City Council - Regular Meeting

uh Council Member Craig Pearson in the Pledge of Allegiance to the US flag, followed by Mike Rogers leading us in the Texas pledge, and finally uh Council Member Stephanie Oan will give our invocation. Please rise. Join me in the pledge to our nation's flag. 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. The Texas pledge. Honor the Texas flag. I aliance to thee, Texas under God, one and indivisible.

Please join me in prayer. Father, we just come to you this evening just uh praising your name. Father, we thank you for the the warm weather and and the excitement that comes before spring. And I just uh pray that we have safety and and and weather and storms and just ask that you protect our our community from that. Father, I just uh want to thank you for this community that we're blessed to live in. I thank you so much for the uh amazing staff that serve this community day in day out. out and I ask that you watch over them and protect families. Father, I ask for a special blessing over our men and women uh in uniform and that you keep them safe and again protect their families as well. And Father, for those that have had loss, just ask that you provide a comfort that can only come from you. And again, we just bless you or ask that you bless us and our community, Father, and just bless the deliberations this evening and that all of our decisions and and discussions would glorify you. For it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Amen. All right. Tuesday, March 10th council meeting is called to order at 5:32 p.m. First item after calling is our public comments. If anyone wishes to speak to the council on any actions that we can take um they may come and do so three minutes uh I'd have at least one signed up and if you did not sign up and wishes to speak they can go afterwards. The first one I have is uh Mr. Levi Coington name and address for the record.

Levi Coington at 21109 North Penelopey Street. Um, good evening council members, city staff, and citizens of Belton. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here on behalf of the city of Belton Youth Advisory Commission. I'm here to the invitation to all of you to to attend our one community, one-day event and cookout. It will be on Saturday, April 11th, and it's a large community service project focused on doing jobs for homeo for homeowners who sign up. After the event, we will also be putting on a cookout to celebrate all of the work that we've done. We would love it if any of you would want to volunteer either to participate in the projects just to watch, but we would also love it if we could have some people to sign up to be grill masters

to cook the food for our cookout. It would be amazing to see our own city council participating in this event, showing that the citizens of Belton that we are one community. If you have any further questions, you can reach out to Shereice Bennett, Al Adam Trillo, and Adam Wells at the parks department, or you can reach out to me. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Cington. Levi, will you add me to your list? I've got a pretty good pit and uh I can recruit some guys to uh sing some burgers or hot dogs or whatever you need. We'd love to help with that, sir. Saturday, April 11th.

Thank you. You still have another minute to keep going. All right. So, good job. All right. Yeah. Good job.

All right. Any other comments before we move on? That being the last public comment, the next two items on our agenda are consent agenda items three and four. Uh these items can be enacted by a single motion if the council so chooses or they can remove them um and discuss them separately. I will read items three and four into the minutes and then we can uh take action. Item three is adopting the minutes of the February 24th council meeting. And item four is authorizing the city manager to enter into a professional services agreement with Clark Associates uh engineering and construction administration services on the West Avenue drainage project. That's all I have on the consent. Any comments, questions or the chair would entertain a motion? Move that we adopt the consent agenda as presented.

Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. All in favor say I. I.

Those opposed. Passes unanimously. Onto the regular agenda. Item five is consider resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement and all documentation necessary to finalize the purchase of rightaway for one remaining parcel including the use of imminent domain necessary. Money. Yes, sir. to bring this item to you this evening. And uh due to some early renovations here that we found with the uh engineer and such, we're kind of wanting to see if we could go ahead and table this and look at a couple of different options that would probably help minimize some of the impacts to the uh relocations that we were seeing. How how long do you think we should indefinitely or

April 14th if we could? Okay. Give it one month. Right. Chair Entertainment to postpone this to a future meeting. So move second. We have a motion and a second to postpone this to a future meeting. Um you guys can set the date. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. Those opposed. All right. Postponed. Item six is receive an interim financial report for the quarter ended December 31st, 2025. Mr. Rogers.

Good evening, mayor and council. Um oh, watch it now. um to um in an effort to increase transparency of city finances, I'd like to start bringing these quarterly finance to you. Um if you allow me just a few brief minutes, I'll go over our budgeted funds um and the results for the first quarter. So for the general fund, um the blue bars you see is the annual budget. The orange bars you see are the results for the first quarter. Um we've collected most of our property taxes for the year. So that's why um revenues exceed expenditures by almost $6 million for the quarter. Um you will from this point forward expenditures will grow at a more rapid pace than revenues will that 5.9 will continue to shrink as we go throughout the year. Um street maintenance is a large part of that budget that hasn't even started yet. We also have capital expenditures during the year that will that will be coming. Um on the water and sewer, um we have debt service payments. They won't hit until the second quarter of or we pay interest and principal in January and July of each year. So that's a large chunk of this budget that hasn't hit yet. It's only 16% of expenditures. Um so that's generating a a large net income for this quarter. Um water charges are kind of tracking along. sewer is a little bit last year. So, we're going to have to watch that for the rest of this year. On the drainage fund side, um 31% of the expenditure budget has been reached at the end of this quarter. That's because of these large incumbrances that we have for some large projects. We got detention pond mowing. We're upgrading our flood warning system and some consulting fees. A contract has already been signed for some of that. So, those incumbrances are pushing up expenses during this quarter. Um, but it's about a break even $56,000 net loss

for the quarter. Um, we on our hotel tax fund, we've obviously already have on the Chisum Trail, Poc on the Square, those expenses are already um occur have already incurred during this quarter. So, we've reached 32% of our expenses. um revenues fall behind because um for those um folks that pay us quarterly, they don't pay us occupancy taxes until January. So, you'll start seeing that revenue hitting in the second quarter of the fiscal year. Um these two funds are not much to report lopsided one way or the other. Um the debt service fund has revenues um based upon the property taxes that it received but there are no expenditures um in the first quarter because again we pay debt service in January and July of each year. The TUR fund just does just the opposite um where we don't have any revenues hitting this fund yet. Um it receives its contributions from the city and Bell County in a uh March and April of each fiscal year. So, the second quarter is when you'll start seeing some revenues come in. Information and technology, um, information technology and building maintenance, our two internal service funds are doing what they do every year. Um, kind of moving right along. Uh, a lot of our software costs, annual renewals, computer purchases. A lot of that stuff happens in the first quarter of each year. So you'll see a net loss for the quarter in information building maintenance treging along about 25% of the year spent. And then lastly, our our EDC is showing a large gain for the for the quarter of $720,000 um over expenses. Again, that's that's sales tax revenue that's coming in and

the timing of those capital pro uh capital purchases and projects. Well, those will happen later in the year. So, that's a just a giving you a brief update of the first quarter. Um, I'd be happy to answer any questions. If not, we'll go on. Any questions? My only qu is I don't want to get into the weeds here, but I know we did a pretty big water rate implementation is I think we're roughly almost a half year into that. That was before budget, right? Yeah, that was two years ago. This is the second year of that study. Um, and we didn't change any rates for 26. Oh,

yeah. We left them flat from 2025. Um, and so we're going to have to watch that as we go forward. Adopting 27. Kind of be it. Okay. Is our law the term water water loss unbuild water or water loss. Yeah. Is that looking a little better? I think that's looking a little better. That's a Scott hottie question. Um, we don't calculate that every single month, I don't think. Right. um come in. But we did fix part of the billing problem that was causing that. We we do keep track of it monthly and uh it is going to take a uh decrease on this next round here just because of the billing issues that we had and some other factors but we do see it declining. Perfect. Good.

Anything else? All right. No action taken since this was just a interim report. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. All right. Item seven is receive a presentation on the Belton Fire Department 2025 annual report. I show Chief John Fontnau on the paper, but I don't see him in live and in person. So, it looks like a much prettier guy. Absolutely. All right. Thank you, Mayor Council, for uh letting me present this year or last year's 2025 and the year presentation. This all, by the way, this might be the quickest council meeting ever sat there, by the way.

Up to you, Tom. Yeah.

Uh, so our mission at the fire department is to, uh, dedicated professionals, uh, is to enhance the quality of life for our community by delivering expert levels of fire and emergency service response, fire prevention, and public education, as well as providing any other service we're equipped to deliver. So, our team coordination is our team. We have two fire stations, you know, downtown which has a uh a lieutenant, a driver, operator, and three firefighters. Um, one of those firefighters is u also staffs the blocker truck. Um, and that lieutenant is over that station and and those that equipment apparatus. Uh, station two is equipped with the or staff with the captain who also is the shift commander over the entire shift as well as that station. And uh, that crew also consists of a driver operator and two firefighters. So, as far as training, training in our department is extremely important to build competence uh competence and consistency and consistency in emergency responses. As you can see, our firefighters are dedicated to training. Um this last in 2025, there was 287 C hours and the C hours are mainly like your statemandated um hours such as ladders, hose handling, pump operations, stuff like that. 118 advanced skills out uh skills hours which is like uh people going doing rope rescue, high angle rescue, swift water training such as that. And then 404 hours of advanced certification which means upgrading their certification as a higher level of firefighter or wildland firefighter, boat operator, um fire officer courses, fire inspectors, things like that. So on average um we had over 80 hours of training per member in 2025. and our calls for service. So, our total incidents are slightly down from 24 by almost 60 calls. Um, all of our fires, our structure fires, car fires, and wildland fires all increased over in 2025. The rest of the categories pretty

much remain the same. Um, and then as you see, station one is quite a bit busier than station two with uh over 1500 calls and station two just over nine. Um that equals out to 29 2951 apparatus responses. That means that many times a fire truck left the fire station. Um that's broken down into dual truck responses which is usually commercial fire alarm and uh Rex on 35 and 14 is what those usually consist of. Um again in 2025 uh box one which is the downtown district which is the red is the busiest by box three and two three is the blue and two is the green. Um box one or box one district one is our busiest that's the downtown that the middle shade of of red followed by 21 and 31 all remains our busiest districts. Um in addition in 2025 we swapped some response district with Celo provide faster response by sending the closest unit. So now covers uh the southern area which is formerly box 35 which is the tan or brown tan in the bottom or the south and we cover the lightest blue on the southeastern side and this is for one alarm calls such as NBC's or accidents medical calls uh any fires in either one of those districts get Belton and SLO both our fire officers have been busy again um in 2025 with 617 uh inspection investig stigations. Um those numbers remain consistent from 2024 except for the number of COs which went up by a lot almost or went up 86 uh for the or for 2025. Then our community engagement, we're out a lot in the community. Um we had 80 total events in 2025 with over um 3644

public education events. Those are going to be like fire extinguisher training. Um it's part of prevention week when we go visit the schools, station tours and things like that. And then our public uh public relations, we interacted with almost 6,400 people. Um those are things such as national night out, wedding down the band like we do every year and consider days a touch a truck and things like that. Also in 2025, uh Tammy, our office manager, won the uh 2025 city of Belin excellence in customer service award. And we also had um the C shift in May and July both had uh customer service recognitions. You may have seen them on Facebook. One of them was they finished to mowing a guy's yard after he had a medical emergency. Those guys are doing great there. And this is a pretty big deal to the CPR life-saving awards. Um this is one of the awards we give that we've given to these two guys on two separate incidents. One in July and one in September. And this award is what we give for a patient when we arrive on scene has no pulse and then we end up getting pulses back and they make a full recovery and end up leaving or discharge the hospital with no deficits. So that's a pretty big deal for those two groups of guys. Then we have um there's a whole list of stuff they do there but you know some of them you know it's a they're mainly a big help to support the firefighters by providing rehab um during extended scenes and also help our fire prevention and community outreach. So they too some of that like smoke detectors they help with that. Um also we have the third course that's held annually in September and October. It's one day a week for eight weeks usually here at the hair center. Um in 2025 they did or 15 students completed bringing the number to 133 in the last five years. So if y'all are interested that's starting up here in uh September. Uh in 2025 with 28 active members members, the team volunteered over 1,550 hours.

Um the CERT community participated in 16 events. You can see them all listed there. Um some of them such as the market days, Fourth of July parade. They help us by staffing the first aid area, National Night Out with Blaze. I'm sure you'all seen him before picture there in the top. And uh Christmas on the Chisom Trail. So, some new additions coming soon. So, some of our new additions in 2025 with this budget year was a C rehab trailer that's been replaced. It's fully functional now. It's been stocked and organized with C supplies as well as the firefighter rehab, water, um tent, all that stuff's in there. And we also replaced some of the furniture at station 2 um this year or this budget year. Station one's getting some. They should be here any day. Uh we purchased a bler a blocker truck in late 2020 started the upfit pit and it has now been in service a little over a week and went in service two Fridays ago. Friday ago. Um and we're also replacing a fire marshal truck and it we've already got it or we had it and it's now in Austin getting upfitted with lights and graphics and everything. We hope to have it hopefully in the next two weeks. Uh in 2025 uh we acquired land closest to the justice center. um for a station. A comprehensive analysis was completed and presented to council on February T February 10th meeting by Chief Bontno. And then we had our awards. If you all saw on Facebook, we had ours uh last week uh for this yeah for 2025, but these are for the ones from 24 actually I guess you want to say. So that one um we had our officer of the year that that award is voted on by the firefighters or the officer and Lieutenant Marty Tippet is the one that won that award last year. And then there was firefighter of the year um who was uh voted on by the fire officers and the command staff at the time. LJ Whistinger was a firefighter. He has since promoted to

driver operator in 2025. And then he got the fire chief's award is voted on by the fire chief and uh that went to Lieutenant Carter Davis. And then we had the uh local 456 presence award that went to driver operator Jeff Booker. So on behalf of the entire fire department, we are thankful for the council for continued support through 2025 and looking for the same in 2026. So I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have them. Awesome. Thank you very much. Any questions? Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Right. know if this is the council meeting on record, but it's it's it's in the it's in the hunt. So, that's the last item we have on our regular agenda. The next three items are executive session items, and we will not be taking any action afterwards. Uh so, we will retire into executive session. I'm going to read these uh items into the agenda or into the record um while y'all leave, but we're done. So, stand