City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we're going to call to order Mount Pleasant City Council meeting. It's 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026. Uh a roll call. So, we do have a quorum. Uh Councilman Hinton will meet us back in executive session. Just to give you an idea of what we're doing tonight, we're going to move into executive session because we have so many items right now. and then we'll come back out at 6 and start the regular session and then we'll move back into executive session after that. So, whatever we have left. Okay, just to give you all a heads up of what we're doing. So, we're going to go ahead and move into executive session right now and the time is 1700. We'll call the meeting to order. So, ma mayor, um, if I might, um, so you're going to go into executive session under, uh, chapter 551 of the Texas government code, uh, 551.07 for economic development negotiations for the Illumin. Is it okay if I go through this for you real quick? Okay. and then consultation with attorney under Texas Government Code 551071 and personnel matters 551074 for the following several matters. Discuss and consider the approval of various boards and commissions appointments um related to the appointment employment duties of the city attorney. Discuss city attorney candidates regarding claims received by the city and possible resolution of same. Regarding possible adoptions of rules of procedure governing governing city council meetings regarding proposed master services agreement for professional services from Cape Dawson Engineer LLC to consider the ethics complaint filed against council member

Melanie Knight toya and the status of the investigation. discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of public officer or employee, city manager. With that, you're ready to go into executive session. Thanks, Lee. All right, we will. It is 1702.

All right, we are reconvening back into regular session. It's 602 and uh Chief, you're going to give us the uh invocation. Our father in heaven, we are grateful to be able to gather together the high council conducts business in the best interests of the city. We pray that they might be inspired and guided and have wisdom. We pray for protection upon our community that may be a place of peace and comfort and a place where families can uh grow and come together and and find community and this we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Thanks, Chief. I appreciate it.

All right, we'll move into public comments. The city council welcomes citizen participation and comments on all city council meetings. Citizens comments are limited to three minutes out of respect for everyone's time. The council is not permitted to respond to your comments. The Texas Open Meetings Act requires that the topics of discussion deliberation be posted on the agenda not less than three business days in advance of the council meeting. If your comments relate to a topic that is on the agenda, the council will discuss the topics on that agenda at that time the topic is discussed and deliberated. We have any public comments? Just state your name and your address.

U my name is Kyle Moing. I'm not my address. U Good evening. City or Mount Vernon. Okay.

Good evening, Mayor Lion and the members of the council. My name is Kyle Mo. Some of you know me. Some of you been told been told not to talk to me. I'm not guessing. I'm not repeating rumors. I know it because I have the emails. June 30th, 2025. Roof debris and particles were falling on the people of Mount Pleasant on the food they were they were buying to feed their families. No preventative measures in place. No corrective measures taken. I asked the city for answers. Your assistant city manager, Candace Webster, emailed eight employees. Can you please provide this information to me only? If this guy reaches out to you, please do not reply to him. This guy, me, that's not transparency. That's gatekeeping. The next day, July 1st, a stop work order for asbestous testing was issued. October 17th, 2025, your city manager, Rob Vine, emailed the entire governing body. He told you, "If you receive an email from Kyle Mo about OSHA violations, construction complaints, or safety concerns, do not respond. Do not engage. Forward it to him. When elected leaders are told, "Do not reply. Questions don't get answered. Concerns don't get tested, and the public stops believing the system is fair." November 25th, 2025, the night before Thanksgiving, your city attorney, Lee Ree, emailed every one of you. She wrote, "Please do not reply to Mr. Moring." Then she said, "My complaints were really just a grudge against Walmart, that the city was simply in the crossfire. That's not legal advice. That's spin." But here's what they didn't tell you. October 20th, 2025, your building official, John Ankram, emailed the assistant city manager. He wrote, "I have attached an updated copy. The other one had the code reference for work without a permit, and Lynn suggested that we take that off." A city official cited Walmart for unpermitted work, and your director of development services told him to remove it from the letter. I'm not here to accuse anyone of a crime. I'm asking you to do your job. Find out why that was removed. Find out what the public record should have shown and fix it. Because if a mom and pop business did work without a permit, would we take that off or would we enforce the code? Meanwhile, the Texas Department of Department of State Health Services inspected Walmart store 131. They found federal and state asbestous violations. No survey before demolition. No required notification. Abestous, where people buy groceries, where workers spend eight hours a day. DSHS

also substantiated food safety violations. The Texas Department of Agriculture found the store out of compliance. These aren't allegations. These are findings by the state of Texas. And what did Mount Pleasant do? Your director of development services prepared talking points for the city manager. She wrote, "No asbestous was falling. Not industry standard. Not to our knowledge. Not to our knowledge is not a system of accountability. It's a way of avoiding knowledge. It's a way of avoiding responsibility. The Texas Public Information Act exists so citizens can see what their government is doing. When officials tell staff not to respond when they tell elected leaders to forward emails to a gatekeeper, when they alter violation letters to remove code citations, that's not transparency. That's protecting the powerful at the expense of public safety." William Faulner once wrote, "Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed." Well, I'm here to tell you I am not afraid and I'm prepared to provide the records that support everything I've said tonight. Thank you.

Thanks, H. Anyone else?

All right, we'll move into open session. Uh, consent agenda items. Items on the consent agenda are approved through a single council motion, which applies to all items listed. Consent agenda items are considered routine, not likely to require discussion or deliberation, and may be discussed prior to making motion. There will be no separate discussion on the items uh unless council member requests an item be removed and considered separately. Uh item number one, consider approval for minutes from December 16th, 2025 meeting, January 26 or January 6, 2026 workshop and January 7th, 2026 meeting minutes. Item number two, consider the final pay request number eight for Drake Paving LLC for work form for Mount Pleasant Regional Airport Southwest site development and drainage improvements. Consider pay request number 32 for Drake Construction for work performed in Southside WWTP. Item number four, consider pay request number eight to J2 uh J2 Construction for work performed at the industrial park lift station. Item number five, consider pay request uh number 15 to Wicker Construction for work performed in the West Loop wastewater collection. And item number six, consider the final pay request for capital underground utilities for work performed in the housing authority. I make a motion to approve all consent agenda items as presented.

A second. Madam Secretary, call vote, please. Yes. Hi. Hi.

I I

All right. Unanimous. Let's move on to number seven. Uh for the regular agenda, uh monthly financial report for month end December 31st, 2025. Uh a look at a new financial transparency site. Hello, Council Mayor. Um, so here we have the financials for December. We're in February now, but we had a couple meetings pushed. So, here's finally our first quarter of the fiscal year, and we'll look through all of our normal ones, and then I'll show you a new site that we put together to uh provide more transparency on our financials. So, here we have the general fund revenues. Uh we can see that year-to- date percentage we have 27.9% course quarter of the year that's 25%. So that's good that our revenues are above 25% compared to last year at 25.9. And we'll look at the property tax and sales tax here in a second a little bit more. We can see across the board everything's doing great. Everything's looking about where it should be at this point in the year. uh for our property tax. It's still coming in. Of course, I believe later this week, we'll get the reports from January and we'll see pretty much all the payments. As you can see, January is a huge spike in the past couple years. So, it'll have the same spike being that we'll see at our next meeting in a couple weeks. And then for sales tax, we're still coming in strong. We are 9.3% above budget which is real good for revenues. We're supposed to be above budget there and so they're still coming in. We'll see the January one in a few slides. That is still doing good there too as well. For our expenses, we are at 23.1% for the quarter compared to 22.8 for

last year. So of course that's also good below the 25 now. So we got revenues above the 25, expenses below. So that's a good that we're keeping in line where the budget should be. Two of them that stand out a little bit, the tax assessment and collection department, that 31.6, it's a quarterly payment, so it's expected to be a big jump and then it'll jump a few times in the year, but that's normal. That's where it should be. Last year was 36.4%. So it's right on track where it should be. The non-EP departmental line item shows 47.5. That includes a annual payment for liability insurance which we'll also see in a minute on the utility fund. And so that's a one time a year thing. It gets a big old hit but it's right where it should be as well. And that leaves us with an excess in the general fund for the first quarter of $86,092. That's really good compared to uh just under 500,000 last year. Then we'll move into the utility fund. We have uh those revenues coming in at 23.5% which is fairly close to the 24.1 from last year across the board. Everything's coming in fine. I believe this is missing maybe a little bit of the revenue recorded just due to staffing and everything, but those numbers are where they should be. Nothing to worry about there. And then over on the uh expense side, we're also at 23.5. So those are staying in track, not getting out of hand. Again, we see the non-EP departmental line item a little bit higher than usual. That's the liability insurance. We see the freshwater supply that has two months of payments just because how the the pay dates lined out. I believe we paid for January on the 31st just because that's

when the AP check was ran. So it's a little bit higher there. And then we see in the utility department um 10.1% that's the purchase of a couple new vehicles to replace the leases and to get us on uh owned vehicles instead of leased vehicles. And that fund has a an in excess at the end of the quarter of 213,99. And then we'll look at sales tax for January and we say see that green line still staying up. We are now 8.8% 8% above budget as of end of January. So that's very good. Those numbers are still coming in strong. Uh this January number reflects November actual sales in store. So we'll probably see another good amount this next month when we see December sales come in. And now um uh we'll move over to the uh new transparency site. And this was put together to have more open openness and transparency for our financials and just have a way for the public and the council and anyone to be able to go in and see the financials. And these are updated each night. So any journal entries that we did today, every single payment, it'll now be in the new software overnight. And in the morning, it'll show up there. So on the main page of the news site is this nice little title. We have u the total year for last fiscal year for 2425 and then the year to date for 2526. And up at the top of this page, it just talks about down in this bottom paragraph of the slide about how the site works, how you can hover over the different graphs and get a little bit more detail on them. And there's some of the slide some of the graphs that you can click a view report button and get a little bit deeper into.

We'll walk through a little bit of that right now. So we have revenues and expenses that will be shown throughout the whole uh page. It starts off with just overall revenues and expenses by fund and then it goes into the general fund and the utility fund as our two major funds and breaks those down a little bit deeper. And then at the bottom we have our accounts payable section which will do which shows all of the checks that are processed through accounts payable for all funds. And if you see in the bottom corner there's a view report button bottom right corner. You can click that and it opens a new tab where you can go in. You can scroll down to the bottom of that new tab and you can dive into any of our funds. So here we have our library grants fund and we can do the little drop down and see they've made payment to Ingram Library Services which is their book distributor with for invoice this number and it's paid via a on this date and you can scroll over and see what line item it was coded to as well and so all this information is now there so you can dive in and you can see very transparently transparently where all the money is going for each check.

Great. So, that's that. We have any questions? Thank you. Well, and Rob was saying uh for last year's checks, we just implemented the the details and stuff like that for this year. So, if you're looking for some checks and and details on that, then it won't be on the site. So, we have the field on the site. A lot of it's not going to be filled out just because it's before we implemented having more details on those checks, but you can look at some of the more recent checks and see the more detailed information there. But all of them will show what line items they are coded to. That's great. Thank you, Julie. Any questions from anyone?

Before she leaves, I would just like to say thank you for the time that you've taken. This is not it's not a picture. Uh it's not a picture. It's a very difficult uh page that she's created, but goes into great detail. So, anyone can look at this as far as they want to go into. I'll drill all the way down into the check. Again, uh the council's push transparency and accountability. We think this is going to go a long way to both of them. I want to say thanks. I really appreciate it. All right. That's awesome. So, uh we'll go ahead and move on to

And it may not really be just for you, but for the department heads. How far along and where are we looking at the vehicle replacement stuff? Is everybody actively moving toward that? I'll go ahead and answer that. We are we are doing what we can to remove ourselves from the lease program as much as we can as quickly as we can and as with with as much accountability as we can. We are limited as to how fast we Yes, I do know we have a few uh payments pending for new vehicles that should be paid out this week. Yes, we do have some already in, some on order. We're working through them.

Thank you again, Jill. Right, we'll go ahead and move on to item number eight, quarterly investment report for quarter ending December 31st, 2025.

Okay, so this is the quarterly report for our in our interest on our investment accounts and our bank accounts as required by state law and our investment policy. And so we have 19 guarantee accounts and they earned a quarterly and year-to- date because it's only the first quarter of the fiscal year. Uh interest of $40,33424. We have one account with Textool that earned interest of $25,564.551. We have six accounts with Logic with interest of $48,514.15 and two Texas Range accounts with interest of $29,39.91. And so this is just to bring information to council to keep you up to date on um how our investments are doing. And there is a motion to accept the investment report.

All right. Any discussion council? Good. All right. Can I get a motion? I make a motion that we accept the financial report. Is there I second the motion. All right. Madam Secretary, can we please call a vote? I I I Yes.

All right. Passed unanimously. We'll go ahead and move on to item number nine. Discuss and consider the approval of various boards and commissions appointments uh with the assistant city manager Webster.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. So, here are our annual board appointments. And we have the airport board. We have two members who are coming, three members that um have agreed to serve um another two-year term. And we have um the library board. We have two new members. And then we have the cemetery board. We have two new members. And then three from the holdover. We're extending those. And then our parts board appointments that are up for approval. All right. Any questions on that? Is it good? All right. Thanks. Can we call a motion?

I make a motion that we accept the parks board uh new members and those carryovers. A second. Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please? It's actually more than the parks board. It's the library, airport, parks, and cemetery. Okay. Do we need to redo the motion? I make a motion that we carry over the new members and the uh the carryovers for the parks board, the cemetery board, the library board, and the airport board. I second the motion. Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please?

I I I

Yes. Pass unanimously. Go ahead and move on to item number 10. discussion and consider City of Mount Pleasant authorization to issue requests for proposals for administrative services, RFQ or RFPs as a disaster recovery management service provider to complete applications and project implement implementation and request for qualifications or FQ for engineering services for federal emergency management agency public assistance, hazardous mitigation assistance funding administered by the federal emergency management agency, Texas division of emergency management andor Texas water development board. That's going to be our city manager, Rob, mayor. Mayor Protown, members of council. Good evening. We have uh Mr. John McElish here with Grant Works. I'll ask him to come up here speak momentarily. He can explain this a little bit better than me, but uh what we're doing is we're prepositioning the city to be able to receive funds of emergency. And I definitely thank Mr. Mel for being here and traveling with us tonight from grant us through the process.

Mayor council um we're going to talk about grants a little bit. This is not for a grant. What we want to do is want to preosition the city of Mount Pleasant in the event that a disaster is declared in the county where we can move straight to application to apply for funds that'll help mitigate hazards in the future fix damage. pay your employee cover overtime, extra expenses, snow days, ice. Anytime there's a disaster declared in the county, Tetum will release funds in the form of a DR, disaster recovery in the form of a grant, there are different eligible activities. The way it works is this. When that PR is announced, I call Rob, I introduce him, tell him what it's about, what the eligible activities are, and normally we start a process of procurement. He can hire an administrator to apply for that. We want to eliminate that procurement process. Do it one time, last five years. And although the the funds aren't first come, first serve, if buckets of money are there finite, enough applications come in, they'll run out. I'd like to be at the front of the line. That simple. We can eliminate the procurement process. Takes about 30 days off of the entire process. We go straight to application. Put in a better grant competitive. You're competing against all the cities in your region that the same pretty popular program. You don't have to select grant works. We hope that you do, but we want to start the RFP. That's what I'm here to ask for tonight. Allow is the RFPs, whoever's going to do that work, start the process.

And I think we we talked about the way that y'all got paid. Is it a percentage of the grant or something like that? Our funds come out of the grant. There's no there will be no administrative charge to the city for that. There is a match portion for the city on most of these grants. that that number can be that the grant works administr a lot or a cap. Okay. Any discussion with the council? So, Robert, are you going to go over what we need to do to be ready for the RFP

as far as the council? Well, he was saying that we needed to get things ready.

Um, if the council authorizes Rob to issue the RFP, what he's going to do is he's going to send emails out to other administrators like asking for the same proposal on the same. He's going to receive those back score. We'll score those. There'll be a committee that will score those probably. We'll score those and we'll select an administrator. Once that's done, you'll award that administrator. We'll do that in another meeting and then that administrator will be hired for two years and then three one year extensions if you want that. You're not locked in for anything but not think about it that way. Each individual DR I will still bring the opportunity. We will still talk about it openly. What's eligible? What do you need? Did you have damage? You know, all those things that come into play. And if you're not interested, you don't just move on to that. are important. They're part of a federal procurement policy. We have to do it right.

This doesn't necessarily lock us into anything, but it gets us to where we're we're ready to do anything. How many different companies out there that do the same thing you do? There's a lot of them that try. We have a FEMA department and a PEM department that do a very good job of this. working with FEMA and PEM is extremely they do. So you need a strong showing in that I do not expect you to get more than one maybe two. Rob, are you on this? I mean you you research everything.

Yes, sir. In fact, I've worked with grant works in other cities. I worked with Mr. Mcel in previous city. That makes me comfortable. Yes. Very comfortable. So, is grant works are you going to start working on actually searching for other grants for the city or I mean did you all have that? We do and Rob and I are already working together. Okay, great. That is a conversation that we will have at several other council meet. There's lots of Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Is there any more discussion with council?

I have a question. I need a refreshment and I don't think you'll be the one to do it. It might be Chief Mcgra. Um, didn't we get approval for something like what, seven or eight months ago for FEMA or wasn't it something we were kind of delayed on and it was something having between us and the county? Yeah, it was a hazard mitigation plan that was out of date and we revised that which allowed us to get a grant for two generators a little over a million dollar. I don't remember exactly uh that had been applied for. We couldn't get the grants because the hazard mitigation plan was out of date, but we got that in date. Got the grant.

Well, that's so now that's done and we can go forward. Yeah, the hazard mitigation plan for five years we have.

All right. Can I get a motion? I'll make a motion to authorize the issuance of request proposals for administrative services as a disaster recovery management service provider to complete the application and project implementation and request raw qualifications for engineering services. All right. A second. A second. Madam Secretary, can we call a vote, please? Yes. I I I.

All right. Item passed unanimously. We'll go ahead and move on to item number 11. discuss and consider approval of rightaway and easements for the benefit of Southwestern Electric Power Company relating to wastewater treatment plant on 2561 CR 4540 Mount Pleasant, Texas. And that's assistant city manager. Good evening, mayor and council. So, this is an easement for um TWECO for to complete the some work at the wastewater treatment plant. So they need this easement in order to finish some electrical work that will complete the project.

Any discussion with the council? Just can if you would just for clarification. It is on the U 25661 County Road 4540.

So whose property are we are we going across someone's property? No, sir. This is the city's property for the easement. Okay, great. Any more discussion from the council? Can I get a motion? Make a motion that we approve the right way and easement for the benefit of Southwestern Electric Power Company relating to the wastewater treatment plant. I second the motion. Madam Secretary, can get a vote, please? Yes. I I I

All right. Item passed unanimously. We'll go ahead and move on to item number 11. consider ordering a general election for May 2nd, 2026 for the election of three council members. And that's three. I'm back. So, this is just an order so we can put it in the newspaper. And it is ordering our election for May the 2nd, 2026. Um, and it is for the ballot time of January the 14th through next Friday, February the 13th for council members three, four, and five. Any discussion? All right. Can I get a motion?

I'll make a motion for an election for May 2nd, 2026 for council members places 3, four, and five. Madam Secretary, can you get a vote? I I

I passed unanimously. Let's go ahead and move on to item number 13. Discuss and consider resolution 2026-1 denying the Southwest Electric Power Company's request for approval of its proposed electric service large load contract tariff requiring that the reimbursement of municipal rates pay expenses. Authorizing uh participation in the coalition of similarly situated cities and authorization authorizing intervention and participation in related rate proceedings and authorizing the retention of special counsel. So Candace,

so this is um when SWEPCO tries to raise their rates, we are a part of the card. And so what they will do is all the cities in that area the Herrera Law Associates who represents all of us will send out um the notice for us to take it to our city so that they can't raise the rates on us for bad weather. Um like an example is last year when this it was really really bad they came back with when the weather was bad to try to raise the rate. So this is them doing the same thing again and this is our petition to deny the rate increase for the citizens of Mount Pleasant. All right. Any discussion council?

Well, this makes it easy. Nobody wants to pay more, right? I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2026-1 denying Swip Co's proposed new contract rate. I second. All right, Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please? I I I Yes.

All right. Item passed unanimously. We'll go ahead and move on to item number 14. Discuss and consider resolution 2026-2, adopting the social media policy for the city of Mount Pleasant. And this is with our city attorney Le. Sorry. Thank you. Um, good evening. So, um, you have before you, uh, a revised policy, but I want to note that in the packet, it appears that the resolution was there, but the policy was not attached to this particular packet. It was in a previous packet, as you know, this meeting has been posted. This is the third time that, so it's been there before, but I'm happy to describe it for you, but if you want to It's not legally required that you have the packet available to the public, but it's certainly something that you may choose to do. And so I can describe for you what the changes are. Uh and then you can decide whether you want to table it till it's reposted or if you want to go ahead and move forward. So, um, as you know, the council was considering adopting a social media policy that removed the comments feature. And then there was some discussion about how you were going to handle and this was really Facebook and the YouTube sites, right? That's the two things that the city's doing. Uh, and so then there was discussion about changing the way you did the YouTube and so that there could be written comments that were going to be read at the at city council meetings. Then council decided to go a little bit different direction and so now the way that the policy is written is the Facebook comments will no longer be posted like it won't be allowed you won't citizens will not be allowed to post comments on the city's Facebook. The city's Facebook will be used to

distribute information, but not sort of back and forth. Um, I believe the council feels like there's other forums that people can express their opinions in that regard. The YouTube will continue to have a comment feature and the policy provides that those comments will be maintained in accordance with the policy. Uh but if somebody wants to ask a question during a meeting, if they promptly and timely submit such a question in a way that it can be discerned on the social media, that question will be read and asked if it's still being discussed. There was, I think, some discussion about changing the uh time of the meeting so that what was being displayed is and so that's not in there anymore. it'll be simultaneously or live broadcast or whatever the right phrase is there. And so those are the principal changes. Um and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Uh but the other thing at some point you all also talked about there being written statements that someone could provide uh right into the city and that the city secretary would read those to the council. But the council has elected instead to have people come in person and they can, you know, ask questions online but not have statements.

Yeah. And this is just another part of us trying to standardize with with Rob coming in and taking the lead on it. He's trying to standardize a lot of stuff that we have. And to clarify because I'm sure council is going to get flack on this, those posts that we put on Facebook are going to be sharable. So, if you want to share them to another page and start a discussion there, then that's fine. But the city the city website and and Facebook is is literally it's a bulletin board, right? So, if we want that discussion, just share it to another page and and you'll be able to comment all you want on it, right? Any discussion?

And I'd just like to say thank you, Lee, and this has been a learning experience for everybody up here and for the last several years. We never had any of this. It's a new system. We're trying to do the best we can. We beat it over the last two or three months. We hope we've done the best we can do and it's always open as we find that we need to. We can always amend change, but this is I I totally agree that we need to do this. It gives us a little structure where we had none before everybody's work.

Yeah. I mean, and and as we grow and as things do standardize, we're we're probably going to get a public information officer or somebody that can monitor the page. So, I'm sure there's going to be amendments later on, but this just helps us stay consistent, right?

Absolutely. So, council's always free if you implement this and and one thing I would say is the draft says January 21st and of course that's because that was the meeting that it was scheduled to be heard u just before. And so, I would suggest that the the addition here would to make it effective March 1st just to make that very clear right so you'll have a clean start date that would be the only addition to make it effective March one okay any more question can I get a motion

I'll make a motion to approve resolation resolution 2026-2 uh beginning March the 1st 2026 adopting a new social policy. A second. Right. Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please? I Yes. I

I motion passed unanimously. We'll go ahead and move on to item number 15. Discuss and consider adoption of ordinance 2026-1 amending chapter 95 health and sanitation of city's code of ordinances to require the use of a companies contracted by city for all commercial trash, garbage and refuge collection and removal including providing roll off dumpsters and providing for penalties for violations including denial of building and other permits. And this is going to be with our building official.

Good evening mayor, council members. Um, so this particular ordinance has come about um over the the last five to six years, probably longer than that that you might know, but uh the city has a contract with East Texas Republic. Did you guys get a copy of this contract? You guys all have to. So, if you go to uh page six and at the bottom of the page, it's going to state on there um this this part here number 21 that the contractor shall have the sole and exclusive franchise license and privilege to provide residential, commercial, and industrial rolloff, refuge, collection, removal and disposal service within the corporate clinics of the city including temporary roll off con uh off construction. So, currently the way it is now um we have the agreement but we have no mechanism that staff can actually enforce the agreement. So, this ordinance uh today, if you guys pass it, will give staff the ability to go and make sure that people are using Republican service within the city limits and not using other trash containers. And if you I just took I just drove this was literally two weeks ago, just kind of drove around and you can see some of the businesses uh and and homes around town that people are using containers other than the public. So, we would recommend that you pass the uh pass the ordinance. I know there's some people in the audience that have some concerns about it if you want to hear from them. and council. We also have a representative of Republic Services here tonight. Very glad he's here, but he he would be able to speak to anything.

So, one of the things I had this this 21 it so it was in the contract from 2019. That's my understanding. I actually asked about it this morning, asked our water department, Tammy, and she said that uh the contract before this, it was the same thing in there. And Debbie probably knows too. Um, so the ordinance should have been signed by previous council when the contract came out. Yeah. However many years ago Republic was here. Yeah. Jean, was it has it always been in the contracts with

Before Republic got the contract here, it was a waste management contract and it was the same. It's pretty much it's pretty much industry standard. Before 1999, we weren't allowed to put a rolloff in Mount Pleasant because the contract.

Oh, same thing. We can't go into Atlanta. We can't go into Texarana. We can't go into Pittsburgh. We can't go into Gilmer. We can't go into Mount Vernon. We can't go into Sulfur Springs. All these cities have contracts, franchise contracts, um protecting them and helping to maintain the rates so that they're controlled by the council. Um it's just sort of the way cities do. The other thing is the city requires us to have a $5 million life insurance. Uh, not life insurance policy, $5 million insurance policy per occurrence. Um, and you also require us to have a $100,000 performance bond every year to be able to operate in the city. So, we have these requirements that the city put on us to operate. And I think what started this was we went and had a conversation with Mr. letting him know that we had a very large special waste project that's ending that's been contributing a large sum of money to the city through us that's ending and we're going to have a little shortfall on that and we needed to prepare and then of course Mr. Vine starts asking questions and he's looking for ways of trying to make that up and and I just mentioned to him one thing is that the city has sort of stopped enforcing the rolloff ordinance and there's rolloffs all over the town

sir. It's because there wasn't one, right? There was Well, there's no ordinance. There was an original contract, but like the the building inspector just said, there's no enforcement of it. So, and there there never was in the old days sanitation solutions, waste management, waste connections, Republic services. We don't go into each other's cities because we know we don't want to that's we don't want to

dispute our integrity and by cities being angry at us because we're not paying attention. But nowadays, everything is changing. There's all these companies that have five rolloffs and they're going into these cities not even checking with the rules. they're just coming in and leaving, you know, and you know, whenever we try to say something about it, they say, "Oh, that's y'all just have a monopoly." Well, a monopoly doesn't give the city $1.5 million a year or voluntarily donate $10,000 a year to charity in the community. They don't have to, right? We're we're a franchise. We have an agreement that was negotiated with the city in order to have the residential prices down low. You know, I have a couple of cities that doesn't have the rolloff at all. It's open, but their residential rates are a lot higher than what they are in Mount Pleasant because it all ties in.

So these Yeah. So if we were to change the contract or anything that you would expect the residential price to go up to compensate Absolutely. Yeah. No matter who you use, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. It's all It's part of that. So just a standard franchise agreement. Unfortunately, in America, it's capitalist society and we

we the businesses bear a lot of the burden and uh but you know, having been on a bus ministry like I have and I go into some of these neighborhoods, I know there's people that struggle to pay those utilities and the trash and it's better to keep those rates low. You know, a lot of people in here probably didn't have a problem paying it, but there are people in cities that struggle to pay that and you want to keep those residential rates as low as possible. But the other advantage is for instance on the commercial dumpsters where a city a a a and I'll use 7-Eleven because everybody knows that brand but typically there's two or three convenience stores on a on an intersection and the 7-Eleven because they're so big they can negotiate a very low price and the mom and pop across the street they can't. So typically they're in an unfair advantage right there because this store is getting lower cost for services. The other one is not in a franchise. Everybody pays the same at a low price because everybody's joined together to get that price down. Same way with rolloff. You have a contractor who's I know that eventually uh there's a big project coming into town. There's going to be some others around that business. I don't know if you announced that now. I figured it out. But um there's going to be contractors, local contractors wanting to bid on that stuff. There's going to be probably very large contractor coming in that's going to be doing some of that work. They probably already have somebody they use because they use a 100 dumpsters a year. Well, when you're bidding on the jobs, you're automatically at a disadvantage. When everybody in town's having to pay a certain amount for the roll off, no matter who you are, you got 10 dumpsters for that job. Everybody's on the same page. you're you're fair and equal to the small company as well as the large company. So, there are different advantages as far as also the code enforcement. You know, I I have one city a while back that they didn't have the franchise. They had four different

companies in town. The city manager would constantly call me, not constantly, but regularly call me with a problem he's having with somebody. And I finally asked and it was never me. And I asked him one. I said, "It seems like you you're only calling me about this one and it's never me." He said, "Because you're the only one that responds and you always know who it is." And so eventually they went to a franchise as well. Um and and I ended up with that. But but that is the nature of the business. That's that's what we do. So there's advantages and disadvantages, but most of the time on these it's an advantage and it's good for the city because that million and a half dollars we pay every year keeps the tax rates down for the citizens as well as the residential.

I appreciate you, Jean. Sure. I have a question. Sure. Um, it's not really a question. I just need education. Sure. So, I have had a conversation with a contractor and he was concerned because if he had to use Republic, he'd have to wait like twice a week to have his um have his dumpster taken off and he wanted to make sure that he can take his stuff off daily if he wanted to because there was so much. So, I'm I'm looking around the room. I don't see him there, but

maybe other contractors here. I only talked to one that was concerned about this. Is there a way that Republic can come and take off?

Oh, yeah. We have we have we handle very large jobs and we have if there's a job like that where they've got a big track out there filling those things up every 30 minutes. We have a designated driver that just sits and just haul back and forth. Have to request that. And that's that's how that's done. I mean, like I said, we've we handle some very big jobs. We're able to I mean, we're the I mean, we're local here in Mount Pleasant. I mean, twothirds of our employees live in Mount Pleasant. The others within a 50-mi range, but um besides that, we're the second largest company in the nation. So, we have the resources to have the robot.

That was the concern, I think, because of the development that's coming up at Anderson Crossing. He just walked in uh with an complex and then what's going to be built. I won't name it, but we just want to make sure that that's been my question and I'm hoping to hear from other contractors that they'll come up because I'm I need educating on Sure. So, we do we have any public comment question? Would you state your name and your address?

Testing. Um, good evening. My name is Israel Martinez. I am a builder here and the surroundings and I also operate with the rolloff. You guys saw a couple of my bins up there. Um like you were saying, there's other contractors that and customers that can't afford Republic and um we kind of dropped the price from what they do. I have deal with customers that have lost family members. Some houses get repo. Different stories that I heard throughout I've been doing this for four almost four years now. And um my concern is I don't see the point of me hiring Republic for my own builds when I have my own job sites. I have 12 bins and sometimes I have right now I have three houses going on at the same time. I'm not going to wait two weeks. My guys can wait a week or three days. Stuff like that. Um, I just want to know in certain city areas, um, we are allowed to have the rolloffs. As long as it doesn't say rent me or my phone number, I can just drop it off. Stuff like that. Um, but for my pro my projects that I do, whether it's here in town, well, mainly it looks like it's here in town. It doesn't affect me outside of Titus, outside of SE. Um, I want to know what's going to happen to the small business like me. I'm not the only one. I'm probably the only one that made it. I reach out to a few people, but they got stuff to do. But I want to make my voice heard because I know I'm not the only contractor here or that operates with the roll out. That's the only thing I have to pay.

So, Jean, if you if you'd like to, but I was going to add something as well. I'd have to speak to a few other contractors. You know, we're there are some roofing companies that have their own trailer with and that that we don't we don't interfere with that that if it's their truck and their trailer and their job, then I think they should be I haven't read the ordinance. I don't know. But I think that should be excluded. But now the rental thing and you're not using your own truck, then you're you're in the rolloff business. So that that's the only stipulation. And we do watch that. I actually caught somebody because they said it was theirs and while I was there,

the truck backed up and I took the license plate number and it was not his truck. It was a company. So, we will catch them.

And speaking to the contractors, u gentlemen, if if you if you are using your own dumpster at your own work site to to call off debris from where you're working, this ordinance does not impact that at all. you will still be able to continue to do that. It doesn't matter if it's a small dump dumpster or if it's a big dumpster. If I'm a contractor and I'm tearing down a house and I'm putting it in my dumpster and then putting on my trailer, I can continue to do that. But if she's tearing down a house and I'm renting her my dumpster and I'm not with your public service, this is what that ordinance addresses. So, we're we're not in the business of hurting the small business owner. Um, go ahead, John. I was just going to say, yeah, as long as you're the permit holder and you're the individual who pulled the permit and it's your job, then yeah, you can you can't drop it off or something else.

And hopefully that provides a little clarification. Okay, good. And that was shared with a few different uh contractors before this evening. Had several conversations with them. So, can we put some language in the ordinance to make sure that that I think the way it's written 15 years down the road, I think the way it's written should be clear. Okay. And I will say this. Go ahead.

I'm Jeff Jackson. Uh, got a little business out on the interstate. It's growing. Uh, I don't like to be handcuffed and told who I'm going to use for my rolloff dumpsters. very large company. We got a large procurement team that does all our purchasing, but we can't choose who to haul our trash off. I don't know what else to say. I just I feel y'all picking winners and losers. Is so property inside the city? Well, it will be in uh 27.

So, it'll be under the franchise contract, right? Okay. Yeah, I just need to buy my own roll off and own semi. That's what I was wondering. So, would he do you know, Jean, would he purchase his own would he be able to purchase his own rolloffs and absolutely is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question.

All right. Any more questions? No, but I do have a comment because I've been here forever and since 1987, as far as I can remember, there has been some kind of contract with Waste Management or Republic, whatever it was called. And we have, and when I was here, even still working code, there were at least two or three occasions where we did go out and, you know, work those issues, but we always were able to talk about it, discuss it. But another thing we have to look at and remember is to make sure we know where our debris and all is going. I have been told recently that a building was taken outside the city limits and buried on someone's property. So that that is a concern for all of us as well. But I do think with the owners having permission to operate their own because Rob and I talked a lot about this. I talked to a lot of people. But I do think that the intent always has been and this is just clarifying it. So I hope we can at least acknowledge that contractors can take care of their own business.

Listen, go ahead and state your name and your address. My name is Jackson Smith. I've been in the rolloff business here in Mount Pleasant for four years now. We service a lot of people at Republic can't service. Y'all have never heard a complaint on me yet. Republic not start a complaint on me to the man right there. Me and him got the problem and it started a long time ago. So, okay. Y'all didn't hear nothing about it. So, you're doing he's trying to Okay. So, so this came up this contract's been in place for about 26 years. Yes, sir. Okay. There should have been an ordinance put on the books. Yes, sir. 26 years ago.

Yes, sir. Okay. So, what we're doing right now, like a lot of other things, is we're putting what should have been in place 26 years ago, right? But it was brought up about 12 or 14 years ago when it didn't go anywhere. Well, it should have, but when he came back to town, it started going somewhere. There's all kinds of things that have been going. Yeah, there's been very good things coming from Rob. Yeah, there's all kinds of There'll be more to come from Rob, too. I hope so. You won't like the result. All right. Well, I appreciate your input. Okay. Now, what do we have to do to leave our rolloff boxes in town? If you're you're renting them to people, am I what? Are you renting them to people? I'm not understanding what you're saying. Are you renting the drop

the the dumpster? No, they're their boxes. I'm selling them boxes. I'm selling her a box, him a box, you a box. I'm selling to them. What do they do after you sell them to them? I don't care what they do with them. Gina, is there any You're good. Okay. Go ahead. If a company buys a dumpster from Mr. Smith or anyone else and they are using it on their property for their projects and they're taking care of it, we have no with with their trailer with with their stuff. Yes. He still sell us his

So it's all right for me to sell them. Just sell them. Yeah. And then they haul them off with their vehicle. Right. Right. Okay. So, is the ordinance going to make sure that that clarify for him? Well, it it states as long as it's you are I'm a contractor. I have my dumpster on my trailer with my truck. It does not. Okay. Is that I'm just No, I'm just going to steer you the dumpster and you have whoever you want to haul it. If you want to call me to call it, haul it, fine. If you want to call Republic to haul it, that's fine, too. I don't care who hauled it. I'm just selling dumpster.

I don't know about the contract. Jean, do you know does the contract cover anything like that? You're not in the

Yeah, I've got truck. Well, the thing that concerns me as an official is the actual insurance, right? Republic.

Two things we need to clarify. One is does the purchaser of the dumpster have to have their own trailer with their identification on it. Secondly, who can haul that trailer for that company? That's two questions. I think Republic is the only company that all that through our franch through our franchise contract through our agreement. And I did have opportunity to speak with Mr. Jackson. And if you have any questions whenever everything, you know, further questions, just let us know. We'll see if we can some more. Okay. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for your feedback. Any more discussion,

mayor? So, I think the uh discussion here has been very insightful. I think we might need to tweak a few bits of the language in the ordinance just to make clear some of the discussion that's been here tonight. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. We're going to go ahead and table uh item number 15. Move on to 16. Item number 16, hold a public hearing and discuss consider adoptions of ordinance 2026-2 adopting the 2024 edition of International Building, International Residential, International Plumbing, International Mechanical, International Fuel, Gas, International Energy Conservation, International Existing Buildings, and International Property Maintenance Code with local amendments adopting the 2023 edition of the National Electric Code. With local amendments amending chapter 94, section 94.40 40 and 94.43 of the city code of ordinances relating to the adoption of 2024 international fire code and local amendments repealing and reenacting reenacting uh chapter 150 building regulations. Repealing chapter 151 electrical code reorganizing and reumbering certain provisions with chapter 150. repealing all conflicting ordinances, providing a servability clause, providing an effective date, and providing for publication. And that's with our building official.

Yes, sir. Thanks. It's a mouthful. Yeah. Yeah, it was.

Um, so essentially, it's that time of year. It's it's uh the new building codes have come out. We're under the the 2018 code um currently uh and the 2017 National Electric Code. And the international codes include all the codes that you read, mechanical, plumbing, gas, residential, building, etc., fire. Um staff is proposing to adopt the 2024 codes along with the 2020 uh along with international codes and the 2023 national electric code. Um just want to go over some of the reasons why we adopt codes and kind of the primary reason why we adopt the codes. Uh the first two here are kind of the generic reasons to protect health um safety and general welfare as related to construction, occupancy, building and structures as well as to update codes to the latest uh advancing technologies materials. Um and then the last one there is to um boost our overall ISO rating and that's one of the one of the things I want to kind of share with everybody. So our uh ISO ratings is the insurance service office rating and that's the when you go to a insurance company to get insurance premiums uh on your home every single insurance company stay farm progressive they all look at an ISO rating and that ISO rating is based on a couple things. It's based on the the BGS which is the building code effectiveness grading schedule as well as the fire department's um ISO rating. So it's kind of a combination of the two. Um, and so the the way the building code effectiveness schedule uh works is it's on a schedule of 1 to 10. One being the best and 10 being the worst. And the way it's kind of weighted when they do it is the current adoption, the current code adoptions, if it's within five years of the most current code, so we're under the 2024, so it has to be within five years. Um, we're under the 2018, so we're not in that. So, if they came to do their survey today, we'd actually take a huge hit to our ISO rating, which would in turn affect premiums for homeowners on their insurance. Uh, code enforcement, which is the inspections, plan review, and training portion, carries about 30%

weight, and then public education carries about 10% of the weight. And the way it works is the community building code enforcement is graded based on local codes adopted effectiveness of their enforcement which is me measured by criteria like staffing certification and work budgets. And so actually um kind of a coincidence but the ISO's actually we got an appointment with them on February 26th. And so I'm just kind of I just started actually working on this today. So this is kind of the the the stuff they sent me. And so what they're looking at is they're looking for our budgets, our job descriptions, permit plan review and inspection, training hours, board of appeal, uh appeals members and their professions, um plan review for residential uh commercial plan review, inspections, how many we do, how many plan review we do. They even want a copy of our fire hydro. So these are kind of all the things that they look at along with a bunch of other um information, but these are kind of the uh this is just actually kind of the beginning steps. And so based on this and the uh process they go through, you're either graded at a one being the best, 10 being the worst. So the impact it has is insurance companies use the BCEGS ratings to gauge potential risk um by promoting and adopting and enforcing strong building codes. BCEG contributes to safer buildings, can lower overall damage from disasters, and it encourages communities to improve their building codes and code enforcement to build safer uh more catastrophic resistant buildings. So, this is a copy of our 2021 ISO rating. And so, we scored a four. It was actually like a 3.89 for uh one in two families, and I think it was a 3.49 uh for commercial, but they gave us basically an overall score. And you can't really see it on here, but what took where we took the biggest hit is we lost 17 points on staffing. So, at this particular time, we had a planner that came in basically one and a half days a week, and I was the only individual doing plan review, building inspections, and everything else. So based on staffing, we took a SE. If we didn't if

we would have had the staffing that we have today, I'm sure we'll be at least a three, maybe even a two. And so the way it works is 40% of the Texas communities receive a grade of 1 to three. Cities like San Antonio and Austin are one. I think there's only 12 cities currently uh in the state of Texas that are ones. And then everything else is two and three. Uh 50% are four to six is where we kind of fall in that range now. and then small towns, rural areas often 710 due to outdated codes. So far, a lot of the bigger cities in Dallas, uh, in the Dallas area, Houston, and San Antonio area have already updated to the 2024 codes, preparing to get regraded. And so, this is kind of a breakdown of how it could potentially work. It's not always um the premium deductions aren't always this uh extreme. In areas like El Paso and San Antonio where there's no natural disasters, they get huge deductions. But in areas like Dallas and others, it can kind of vary. But basically, um, if you're a rating of 1 to two, it's about a 15 to 25% reduction in premiums. Rating three, 10 to 15%. And four to five is 5 to 10. If you're a six or lower, then you you don't get it deductions in your home insurance.

So, is there any questions on that particular part? Okay. This again is education, John. Yeah. So I know that when I came on and I started listening to which you've been in some of the rooms with us, various people talk about the code. They used to get by with this and they can't now. So um and it goes back to I guess I'm looking at some of the contractors, but I know that that's where we were getting tighter on our codes as far as building. We're still going through that because a lot of people still aren't happy

with um the direction that the city's taking. So, I'm reading this and it's international, international, international. I'm like,

why are we why are I mean, shouldn't we be national or Texas or I mean that's why I'm like, why should we? So, explain that to me. So it started back in 2001 and across the United States they had the uh southern building code, they had the uniform building code, they had uh different building codes in the northeast and in order to get the the country so it was on the same code and not different codes. So when contractors travel to different areas because even cities in the south, they might have adopted the uniform building code and this next city adopted the southern building code. And so in order to get all the cities on the same code, uh I think it was uh what was his name? Tall Darkhead governor. He signed an uh he signed an ordinance then requiring that all cities had to adopt the international building codes. And so that's how we're now. So every city in Texas is under some year of the international building codes. And so that's and I'm going to kind of get into that amendment. That's why we have local amendments because the international codes it covers everything. But I mean, you get way more snow in the north than you do in the south, way more wind in the south than you do in the west. And so, um, you you have local amendments that kind of try to rationalize and break things out so that it it more directly applies to your community. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? All right. So, what I'm going to do is on this part, so there's there's only what I would consider two significant changes to the code between the 2018 and the 2024. So, one of them is that all residential properties now have to have an emergency disconnect on the outside of the house. And what's driving this for the most part is solar panels. So, if a power outage happens, solar panels don't stop working. And so, they keep feeding power back into the grid. So, if a lineman's out there, there's still power being shot back into the grid. So, disconnects on the emergency allows the lineman or the utility company to disconnect the service so that they know there's no way that power can get back onto the line. Now, buoycast is already enforcing this. Um, SWEPO is ready to enforce it. Most the electrician town

electricians in town know it's coming. So once we adopt it, then we'll tell them they got to start putting a disconnect on the outside of each other. The other one, which really isn't a big one, is tracer wire. So tracer wire is currently only required on gas pipe lines. So the new code is require sewer lines also have to have tracer wire on them. So those are the only two really major changes um to the code. Everything else is pretty the same. Some of it even got a little less restrictive. Um, so I don't think that should be too big for the contractor to take. And then so now local amendments. And so why do municipalities, you know, uh, adopt local amendments? Because you have a national standard with different realities in your local community. So the international codes are written for the entire USA. It's a one-sizefits-all, and that doesn't necessarily always apply. Local amendments allow us to pro protect our communities in ways that we know need to be protected, and local amendments allow for clarifying the code. So, the North Texas COG, which is the North Texas Council of Governments, they put out a recommended list of local amendments for the entire North Texas region. And so, what we've done is I've gone through the building stuff, the fire department has gone through the fire department stuff, and we've adopted some of those local codes. We haven't adopted them all. There's they're huge. We we've adopted very minimal, I would say. And so, I just want to show you some of the local amendments we adopted. That's just how they're written on the page. So appliances in exa in atticss for example the code just says that you have to have a scuttle hole big enough to allow the appliance to get out but it doesn't really say how you get up into the attic you know unless you have a ladder with you or or something to that extent. So what we put in the local amendments is you can either use a permanent staircase an access door from an upper floor or a pull down ladder and that allows the homeowner to get in the attic allows the contractor to get in the attic and allows us as inspectors to get into the attic.

Yeah. When you say appliances in the attic, hot water heater being one sometimes. Okay. Usually it's a a furnace, but sometimes it's a hot water heater, too. Yeah. Why someone would have to put their hot water heater in their attic?

Oh, it's not required. It's just a lot of times contractors do it to save space. So, they they don't have a place downstairs, especially if they have a carport and they don't have a garage. Usually, if they have a garage, they'll put it in the garage. But if there's no carport, there's really I mean if there's no garage, there may not be anywhere else to put it in the house. So they'll put it in the attic. It's not a requirement. Another local amendment is fire pits. So the way the fire code uh is worded is you're not actually allowed to do any burning outside outside at all. I know we allow it here in our town, but technically outdoor burning is banned by the code. Um, so in order to allow people to do um to enjoy the evenings on a cold night, have a little fire outside, that kind of thing, uh, me and the chief got together and we came up with requirements for a fire pit, which basically says you can't be within 10 feet of combustibles and it gives dimensions, which is 3 feet in diameter um, for the fire pit. So, it allows people to build a fire pit next to their pool or whatever they want to do. Um, another local amendment is uh, an addition or a carport. So, if you do an addition where you actually add square footage to your home um or you add a carport, then we the local amendment says that you have to meet the minimum parking requirements. And so, I just use this house as an example. You can see the before picture. And then when he added his carport, he had to put in the driveway. So, then you get kind of a um front of the home like you see there. And essentially, it kind of cleans up the streets, has people parking on concrete rather than dirt and grass and dragging mud into the street when it rains. Um and so that's another form of local there. Any questions on those?

Mayor, you're required to have a public hearing on this because

Yeah, I got a couple more things. So, because the the ordinance the the way the ordinance is is long. So, one of the things I want to show you on chapter 150 is the reason why it was deleted and amended. If you have this sheet here, um so we went through the way it was kind of organized uh kind of badly. it was hard to find things. Contractors, um, architects, engineers couldn't really find things because we had adopted codes kind of throughout the, um, chapter. And then we had local amen local amendments in one section and they were all jumbled together. So, you couldn't really break them out. So, if you look at the way the new 150 is written, we have the uh, and I'll just kind of show it here. We have the building codes and then the adopted code, then the local amendment right under it, which affects that particular code. So, you have fuel gas code and the amendments for the fuel gas code. um mechanical code, amendments for the mechanical code and so forth. So, it makes it a lot easier for the uh contractor architect engineer to find what our local amendments are. Also, there was a lot of stuff in chapter 50. Some of it was about trench safety, which is now covered by Texas Health and Safety Code, chapter 758. Um there was other stuff in here about plumbing applications and provisions. Um that's all covered by the plumbing board now. So, it doesn't necessarily need to be in our code because we have to follow the plumbing board's rules and regulations. And then for chapter 150, it was the electrical code. That code was written in 1987 for our city. In 2004, the TDLR took over the electrical code and put the rules in place for licensing and what's required for a contractor and those type of things. So, our electrical code is obsolete. So, there's no reason to have it. Everything goes to the TDL, which is the Texas Department of License Regulations. So, that's why 150 was deleted, and that's why 150 was kind of overrated. So for the the local codes that you'll be coming up for the city, do those go before the council before they get put in place or that

so that's part of this this package here tonight. And so I mean if you if that and that's one of the things if you want to read through them and pass this on another night. Um we do have the ISO lady coming on the 26. So I'd like to get it passed as quickly as possible. But um if there's something you wanted to add to it or something to that extent you certainly could. Um, but the way they're written out, they're essentially the same as they were when we adopted them back in 2020. Nothing's changed on the local amendments. Okay, here we go. Okay.

I'm not so much the building code I understand and I understand what the codes are for and we know they're supposed to be enforced. What I've run into and recently um is more with some issues with building and the zoning requirements which city code ordinances and we can either discuss it now or later, but we need to discuss. No, there's definitely some ordinances that need to be looked at, revised. Absolutely. So, can we approve it with the city codes taken out so at least he can get that? These are city codes. These are

Yeah, these are local amendments that are just amendments to the building code itself. She's talking about actual ordinance like the zoning code or or things like that that are actually put in place by the city and adopted by the city. But those will be two separate conversations. Yes. Well, I and I don't know if the council feels the same, but I'd like to look over the city codes that are put in place. I was a little concerned because I live on the the east side and I think that a lot of people that have single car driveways, if they wanted to make their property look better and put up a carport or something like that, if it's like a single driveway, are they going to be required to I mean, some of them it may pick up their yard.

Yeah, it really it just depends like the u if if it is long enough typically it can fit two cars. It's it's not typically an issue. Um I don't recall much of that coming about to be honest with yeah I don't know um if that's most people want a carport big enough to cover a couple cars and so our standard carport is 20 by 20 so that's two cars side by side able to get out each car um a typical parking spot is 9 ft wide so 20 by 20 kind of accommodates the two vehicles and are they required to put in like a concrete or drive so that is a requirement yeah if they don't have existing concrete because our uh general designs and standards engineering design incentives does require concrete so then we ask them to bring it up to our current codes which is our engineering designs and standards.

When we come back and we're in where the council gets to comment, I want to discuss 155. Okay. Tonight Oh, okay. And this is a public this is a public hearing.

All right. I will just add one one I guess closing statement is that we we want to be development friendly. the city does. We want development, but we want to make sure that that development is safe and adds quality of life and adds value to the city. So, that's that's why we're we're pushing these obviously the the bills, not the bills, but the um for the ISO improvement V6 and to get the uh the building code in and then also we are looking at subdivision ordinance. That will be a separate conversation, but we want to maintain that we are development friendly, but we want to make sure that that And and the complaints I'm getting are I want to be developmentally friendly. I love this city, but I also want us where we can't use common sense or where our own planning issues or problem, our own planning uh ordinance doesn't differentiate between warehouse or storage building. That is what I want to address when we come back because I know I'm not supposed to do it now. All right. So, we'll open the public hearing.

All right. Yep. Open the public hearing. We What's guess we ask for any input? All right. public input on that. Close it. All right. We'll go ahead and close the public hearing. And uh so you wanted to wait table that until after executive.

So okay. So, um, I don't think this item covers what I think you want to talk about, right? And so, in your comments, you can really suggest your council comments. You really shouldn't be getting into a substantive discussion, but if you just want to mention what you want to add to another agenda, it's an agenda item, Lee. I'm going to put it on the agenda or ask for it to be on the agenda so that it's done. All right. So, can we vote on this tonight? It says, "Yeah, after we closed it." Yeah. Yeah, we would like like a vote on it. And and when you go through and you look at it, if there's something want to be revised, we can always bring it back and get it revised.

That's great. All right. That's perfect. Thank any more discussion from the council. All right. Can I get a motion? I will make the motion that we approve ordinance. Is it on the wrong I'll make a motion that we approve the building code requirements for the uh international building code for all the books that John needs. All right. Can I get a second? Before you get your second, it's me. Yes.

Can you reference ordinance 2026-2? 2026-2. All right. Second. A second. All right. We call them. I I I Yes.

All right. Motion passed unanimously. Let's go ahead and move on to item number 17. Discuss and consider ordinances. Ordinance 2026-3 amending the eastern portion of PD-2 uh plan development district number two on 53.84 84 acres of Anderson crossing amending exhibit uh B sub area map. Use boundaries allowing commercial construction area flexibility amending section 4 architectural standards for facid maximum length uh to to 600 ft maximum and uh lighting parking and signage standards for entry signs loca location and height of that portion of the PD which lies to to the east of US 271 and contains the following property IDs 7383 and 6565 owned by Creative Destination Destinations Development LLC recorded as instrument number 201648 and Real Property Records of Titus County, Texas, City of Mount Pleasant, Texas and generally located at the northwest side of the intersection of Rotan Road and West Ferguson. road highway 271 east of Tankersley. And that is going to be our

Thank you, mayor and council. I'm sorry for that long long um description, but it is somewhat complicated. Um to describe, but it's simple housekeeping. Basically, um the plan development number of two for Anderson Town Crossing was approved um uh in 2024. It actually had two iterations before previous councils. Um, and this is just to amend very slightly some of the provisions in the portion um along 271 for this project for the developer because he now has a very exciting retail um applicant and there was no wiggle room because a plan development basically has set requirements as if it's a solid zoning. So, we had to come forward. Um, So, this would allow expanded retail fixibility to site the um new retail store that was denied or had. So, when they did that initial zoning map and plan development map, it didn't actually they didn't know what clients were coming. Um so, Academy is uh the national retailer. Um that news has been out for a couple of weeks. um the commercial area that was described in the map did not extend far enough back on site for their uses. Um and that would trigger the PD amendment zoning case. There was a 100 foot uh buffer that I could approve but it was it was in excess of 100 ft. So it had to come to you again PNZ and to you. Um, additionally, the way that they are uh doing that init that whole subdivision with a big anchor store and another

store next to it, there was a 450 foot uh length facade limit built into the old code in the old PD. And so, um, looking at what they're proposing, we're ex extending that, um, to 600 and I think it's 625. They also had asked for two signs um that did exceeded the height requirements on of the city and what was originally proposed. Um the retailer would uh they typically require and have asked specifically for 100 foot sign height and the thousand square feet for all the development signage on each one. So that would be not just them but every single one of the anchor tenants for the PD. So just to kind of orient you to the study of course you're familiar with it on the left hand side on the right the area we're talking about is circled in purple which is um basically to the north of Rotan and along um the western side of 271 and uh south of Outwoods. So some just some case history. Um this the entire site was uh the subject of the plan development. I don't know if anybody on the council was here when that whole uh vision came forward. Then um the Chris's site came uh came about and the multif family along Tankersley and some of you were here for that. Um and so we are actually underway on the a multif family portion along Tankersley but this is just for the part um that is purple um which is where uh the retailer the academy wants to locate the future land use map just to kind of um introduce you or reintroduce you to that has the entire area which was

designated and was underway I think at the time that the future land use plan and was was created and our comprehensive plan it was designated as mixeduse center. So this change is not really doing much. Um it was already multif family and commercial just enlarging the the retail commercial portion. The changes are very slight and they have more to do with where the commercial is in in relation to the multif family. Initially the multif family was shown to be in a larger part of the light green area that is now primarily going to be allocated as retail. There is multif family on the other portion as I said the apartments are underway along tanker but these totals did change. This was from the PD. The original PD had had some slightly different acreages and descriptions and so this was the new this will be the new um description for each one of those parcels. So, the changes for this uh it's a long long document, but the changes are few and far between. The um circled area that changed commercial areas. it it shoved the buildings back and you'll see that there's a long building there instead of what had been um visioned at the time was just individual uh establishments but this is you know more modern and you see sometimes the big anchors are right next to each other so that uh PD change allows that coming forward we don't have a building permit yet but that's that's what they're visioning um the extended facade len of course is is what I'm referring to to make it longer across the front. Um, and then the sign locations,

um, they weren't called out in the first iteration, but and but the size and the height, um, were smaller than the 100 foot high, thousand square feet, which would uh, of course include all of the, uh, the, um, the the buildings, the vendors, I mean the the establishments. So along Tankerously that sign would also point to uh the entrance for um academy and the academy sign side would also point to um whatever goes in 12 13 and 14 because that's basically seeing it's going to be um uh the in and out for the entire so it's going to be an entire development that is cohesive once it's built and finished. We did notify all the property owners within 200 feet of this portion and there were 18 of them. I did get a response, a negative response from one property owner on road 10 road shown in the red X. Um it was uh noticed as as per state law on December 24th for the public hearing and and the applicant also erected a zoning sign. So this is the notice um from 1712 Rotan uh Road, Miss Stag. Um she actually um in her comments was addressing the um effect on her property from the southern portion that is not actually part of this BD change. Um but it was included since she was uh contiguous to a piece of the property along the Atwood Street. So that's why she was noticed specifically. Um, city staff is recommending approval based on the fact that the current PD is in place and these are minimal changes

that it is compatible with the original intent of that plan development um and the development itself. There are utilities available for the that site and that site and there's no detrimental impact on you on existing uses. So, um, on January 13th, the planning and zoning commission, um, had a three to zero vote. We had one that had to be reduced and one absent member. Um, but they did vote to approve and recommend to you this project. Any questions? Um, Mr. Anderson is here as the um, if you have any specific questions that I can't answer.

So, is this just a standard height of a normal signage nowadays.

So, so I've I've been around the state with some of these higher level uh developers and retailers and 100 feet there are several companies that are known to absolutely they must have 100 foot sign. Um academy is falls in there. Um we did look at survey. I did go and look at the area because 100 foot sign is fairly high. However, um if you're familiar with the area, Lowe's is right across the street along third I30. Their sign is um it's actually higher. It's it's around 80 85 ft, but where it's so this height of a sign is from the ground to the top. The ground there is quite a bit higher than both where the sign will go at road 10 and also the other one down by in that entrance that's lower. So effectively the height of the signs are going to be in the air pretty much even. That makes sense. It'll look the same. So it's not it's not as extreme as it sounds. You know, I I wanted to kind of look at that really carefully u from point of view of what kind of impact on the community. And I I don't believe that with a development this size and um this this many exciting businesses, you're going to need a lot of square footage

to advertise each one of those pad sites. Those are going to be pretty uh you know impactful to the community. So it fits with the kind of signage and the height of similar developments in other areas particularly along an interchange. So that's so maybe something we need to do to update the whole code then probably right on the highway with the signage with the signage being able to be that high so we don't have to so they'll be within a range right I mean if they're on the highway we probably want any business that's that big to be able to have signage that's 100 feet I would think on the highway

I think you you could make the case because this is a plan development and it is specific a special case. Typically, it those are really big developers like Lowe's, like Academy, like BIES. Bies is one that absolutely will not come to your city if you won't approve their beaver on hold. And so there, but Academy is also known to be a stickler for what they want. They know what works. They've got it. And it's not, you know, they're not cherrypicking and picking on communities. They do that everywhere. If you look at all the academy signs, you're Oh, I figure it's pretty standard. Yeah.

I I would not recommend that we change our sign heights to 100 foot maximum just because everybody doesn't need that. Okay. You know, that's what I was asking. All right. What is the current sign height? I believe it's 405. Yeah.

And the other question is the maximum sign square footage. What is the current now? Because a thousand square feet. 000 square feet is what they're proposing. Um it the the way it was in the code I believe it might have been I don't remember if it was 400. Our code addresses a a multi-tenant signs. It would be a multi-tenant sign and uh it I think it's somewhere around 350 or four. This one was not really outside the bounds. They didn't really look at when they wrote the PD. they just kind of took what we had and just put it in there. And now we have specific actual um clients that are needing that and the pad sites and um with one really exciting tenant, anchor tenant, you're probably going to get more and they're going to also need signage. That's where the thousand square foot that's a maximum. That doesn't mean that they're it's going to be everybody that's on there and how how big they want their signs within that. So it might be 800 or could be 700 until another big tenant comes. It kind of would it wouldn't be a thousand right out the of the box. They're not going to have a thousand square foot sign. Academy is not. That's not what that is. Yeah.

Well, let me ask you this then. If you have this sign out there and someone wants to put their own sign in, are you are we going to deal with that? They're going to be on that sign. Yeah. Sounds pretty standard, right? I mean, that sounds good to me. Any more discussion? I make a motion to approve ordinance 2026-3 amending the PD amendment and map changes as presented.

Need a second. A second. Madam Secretary, can we get a vote? I

I All right, motion passed unanimously. Let's move on to item number 18, city manager report.

Mayor, mayor prom, members of council, since we've missed a few meetings since our last meeting, this report might be a little bit longer, but I'll move as quickly as we can. I would like to uh take a moment and recognize the staff that the efforts that they put in during the last winter weather event, specifically the civic center staff opening as the warming center and then staying open for 24 hours. uh the next few days during that event uh public works and also utilities and of course first responders. Also I'd like to thank Mayor and Mayor Portim for uh participating in those countywide conference calls. We had two each day during this event. One at 9:00 am and one at 4 pm and then the mayor was able to help us push out create a summary of these uh calls and then we're going to push this information out to a timely manner or in a timely manner to the public. So, uh, what I would like to do is is recognize bring these staff members in at the next council meeting and recognize them publicly. Did they do their just do their job? Yes. But did they do it under extraordinary circumstances? Yes, they did. So, we would like to recognition of main street manager and we have a few more scheduled for next week. Obviously, this is an extremely important role within this organization and I want to ensure the council and the public be careful to select the right person for this role. Um compensation study, the consultant completing the study, Shane Howard, is meeting with each of you this week in fact to get your input as he compiles information for this study. And for a more further detailed update on this project, I'm going to ask HR director Holly. She doesn't she'll give us a brief update on this project. Holly,

good evening council mayor. Uh so as you know the in the staff they could all completed position assessment surveys for each position within the city. Those have been completed. There were more than 70 of them for the whole entire city and they uh he had he has had a chance Shane Howard has had a chance to go over all those and that'll be part of the survey. And then he also met with all of the directors individually um for meetings to discuss their operational needs so that he had an accurate comparison with other that would be comparable to our occupational needs. Um, now the next step would be to meet with with you all to get your take on what's going on and and we're currently on the expected timeline. Correct.

Yes. Yes, sir.

Thank you. Um during during the cold weather event, Fire Chief McCrae and I were able to meet with Texas Department of Emergency Management and discuss establishing a countywide emergency account to accept financial donations. Um we would like to start that set that account up prior to needing it. And if we have that, then that would be a donation fund set up for the city and the county, not to have two separate ones. But we will be bringing that once we get that uh those guidelines established for that program. We will be bringing that back to you as the council and also the county commissioners for for adoption. Um we, as you know, we had a fire at the old Gordon plant. I will bring Chief Larry McCrae to come up. We had quite a stir. Uh so just for the record we want to clarify TCQ did come out. I would like him to discuss just the uh air and water quality concerns.

Thank you Rob. U as you know we did have a fire down at the old for milk plant and there was a lot of stuff out on Facebook question. So, uh, when we got there, the fire was already coming through the roof and we did our best to contain it, but we just weren't able to. Uh, the building became unstable. Uh, so we had to back away and basically let it go. Uh, so the fire did burn for a couple of days, molded. DCQ actually came up the next day, I believe it was, and set up all their air monitoring, what have you. And they said they actually couple complaints wasn't about the air about the water run off which again there's a treat that runs right beside it. So they actually came up did all their test air water and all that said they didn't find any contaminants at all. So again we weren't going to try to get in there and and put the fire out because we weren't going to risk our firefight. So based on what TCU TCQ said, that's why we elected to go away and let it burn. I checked with him today about getting the the inspector that we're dealing with. They haven't finished the report yet, but once we get it, we'll provide that mainly for the public even though we are discussing that with council, but we're working through the RFQ the city attorney position that look forward to the next step in that process with background interviews to complete that selection process. And as as we saw the development services director talk about one development, we have a lot of exciting development coming in. We've had some good meetings. Um there are some very very positive things coming in. I'm proud of the way

the team's working and I think the word about Mount Pleasant is getting out and the people that are coming in are excited about bringing their project. I want to thank them for ahead. All right, we'll move on to council comments. Limited uh limited to announcements of upcoming events, recent council member activities, or requests to add agenda items for the upcoming meeting. Uh two minutes per council member.

Okay, Lee, this is a request for an agenda item for our next meeting. Um, recently I've had a lot of contact from the public on some things that are going on with within our city. And I'm a by the book kind of person. I know we need our codes, but sometimes we need to alter our own planning and zoning codes in this case because that's what I'm dealing with. And I know we have a guy that's looking to build about a half a million dollar project and there's an issue with parking spaces. And in getting with uh Rob and uh Lyn and John, I see what the ordinance says and I know before we've dealt with issues like that and however it was handled, it was handled and I know why people say what they do. So, but I know we have to go by the book and that's why we change things when they're needed. I'm going to ask that Lynn and John work on something on the ordinance in section 155 on the planning and zoning about the uh outdoor requirements for parking. The one that involves the storage buildings and warehouses. I would like to change that verbiage in there so that when we come into a situation where we're going to have a project that doesn't require a lot of parking spaces because it is a storage center and that's all it's going to be used for that and uh storage of recreational or boats. So, it's not like a lot of people are going to be staying there and it's not like there's going to the employee count is going to be less than two. So, um I know you can't go by that because that's what the book says. You either go by square footage or by the usage or or the employees. Since there's the owner and probably a manager is all it is for a storage building, we need to alter that where that either it goes before uh that we change it, put it

in a separate section where storage buildings are not required to have the parking, maybe two parking spaces, but the square footage when it's 7,000 or more to put in, you know, and and I've looked at the plans. The plans I'm looking I know there's a different opinion about that, but I think that we have to find a way when we have a business that wants to come in here, somebody that wants to relocate that we look at what we have and even though, you know, we're going to go by the book, we need to alter our own planning and zoning where we can if it's if it's needed. And in this case, I think it's definitely needed instead of putting in six, eight, nine parking spaces when probably 99% of anybody who's going to go to that site is going to pull in, unload what they've got, and then that's going to be the end of it. So, I know all it takes is adding another sentence to it or taking it and putting in a separate unit of the zoning, but I would ask that by next week we get something in writing to the council that says we're addressing that issue with the parking requirements either by taking it to council for a different ruling or whatever, but we need to address that and we need to address it as soon as possible. So, I would ask that you please, and I'd ask Rob, that we get this to the council next week before we either lose a project or require something that really kind of doesn't make sense in this in this usage with what he's got. Um, I would ask you to do that. Submit it to the council by next week so we can look at something and then have it on the agenda for our next meeting. Thank you. Thank you guys. And I do appreciate and I appreciate that. I can always All right, more coming.

I would like to say thank you so much for all the updates happened during during the ice. So, uh, being on the council, um, I'm in a different position than I was when we had the ice storm in 21. And you're seeing the comments of people on Facebook. You're I'm hearing from various ministries. Um, where are the homeless people going to go? Where are the people that need shelter going to go? And you know, your heart, you hear it, your heart's there, you're trying to think, what are we going to do? And of course, I'm from a different mindset. I don't mind speaking this, but I think that's where the body of Christ steps up. And I believe more in body of Christ than I do government. That's just my opinion, but this is the first time I had gone through anything like this and that was coming. So, I loved getting the updates so regularly and we were getting them. The city was getting them. They weren't getting out the way they were supposed to get out, I think, to everybody. And we were getting them. And I was so excited and so proud that it looked like a very welloiled machine. But in addition to that, um, Rob specifically was telling us, well, we have the warming area up. We've had two people come and bring food. I think I'm right. We only had two people come in to hang out during the day and charge their stuff, but no one came and spent the night. And my first response was thinking from my

position, okay, well, how many people from the city spent the night there, you know, that they weren't in their own homes? And then Rob made the comment that it's better to air this way. And he's right, you know, and and so it was a very interesting position to be in on the council when you have a heart that you're sitting there going, "Oh my gosh, I've never really had to think like this before. And uh it was very humbling and I'm just so excited to be part of a city that really did think and take care of our people and our communication was wonderful and I do want to thank everybody that gave their time, their energy, their effort. Um and I think you know someday hopefully well let's hope we don't have another time. Let's be done for this year. But I'm I'm very proud of everybody.

Any more comments? Okay, we'll adjourn. Uh we're going to go ahead and move into or reconvene our executive session. It is 651. again.

All right, I need to read I guess what we have left. Uh consultation with attorney uh Texas government code 551.071 regarding possible adoption of rules and procedures governing city council meetings regarding proposed master services agreement for professional services from Pepe Dawson Engineering LLC. uh and to consider the ethics complaint filed against council member Melanie Knight Deoya and the status of the investigation and discuss the appointment employment evaluation reassignment duties discipline or dismissal of a public officer or employee with the city manager. We'll be back.

Oh, hell yeah. I

All right, we're reconvening back into uh regular session. It's about 9:10. Uh we have one action item and that is um to consider the ethics complaint filed against the council member Melanie Knight Foya and the status of the investigation. So do we have a motion? I motion authorizing the issuance of council subpoenas for witnesses and administering oaths and compelling the production of books, papers, and other evidence in the investigation concerning Melanie to Foya as directed in executive session and authorizing the mayor to sign the subpoena.

I second. Madam Secretary, can you get a vote, please? Yes. Hi. Hi.