City Council - workshop

Thank you.

Let me call to order the June 16, 2026 City Council workshop. And did anyone sign up to speak?

No, sir.

Moving on to workshop items, agenda one, recognition of various city employees and their accomplishments. Is that why we have such a full house, Mr. Stokes? Yes, sir.

Ryan Taylor is an awesome man and a good friend, but that's not why we're here today. We get to recognize employees. Of course, we recognize quarterly award-winning employees and departments, and this is not the same thing as that, but there's special things that happen through the course of the year. This isn't on any set schedule, but as they build up after four months, five months, six months, whatever the occasion is, we want to recognize different people for their accomplishments. The first one that we're going to recognize is our Assistant City Manager, Sarah Koslow. Sarah, y'all can applaud, that's fine. Sarah's been very active in the Texas City Management Association for the past few years, and they started a new program last year that was called the Texas City Management Association's Texas City Management Institute. And there were only 15 or so, 20, that applied for that. And I'm going to let her tell you a little bit about that. But that was a big deal to go through the inaugural class of that. It's something that they're planning to continue at our conference, TCMA conference. Two weeks ago, they were talking about encouraging everybody to participate further. So Sarah, tell us a little bit about what all you did.

I was not prepared for that. It's more fun that way. Yeah, so it was a mixture of professional administrators with municipalities across the state, which was unique in itself because they range in size and whether they're home rule or general rule or things like that. So we all had different things that we were used to considering and dealing with. But it was a great professional development program that kind of touched on a lot of things to just make you a more well-rounded individual. But the most beneficial part of it was that there was an open call to cities in Texas to submit projects for the institute program to work on. And they were projects that ranged from robust succession planning to an emergency action plan to a complete redevelopment and implementation plan for the design of a main street. And so cities that would normally pay tens of thousands of dollars to consultants to do this sort of stuff externally for them because they didn't have the resources or the time to do it for themselves, this program worked on those projects and then provided deliverables for them. So it wasn't just professional development for those of us going through it, but it was also an actual benefit to municipalities in the state. And so I'm really glad that they're going to continue to do it because there's a lot of value in just that piece of it by itself.

Next is Nicole Ganey, our director of finance, and Sarah is going to tell you about Nicole.

That's really why I walked up, was for Nicole. So Nicole has been with us for almost four years. She's been a fantastic rock star the entire time. I don't think there's anyone here in this room that wouldn't say that. But Nicole is constantly trying to better herself and her team. She's currently, whilst working full time and living at home with four children, she's going through a master's program. I didn't know if any of you knew that. She's in the last final stages of the multi-year process of getting her tax assessor certification, which has been a huge undertaking. It's a big deal. She's been tapped on the shoulder for lots of other opportunities and things, but the real reason that she's on here tonight is because she was to She was elected statewide to be the east-wide representative for the Board of Directors for the Government Finance Officers Association of Texas, which is the Texas organization of the national GFOA, Government Finance Officers Association. So that's a really big deal. She'll go through their leadership track for the next three to four years, and we're really, really blessed to have Nicole on our team.

Next, I'm going to call up Angela to tell us about your department's award.

Because I know Jay so well, I made sure to print the letter that talks about this, because I knew he was going to make me talk. My department received the Texas Municipal Clerk's Office Achievement of Excellence Award. They do it on a bi-yearly basis. So we were one of 42 cities to receive this. There are 12 standards, and you have to meet at least nine of the 12 in order to be eligible to receive the award. And the 12 standards that are considered by the committee include records management, professional development certifications, government transparency, elections, awards, recognitions, public information act, open meetings act, boards and commissions, municipal clerk office policies and procedures, other areas of responsibilities, innovation, streamlined projects, and departmental training. And we were able to provide information in all 12 of those. And so I was really proud of my team for doing this. And this shows that we do more than just take minutes and answer the phone. So I do have my entire department here. And we received our certificate plaque. And we are really excited to receive this. And we do get to try again, or we get to apply again in two years. So it's every two years. So we're going to consistently improve our processes so that we can go for it again in 2028. Thank you.

The next two are both in the public works department. So David, if you would come on up. Tell us about the cook team.

So I came here a couple years ago, and I saw Shane in the hallway. And I was still downstairs in the permitting area. And we started talking about barbecue and stuff like that. And I found out we didn't have a cook team. And so I said, hey, we should try this. Every year, we have a picnic. They had not even been to the picnic. So in 24, we went to the picnic. And then last year, in 25, we actually competed and got a feel for what it's like to compete. And then this year, they got second in chicken, third in open protein, which was dino ribs, And last year, we did win second place for art, which is really good. But it's a lot of fun, and it's a great team-building event. And the money that we get from this cook-off and the picnic and all that, it all goes to scholarships. So that's really important for APWA, American Public Works Association. So Shane's the head of the team, but everybody has a role. Kathy is behind the scenes, and she gets all our stuff for the tent. And gets all our shirts and everything for us. So it's a big group effort. And it's a great team builder. And they did really good this year. I'm really proud of them.

Thank you. I know.

It's cute. I like that. I know. Aren't they cute? Pit habits.

Clever.

Our next recipients are the surface water treatment plant. This year at Texas Water, every year Texas Water, and it's a big conference that has a lot of engineers and people in the water business around the state. It's for the whole state of Texas. And so every year we have a competition, best tasting water. And it's all the water plants in the state of Texas that want to compete. And they bring a sample of their water. And this year was really good. It was the San Antonio. They had the guy from the Spurs that's dressed like Jesus on the sideline. He was one of the judges. We've had people from Top Chef be judges. So it was an array of people from San Antonio this time. And so what they do is they get all the water samples together, and they put them in cups. They hand it out just like a regular cook-off or something like that. And they don't know whose water is what. They taste the water. And this year, they had a dilemma at second place. We tied with another team, and they didn't know which ones. They had to have a taste-off, actually. So we got third place. But I think that's pretty outstanding. And they've been doing this for a while. So we were very happy to get third place.

Who were the top two then?

I don't remember. Who won? Bobby Boucher.

So we know who to beat.

Bobby Boucher.

That'd be one of them.

He won Louisiana. It was a team with a G. I can't remember. It was somebody in a small town.

Guadalupe River Authority.

Was it? Okay. Guadalupe River Authority. So... Very proud of these guys.

Mayor and council, that's everything for now. We're already working on another list and have some names on it. In a few months, we'll be back to recognize them.

Thank you, sir. Item number two, presentation of the Deer Park Police Department 2025 annual report.

Good evening, everyone. This year's a little different. So we went ahead and put the annual report into Granicus so that you could see it ahead of time. Usually you get it put in front of you here, and you don't have time to look at anything before I get up and make a presentation. So you not only have it at your desk, but you had it early as well with the posting. So once again, Sheila has outdone herself. She has done a great job every year for, I think, 17 years now. And this is, again, a great example of her making sure there's a picture of everybody in our department in this annual report at least once, some more than once. But it tells a lot of information, and it makes it fun going through it, not just a bunch of stats. But this year, in 2025, we did bring in the new RMS CAD software, not by willingness. It was more of a necessity. But we have it. We've had a little over a year now, still trying to get accustomed to it. But we do have it up and going. The Humane Department reached full staffing, which we'd been trying to do for two years, and part of our strategic plan was to be able to do proactive patrol. And now that we have that, we've been able to do some of that, and you'll see that in our next update on that plan. We also hired a lot of people, six police officers, four dispatchers, two public safety attendants, one animal control officer. We had two PSAs transition from the jail into police officer positions, bringing that total to seven in three years, which that was started before I got here for the purpose of bringing those folks into officers. And it never happened until three years ago. Now we've had seven of them do it. So once it broke loose, we had more come through dispatch by far than we had through the jail. But that's a thing of the past. We've just got another young man that should be coming on, going to the academy in August, coming out of the jail and going into this. So that's continuing. And then the Crime Control Prevention District funded the regular folks that we normally fund, but we also used it to bring our new drone program online. And we finally finished up the EOC Dispatch Center, which was a huge accomplishment getting that wrapped up. And then, of course, we had a lot of help this year with the fire and EMS and ourselves with the Deer Park ISD Criminal Justice Club. If you look down at the third from the bottom paragraph, the students there did very, very well and had a great time with our officers. Our officers had a great time with them, but they were very successful all the way up to the state level in several competitions. And then obviously, I'd be remiss to not point out that this police department cannot function the way it does without you, all of y'all, and the mayor, and Jay, and Sarah. Y'all make the environment stable in this city. And when that happens, you can do a lot of good things. And so thank y'all for that. Also, I'd thank our volunteers. They gave 3,766 hours this last year. They did a Back the Blue event again. And a great opportunity for them to, and LaPorte, their alumni association, to put on that event for officers and get to spend time with the officers and the citizens. And our citizens, I forgot to put it in here, but they did help a lot with the Texas Police Chief Association golf tournament last year. They co-sponsored it with LaPorte for $7,500 apiece. It's the only year we've ever had a title sponsor of 15,000. And they put it on. Not only that, but they went down and volunteered and ran that flawlessly. And they did a really good job with that. And I would be remiss to not point out that the most consequential and significant accomplishment for the police department in 2025 was the renewal of the 20-year Crime Control Prevention District. And so I've dedicated this annual report to those citizens that voted for that and made that funding possible for well into this police department in this city's future. With that, I'll answer any questions if you have them or listen to your comments.

Councilman Lee was making a comment, and I told him to keep it to himself, but he said something about these pictures having some age to them, and I told him if Sheila finds out, he might get in trouble. So welcome to tell Councilman Scott. We were saying that some of these pictures look like they were 20 years ago on some of these headshots.

Oh, Frank Hart. Oh. May need to update those so people will recognize them.

Don't let Sheila know he said that. I took Sheila and said, whoever did this year's annual report, it's awful. I'm not going to say her response. We know he didn't check through. We'll see if we can update those next year, Councilman.

We'll get a current picture of Frank. I know that's one of you talking about. He's pretty brown in this picture. Color in his hair. Any comments, questions?

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

I'm surprised he didn't make the new assistant chief do the presentation. Get drilled a little bit. That's all we have for this workshop, Mr. Stokes? Yes, sir. All right. This meeting is adjourned, and our regular city council meeting will start here shortly.