City Council - Regular Meeting

Whether you're a current business owner, downtown dreamer, or somebody with a great idea, you deserve a seat at the table.

My job is to help with any zoning questions or building safety questions that may or may not require a permit.

I'm here to help you with any of your water service needs, such as turning on and off service, any billing questions you may have.

We're there to help you navigate all of those systems to help you get involved in your business or promote it.

So we offer complimentary services for branding, for marketing, for social media, for their website design.

Our goal with this event is to make you feel like you have a full team of professionals right behind you wanting to make your dreams happen.

I'm here to help you with any zoning or building safety type questions. So I try to help keep your neighborhood safe and I try to make a difference daily.

I use my knowledge of the codes to keep people safe. I look forward to seeing you at the seat of the table.

With Seat at the Table, we bring all those people into one room, so you can make one stop and get the answers you need. So remember, pull up a chair, bring your questions, and lead with answers. Whether you're a current business owner, downtown dreamer, or somebody with a great idea, you deserve a seat at the table.

My job is to help with any zoning questions or building safety questions that may or may not require a permit.

I'm here to help you with any of your water service needs, such as turning on and off service, any billing questions you may have.

We're there to help you navigate all of those systems to help you get involved in your business or promote it.

So we offer complimentary services for branding, for marketing, for social media, for their website design.

Our goal with this event is to make you feel like you have a full team of professionals right behind you wanting to make your dreams happen.

I'm here to help you with any zoning or building safety type questions. So I try to help keep your neighborhood safe and I try to make a difference daily.

I use my knowledge of the codes to keep people safe. I look forward to seeing you at the seat of the table.

With Seat at the Table, we bring all those people into one room, so you can make one stop and get the answers you need. So remember, pull up a chair, bring your questions, and lead with answers.

Good evening. Welcome to the September 1st, 6.30 p.m. City Council meeting. At this time, we will stand for the pledge and prayer by Councilman Loftus.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Our most gracious Father, we thank you again for this day which you have granted us. And Father, we thank you for this council who is making decisions that will affect our city. And we pray that the decisions we make will help our city to grow and help our citizens and our community. Also, dear Father, we ask you to be with all our employees that are employed by this city. We pray that you will be with them with their daily jobs and keep them safe and also continue to bless them as we try to make this a better place for us to live. We ask your guidance throughout our lives and we ask that you continue to look upon our city and give us all the help that we can muster from you. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

At this time, any questions or comments from citizens?

Again, I just want to say I haven't thoroughly enjoyed Scott Felker's new On Patrol videos. I think he's educating us citizens very well. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for speaking.

Just real quick with that, I might add that people might not know, you know, we do have a YouTube channel that he kind of maintains and stuff too. I know going back and watching some of those can be a little harder on Facebook with the way Facebook Live does all that, but all that stuff's organized and available on YouTube. So if you go to YouTube and search City of Borger, all that stuff's there and really easy to go back and watch anytime you want.

And then at this time, we will move on to the consent agenda items. five through nine if there's any discussion questions or discussions and if not then i'll entertain a motion i make a motion to the accept and send items five through nine a second All in favor? And they pass. And item 10, receive a presentation on the fiscal year 2027 proposed operating budget, hold a public hearing, and then consider and take appropriate action to approve on final reading ordinance O-003-26, adopting the fiscal year 2027 operating budget. Mr. Spradlin. Okay.

So I'm kind of excited for this. This marks our 100th budget.

Oh, wow.

So, you know, it's kind of weird without the Centennial Falls. You know, 2026 is the Centennial year, but since the city wasn't actually created until October, this is the 100th budget that the city's ever operated under. That's great. Tonight, this presentation, we're going to cover a few things, but for the most part, you know, I kind of wanted to shape it this year is telling a story. You know, we interact throughout the year and we get guidance from the council, and really the budget is about telling that story about what we want to achieve and where we've been and where we're going. And so what I kind of want to talk about tonight is that we're getting, you know, taxpayers are getting real services. You know, the things we're funding, you know, impact their daily lives every single day. We're being responsible, so our operations are remaining stable. And we're trying to be very mindful in where we invest and how we invest. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. And the increases in this budget are really about further investment in our community and investing in our future, not about operations. And so to me, this budget tells a simple story. Protect service quality today while making practical investments to carry Borger into the next century. So this presentation, we're going to cover the tax rate, the operating budget, the fee schedule, and the CIP and tough renewal. So those items are kind of next into it. Instead of stopping and doing a bunch of different presentations, I thought we just got to take care of it all at once. So we're going to cover things that will be talked in the next several items. As I've done the last couple of years, I kind of like to start with just a little bit of demographics to kind of explain where we're at. And so we've talked about this quite a bit. Our population, right, in 2024 is projected at 12,226. That's down 1.39% from 2023, just a little bit. You remember our population numbers are always delayed from the census. So, you know, hopefully we're, and that is, we've been averaging a little over 2.5% decrease yearly. So 1.39 is slightly improved with what we've got going in Yucca states. We are trying to to address some of that stuff. Our daytime population, of course, does increase during the day with the people that work here. Remember, 51% of our workforce doesn't live here. And so that's kind of a problem. Daytime population goes up a little bit, though, to 13,550. And so why it matters and kind of what that impacts on the budget is I've talked a lot about this, and sometimes I know that it's hard to understand, but when we're looking at where to spend money and what to spend money on, we have 28 parks today. We had 28 parks in 1964. In 1964, there was almost 24,000 people in this community, not counting Phillips. Today, there's 12,226 paying for the same 28 parks. We have 80 road miles of streets. We had 80 road miles of streets in 1964. So the things that we have to maintain are not shrinking. but the population is. So it's definitely important that we address that. The chart over there, you can see the trend. You can see it kind of slowing down now. So hopefully we're kind of addressing that and trying to get there just a little bit. When we talk about housing, so the median household income is $61,583. And 20, the median, sorry, that's the median household income. The median home value is $103,400. I do want to talk a little bit The state and their infinite wisdom, when we talk about budgets and tax rate, they make us use two different numbers in two different places. We have to use average homestead, and we also have to use median homestead. And so you will see those used interchangeably, or not interchangeably, but in different notices based on difference. It's kind of important to remember that the median home value is 103,400. That means that there are equal values lower than 103,400 and equal values above that. The average homestead value is like 79. So what that means is overall, we've got a lot more worth less than we do worth more. So we've got a bigger gap. And so when we talk about what your tax impact is gonna be, we have to use the median home value, but the median home value may or may not impact as much as like the average home value. So I just, with a big gap between, it means that the spread isn't even. And so we talk a little bit of – normally when we talk the difference between average and median, we're talking about salary. It's a little more complicated when we talk about home value. So I just kind of want to keep that in mind. Seventy-nine percent of our homes are owner-occupied, meaning not rental. The state average is 63 percent. And so we see that in the fact that, you know, we hear a lot that we maybe don't have enough rental, especially, you know, like apartments and things like that. That's part of that number. And right now we have in two years ago, which is the most accurate data, we have 4,208 households. So lower household income makes taxes and fee restraint important. So we do try to be mindful about that when we talk about what fees we're increasing. And when we get into the tax rate, I think people are going to see that we've tried to do a pretty good job at being mindful about what we're increasing and where that money's going. But we are generally above the state income. Our median household income is 21.53% below the state average. And more people own their home and rental. And so that combined with the fact that 51% of our workforce doesn't live here are some of those demographic and money-related issues towards infrastructure, which is why housing and getting more people to live here is so important. So I want to talk a little bit about what taxpayers are getting for. You get public safety. 63% of our general fund expenditures are public safety. That's police, fire, EMS, code enforcement, and emergency preparedness. We talk about that a lot with the fire department. They're ISO class 2, crime rate. If you follow our performance measurements and the monthly reports and the budget, we're making good strides in that. You get utilities and sanitation. I mentioned this down in the work session a little bit, but when was the last time you've noticed a boil water notice come out from the city of Borger? When was the last time we've had to reduce water? If you think our trash service is expensive, I suggest you talk to somebody in the county that pays a private contractor for trash and what pickup they get and how often that gets. We hear it all the time now. I wish we could use those bulk refuge trailers in the county. And so there is a lot of services and stuff like that that you actually get when you live inside the city limits, and we do hear some of that. Street maintenance, drainage work, fleet support, long-term capital planning. I know there's a bit of debate with that right now after our big street project. I joke, but we'll never do the right street because everybody wants their street done. but we do have a pretty big plan for that you notice walking in we do have our tough maps back there there's a map in green that shows all the streets that the tough is already treated and then there's another map with our five-year plan those are also online and updated on the tough page they're also on our capital project page all that information is out there there's a tough report in today's packet that outlines a lot of the things that we've done so there is a plan and we are trying to make progress i would just kind of remind everybody that that on street maintenance We know we're behind. We know we've been behind. That's why we did the 2018 assessment. That's why we added the tough fee. And I think we're starting to make pretty good progress on that. But it's going to take a little bit of time. Of course, that money also gets you quality of life, parks, recreation program is still free in the summer. Admission to Johnson Park Youth Center is still just $3. Our concessions are not at a true restaurant markup. We'd still maintain those 28 parks. We haven't closed any of those parks. We've added new skate equipment last year. So we are making progress with that and we know we've got more to do and we'll talk a little bit about that too. And then, of course, planning and development. I know a lot of people don't like that, but, you know, remember cities are formed for the collective good. So, you know, if you don't like what your neighbor's doing, there is a little bit of enforcement and stuff like that. I know people might not think we do enough, and I know a lot of times there could always be more, but, you know, we can do something in the county. It's not like that. And so you do have that collective good in the city. So how are we being responsible? So we have no new personnel in this budget. It does include a 5% cost of living adjustment, but no new personnel. Right now, we're looking at an $80,000 surplus in the general fund. Following some of the early council budget discussions, we talked about our reserve requirement has kind of dropped, not because we've spent it down, but because we've added EMS and we've added cost, which has increased our reserve requirement. So this is a step in trying to get that back up there so that we're meeting our reserve requirements. Our debt last year decreased by $3.17 million. We paid off $3.17 million worth in debt. Our credit rating is still at a double A minus. If you watch the Citizens Academy video that's out there on finance, we talk about that. I will say that the only city in the panhandle that's better than us credit-wise is Amarillo. And they're a AAA, but we're Pampa. We're up the same with Pampa, so our credit, you know, and that's third-party independently assessed. You know, that's a pretty good term, so we're doing really good there. We have used one-time use of fund balance. We've talked about that the last couple budget years. There's still a little bit of that, you know, using that accumulated fund to pay for projects without having to take out debt. So we're trying to be responsible with that, keep our reserves up, but not, you know, keep them too high at the expense of debt or tax. And when we get to the tax, we have passed along real tax savings, including homestead tax exemption over the last couple of years. So we've been very mindful in following council direction and trying to be making sure that every dollar and the way that we operate is forward thinking and financially responsible. I know that some people, I still see it. I see some feedback out there on all the new vehicles. You know, what they don't see is that our maintenance cost is down by $380,000 a year. That's every single year that gets to go back. You know, having old stuff does not save you money. And so when we do things, we are trying to look at the whole picture. I've seen a few comments on the covered parking out back. That is to protect city vehicles from hail and wind. You know, if we claim those on insurance, our insurance rates go up. If our insurance rates goes up, that's something the taxpayers have to pay for too. So we are looking at the whole picture and not just any individual portion of it. So responsible budgeting means maintaining daily service quality while avoiding unnecessary operating growth. So what that means is we're very mindful about the types of expenses that create recurring costs and those that are one-time costs that can maybe reduce recurring costs. And we talk about this every year too. We do have, we are definitely keeping the council's five strategic pillars in place in 2018. We had a strategic retreat and we set our five pillars, community involvement, entertainment events, housing, industry diversification, and infrastructure. So this budget supports our day-to-day services while also advancing those five core principles. You know, it's funny right now, I see some debate online about why we're wasting taxpayer dollars for people to engage people on social media when they're arguing with us on social media. which is kind of just, to me, proves their point. But we do want to engage and listen to our citizens in the ways that are convenient to them. We handle a lot of problems on social media through messages or message reports, and we provide information. And overall, I think because of that, we generally have a much better reach and engagement with our community. So that, to me, is definitely worth it, even if they don't necessarily see it. But it's seen a lot more than people think. And we still do the Boomtown Beat and the newsletters for those that don't do that. So we try to do all of that. But community involvement, we see that feedback. We take that feedback. We know that we live in a community that does a lot of shift working. So coming to meetings isn't necessarily always convenient. I find it funny right now in Amarillo, they're debating about putting other meetings other than the council meetings online because they only broadcast the council meeting right now. We have been broadcasting the council meetings, the planning and zoning meetings, the building standards committee and the board of adjustment now for years. It's all out there. We put it all for you to watch. I'm not saying that that's all super exciting, but it's all out there. Links to the video are on the website. And so we do use the feedback that we get from all that to shape our decisions and see what's coming. And I know that we can't always, you know, it's a juggling match. People need to understand that from the city standpoint and city staff standpoint, we've got to keep the whole city in mind, not just one neighborhood, not just one area. but the whole city. Entertainment events, you know, we've got Boomtoberfest coming up, you know, for the fourth year. We've got lots of things going on. I say this fairly regularly and every year during this time, if you think there's nothing going on, then you're living under a rock or you're not open to the communication that's going out there. I still see and hear people, well, I didn't know about that. We have the Starbucks. We've got VisitBorger.com. We've got BorgerTX.gov. We've got the Boomtown Beat that goes out in the water bills. We've got the app you can download on your phone. Search BorgerTX in the Android or Apple App Store. Flyers in City Hall. I mean, we are literally trying every way we can to tell you what's going on. But there's almost seems like something every week. And so if you're not finding things, you know, you've got to be open to that and looking, you know, I can't, we can't go door to door. And in the modern times, if I send employees door to door, half of them probably be shot or ignored anyway. So people don't answer the doors like they used to. Housing, we already talked a little bit about that. continue to try to work with that. We do, 712's getting ready pretty close to starting on their next one, and I've got three others that we're working through, so that's coming. Of course, industry diversification, a lot of that for us is supporting downtown and diversifying the quality of life type stores and events. We have that really heavy, strong industrial And so it's how do we diversify and make our community more welcoming to get more people living here? And then, of course, infrastructure, streets, water, wastewater, all that stuff. I mean, we've done a lot of street works. You've got a bid on tonight's agenda for a wastewater stormwater. Bob's got me, you know, he's got me screwed up ever since this little solid waste slip. So every time I say waste, I get slipped up now. But we are doing a lot, so this budget, you know, moves a lot of that forward. So I do want to talk about the tax rate, our proposed tax rate that we discussed with the council that we've taken initial action on is .64650. That consists of an M&O rate of .482, so that's maintenance and operations. So .482 is what's going to support the general fund and general operations. 0.1645 is the INS rate, interest in sinking, which is also the debt. So the interest in sinking fund is what we pay our debt out of. So the no new revenue rate this year was 0.601. So this is a tax increase over the no new revenue rate. Our voter approval rate is 0.95. So that's the maximum rate we could have gone up to without having to have a vote of the public. And so if you look down there on the little grid, you can see in comparison to what the voter approval rate is, what little sliver of the total capacity that we're taking with this tax increase. But more importantly, this is the tax rate history since 2020. So in 2020, our tax rate was 0.86349. So since then, even this rate is now 25% lower than the highest rate in 2020. So while we are taking a little bit back, the council has reduced the rate significantly over the last several years, and we still haven't cut services or reduced staffing. But I know that the rate's only part of the story because we do have appraisals. And if you just tell the rate story, sometimes you can be open to different feedback. So here's our collection history. So this is how much money the city has taken in in tax revenue. And with this increase, we're projecting $2.61 million in tax revenue in 2020. That was a little over $3 million. So even with this year's increase, we are bringing in $390,000 less than we did in 2020. So while we are taking some of that back, I think it's important to remember that in that time period, we are still making less in tax revenue than we were in 2020. And I don't know about you, Are y'all all paying the same for all of your bills that you were in 2020? And the city's not either.

Right.

And so, you know, we're not immune from those price increases. And so it's important that we try to keep up a little bit with that, but being mindful that it does have an impact with everybody. So not only has the rate gone significantly down, this is a little bit up, but it's still just a portion. And we're still making less money than we were 20 years ago. In 2020. Yeah. And so when we talk about the average homestead, so the average homestead value is $91,529. So the estimated annual tax bill would be $591.73. That's an increase from last year of $71.36. So this tax increase is $5.95 per month on the average homestead. At this time, I would like to remind everybody that we did pass a 20% residential homestead exemption three years ago. So that is still in place. So that tax rate and everything, that's on, you know, that doesn't even factor in the 20% homestead exemption that you're saving if you live, if your homestead is in the community as well.

So.

It does not factor that in?

The, it doesn't in the, like 90.

Okay. In that, in that example. Right.

So we added that, so you take 20% off of that. But we've come back up. So the average is still a little bit about that. And I did kind of like to point out at this time, too, is remember that your property tax bill is not just the city. So there are five taxing entities in the county, and what we do is only a portion of that. And I think sometimes that gets lost, but the city in the last seven, other than this year, in the last seven years has lowered the rate below, at or below the no new revenue rate. plus add in the 20% homestead tax exemption. Now the county's had the 20% exemption for a while, but the college and the hospital do not have a homestead tax exemption. So you have to kind of, a little different for everybody, but your tax bill and with what the schools or what the state's done with the school district, almost every school district, especially on the residential homestead side has gone down. So we are trying to still be mindful for that. I do want to talk a little bit about what the council, and we'll talk more about this, what we've talked about with this rate increase. So this tax increase is not for new personnel. It is not for new programs or any new operating costs. It is not funding a major recurring service expansion, and it is not offsetting a general fund imbalance. So we didn't spend more than we've got, so we're having to make it up. What it is planned for is debt service for major capital projects, public safety facilities, equipment, stormwater streets, and community assets. And so this buys us long-term assets, not at a new layer of recurrent, and not a new layer of recurrent expense. So this is not going... to our operations. It's going to our planned upcoming debt issuance and capital projects that we'll talk a little bit more in a minute. So that's the tax rate.

Questions on the tax rate?

So we're gonna go into the budget a little bit now. So our total budget, this is all funds citywide, total revenue, 45.6 million, expenditures of 48 million. 2.4 million is planned use of fund balance. So our operating funds are balanced. The reason you see that difference is we're planning to The water well is in the budget without the grant that we put in for, because we're going to have to do it anyway. And so most of that is the fund 51, the water sewer fund, water well replacement, and using fund balance for that. So when we get to the general fund and the operating fund and the water sewer fund, you'll see their balance. But we've been accumulating money in those funds to pay for those projects. So that's the difference between revenue and expenditures. When you get to the general fund, you will see that our budgeted revenues are 22.83 million and our budgeted expenditures are 22.7 million. So that's that $80,000 surplus, depending on how tax comes in. So operating expenditures without capital outlay. So like kind of like the bare minimum, like if we had to can everything and just do operating is 21.18 million. So you see, we've got a little over a million dollars in capital in there. So, but I will keep in mind, like we talked about earlier, continuing to replace capital equipment is important. It does not save you money to defer capital replacement. So our projected ending fund balance in the general fund is $4.4 million. So that's about 20% of our operating expenditures. That's below that 28% threshold. But remember, that's because we added $2 million in EMS costs without increasing that balance. So that's the $500,000 difference or so. Our calculated reserve requirements are just a little over $5 million. So we're working on that. But there again, we didn't spend it down. We just added costs because we didn't know we were going to sound like we had a lot of notice that we were going to take over EMS. And that's definitely driven up that requirement. So, so our major revenue driver sales tax remains essentially flat for next year. So we're projecting that flat at about 4.37 million. Depending on when the Western gateway pipeline and all that stuff starts, you know, we might start seeing some impact from that, but we're pretty conservative on that. Industrial district contracts went up by their contracted 2% amount, so that's 5.21. And there again, why the surplus matters, we're trying to build up that reserve just a little bit to make up the difference. Councilor members, I believe the question two work sessions ago was what is our plan to deal with that? So there's your plan that we talked about last work session. The general fund is not being expanded broadly. It's just being managed conservatively. So we're covering what those are, what we have to. So our expense... some of that um is also because of the water the change right and that's so 2.85 million is our water serve water sewer service transfers yeah and so we talked about this earlier so used to we would split administrative costs like my salary was split between general fund and water sewer stella's was split accounting was split i.t was split uh the auditor requested or suggested that maybe that's not the cleanest way to do it. And I don't think he's completely wrong. And it's definitely not transparent, because you've got to go to two different departments to see what the cost is. So this year, what we did is we budgeted all the cost in the general fund. And then we're billing the water sewer fund based on different items for their portion of that cost. So that also has risen up. It rose our general fund cost up. Budget wise, it didn't, you know, it's negligible. Last year's, this year's budget was 45 point something. Last year was 46 point something. So I mean, overall, it's not a big driver, but that is 2.85 million worth of adjustment and expenses. We've got the revenue coming to offset it. That's not going to taxes. It's kind of complicated how that works, but you know, this is cleaner. So like when you go look at administration, you can see all of our costs. When you go look at IT, you can see the whole IT cost. So that is one of those changes. Of course, our other big revenue, the industrial district and sales tax, I will kind of point out that property tax is only 13% of our general fund revenue. You know, I know a lot of people talk about that, but it funds very little of what you're actually getting. A sales tax funds the biggest, Percentage of that sales tax has also allowed us to keep the property tax rate lower. We've got that half cent for property tax reduction that goes into that calculation. So that's been part of that. So we talk about this every year. Shopping local is always better. It helps your property tax increase. The studies do show that your money spent locally spends over a lot more, but then I will add that with the caveat. If you're not going to shop locally, then you should buy it from Amazon. because Amazon pays taxes where the item is shipped. So we still get the sales tax on things you buy from Amazon. You drive to Amarillo and spend the money over there, Amarillo gets your money. And I get that sometimes, well, Amarillo's tax rate's cheaper. And a lot of reasons is because you drove over there to spend your money over there, which helped them keep their taxes down. And so instead of driving over there, if you buy it on Amazon, we get that. So that's, if you're not gonna buy it locally, but buying locally is always a little better. $16.2 million of salary and benefits. So over 60% of our expenses in the general fund are people. People provide the services and people are who you interact with. $13.84 million is for public safety. So out of that $22 million, $13 million of it is for public safety. And there's $1.57 million in capital outlay this year in the general fund. So bottom line, general fund revenue expenditures are each about $22.8 million with a small operating surplus directed towards our reserve building. On the water and sewer side, we've got $14.5 million budgeted in revenue and $14.55 million budgeted in expenditures. This budget includes a 6% increase in industrial water rates. We'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to the fees. That is to support the Cremall 2 expansion that Cremall's working through. There are no fee increases in this budget for residential or commercial water or sewer. We have $1.57 million budgeted for the Northwest Wellfield expansion. That's that extra well. And that is part of that in the capital fund, which is the fund balance spend down. So again, it is a balanced operating plan. So our operating expenses are balanced with our operating revenue. And then, of course, this does have the change in the shared administrative costs are shown more clearly through a formal service allocation model. So you'll see the service expense in the water sewer fund. You'll see the personnel expense in the general fund.

And then you'll see the revenue offset.

Our major revenue drivers are there. $8.82 million of that $14 million or 58% of our revenue is from industrial water sales. Of that, Phillips 66 is $4.4 million. Nutrien, $2.83 million. Retail water sales, like that's the average residents and customers, is $2.78. Sewer charges are $2.47. So you can see the people that kind of live in Borger, the water and sewer for them is about $6 million, a little under $6 million. Our expenditure drivers, most of that is that water sewer operational support, which is $7 million. That's our debt payments for Cranwell and the Northwest Wellfield. Services, that that we pay others for is $2.89 million. Salaries and benefits is $3 million. So salaries and benefits are a much smaller portion in the water sewer fund because we are selling a product. The general fund isn't selling a product. They are providing a service, which is more personnel, you know, people centered. So that's why you see the big difference there. Questions on the overall operating plan and outlook. So our 20 to 27 fee schedule changes, there is, The biggest one that everybody's going to notice is the $1 in residential solid waste, residential commercial solid waste. So we talked about this last year. Pampa has increased their cost at the landfill. Their costs are increasing much quicker than ours because a new settlement landfill is really expensive. I don't know. We kind of complain about the trash truck we ordered a little bit earlier at $257,000. They're buying those compactors are almost a million dollars now. So they definitely have some costs with that. It is important for us to maintain a healthy revenue stream for them to keep that landfill open so we can take it to Pampa and not have to drive everything to Amarillo. We do have flexibility with the transfer station, so that is kind of nice, but there is costs associated with that. So that's really the only cost that the residents are going to see on the utility bill this year because their water rates and their sewer rates aren't changing. The only thing that's changing there is the solid waste rate. And like I said, that is for the most part driven by our disposal costs continue to go up. On the utility side, we are increasing the industrial water rates from $2.43 per thousand to $2.58 per thousand. So that's related to the Cremall 2 expansion. Cremall 2 will eventually add up to 3.8 million gallons a day of water available to us. Of course, that benefit is mostly for the industry. We sell about 12 million gallons a day. 10 million of that is industrial. The residentials, we don't really need that excess capacity for our residential commercial clients. So it's not really cost effective for us to pass that cost on to them. So we're passing it on to the industries. We've been pretty good with industry water rates. They've been stable for the last seven years. So this is their first increase in seven years. I will mention that we do have our next five-year rate study is coming up in this fiscal 27 budget. So when we go through the budget cycle next year, we will have a new rate analysis for the next five years that will recalculate that split of where our water is going and how that cost should be divided. So this could change a little bit going forward. There are some other minor cost increases. We are increasing some of the rates at the Dome. They're about 5% overall. The Dome is still a very cheap facility for the type of facility it is. We get people in there all the time that have price quotes from venues that are smaller and not quite as nice in Amarillo that are double what some of our packages are. I mean, I know some people don't necessarily still think it's expensive, but Those same people didn't, and discounts on previous councils don't want taxpayer money supporting the dome. So these fees are built around self-sufficiency. So between the venue tax and the revenue, it has continued to remain mostly self-sufficient. So when I say mostly, I mean, you know, the parks will help set up or clean things or the streets went out and re-striped it. You know, we use other city employees to do it, but the employee that's out there and the cleaning and the utilities and all of that are paid through the venue fund. So it is generally still mostly self-supporting. We are changing late payments. So we're cutting late fees by $10. Some of you will call, some of you won't. Late fees used to be 10% of the bill. And six or seven years ago, we changed that to a flat $25. When it was 10% of the bill, almost 70% of our bills were paid late. And so that 10% was such a small amount, people were riding on us. So we changed that to $25. Since then, less than a third of our bills are paid late now. What we didn't intend is that the late fee and the disconnect fee and the reconnect fee were starting to stack up. So if you took it all the way to disconnect to get it reconnected, you had $75 worth of fees. And that was just kind of a overlap by our part that was not the intention of that. So we're going down to $15 for all of that. So that's $15 for the late fee, $15 for if you're disconnected, and then another $15 to get it kicked back on. So now if you go all the way to disconnect and then you turn back on, that's $45 instead of $75. We do still have payment plans and we do try to get people on payment plans before they go to cut off. And we, you know, we will work with people as much as they let us know. But water is not free. And it's not a community service. I know some people think that, but there's a cost. I mean, we still have to pay to produce that water. And so there is a cost with it. So if we let too many people not pay and deal with that, then we have to raise everybody else's rates. And it can kind of spiral with that. Then we are also adding two credits this year. So if you will sign up for an email bill and not make us mail your bill to you, we'll give you $1 a month credit on your bill. And if you sign up for automatic draft or auto payment, we will give you another dollar credit. So there are up to $2 credits on your bill this year. So a lot of the fee changes I think are more positive this year, reducing some of those late fees.

Can I sign up for those again?

You can call, you can come in. They're going to go through... Utility Billing is going to go through and see who's got them turned on and proactively apply those credits based on how the accounts are set up right now. They're going to start asking everybody when they sign up or switch an account, or if you call or come in, you can talk to them and get that set up. Postage now, our cheap postage at the cities, fully automated, sorted, us doing all the work for the post office, postage rate I think is now 73 cents. That's at the machine, not the pre-sorted. So if you could just go to the machine and run a regular letter through there at 78 cents, if we pre-sorted, we get some more off, but it's still just like. A stamp's 80, I think.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. And so that dollar a month, we're just passing the savings. If we don't have to pay for the postage and the envelope and stuff like that, we're going to pass that savings on to the customer. I will remind everybody, too, that last year we started eating the payment fee for online payments or credit card payments. So the city's covering that cost. So if you go online and pay or use the automatic phone pay, there is no more fee for that. We cover that. So I know that Sometimes people look at the little increases more than some of the other things we've changed, but we are not always just going up. We are trying to make some other changes and make things better. So overall, like I said, what the average customer is going to see is a dollar increase in their solid waste. But if they sign up for email bills and automatic draft, they're going to get a $2 credit. So they'll actually see a dollar lower bill. Questions on fees, I know the council's seen the full draft. Most of it's like the change in little things here and there, what we would charge somebody if we have a hazmat response and have to replace fire equipment, what our reimbursement rates for some of that stuff is. Everything else is pretty minor. So our capital program, so you're going to take action on the CIP later today too. That's our five-year plan. Keep in mind that only year one of that plan is funded in concrete. And so that's what's in this budget, which is the $5.5 million. Everything else in that plan is our guide. And as we try to work forward and what we're trying to work through, it does constantly change. So people shouldn't take, you know, that as the word. It's what we're working for and depending on how budgets and funding works. But in our one-year plan, so we have $5.5 million in capital projects funded for next year. Of that, Street and Alley is getting $1.9 million of that. Water production is getting 1.57 of that. Wastewater, 758. Solid waste, 520. And the police department, 301. So our storm street projects, we have the Third Street Stormwater Improvement Program at $1,389,000. Of course, we're going to have some good news when we get to that item here in just a little bit on the price of that. Our Tuff chip sale project is budgeted at $363.58. We've talked to the council about coming back next year after we see what the fund balance is and probably authorizing a little bit more. There's also a dump truck coming out of the Tuff this year for the street department, so we're trying to keep up with those, and a brush hog attachment to help with the right-of-way. Our tractor's pretty good, but if you've seen the brush hog that they use, it's... I know Jason's super excited to get... that other one out of there. And, you know, I will just also say with a lot of this stuff too, especially as we're talking about rates, is I know that people might not want to compare us to other places, but, you know, if you look around, I think we're being pretty reasonable with some of that stuff. Canyon uses a, they use a graduated rate, so the more water you use, the rate goes up. More. So that's like got a tiered with that. Like I said, we haven't had a water notice. You know, I know it's crazy. So like my water bill last month, and of course, you know, I water my yard a lot, you know, because as city manager, I feel like I've got to have a green yard. And if I didn't have a green yard, probably somebody would say something. So I used 40,000 gallons of water last month. My water bill was $220. Jared in Wichita, Kansas watered his yard with 30,000 gallons and his bill was 400 and some dollars.

Wow, there's a difference.

So when we look at what we're doing and how we're doing it overall, I think we're doing a pretty good job. With the wastewater investments next year, we still have that well-fed expansion on there. Of course, we are hoping to get the Senate Bill 2 Texas Water Development Board funding to help pay for some of that, which would free up that money to go to another well or some other wastewater project. We do have the Cedar Street Wastewater Board, so that's going from the manhole by Bulldog Motors to the manhole behind Dollar General. That's out to bid right now. We'll be taking action on that in about a month. We do have a new trailer mounted generator for the wastewater department, so they can go around and if a lift station fails, they can plug that in. We've talked about our generator plan on some permanent generators and some of the bigger lift stations. I was working with Whistler earlier this year on the update of the mitigation plan. There are about seven primary lift stations that if we had permanent generators that would take care of about 80% of the capacity because those are the main ones and the other ones are smaller feeders to where even if we had extended power outages, you could take the trailer mounted generator there, turn it on for like an hour, get the wet well pumped down, go to the next one, pump it down. If we have the full-time generators on the other seven, we'd be in pretty good shape. So we're fine-tuning that a little bit. that we do have a little bit of money on the next wastewater project uh at the i don't know why that there's a little typo there in my wastewater truck i must have been there i was thinking bob had me befuzzled on that too but that's for the waste the next concrete wastewater line replacement on second street that's over uh south of third kind of between coble and mcgee uh Assuming that, you know, we've talked about this the last couple years, we always have these good plans with our wastewater plans, and then something happens somewhere else, and we end up having to take that money and move it to that project. We are still right now ahead of everything. This was going to be done last year, but the cloverleaf line failed, so that's why we've moved over there, so now we're moving back to this. We do have quite a few light-duty vehicles and stuff, again, you know, saving maintenance. Solid waste has got the biggest portion of that with that commercial side loader at $275,000. Then they have another $245,000. Most of that is dumpster replacements, so we're still trying to keep up with our 108 dumpsters a year. So we are trying to keep up and be pretty good with that. That's another thing that we can't always – there are – Plastic lids on those.

Mm-hmm.

We have police vehicles, cameras, tasers, and drones for $300,000. There again, it's important for us to keep up with that rotation so we don't get behind on the maintenance. And I know the chief back there is happy now that finally all of his vehicles are in. I don't think he's got anything actually on order now for like the first time in like his entire tenure as chief. And then we've got the $422,000 makes up the other light duty vehicles and stuff amongst other departments. Code enforcement's getting their, you know, they get a mower every year because we rotate through those four mowers for the right of way and some other light duty things. Talking about kind of like that debt issuance or where our capital funding is coming from. So the water sewer capital fund is $1.57 million of that. So that's that fund balance that we've set aside. There's about... A little over $2.5 million in that fund that we've accumulated that we've been paying for design and the other things. We did well 13 out of there last year with the redrill. So we have 1.39 marked for a certificate of obligation. That was for the wastewater, the stormwater. project on third that we've talked about. We'll talk a little bit about more. That's earmarked because we've got a resolution coming up to pay itself from what we're going to do because we know we have to do that. So that's where that one was planning on coming from. The general fund is paying for $1.09 million out of our operating costs there. Water Sewer is paying for $820,000 out of their operating costs. The Tuff is paying for that $360,000 plus the $125,000 for the dump truck. We have $110,000 $1,000 this year and sell a city asset. So that's the other aspect of rotating equipment. As we rotate it with it being a little newer before because of maintenance problem, we actually make more money off of it when we get rid of it. I do say that a lot when we talk about police Tahoe's because we sometimes get feedback on that. A Tahoe's only about $2,500 more than a Ford Explorer right now. But in six years when we go to auction it, we get more than twice the revenue on the Tahoe than we do on the Explorer. So we're selling Explorers right now or auctioning over 10. The last, well, we transferred the last Explorer to South Plains College because we thought that was more than we were going to get at auction. And that was 75, 7,000, 7,500. So we're making 12. I think the last Tahoe sold for like 12. So that's like six grand more when we sell it. So like I said, we are trying to look at the whole picture. It's not just the upfront picture. We have $100,000 plan for grant funding coming in. And then the general fund capital fund, that's a little bit of accumulated balance we've been funding over there. There's a little bit of money left in there that we're going to pay for the transfer station apron with the concrete work there. Questions on this year's capital. So we've talked a lot about this planned upcoming debt and some of the projects we're going to do. The council, we spent a whole day earlier this year talking about all this. There's going to be a lot more talk about this before it actually happens. We're going to start seeing more of this develop as we get past this budget process and work into that debt. But we're looking at a $15 million planned issuance. The projects that we're looking at are the fire substation out in Buena Vista. A lot of that's being driven by the fact that we do have EMS now and we're running out of space for all of that stuff, plus some of the development that's going on out there. A new animal shelter, a part of that is being driven by the fact that the wastewater plant needs a new office complex and where the animal shelter is is a better location for their office and really the animal shelter would be better off. It needs to be someplace else. I mean, it needs some more visibility. We've got $2 million planned for youth sports projects at the youth sports fields. We've got $2 million planned for the fire training tower in conjunction with the substation. $1.1 million for the fire engine that's on order. And so that one's coming. And then the $250,000 for our fire detection vehicles. matching grant. What's not in this chart, because it's technically in the budget, was the stormwater project. So that was part of this kind of plan too. So like I said, we're going to have a lot more engagement and talking as this develops, and there's going to be a lot more council action on this. But I did kind of want, you know, since we're using the tax increase to work towards the issuing this debt, I want people to see what we're looking at and going with that. We've been talking about a fire substation now for years. Since Pete had hair. and so we've been pushing a lot of that stuff forward and you know there's definitely some improvements we need we need to make there we've got the revenue with it uh you know the council seeing our proposed funding structure the tax is only going to pay a portion of that as we balance our debt payments so we do need to continue making those improvements for our community and i'm excited to see how that looks out you'll see our current outstanding debt by fund so most of it is the water sewer fund you know we have minimal debt in the general fund as it is that 38.2 million is our total in debt uh 30 million of that is 28 point whatever million is in the water sewer fund so we did pay off 3.17 and we do have our outstanding debt uh credit rating you will recall that i pointed out when we got our last upgrade that they said that we had a strong financial outlook even with the planned future debt issuance upcoming. So we're in pretty good shape for there. Also on the agenda tonight is the transportation user fee renewal. So the way we set that up is every three years we get, the council gets to renew it, or gets to evaluate it and decide if we want to continue with the transportation user fee. That also, the way that we do it, you can only adjust the rates at that period. And so last three years ago, when we first renewed it, we did adjust the rates. This year, we're looking at it. This year, staff's not recommending any rate increases in that. So we're going to keep that the same. Right now, cost of seal coating has actually gone down a few cents every year for the last three years. I'm worried that that's not going to be the case this coming year. with what oil, you know, we bid our chip sale this year, in February last year, or this year, in February, price of oil was still way down there. Now it's not, so I'm, I'm not – we'll see how that goes. But we don't anticipate any of that. The residential flat fee per account is $8 per month. And then if you recall, you know, as we talk – when we talk about the tough, it's set up by – commercial businesses pay based on a trip generation factor. And so the theory behind it is that the benefit and or damage you put onto these – street system is factored into that. So if you get a bigger benefit from the street system, you pay more. If you create more damage, you pay more. So like, for an example, Walmart is our highest rate of trip factor. They pay $500 a month. But how many cars does Walmart put on our roads to get to Walmart? And how much money does Walmart make off of our roads allowing people to get to them? And so the thought behind that is it is more equitable. We were paying for it out of the general fund, which is property taxes and having to cut things. And so at that point, the residents had a... When you use taxes to pay for the street system, residential property value is 73% of our property value. So they were paying for 73% of the road maintenance. And the businesses were paying for the other 26%. So the businesses that were getting the most benefit from the roads were paying the least amount. So now when you factor in the way that the Tufts works, residential account for about 40% of the Tufts revenue. and the commercial businesses are about 60% of that. So generally it's considered more equitable based on who uses the system. It's also increased how much we spend on the road system annually from $100,000 the last time it was in the budget to $620,000. I know that for the first couple of years, some of that wasn't seen as much because a lot of it went to the 10th Street Reconstruction Project first. Now that that's behind us, especially this year, you're seeing how much more miles of street we're able to cover with that money. It's definitely been a good thing. We're testing with the microsurfacing and seeing how that goes. Total expenditures planned in 2027 are $939,000. So that's a little bit of the fund balance. And of course, we have the water sewer transfers into this to pay for the repair of their water cuts. So like when they dig up to repair a water line or they dig up to repair a sewer line, their money comes into this too. So again, tonight, when we get to that item, all the ordinance is doing is keeping everything in place, still basing it on the same trip charges and transportation factors, and we are not increasing the fees. We are keeping everything the same. I will say that if the council chooses not to renew it, we have to find some other way to fund the payment on the 10th Street debt. So not saying that you have to, but... But overall, I do think it's been a very positive thing. And the plans that we have out there, I will go ahead and go to the next slide to kind of cover this too. But we have the maps that I talked about out front on what we've done so far with the tough money, what we're planning on doing with the tough money. Those are online. They're in the budget book. They're in the tough, in the part of the agenda packet tonight is the tough report. That tough report is on the website, which has got all of that stuff. This budget is online. There's a link to it from our homepage. All of this information is on our website. There is a new budget and brief document that we've talked about before. This simplifies the budget into four pages. It's here at City Hall or it's online too. the budget book, which has got a ton of information in it. I wouldn't plan on everybody reading all 310 pages, but it really has a lot of information about what each department's doing, what they've done, what their plans are, what our projections are. If you're a government nerd like me, it's interesting reading. If not, it might be boring, but it's out there. If you don't like reading all of that, this puts it down into four pages. The CIP is also up there. It's a lot smaller, but these are our plan projects. You know, there again, we back to that. Well, I didn't know anything about that. You know, it's out there. We're not trying to hide anything, but we can't spoon feed everybody. You know, you've got to go do a little bit of looking on yourself. On our homepage, since it refreshed, there is a button on the side panel says city projects. You click city projects. It takes you to our capital plan in an interactive map. It's got them where they're located. You can click on the projects. It's got the streets marked that we're planning on doing, the sewer projects. It's all there. And it's all a plan. And we do, like I said, I see the feedback that comes in on social media. I see the feedback that comes in in person. We do take that into consideration. We are not developing this in a vacuum. But there again, when we look at park projects, we have 28 parks. When we look at streets, we have 80 miles of streets. 80. I think this year was the most we've still coded, and we still coded maybe 10, maybe closer to seven miles. I mean, and we did a lot, but it's going to take some time, and we're playing catch up, and we're trying to do that.

Speaking of planning, we did win an award for our planning.

We did. We were the 2023 Texas APA.

I mean, we're planning.

And like I said, things improve every year. We're investing in our community. We're investing in our employees. And I do feel like we're getting better. Are we going to fix everything? No. Are we always going to be perfect? No. Humans are not perfect. Can we learn from that? And can we always strive to do better? Yes. Do I think we're better than we were 100 years ago when that was still a big mud pile out in front of this building? You know, the city was created because they wanted community good and community services. I am very confident that of cities our size, we provide better value and more services than almost every other community our size. I know that because I get feedback from their city managers. And normally it's, well, I wish we could do that. And so I think we're in a lot better place. But it's all out there. I mean, I can't mail every resident a 310-page book, but we put it out there. The online version, it's meant to be. It's got the table of contents. It'll take you straight to what you want. You don't even have to look through all of that. So it's all out there.

Yes.

And so just a little bit of the actions that are coming up. So first step is to have the public hearing for the budget. Then after we have the public hearing for the budget, you will take the final action on the budget ordinance. Then since we are increasing the tax rate, there is a new resolution that just ratifies the tax rate in the budget. That one is a roll call record vote. You'll see that one highlighted. Then we will take action on the first reading of the tax rate. So you will introduce that and you will set the public hearing for September 15th at 1.30. And part of that motion is the announcement of the final time and action on the tax rate. Then you have the introduction of the fee schedule, and then the resolution for the CIP, and then the introduction of the ordinance for the tough renewal.

Questions?

That's a lot of information in a very short amount of time. And I know the council, I would like to thank the time that the staff's put in over the last several months. I'd like to appreciate the time that the council's put in. I mean, the public sees a small fraction of what we've talked about and how much effort we put into this to trying to come up with a plan that is good for the community and addresses as many concerns in as many areas of town as possible while being mindful of fees and tax rates and all of that. So I'm personally, of course, I'm biased, but I'm very proud of this budget. I'm very proud with how we're starting this century. I'm proud enough of this. I want this to go in the time capsule because I think in 100 years when they reopen that, they will learn a lot about who we are, what we do, and how we did it with this document. Maybe by then we'll actually have flying cars and they won't care about the streets anymore.

Yeah. So, Garrett, I'm not seeing the public hearing.

I'll just go ahead and do the public hearing. Yeah. It's part of the top of that, but it's in your agenda. It says conduct the public hearing because it's like receive the presentation, then conduct the public hearing.

Oh, okay. All right. So at this time, I will open the public hearing. And if there is any comments. And if not, then I will close the public hearing. And then I will move on to number 11, consider and take appropriate action on final action on the budget.

On ordinance three. On item 10. It has three things in the one item.

Okay. Okay. I get it now. Okay. Receive a presentation, which we did. Hold the public hearing. Okay. And then consider and take appropriate action to approve on final reading Ordinance O-003-26, adopting the fiscal year 2027 operating budget. And at this point, I'm just going to entertain a motion.

I move to approve on final reading ordinance O-003-26, adopting the fiscal year 2027 operating budget on first reading. Second.

And all in favor? And it passes. And to item 11, consider and take appropriate action on resolution R-0028-26, ratifying the property tax increase reflected in the fiscal year 2027 operating budget. And at this time, I'll entertain a motion.

I move to approve Resolution R-028-26, ratifying the property tax increase reflected in the fiscal year 2027 annual budget as required by Section 102-007C of the Texas Local Government Code.

I second.

And all in favor, this will be a roll call vote. So, Councilman Lawrence. And councilman feeling right. And and and and and I for myself. So it passes.

I've been like, you know, this is the busiest agenda of the whole year with the most complicated stuff for the whole year. And I've only been half with it for like the last three weeks. So you're not the only one.

I was thinking Shelby, but I couldn't think of the last name.

Well, we have to be careful because we got Shelby Wright and Shelby Webster. Anyway.

item 12 consider and take appropriate action to introduce on first reading ordinance 0-004-25 adopting a combined tax rate of 0.64659 per hundred dollar valuation for fiscal year 2027 and confirming the required public hearing for september 15th 2026 at 1 30 in the city council chambers of city at city hall 600 north main street And at this time I will make. I'll take a motion. Oh, I messed up bad. I'm so sorry.

I move to introduce our first reading. Ordinance O-004-26, adopting a combined tax rate of 0.646590 cents per $100 evaluation for fiscal year 2027. I further announce that final action on the tax rate will be taken on September the 2nd. 15th, sorry. I forgot to update that.

15th.

Okay. September the 15th, 2025 at 6.30 p.m. At 1.30 p.m. 1.30 p.m. See, I just told you I was scribbling.

Do I have a second? Second. And then another roll call vote. Councilwoman Lawrence. Councilwoman Wright. Aye. Aye. I protein of this time feeling thank you and so I myself and so it passes. And then we will move on to what item in my 13 consider and take appropriate action to introduce on first reading ordinance, oh dash 0, 0, 5, dash 26 amending the city of burgers fee schedule for the fiscal year 2027 budget year. I'll entertain a motion. I keep wanting to say Mr. Spradlin.

I'll talk more about it if you want. I move to introduce on first reading ordinance O-005-26, amending the City of Borger Code of Ordinances, Chapter 1, General Provisions, Article 1.07, fee schedule.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. And it passes. Item 14, receiving the fiscal year 2025 annual tough report, which we already did, right?

Yep.

And then consider and take appropriate action to introduce on first reading. Ordinance O-006-26, reviewing and continuing Article 13.07, transportation user fee of the Code of Ordinance of the City of Borger, Texas. And I'll entertain a motion.

I move to introduce on first reading ordinance 0-009-23 reviewing and continuing article 13.07 transportation use of fee of the code of ordinance of the city of Borga, Texas.

Second. And all in favor? And it passes. And item 15 consider and take appropriate action on resolution are dash 0, 1, 6, dash 2, 5, approving and adopting the fiscal year 2027 through 2031 community investment program. And I'll entertain a motion.

I move to approve resolution are 0, 29, 26 approving and adopting the fiscal year 2027 through fiscal year 2031 community investment program.

And on favor. And it passes. And item 16, consider and take appropriate action to introduce on first reading Ordinance O-007-26, amending the 2026 operating budget. Mr. Spradlin.

So, you know, this time of the year, we normally make our final budget adjustments for where we're at. We normally do it a little earlier, but actually this year we've been, for the most part, pretty good. You'll notice that this year we have no amendments in the water, in the general fund or water sewer fund. I've been able to take care of those line item adjustments without having to adjust the total revenue or total expenditures. So we don't need any action on there. This year in the tourism fund, we're able to increase revenue to $525,000, about $50,000 more than we budgeted. So we've had some more revenue coming in. That will help offset the, you know, we planned on using the accumulated fund balance to buy that mobile stage. So we're gonna have a little extra in the fund balance after that with the increased revenue. Of course, in the opioid grant fund, we didn't plan on doing the project with Aspire and buying the car when the budget first started. So the changes to Fund 25 incorporate those expenses. The council has previously separately approved those actions. Now we just need to amend the budget for that action. Fund 31 is the fire training fund. We put in placeholders there every year. The fire department uses that for training, depending on how much training they have or what's available, depends on how much they use. That fund has a little round $500,000 in it. We generally just put $50,000 in expenses. So this year they wanted to buy a UTV out of it. And so that's what the increased cost there is. That UTV will actually eventually be able to send out on deployment. That's been one of the big demands that they've made is they don't have a lot of wildfire EMS response units. So we do expect that when that UTV makes money in the future, all of its revenue will go back into Fund 31 to help supporting fire training. And if you recall, that's going to pay for part of the training tower. debt payment when we get to that. But the debt, the amendment is for that change. Like I said, that's one that we just adopt a financial plan on. So, you know, we know that it's going to kind of be up in the air, but we do still come to the council. In 46, there's some changes to expenses. We had to replace an AC unit that we weren't planned for at the Dome. So that's adding that extra cost there. We do end up being a little negative, but we still have a fund balance in there. And revenues is a little higher in there too, but we don't need to adjust it. I'm hoping that that will balance out. Fund 52, we had budgeted for that stormwater grant project. Of course, that didn't happen in the current budget year, so we're just removing out all of those. It's a net zero, but we are removing revenue and expenditures, so that requires the council's action. And then in the transportation user fund, we did the microsurfacing project. We talked about adding more to that. The council We approved that expenditure back when we talked about it. Now we need to add it to the budget because the microsurfacing project wasn't in the budget. So we're adding the $452,524.86 for the microsurfacing and then the $95,500 for the 6th and Main Centennial intersection, which were the unplanned expenses. We are still anticipating the transportation user fund in somewhere with about a $400,000 fund balance. So we're still doing really good there. Other than that, like I said, this is much more streamlined than the last couple of budget amendments the last couple of years. So we're getting things lined in and they're filed in a little bit more, but I'll entertain any questions you might have on that.

Anyone have anything? If not, then I'll entertain a motion.

I move to introduce on first reading ordinance 000726, amending the fiscal year 2026 operating budget. Second.

And all in favor? And it passes. And then item 17, consider and take appropriate action on an amended interlocal agreement for emergency medical services between the city of Borger and Hutchinson County. Mr. Spradlin.

So I'm going to talk about this item and the one after it that's kind of related to it. House Bill 3000 added a rural ambulance grant program in the last legislative session. So that money goes to the counties who can then use the money to purchase qualified ambulances or emergency medical equipment for the provision of emergency medical services. This change in the amendment adds the language for us to use as the interlocal agreement for us to be the recognized service provider to use that money. There are no other changes in that agreement other than renumbering the sections to add that section nine, which is the terms and conditions for that grant money, which is pretty much dictated by the state law. So there's no real thing about that. The next item is the resolution. So the county's asked that we purchase it for them because it has to be their equipment, but we want to make sure that we get what we need. So we're going to request permission from them to buy it on their behalf. We will pay for it, and then they will reimburse us. That's also the cleanest way. We're asking for a little bit more than the grants for $350,000. The estimated cost is $354,172. So that's how we can make up the $4,000 difference without having to complicate it with another agreement and getting the county to pay the $354,000 and then us having to pay them the $4,000 and deciding how that works. So this ends up being the cleaner way to deal with that. For the first year, this is two years of funding. For the first year, we're trying to go for equipment. It's a little cleaner and easier. What's included are

Three new power lift cots. Two power loaders, which are what puts it in the ambulance.

I'm going through some of this stuff because there's a lot of accessories and you don't care about the accessories. Two new cardiac monitors, the LifePak 35s like we bought two in the past. And then... Two Lucas chest compressors, and then a whole bunch of miscellaneous batteries, the blood pressure cuffs, the SpO2 monitors, the cables, the printers, and all of that stuff. So with this, it will equip four ambulances all the same. So we need three cots because the two newest trucks that we have have power loaders and have new cots that are still under warranty. The two new ones we've got coming and Medic 3, the maintenance spare, we didn't buy new cots for that. So that gets us, that's why we need three cots. But then we only need two power loaders because we've got two power loaders in the two new trucks we bought. We don't have one in the old one and we need one for the one that's coming. Then again, the two cardiac monitors, because we've got the two and the two new trucks that we bought last year, this will be the two for the others. The two chest compression devices, because I forgot earlier, we bought one from Stinnett when we took over their EMS service. So we've got the one we bought two years ago, the one we bought from Stinnett, and then the two new ones, we'll put them on the same truck. So that'll equip all of our plan four main units with the auto loader, the power cot,

the LifePak 35 cardiac monitor and the Lucas chest compression device.

The resolution is calling this.

How does this, how do you, because I know you said that even though, I mean, we're the ones using because we provide the PMS services. How do they own, they own the, Hutchinson County, they own the equipment?

Really what that means is it goes on their asset list and not on our asset list. But it's going to be on our, it has.

But I mean, it's state, it's money that we don't.

Right. It's a little, and we talked about that being a little complicated because, you know, the state, you know, they don't necessarily think in operational terms. And so, you know, I think, and, you know, they try to get, you know, sometimes legislation gets developed quick and, you know, it's not uncommon for, legislation to be fixed in the next session or years after. So I don't think they completely thought about that. I'm not for sure. I think in their mind, they were thinking that the counties operated most of the ambulance services. And in reality, the counties don't operate. I mean, fewer counties operate EMS services than do. And so since they were giving the mechanism to the counties, that's why they want it to be their equipment. But it has to be used by a qualified EMS service provider. So like unless the county is the EMS qualified service provider, they can't use the equipment that the state's requiring them to buy. And so it's kind of like we're going to end up having like a $0 lease on it. But it has to be used by us so the county can't not use it because we're the approved qualified EMS service provider in their grant application. So it's It's a little cumbersome in the procedures because of how the state law is written. I'm hoping maybe that with the legislative session coming up, if they renew this program for another two years, that they clean up some of that language. Because there's no reason, if we're the qualified EMS provider, there's no reason the money couldn't come for us, for the court required. What the state was trying to do is they didn't want to deal, if they give it to the counties, then they're only dealing with 254 entities. If they allow the counties to do subgrants and make all the subrecipients report, they could be getting reports from, you know, if the county gives each year to two different providers and that's 254 counties, I'm not for sure how many qualified for this grant, but you double the amount of reporting that you might have to do. And I think that was probably to reduce the number of applications because the county has to apply, not the, and you know, multiple counties might have multiple providers. So it definitely made it easier on the comptroller to, just accept applications from the county. I think that was the basis for it. But operationally on our side, there's... It's definitely a little bit convoluted. And the state might not care because it's... They're like, well, you're giving your money. You know what... But... It is a good deal for us. Most of this stuff was planned in our, you know, when you see an ambulance in our budget, the ambulance is about $360,000, but you see a little over $400,000 in expense because equipping it with all of this is part of that budget. So most of this stuff we were planning on equipping. We're accelerating some of the replacements while the grant money is here just in case it doesn't get renewed. But like I said, the... Older cots that we have are going out anyway, so this gets us four or three brand new cots. The two new trucks we have, the cots are going into life, but we've already bought one for the new truck coming in, which is where it's going, which is why we're buying three cots instead of four, because we've already ordered one. The auto loaders are still good. The two old... Cardiac, the two cardiac monitors we bought are still good, and the two chest compressions. So that's why you get three COTS and two of everything else. Now that I see the numbers. I know I was a little confusing about that downstairs earlier. I've been looking at so many numbers so long now. But that's the next two items. Other questions? Does that make as much sense as maybe it can?

Yeah. If there's nothing, then I'll entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion that, excuse me, we approve the amended interlocking agreement with Hutchinson County for emergency medical service as part of the consent agenda. I don't need to have that rest.

Oh, I didn't put it in the consent agenda. I changed my mind. Well, when I first did that, I'm sorry. When I first did that, I didn't have the striker quote. I didn't know we were going to do it at the same agenda. So I moved it real quick because I didn't want the strike. I didn't think you were going to authorize $354,000 of untalked about equipment in the consent agenda.

Yeah.

See, I'm not perfect. I talked about that earlier.

And do I have a second? And all in favor? And it passes. And then item 18, consider and take appropriate action on resolution R-030-26, authorizing the sole source purchase of emergency medical equipment from Stryker Sales LLC on behalf of Hutchinson County in connection with the Texas Rural Ambulance Service Grant Program in an amount of $354,117. And we pretty much talked about it, so I'll entertain a motion.

I move to approve resolution number R-030-26, authorizing the sole source purchase of emergency medical equipment direct sales LLC on behalf of Hutchison County in an amount not to exceed $354,117.98. with reimbursement from available House Bill 3000 Rural Ambulance Service Grant Program funds and the city funding the remaining balance. And all in favor?

And it passes. And item 19, consider and take appropriate action to award the bid for the Third Street Stormwater Improvement Project to the low bidder and highest scoring contractor, Bose Simon, Inc., in the amount of $872,018. Mr. Spradlin. So, you know, we've been dealing with this for...

A long time now. We're finally getting close to this being at the end. So, you know, when we very first started this project, we bid it and the Rock Creek Sewer Crossing together. At that time, the OPC, the opinion of probable cost was $500,000. When we bid it out, the low bid came in at $1.2 million. Wow. Just for that portion of it. At the time, we had earmarked some of the... COVID money for that project. And it was so much over that we didn't have the money for it, so we deferred it. We then applied for a hazard mitigation grant for it. We were selected as an alternate project. Then we had the fire over by the carbon black plants that made us a primary recipient. And we applied for it again, thinking that that was pretty much a done deal. The state decided not to award anybody that and keep it in the state decisions. So we didn't get that hazard method grace and grant for it. And that time, last time we talked about it, we showed the council some updated pictures. It had progressed to where it couldn't wait any longer. It was gonna have to be replaced. So we did decide to go ahead and put it out to bid. It was always planned to be part of the upcoming debt issuance next year. So we were gonna do it a year later when we issued the debt, but it got to the point to where we couldn't wait. Now, the nice thing maybe about waiting is that we ended up getting a very favorable bid. So the opinion of probable cost, the updated opinion of probable cost from the city engineer was a little over $1.7 million. There was some contingency in that that I thought was a little high. So when we budgeted for it, I budgeted the one $389,779. And the bid came in at $872. So we're about $517,000 below what we had budgeted for, which frees up some money in our plan debt issuance for probably more sports field improvements or something like that. So it's definitely a positive thing. There was an added alternate in this project to use concrete paving instead of asphalt paving. That was an extra $100,000. I generally didn't think that that was worth, I mean, because by the time we get new concrete headwalls out there and stuff like that, I don't think I think that money can be spent better elsewhere. You know, we talked about that before is we can repair asphalt. We can't repair concrete in house. So if any future repair had to be done, that's paying some contractor. I think once we get it all compacted and get the concrete headwalls and the new curb and gutter and the new drain spouts are all concrete, I think the road surface is, a minimal part of that. So, we are not recommending that with the extra $100,000 for the concrete road surface, just the base bid of $872,000. There will be a resolution at a forthcoming meeting to allow us to reimburse ourselves for this when we issue from the debt issuance, but we'll spend down our reserves in the meantime to get it done. Like I said, if you think it can wait, I invite you to try to drive to the animal shelter and look at it. So it will be much better when it's done. This is definitely something that we don't really have a choice on. It definitely needs to be done. Bo Simon, we've had really good luck with him on the last several projects. If you remember, he was the one that did the screw pumps that we estimated at over half a million dollars, and he came in at 288, which was... where it probably should have been. And he did a really good job out there. Those are back working. He did the sewer crossing. His bid is actually, he was the low bid back the first time at 1.2. So his bid is actually significant lower than it was back then. But he's done, he did the sewer crossing. So he's worked in that area, so I think he had a little better understanding of what he might be facing. He's also, we've had a really good working relationship with him. He knows that we're reasonable, so he's not, you know, some cities are, you know, they're so unreasonable that they're going to hold you to every term of every contract, so they budget in a city unknown. And so we built a relationship, I think, with him where some of that comes down. So building relationships and work being reasonable, I think, has really helped us save money. That's $517,000 that we saved on this one, which I'll be sure to remind you come March when you're evaluating me. And the $220,000 or so he saved us on the screw pump. Wow. Any other questions?

What's the lead time on this project?

So we'll have to, once the council approves it, we'll have to get a contract signed. He's likely going to be bidding on the Cloverleaf bore project too. I'm not saying that He's guaranteed to get that, but depending on what he... And it might not matter. He might want to go ahead and get started on this. And either way, there's going to be some benefit to him probably doing both because he'll already be here for one or the other. So I expect him to have a somewhat advantage on that project anyway just because he just got this. So we'll see. It's going to be probably a month before he can start anyway. We will have opened the bids for that other one, and there could be a chance that he might want to... Delayed a little bit to do them at the same time or to get a staff, but we'll see. Right now, the street's still been okay. How is it after the... I say okay from the bad that it was. Yeah, take that for the grain of salt, but, you know... We'll make sure that, like I said, that's part of the reason that he has been bidding pretty good for us is because we do have that working relationship. So some of that will depend on when he's ready. We will negotiate a notice of proceed date, which starts the contract timing and penalties and stuff like that.

Is there a projected finish time? I mean, you know, from whence they start, whence they break down. I know they're already running the stuff.

I think the contract time that the engineer has anticipated, I think, is four months. I, that's normally overly aggressive. I will say that Bo's been pretty quick on everything he's done.

Is there an alternative?

It's back behind the Church of Christ. And they've actually, we've graded it and made some improvements to it. We'll be able to, we'll put that out publicly. It's, But we're going to allow him to shut the road just so he can work quickly. And I will say that our experience with Bo, he's not going to waste time. I mean, when he gets on something, I mean, especially when he bids aggressively, I mean, that's because he thinks he can do it quicker. And the quicker they do jobs like that, the more money they make.

Honestly, the public would only be going to the animal shelter pretty much anyway.

There are some, and we'll have to work with the, like, the port-a-potty companies that go and dump their, you know, there's a few like that. And it's mostly city employees that will be impacted more than anybody in the animal shelter.

And the lease that goes to those leases?

Most of that, they're already a lot of times coming from the back side. Oh, yeah. I don't think he'll mess around. I think it's probably, you know, there's still a little unknown. And I mean, there's a lot of building back to, I mean, a lot of that dirt's washed away. So, but I, you know, I think probably in weather, you know, we're getting into that time of the year, but this is generally a good time for contractors like that. Cause a lot of the street, you know, they generally slow down kind of towards the winter. So I think he'll probably be able to focus on it. So I'm hoping that maybe, maybe we're looking more in like the two week time period. Two-week. Two-month time period.

Wow, that's really fast. It's pre-made.

It's after seven.

I like it.

Yeah. But you know, we're, we're going to try to, we'll work with him and, you know, and like I said, he, he, he's been pretty good. You know, he, they were able to just close Brian street for like those two days. They, they did that second street last sewer project over there. And, you know, he worked around that. So he's, I think we'll, we should be pretty good. It'll be, it's going to look a lot different. I mean, having a concrete headwall, it's going to be definite improvement. It's, It doesn't directly impact a lot of people, but it indirectly impacts a lot of people. It's going to be a bigger project. It's just not going to be very visible, but it is definitely important.

Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Other questions?

If there's not, then I'll entertain a motion.

I move to war move to war the 3rd street stormwater improvement project to both Simon incorporated in the amount of 870 through 1000 18 cents for the base be it the client. Added alternative number one and authorize the city manager to execute the necessary contract document.

And all in favor. And it passes. And item 20 consider and take appropriate action to adjourn.

I make a motion we adjourn.

And we're all in favor and we are adjourned. Thank you all for.