, I mentioned this during the discussion about the, when we had with, about this, specifically on the merit, on the bringing the market rate or market pay up to match the market, I'm okay with that. However, I still think we need to continue doing the merit pay aspect of funding instead of COLO. I think you're disincentivizing your better performers by not awarding them appropriately and then just giving everybody the same pay or pay increase. Instead of the COLA, it should be the merit-based like we have been doing in the past. Peter?

Yeah, Councilman, one of the reasons we recommended this one-time adjustment is that health care costs are going up effective October 1. And so it's trying to, so there'll be three months where employees will have incurred higher expenses for health care. So the thought was to provide immediate financial relief with the COLA. Also, we had less funds available to address market or performance pay versus COLA. I don't know if Michael's going to add a few other things.

Yeah, I could add a little bit. Thank you, Peter. So Peter said it well. I mean, we have the health care benefit costs going up. We have inflation that's hot. We also are taking a look at other cities and best practices, and they all are also looking at the COLAs. We do prefer performance pay. However, with the 3% we currently have budgeted, It's not enough to properly implement a performance pay process, so we are recommending the colon.

Okay, I still disagree with that. You know, and this is not one time. We did this one time a couple of years ago, and then we did it one time a couple of years before that, so... Well, let's try and keep some consistency here and reward our top performers. Also, you know, well, I'll talk to you about that later, Peter. But that's my last comment. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. And I will try to resend that file to you. If you still don't receive it, please let me know. I can have a flash drive or, you know, it's a large file. So I'll make sure you have it.

Councilwoman Vaughn. Well, it amazes me what candidates will do to get elected. So instead of sitting there saying that he's not in here, he's going to miss it, that he's going to mow it before election, he should commit to mowing three or four lawns a month for the two years that he gets elected, and he should challenge his opponent to help him as well right now before the election. I'm not mowing any grass. I mow enough at the ranch. Okay, Mr. Sinoni, you mentioned vacant property tax. Had you brought that to council?

Vacant property? On the abatements.

You said something about vacant property tax you had proposed.

Oh, okay. So in last year's budget, we recommended a vacant lot fee. So anybody that, and there's quite a few, any vacant lot owner, say there's a building that's vacant, they would pay a fee annually to the city so that the city could do inspections of the vacant lot. And that would have generated, I think, 800,000.

It was, it was about 400,000. Okay. Sorry.

A little bit more.

And that failed.

And that was voted that we had that in the city manager's proposed budget. The city council deleted it, but you know, struck it down and we came and we worked with the real estate council. Um, and they were, I think supportive, uh, but we still, the council still didn't approve it. So that's how we were going to fund it in this current year budget.

So now what we're proposing is a 50 cent fee for solid waste that all the citizens would have to pay for people that own property.

Correct.

I'm totally against that. I like yours where they pay for their own, but our citizens shouldn't have to pay. for someone that has a vacant property, it's their property to take care of.

Right. I mean, a lot of the fire calls that we see are to vacant properties. And so we know code compliance goes to predominantly vacant properties. So it was a way to recoup the costs from these property owners that aren't keeping the properties up.

So if that doesn't pass, I would like to see you bring that back because I think that's more reasonable and fair than trying to charge every citizen when we've already went up on other fees for water. Right. And then give them 50 cents so that we can take care of someone else's property. To me, that is just so wrong.

We'll bring that back in one of our workshops, and then we'll bring a list of what we would have to cut. We'd have to reduce something to come up with $300,000 to $500,000.

And if you went the other way, you wouldn't have to do that.

Right.

Okay. In the animal control budget, I'm assuming that that animal control position for the director is

is included in that budget it is yes okay making sure okay i didn't ask about this what was the budget for city council and city secretary so the way that we show it in the book is city council and mayor are combined and then city secretary and vital records are combined the city secretary's budget and fy 26 was 1.5 million and it goes to 2.4 million in FY27, but that is primarily the one-time mandated expenditures. The increase is related to the digitization and preservation of records and vital records, and then the election cost in the city secretary.

I was a little surprised to see that we had to do the birth certificates. I would have thought the county did that. No? No?

The county does do birth and death certificates, but the city secretary is also what's called a local registrar. So the county is a local registrar, and then so is the city. So we provide records as well.

Okay, thank you. On page 21, Parks and Rec. So I'm trying to figure out why... You went down on the feed for the natural grass, but yet went up on the turf because you have to take care of natural grass. Turf takes care of itself. So it just seems like that would be illogical to me.

Yes, ma'am. I'm going to let Sergio Gonzalez, our assistant director.

Okay. You needed to come up here.

Good morning, everybody. Sergio Gonzalez, assistant director of Parks and Rec. So whenever we had the $60, we were really excited. way above what we should have been for years. So when we did a market study, we went to different cities, we looked at everything. We were with natural grass, let's say Fort Worth, Austin area, Round Rock, they're charging 25, 35, and an additional 10 to 30 for lights. So we wanted to come down and make it right for our citizens and just Make it make sense. If you want to rent a field, then you're going to pay what the market is paying, and we're not going to go and overcharge anybody. So we looked at that. We researched it. Again, different municipalities, best practices. Even went to NRPA, National Recreation and Park Association, best practices as well. So we wanted to bring it down to make it better for the community.

Okay, so what's it cost you to maintain that field?

Let's see. Without lights, it's around $28,000. With lights, around $32,000. You're in the hole, aren't you? Yes. So, and again, with the use agreements as well, whenever we did this two years ago, we looked at everything. Again, the research that we do, we do go to different municipalities. We do talk to a lot of different parks and recreation, a lot of athletic programs and the departments. And so right now we are subsidizing 90% for the nonprofits. with this proposed increase will be at around 20%. And within our 10-year master plan that we adopted in 2022, it was anywhere recommended between 25% and 75%. So this is 20%, so we're right around there.

And I don't want to charge you more. I don't. But it just didn't make sense to me, so I wanted to get your explanation. Okay, thank you. On the solid waste... So my concern... Oh, here he comes. Okay. My concern with this is that we have such a dirty city. I hate to say that, but it's true. You see mattresses on the side of the road. You see tires, all kinds of stuff. So are we discouraging them from coming to the dump by charging that?

No, I don't believe we're discouraging them from coming to the transfer station. So they... Again, we have the Litter Critter events. Once a month we go through the cities.

You have them all over?

Yeah. We do them in all five council districts.

Are you still doing the curb pickup?

Curb pickup two times a year. There are a lot of set-out tires and appliances there.

So let me ask you, how much would it cost you to do curb pickup more often? Because a lot of people don't have transportation to go to Litter Critter. Critter Litter, what's it called?

So we do a special collection, and you can call in and get a curbside pickup a la carte. It's $88.20. Well, that's my point. Yeah, so you can call in and just get a special collection.

And some of these places, they don't have $88 to get picked up. So my question, Mr. Sinoni, what would it cost to do it more often? Twice a year is not very much. People get junk.

Yeah, we can get that cost for you. I don't think we have it today, but we'll get it. It would mean a fee increase potentially because the fund is.

Okay, can you just look at it and let's just look at it and see.

Yeah, we'll let you know.

I'm not trying to be critical. I just don't want us to discourage people from taking their trash to the dump because they don't have $30. Sure. And then they put it in their back. You could go all over the place. The backyards are full of garbage, all kinds of stuff, mattresses. And I'm so sick of seeing them on the side of the road. And a lot of that happens in the county because people take it out there. So that was my concern on that one.

Okay.

Okay. Thanks. Oh, have we ever charged for compost and mulch? Is this a new thing?

So we just last year, you know, we permitted a compost facility. We just finished construction a couple of weeks ago, actually.

So this is new.

This is brand new. Yeah. So we just need a mechanism to be able to sell compost to golf courses. It's brand new for the city. We've never made mulch before.

So that might help us if we did an extra curbside pickup. I'm just saying you've got revenue you didn't have.

Look at increasing that. Sure.

Once we start composting, it'll be, you know, seven or eight months before we have anything to sell. So it'll be quite some time before we're generating any revenue.

Well, we know we already have two pickups, so maybe by then we could add another one by the time you get some money in there. Sure. You don't want to do that, do you? You already have that money spent. I know you do. Okay, let's see.

Councilwoman, real quick. In FY25, one of the recurring reductions or efficiencies that we adopted was to reduce the brush and bulky pickup from four times a year to two times a year, and that was about $800,000 in savings annually.

And I get that, but people have to... I'm just trying to figure out another way. It just seemed that we could do something where it's curbside, because some of them can't go, or maybe in certain areas do that. I don't know. Okay, thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

And I do like Eric's idea. I don't like the idea of him mowing grass, but I do like the idea of maybe we do something for those sessions at the mall. I think years ago we did that.

It was, right.

Yeah, it's just an idea. Maybe still do some sessions, but that would be one big one.

Yeah, we definitely need to change it up. We've seen, you know, the first couple of years it was great turnout, averaging 40, 50, but now it's four or five people.

Yeah, I noticed that too.

We talked about this, and we're going to change it up for next year. We'll finish out these because we've already advertised it, but next year we'll have a different program.

Okay. Thank you all. Good presentations. You all did a good job. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Mr. Zanoni, we this year authorized in our policies to kind of make a target, a goal in our reserve balance between 20 and 25%. Correct. Where are we at that? What does that equate to in financial?

Right.

And what is each percentage roughly?

Right. So we were able to stay at the 20%. And that's like $71 million, I believe, Amy, is that correct? Right, so we stayed at 21%, excuse me, at 20%. We actually looked at potentially decreasing it to balance the budget, but we said let's stay at the 20%, as you can see there. At 20%, I'm sorry. Yeah, 20%.

On slide 49 for your reference.

Yeah, so we have 71 million in general fund balance as part of our financial policy. And as you referenced, the goal was a goal between 20 and 25%. So in the future years, as revenues begin to come back and values begin to increase, we'll see if we can add more to the 20% to bring it closer to that 25%. Yes, sir.

Okay. But we are at our policy requirement, which is the 20% reserve.

Right. And the rating agencies will look at this, so the fact that we maintain that 20% is good.

Yeah, absolutely.

And by the way, I've seen some comments that we were spending down the water fund balance. And as you can see, that's not true. In fact, it's increased from 53 million to 66 to 66 million. So we're doing real well in water. I saw some comments that we were draining that fund. And that's not the case. As you can see here, it's actually increasing. And similarly with wastewater, it's pretty close to where it was in the current year.

Okay. All right. Councilwoman Vaughn. I forgot one question. I would like to see us show the mayor's budget and the city council budget separate because they should both be accountable for what they spend. And one may have money left over. And I don't see that in city council. I would think they would have something left over. Can we do that?

Yeah, we can show you that.

And it may not be a lot, but every department, if you just give a little, it helps. So I would just like to see. We'll show you that. I don't know why y'all put them together in the first place.

I'm not sure how long we've done it like that.

A long time. Well, you know, you can always change. Yes. Change is good. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

I think that's all the questions we have. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, team, for supporting today. Thank you, Peter, with that. If there's nothing else?

No, that's it. I just want to thank the council. These have been some great feedback, and we'll continue to bring information to you to help make decisions.

Residential streets and abatement. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, guys. This meeting's adjourned.