City Council - Regular Meeting

Hey, John. Okay. Got you on there. Got you on there. Yeah, there you go. What's going on, John? Hey, John. John, move to your left just a little bit. No, other way. Sorry. There you go. There you go. Okay, y'all are good. I have y'all out there on the monitors out there, so we should be good to go. What's this?

i will go ahead and call to order our july 30th 2026 city council meeting for the city of longview want to welcome our folks that are online brandon smith and john neustad we can see you guys excellent brandon's wearing a suit thanks brandon John is on vacation, not wearing a suit. Prayer and pledge today will be led by our City of Longview summer and fall interns. The prayer will be given by Quaid Duro and pledged by Kimberly Delgado. We're so excited to have interns this year, so please rise.

Would you bow with me? Lord, I just thank you for tonight, for this city, and for the people in this room who call Longview home. We ask that you'd give this council clear heads and good hearts tonight as they work through business in front of them. Help them make decisions that are good for this community today and down the road. Thank you for our city staff and watch over our first responders. Lord, I ask that you continue to bless this city and the people in it. We ask this in your name. Amen.

Amen.

And now for the pledge. 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.

Thank you guys so much. Oh, photo? Yes, let's take an intern photo. I did want to say our departments have said only wonderful things about all of our interns and how great it's been to have you and how much you have helped, so I hope we will be a meaningful part of your experience as well. Counsel, you guys want to come on up? We can all take a photo.

Do you want to be in the photo, Sidney?

Come on. I as well. Yep, I as well.

Come on. We did not get you a going away gift, but we will take a photo.

Thank you guys very much.

Next up is citizen comment. I think that maybe, Miss Barbara, would you like to talk at the time that we consider that? Where'd you go? Do you want to talk when we actually talk about that on the agenda, or would you like to talk now?

Whatever you say.

Agenda. Later. Next is a presentation item. I will ask Ms. Melanie Wright to join me up here, and we will do a presentation of a proclamation recognizing today, July 30th, as Longview stands against Human Trafficking Day here in the city of Longview. Come on up. Would you like to say something?

Well, we just had our prayer gathering Sunday night at the Gregg County Courthouse and Steps, and we had a wonderful turnout. We just want to continue showing up in Longview, being education awareness and connecting survivors to where they need to go and connecting everybody.

Well, Melanie, we sure appreciate all that you do. But today we are here to talk about World Day Against Trafficking for Persons because July 30th is World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. Human trafficking continues to be a billion-dollar criminal industry that denies freedom to approximately 40.3 million people worldwide. And Texas is currently estimated to have over 313,000 victims of human trafficking, including 79,000 victims of child sex trafficking. Human trafficking is modern day slavery which denies human dignity and freedom and is found in the United States most often in the form of sexual exploitation, forced labor, involuntary servitude, and debt bondage. Even though awareness of this crime is growing, human trafficking continues to go unreported due to its isolating nature, the misunderstanding of its definition, and the lack of awareness about its indicators. Increased community education on how to identify victims of human trafficking along with increased knowledge of local resources and services for those affected by these criminal actions and the public being vigilant to report suspicious activity to local law enforcement will support victims of human trafficking and help diminish the number of future victims. The City of Longview joins the HEPTA Coalition in its dedication to collaborating with the community to offer hope for survivors and educating the community through awareness, partnering with law enforcement providers, victim services, and churches, and assisting survivors with transforming their journey into wholeness and restoration. and joining forces with the community to ensure survivors have proper aftercare. And even though awareness of this crime is growing, human trafficking continues to go unreported due to its isolating nature, the misunderstanding, and the lack of awareness. It is now my privilege as mayor of the city of Longview to hereby proclaim today, July 30th, as World Day Against Trafficking in Persons here in the city of Longview. Congratulations and thank you for all that you do.

Thank you.

Next on our agenda is a discussion item to discuss and review the recycling program that was going to be Mr. Dwayne Archer, but I believe it will be rolling with us tonight. He will give us that presentation. Also, just a reminder that we're also obviously talking about the budget later tonight. So just to council members, we'll do a status update on recycling, but we'll actually talk about fees and those kind of things in the budget. We'll turn it over to you, Rowan.

Sure. I apologize. I'm a distant second to Dwayne when talking about recycling. But good evening, Mayor and members of City Council. I want to acknowledge that Dwayne's unable to be in attendance, but we did feel that it was important to continue this discussion. With some of the recent changes, City Council has had questions about our recycling program, and I will attempt to answer those questions. Here are the areas and topics that I will cover tonight. So we'll just give kind of a brief overview of the path that we've been on in recycling. So first thing, let's talk about recycling change the collection day. Let's look at why we made this change. After the Rivers fire, we let customers use their recycling bins for their excess trash because we didn't want to affect the volume of disposal available to all the homes. So we allowed trash because of that need. So restarting the program created a disposal mindset that led to a high contamination rate. And nearly every load was being rejected, keeping the sanitation recycling on the same day. We needed a way to provide that service to our customers that really wanted to participate, so we staggered the sanitation and recycling days. This has actually been highly successful. We have fixed the contamination rate on the recyclables. Another change was the acceptable lists of plastics that were provided. The original MRF, Rivers Recycling, always accepted numbers one through number sevens, and we'll go through those resin numbers in just a minute. But we really encourage residents to only recycle ones and twos because that's where the market was. When Neetex opened, they accepted the same one through seven that Rivers had accepted. So we made the adjustment and told all of our citizens and customers, hey, you can dispose of numbers one through seven. However, Neetex notified us that markets changed, and they made the decision to only accept one, two, and five plastics. So the important thing to remember out of that one, two, and five is that's where 90% of the recyclables 90% of what is actually recycled are those things. This next chart gives you the resident identification code, and that's the numbers when we refer to the plastic. So as you can see, the clamshells, the water bottles, detergent bottles, pill bottles, those are all standard things that are recycled currently. Not many of us recycle PVC pipe. The film and things like that, those were the things that were creating problems for NETEX. The other things are Styrofoam, which most people don't, it's not recyclable, so typically, and then cosmetic containers or baby bottles, those are sevens. So those are the ones that are not accepted now. So when we talk about the status of recycling, we really need to talk about participation rate. And at one time, we had a 50% participation rate. So half our customers were participating in that, and we were producing about 300 tons per month of recyclable materials. However, the contamination rate at the height of our recycling program and participation was also extremely high. Currently, our participation rate is at 12%. So 12% of our customers are actively participating in the secondary recycling collection day. However, we have very clean recyclables. So before the fire at Rivers, we were seeing more than 300 tons, and this is a graph representing just a few months of Rivers recycling versus what we are recycling today. So you can see it's a fraction of the materials that we were sending to the recycling facility. However, I do want to say that the single stream materials are cleaner than most other cities. As a brief aside note, I wanted to acknowledge the tremendous benefit of the compost site. As shown on this chart, the compost site diverts significantly more material away from the landfill each month than even our recycling program at its peak. So I think that just speaks to the things that we're doing are actually cost avoidance for our customers. The other thing that I want to talk about is what are, what are the costs or the additional costs required of the city to, to provide the recycling service? And so these are an itemized list of those costs, which includes expenses for the additional staff equipment and disposal. So that is what it takes us in addition to the money we spend collecting trash. It's important to note that China's impact on recycling can't be denied. Leading up to our deployment of the 95 gallon bins, which was some 12 years ago probably, China was purchasing a lot of material. Everything we could package up and send to them, they were purchasing. However, in 2018, there was a shock to the market because China implemented a ban on most plastics and would not accept them any longer. So when they did that, the market for those items disappeared. In our local area, we managed to make it through those changes as well as the cost of the disposal with our local MRF until it was on fire. We're now paying nearly $100 per ton, which is about the national average for disposal of recyclable materials. The US has been working to build those new markets and processing systems, but obviously there's been a lag. So when we talk about recycling in other communities, I think it's important to note that Longview is the largest municipal recycling program in East Texas. Many smaller communities have a private company handle their trash and recycling. They all use NETEX. Tyler offers recycling as a subscription service of $6 per month. They have about 4,000 subscribers. So Tyler single stream subscription recyclable materials also go to NETEX. That concludes the overview of kind of where we're at with sanitation and what's going on with our market.

Thank you, Roland. And I had asked Roland to or Duane and Roland to have a presentation on recycling just simply because I thought a good status update would be appropriate. Not necessarily that we were recommending changes, but a good discussion at council level, as well as making sure we have information available to the public. I know that I personally get a lot of questions or see a lot of comments about the changes maintaining our recycling program now. which you didn't really talk about, but is just the reality. We have one recycling partner with NETEX, and if they are out for the week, we have to use our communications team to get that information out there. If they stop accepting one type of plastics, we have to get that out to our customers. And so that does create, and I don't know that that's reflected in the dollar amount there, that creates additional work on the city, honestly some bad feelings from our residents even though they are participating in the recycling program because it's hard to explain that it's not us making those changes we are simply responding so that we can keep the program so I just felt like we needed to have a conversation maybe everybody wants to keep it exactly the same but that is why I asked for it on there I felt like even with the recycling customers that we do have there's still confusion about the changes that we continue to have to implement to keep the program. And that's not us as a city that's just nationally recycling, struggling, because nobody wants to buy recyclables. So anyway, I don't think others have questions or comments. Go ahead, Cindy.

Okay, would you put the slide? All right, just check it. Would you put the slide back up, please that showed the cost? or I don't guess y'all have it. Okay, all right. Do the people watching on TV, do they have this? Yes, sir. Okay. You got revenue there, and you got employee cost. All right. With recycling, we're running two independent routes. Now, in my home, These are the same routes we run trash on Thursday, and we run recycling on Friday. Now, and don't don't misunderstand me. That means we run the same trucks, we run the same employees, and we follow the same routes two days a week. Previously, we did it one day a week. And I'm sure It cost us more than $60,000 to run for a year, to run all of Longview routes for recycling. It's impossible. We cannot run the trucks, the employees, the operation, the cost for $60,000. We have doubled our cost of sanitation pickup Because we're running those routes twice a week. Now, that cost is not. Where is the equipment? You've got employee cost. Where is the equipment cost? Oh, OK, there's 76. All right. So we've got 60 and 76, 6. We've got $130,000 a year. Now, that's about $10,000 a month. I would think our fuel car, how many trucks do we run?

Run nine sanitation trucks and three recycling trucks to cover each route.

Why do we run just three recycling? Because the volume, there's not as much volume. Well, how do we decide which areas, doesn't everybody in Longview still have a recycling bin and a trash bin?

Yes, sir.

How do we decide which ones we're not gonna pick up on the recycling day?

We pick up all of them on the recycling. There's just very few of them out.

In other words, we can run a recycling route with three trucks and it takes us nine trucks to run a trash route. Yes, sir. It doesn't make any sense.

Well, the trash would have maybe one or two bins at every home. Like if you look in your neighborhood, there's probably...

I just asked, doesn't every home have a recycling bin?

But they don't use it. They have it, but they probably don't use it on the recycling day. Like in my neighborhood, I would say 30% of people have their bin out on the second day.

All right. So what about people... So let me see. How do we determine which ones we're gonna run recycling on and which ones we're not?

They're opting in. If they put their bin out, we're picking it up.

So we've got a, uh, some magic thing up in the sky that gives us a picture of the city.

They're driving the route. They're driving the whole route. But if one person of 20 people has their been out, it just takes them way less time because they only were driving the same route. Yes. Just stopping way less.

Okay.

So we're getting the, uh, we're getting the fuel cost and the tire cost and everything for two routes.

It's a high, yes.

It's a high cost. Yes. All right. Yes, sir. Okay. The fellow that runs the recycling facility, we call it Northeast Texas Recycling, Todd Lucas. I've known Todd for a long, long time. He worked for Rivers and was their manager over there, and he's trying to do the best job he can. It's kind of a... hit and miss, can he get enough volume? He's got new equipment, he's got investors to pay for that. When I talked to Todd, was it Wednesday? Yesterday or the day before, he said, we're trying to do our best to keep operating. So we need to pick up this recycling volume. Now, the other question I've got, if you put both bins, our recycling, our trash day is Thursday. If I put out, now I'm going to call it my blacktop bin and my blue top bin container. If I put both of those out on Thursday, does that city truck that comes around that's supposed to be collecting trash, does he pick up both of those bins and dump it? Yes.

It goes to trash.

So it goes to trash.

Yes, sir.

So what if we only picked up the trash bin on trash day and then picked up the recycling bin on recycling day, which seems to me logical. Why are we not doing that?

Well, I think we are doing that. People are using their recycling bin for trash. So they're picking it up on trash day because a resident is deciding to fill it with trash and put it out with trash.

How does the operator of that truck know

They're just taking it to trash. It's a blue bin on your trash day. It goes to trash.

So if you put your recycling products out on trash day, it goes to trash.

Yes, sir.

So we've got to separate them.

That was the thought process of staggering the days, was that the people that would want to recycle would take the extra care to roll the cart out the second day.

Okay, that's good. It's just I'm for the program 100%. When I was on city council many years back, we first adopted a recycling program. And I'm not sure who was at the time who was running it. And whoever the city services manager, I said, you're going to have to put out bigger bins. And we gradually got bigger and bigger. And because we Americans, we throw away more trash every day. But anyway, that's just our nature. i'm for the program i just wish now one lady in my sunday school class mentioned why don't we put leaflets in the water bills we've done that we've done that we put stickers on the bins we have done a whole lot of communication and i think mr archer's done a very good job of promoting this i just can't understand why we can only run three trucks on recycling day but we run nine on trash days only 12 percent of our residents are recycling How do we improve that?

I think that's kind of what we're talking about. I don't know that we can, Sydney. I think people are making a choice not to recycle. And I think that's a national trend, perhaps, because of what Roland's talking about, nobody wanting to buy recyclables. So I think it is. Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. I know used to, and I'll back up what he's saying, used to the recyclables would go to China. Well, China got tired of fooling with the stuff because a lot of it was just trash. I'll joke here a little bit. You take a dead cat and put him in a box and ship him to China, he's not going to smell very good when he gets there. And so China said, we're not taking that. Okay. From China, we went to Vietnam. And Vietnam got tired of taking it also. And I think from Vietnam now... I'm not sure we're going to Bangladesh, I'm thinking, or something where this stuff is being shipped to. So it's not a good market. It's got to be clean. Now, what we're doing now is clean. There's a good market for clean stuff, and we've got to keep it clean. Todd said we're doing an excellent job there, but we've got to increase the volume. That's it. Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a discussion. Yes, Derek.

Well, first I want to say... Best wishes to Dwayne Archer and his health. I understand he's doing better and I appreciate that. And I just want to commend Dwayne Archer on, I love the social media. I was hoping I could be one of the lucky winners of the contest. I don't know if I'm eligible for that, it might be. But we have done, I've seen some positive ways to promote. So I appreciate, can we go back to that slide about the revenue? please the cost so basically when you look at our the revenue and as a part of that question you mentioned Tyler is 596 so how does that compare to our what were our fees art ours is included in the base rate but there's a subscription service and they charge by 596 so it's a little bit different so basically our with ours being included

We're six bucks ahead of Tyler, is that what you're saying? No, the rates.

We're sharing it across. You're paying for recycling whether you're recycling or not in Longview.

We're subsidizing the people that are participating if you're not participating.

Okay. And then you mentioned, so basically when I look at that and you look at the total cost, it's like based on that chart, we have a balance between the what we're our revenue we're generating and employee costs and then the other factors so we're spending then I guess about 132,000 approximately which I appreciate that we offer a service we that should be something that I think it should be noted our taxpayers that how it's money's happening you we went from 50% to 12% did that happen did that coincide with either the situation at Rivers or was that like Sydney just may ask about did we change and go from into the second day is that when it happened I don't believe it happened what I believe is that

It's common that when you start a new practice, and our new practice was we're letting everybody put whatever they want in the recycle bin as well as the sanitation bin.

Which was the Rivers Fire.

Right. So after the Rivers Fire, we said, just keep putting the cans out. We'll pick them up. To restart a recycling mentality in a community is very difficult because we're all creatures of habit. And so once we started that, we wound up with these large contamination rates because the message wasn't making it to everyone. And so as we staggered it, the people that were intentional in saying, I want to put recyclables out, they were putting their recyclables out and it fixed the contamination rate. So I think we just gave clear direction on the people that wanted to participate, how to participate properly.

Yeah, but I think it was the year off.

It was the year off, but the timing of it was not. So the year off. I guess the one question I have is, do we need three recycle trucks with 12 of our people it's three too many to physically run the routes yes okay um i appreciate the discussion i do have a question uh i know we had

She's running late.

Okay. Just want to make sure we were aware. I didn't know. I know we got. And I appreciate some virtual friends up there, Brandon and John.

Yeah, I'd love to. And I'm happy to have other comments. I'd love for our residents to give their council members some feedback on our recycling program. I think that is the idea with the discussion tonight. um how and john wants to say something too but please contact your council member and give them some feedback on recycling because we have a lower amount of people doing it you know how much it costs now you know our struggles with it would you like to see us continue the program in the way that it is or would you like to see us not have the program or would you like to see us modify it in what way uh john go ahead yes thank you can y'all hear me okay

Okay, awesome.

Roland, is there a point where the economics of scale, where we will have more revenue coming in than what our expenses is, or by increasing our recycling participation, will that just increase our losses?

Unfortunately, I think when you increase recycling, you increase your expenses, which drive up the costs.

Okay, so the more we... do better at getting the participation higher the more our cost is going to be to provide that service it's not going to get better on the revenue side yes sir Okay. And then what if we go to like a, not necessarily a subscription model like Tyler's doing where it costs a fee to participate, but they can opt in. And so those that opt in, they run the routes to pick up those specific trash instead of running the full route because the people that participate are going to be the ones that tend to participate and the ones that don't are going to be the ones that don't. I don't think it's... I think it's more of a regular deal than something that people just do every once in a while. Would that be beneficial?

So there's a way, and of course, Dwayne is much better versed at explaining this than me, but I will tell you that when we looked at a subscription-based model, if you got 15% participation, you could charge $5 per month for that service. So that's what you would need to break even. You would have to have a 15% participation rate with a $5 a month fee. What I will tell you is the efforts of the Blue Crew that many of you mentioned and said this is great, we've done some things to promote that, we have 350 participants of that initiative.

In the whole city of Longview?

Yes, sir. So that's the give and take. So it's either, you know, just from me standing up, it's kind of like if you want to keep the program going, you just have to acknowledge that the participation rate may be lower than what we'd like and hope we drive that up through continued practice.

Yeah. And what's the participation rate?

Go ahead, John. I'm sorry?

What's the participation rate right now, percentage?

It's 12%, and then the Blue Crew members who are our advocates for recycling, there are 350 about Blue Crew members. So are we at that percentage now? No. We've got 12% participation rate where we used to be at 50, and the Blue Crew participants is very minimal.

He would say, just as a nod to communications, I don't think there's anything else we could do to promote it. I think we have tried very hard. So I don't think that's on us. I think that is a choice. Yeah, go ahead, Joe.

And I think they've done a great job promoting it. But one of the things I was going to ask is, you know, and I know there's no way to know what all's in the recyclable when they go by and pick them up. But I'm sure some of the drivers can tell when they dump them. Are we looking at most canisters being 25% full, 50% full? Do you look at a bimonthly situation in order to keep it? Do we survive with that? Is that something to look at or to consider?

As far as bimonthly collection of the recyclables?

Yes, second and fourth weeks of the month, you know, whatever.

It's certainly something we can look at. I do think part of the problem with our participation rate is not due to the administration of it, but I do think it is to the number of changes and the frequency of changes that we make.

And I know taking this, you said it's a little over $100 a ton when we take it. Yes, sir. And going to sanitize, taking our sanitation out to the dump is what, about $35, $40? Sprite in there. $35, $40 a ton. So we're paying a lot. quite a bit extra to do this and without people coming in and committing to be a part of it, we're gonna always lose money. We're not gonna get ahead of it. So I think it's gonna speak volumes what the people in the city do. If you wanna see recycling, you gotta get on board.

Can I add a little bit to that? That's not the critical point. The critical point is whether NETEX, Todd Lucas gets enough volume To pay his expenses and his investors, and that's where that's the critical point. I mean, if he could run on 12% would be good, but he can't continue running. on 12%. He's got to pick up more commercial accounts or he's got to doing something. In other words, if we're gonna help him, literally if we're gonna help the company stay in business, we need to get above 12%. Now it's clean stuff, it's good, but 12% is not enough volume. You go over there and look at his operation, it's very complex when you start sorting, separating and all of that. And 12% from the city of Longview, is going to be a stretch for him to continue to operate. And I'll say this, if he closes down, that's it. There will be no recycling.

That's correct. So with that point, going back, do we have figures that we research and see what Tyler's note with with the subscription option? We know what Tyler, it says we have 4,000, they have 4,000, but do you know what percentage that is?

I asked Todd that. I asked Todd. He gets two truckloads a week, a week from Tyler. From Tyler? Yeah, and we give him 12. How many do we give him? How many truckloads? Anyway, he gets two a week, 12. We give him around 12. Tyler brings him two. And there's nobody else they can go to. I mean, they come to a lot. He's actually between here and Kilgore. They come to Kilgore because there's no place else for those recyclables. You can haul them to Dallas, but my Lord.

I think that's an interesting point, Sydney. So in addition to us considering whether we will continue to offer recycling, you're saying if we don't increase our participation, we're going to lose our recycling partner anyway.

Not going to be an option.

Right.

Yes. Yes.

Well, that's certainly information that I think we want people to have because we will need people to participate in greater volume than they are now, in addition to us talking about whether to continue our program.

And I did speak with Ron. I'm glad we brought this up tonight, and I did speak to Ron about this earlier. And a lot of people say, well, if you change your recycling, your pickup, why can't you put bins somewhere in certain areas of the city that people can take their recyclables? If you've ever been to an area that has those bins, it begins to look like a trash dump and it's scattered everywhere. I know that's not something that I would even consider just from what I've seen in the past. So, I mean, it falls on the shoulders of the people in the city of Longview. If you want to continue to do this, we've got to have support to make it work.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I feel like the public response we're getting now is that they don't care enough about the recycling program to continue it based on the level of participation. So I guess I just want to be real clear. That's the message we're receiving. If that's not the message you want, help us change that message. Please reach out to your council members and have a conversation. Yes, John, go ahead.

Sorry on this. So a few questions actually. So just to reiterate on my question about the subscription part, it's not charging a fee at this time. It's just allowing people to opt in so that way the recycle trucks know exactly the route and where to go pick up the recyclables it is for them. And that would save on labor, cost, equipment breakdown. So the subscription model, mostly I'm just referring to the opt-in deal. And then what you can do on the other side of that is those that are using the recycles as a trash bin, they're actually contributing more to the landfill without paying an additional fee for contributing to the landfill. So they would lose their recyclable bin if they don't opt in. So you get a recyclable bin if you opt in to that option. And then that limited amount of trash bin may increase participation in recycling to help divert some trash from the trash bin. And then also on the economic development point, is there any employers or manufacturers, site selectors, developers, any of these that consider like a municipal recycle program or a recyclable program locally that would be affected in our economic development part of it. What does that mean?

I think he's asking if businesses would need us to have a recycling partner. I would say I guess or I would guess maybe not, since they're not obviously using the recycling partner, because if they were, they'd have enough business to do it.

If you're over at the mall where there's a All of the fast food restaurants, they contract with several of the trash people, big corporations, public trash. And then they set out some of these, the mall, has their own compaction machine. In other words, they take their cardboard, and they compact it, and I guess the mall has the equipment, because it's not owned by individual stores. The mall compacts the equipment, and you'll see it stacked out on their, oh my Lord, that's the North, Northwest Northwest parking lot over there. So they compact and then they sell that there's a good market for for compacted cardboard in materials that you use in boxing and such as that, because there's no food contamination there. It's just it's a it's a good product. So they, they're, they've cut their expenses down and getting rid of their waste products, which are the biggest part of them, are recyclable cardboard, paper, and stuff like that. So they do their own packaging, and they sell their products there from the mall. And I've talked to several of the fast food vendors here in town, and they say, we've got too much trash. We can't sell our... So they pay... What's it, the recycling companies here? Who owns the, I mean, the one that owns the. Yeah, they pay Republic and what's the other, Continental or something? They pay those companies to come get their products and haul them to the dump because there's so much food contamination in a fast food process that it's, there's nothing there to recycle. All right.

Did Derrick have a question? I'm sorry. Go ahead.

I just want to say, just to close up, because I know we're going to start talking about budget. I like that we're having this discussion about the recycle program. How do we promote to get better participation? Because based on the revenue and the figures you look at, we're spending a cost of over $132,000 approximately with only 12% of our population. taxpayers are actually participating and then everyone's embedded in the cost so I think it's we appreciate this that we brought this up and we need to improve ways not only for the entire recycling community but be fair to our taxpayers and we're paying a pretty big cost for small percentage of usage

Last thing, and I won't bring anything else up, but the thing about it is if you've ever been in the school business, you know what it's like trying to route trucks. If you go to a subscription situation with recycling, the routing and being able to pick up, because people's going to be joining it monthly, or they're going to be getting off of it, and that's just a revolving door, and I think that would create a bigger issue for us than what we're dealing with now. Just an opinion. But Tyler could probably speak to it from experience.

Yeah. Good point. Good point. Okay. Anybody else or we're done with discussion? Go ahead, Shannon.

So basically on the recycling, it depends on the public's use of the recycling, correct? So have we thought about setting like a deadline on if it increases, then we know that they want it versus I mean, because you can say call your council member all the time, but that's not going to be the city. I mean usage I mean either they're going to increase the usage or they're not and just set a time frame to where if we keep it or not at this point.

Yeah I mean that's up to you guys I've just got it on there as a discussion tonight no like proposed action we could leave status quo and nothing would change and that is a course of action or we could set it for like let's talk about it again in three months. But is status quo still charging them for recycling though? Status quo would be running the program as we currently have it.

Status quo is the same price if you recycle or you do not recycle, you still pay the same amount on your water bill.

But the city is losing because we're not recycling enough.

It's a psychological thing.

Yeah, we're not really losing money. I asked Roland to break out just how much we would save if we didn't have the recycling program. But it is in your, like what you're paying for sanitation, it's included in that. So we could do nothing and everything would stay as it is, or we could keep up on usage with some sort of regular reporting.

When I talked to Todd, he really didn't set a deadline. Mr. Lucas over at Northeast Texas Recycling, he said, let's see, let's work on this a little bit and see if we can get more volume. I mean, I was concerned that he might say, I'm out. But he didn't. He didn't. And he said, let's see if we can't. find some way to increase the clean volume. That was his reply at the time.

I feel like we are doing our part. But yes, I understand. Why don't you guys mull on it and we can just, you know, let me know thoughts and we'll either talk about it in a future discussion or we can calendar it to come back to you. I'm fine with whatever. But yeah, I will keep it on our list. All right, let's move on from discussion now. I've got consent agenda is next. Are there any items you guys would like to pull off for further discussion or information?

Yes, ma'am.

What you got?

C and D. C and D. Any others?

A and B. Okay. Okay. All right, let's do a first. Consider a resolution that authorizes the city manager to execute and renew the agreement with Texas Department of Public Safety, administrator, etc. Chief Boone.

So this is basically the way that we run wanted people, items that have been stolen, anything else. It's through the state. It's through Texas Database that then works with the FBI and NCIC. So it's just renewing the contract. The previous one was signed by the previous chief, so it's just getting that up to date.

Okay, and you said that it is monitoring things that are stolen?

It's not monitoring. Basically, every police department, any law enforcement agency in the country, they put into NCIC, and then TLITS is the method through the state of Texas that's monitored or administered by Texas DPS that allows each of your communications, each of your comm center to gather that data.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chief. Next one is you also consider a resolution that authorizes the city to apply for a Department of Justice grant not to exceed $200,000 for software acquisition.

Yes, this is just giving us permission to apply for the grant. This is for software, and it's a 100% match. And this software, basically this would be crime analytics if we're approved to, if you all allow us to apply for it and then if we're approved for it.

So exactly what does it do though?

What does the grant allow you to do?

The grant allows us to apply to actually purchase a software system. And basically what this software system potentially does, it connects every database, other law enforcement agencies. It allows you to search people through other databases that we currently do not have access to. It even gets off into photos. And it's quite a few databases that it pulls together that would take hundreds of hours for one person to go through each one of those by themselves.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Good question. Kind of a hot topic, the monitoring and software and stuff. So while we're on it, I'm just going to say thank you, Chief, for not having any flock cameras or monitoring here in the city of Longview. The item C, consider a resolution awarding a contract to and directing the city manager to execute necessary documents for disaster debris management. Mr. Rick Evans. Yes, sir. This one is Sidney had a question.

I'll get to the point. Is this new? No, sir. This is not new. We've been spending $217,000. Is that each year? No, sir. Well, what's the $217,000 then?

I don't see where we spent $217,000.

It says right here the proposal was submitted for $217,745. This includes hourly rates for required acquisitions, estimated hours in case of disaster.

Okay. So that's in case if we have a disaster inside the city of Longview, if we have a tornado or whatever, and it's not – to pay them to come in and help us do the paperwork on the debris removal, getting contractors together, having debris sites to dump, and help us get all the paperwork together for FEMA to get reimbursement.

What have we done previously? The only two really what I would call.

But we don't pay them that money until we utilize them.

When have we utilized them previously?

We haven't in as far as I can remember, but it's always good to have them there in your back pocket.

Well, we've had several ice storms previously, one about maybe what, five or six years ago and 15 years ago, and we were able to handle that ourselves. Yes, sir. So if we'd had them on the contract during that time, what would they have benefited us that we couldn't do ourselves at that time?

Well, they could have got us some extra help or some extra.

What do you mean? They would go out and hire people and bring them in? Yes, sir. They're going to bring them from Florida, and they're going to come up here and work with us?

Well, yes, sir, wherever they can get contractors in.

Yes, sir. We've done that previously. There's contractors that travel. coast that travel the, what is it now, what do we call it, Gulf of, I mean, the American Caribbean or whatever it is. The Arkansas, no, not Arkansas, all of them, Florida, Alabama, any states that border on that area down there, have multiple companies that sit and wait for these, I hate to say it, for these disasters, and you call them and they're here the next day. They've got equipment, they've got manpower, they've got loaders, everything. So why do we need to pay 217,000 to know who to call?

I'm jumping in. This is coming from a FEMA perspective. If we have a disaster that could qualify us for FEMA reimbursement, if it's significant enough, and I'll take the ice storm from 2000. Remember that one?

Yes, ma'am. I do.

If we had had them... A company like this that is focused on debris management, we would have recouped a lot more money than we did. We tried to do it ourselves. If you recall, we had all the trees. People could go dump them at Hensley Park. Remember that?

Oh, yes, yes.

And we spent months taking care of that. We had to go find our own grinding services. This would expedite everything, and we would meet FEMA's deadlines for reimbursement. So this is like having somebody on call should something bad happen, purely to meet FEMA's requirements.

We don't have the capability ourselves.

If we are faced with something like that, no, sir, we do not.

Which I think is good because we would be overstaffed if we were always ready to respond.

What about just the computer programs that are available nowadays? I can go on AI and get an answer to anything I can dream of.

I don't believe that at all, Sidney.

Well, my grandkids taught me how to do it. Yes, my grandkids taught me how to do it.

Mr. Allen, I'll turn you loose with FEMA and we'll see who wins.

No, I'm not getting paid to do that. But if you have to pay me $217,000, I think I can go find somebody that knows how to fill out a form.

This is a recommended protocol through the Texas Division of Emergency Management to manage these types of issues. particularly with jurisdictions our size.

What do you mean by protocol?

To manage a significant natural disaster. I'll say a F1 tornado, we can handle ourselves.

We've never had one.

Yes, we have.

When back? When?

The one that was in East Longview and Longview Heights, that was an F1.

I love you. I feel like we should stay on topic.

We are.

It's a disaster.

Yes. Yeah. But yeah, wind doesn't matter. Go ahead. Okay, so we manage smaller events, but that ice storm was significant. And it took us months to recover from that. And we did not get the reimbursements we could have. This is a way to manage significant events should they happen. And they're on call, they come in with their expertise while we're responding to other issues. And we are not, the mayor's right. We can't be staffed for this.

How do we decide at what level we're going to, this 217,000 is only if we need them.

And Chief Grimes is our emergency management coordinator. He would, with the mayor and the county judge, they would declare a disaster. At that point, we start implementing things.

Okay, so this is only... If needed, no, they're not paying $217,000 just to be on the mailing list.

No, sir. But we have to have a contract in place or it's not eligible for reimbursement.

It is part of our emergency.

Yeah, I was concerned that we were paying that every year whether we need it or not. No, sir.

Derek's got a question. She mentioned and you talked about timelines.

So other than the 2000 ice storm, have we had need for reimbursements that have been excessive?

We've submitted a ton of reimbursements to FEMA, but we've never had enough. If you remember, with all the trees from the straight-line winds, one of the things, we took all those trees and those trunks and moved them and took our streets and drainage crews off of their original operations, sent them to collect everything. So we didn't do any street patching. We didn't do any drainage work. We were just picking up trees and bringing them to the compost site. And then... We can't do anything with them, and that's when we've had fires, and of course those things have cured themselves. But an actual company, and we've had a debris management company on standby for, it's been a long time. It was just time to go out for it again to make sure we still had responsive responders. How much was that one? I'm sorry? How much was that one? I don't have that in front of me.

Yeah. I mean, we're not paying them until they come and we use them. And it sounds like we haven't used them in the past.

Okay, so I guess my question will be because the source of funds is coming from the sanitation fund. So I would like to know where we're at with the sanitation fund. We're getting ready to go in the budget. So this money will already be pulled whether we use it or not and put into the general fund.

No, no, it's just authorizing to use it in the future if we needed to deploy them.

And so Just for clarification, anytime there's something that is designated as FEMA, that comes at a state level. We don't designate anything as, hey, this is what we can get reimbursed by FEMA. That is coming either from a state or federal level.

Yes, I think so.

So how do we determine? You get what I'm saying? So we're saying that we want to allocate this contract for $217,000 when we're not the deciding factor on who determines if we even keep FEMA.

I think it's just a placeholder because then we could apply for that much to be reimbursed by FEMA. But you're right. We don't know what it would be until it happened. So we would be picking a higher amount that we could ask for reimbursement from FEMA on.

But doesn't so you're telling me that FEMA will go over higher because I want this for clarification because it seems like they give a designated amount for whatever the need is. Say the ice storm. How did that work? When we had the ice storm and whatever we paid out and what happened, what happened with that?

On an emergency event that is FEMA eligible, we are reimbursed for people, time, equipment, and disposal costs. We just have to have it documented. Regardless, if we do this right here or not. Yes. And if we wind up with, of course, the events we've had, and thank God, the events we've had, we've not needed exterior debris management. We've been able to handle that in-house. But it is very important for municipalities to have a debris management contractor on standby should we experience something that we've not experienced before beyond our capabilities.

So have you included this in the 2026?

It is not included in the budget. Most emergency items are not budgeted every year, right? That's why we have the reserve funds set aside for just when those things happen where we have a natural catastrophe. That's where we'd have to look to find those funds.

But if we're being proactive and you're saying that this is what we want to do, wouldn't we include that in the budget?

There is not room in the budget to include that.

Well, we certainly hope not to have a national disaster that we would need to use it this year. I mean, I get what you're saying, but I think Ron's saying we take it out of the savings, and that's why you have savings.

I mean, I'm just saying, I'm just wondering why we're taking out savings for if, and we haven't looked at the budget. Well, we're not taking out a savings. Nobody's spending the money.

Until a natural disaster hits us. We will not use these services.

And so these funds will not be removed from anywhere? Correct. It is not to spend the funds, right?

No.

Yes. I tried to pull up the language to look at it because I think that was what is confusing. It is not a budgeted item. It is approving the contract with them that would... And part of that is because the debris management...

The department responsible for the debris management usually and customarily has been the sanitation department because that's where the facilities are for processing those materials. That's where the equipment is. Yes, sir.

And then my other question would be, so I noticed for the bidding process on this one, we'd use the evaluation criteria. Is there a reason why we did that versus just opening it up for bids?

just asking yeah request for services is different process yeah it was a different process i mean it says it's on here right right so because you don't just want to judge things on the bottom line you want to judge things on the dependability when can you use the request when it is professional services professional services as opposed to construction correct that's all i have yeah Well, it's confusing, but I think I got it. So we would just need a contract with them in case we needed to meet FEMA deadlines so that we could apply for reimbursement. But we have not ever actually used their services despite having a contract with them for however many years. Everybody good.

Yeah. Clear as mud. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's I mean, it's clear. I was just wondering because usually when we approve these type of things, then it's already Angela like I mean you already kind of y'all set aside and y'all create another fund for that and then it creates its own account is what I'm asking.

During the normal budget process yes but this is different because it's emergency based.

Okay that's that's what I want to clarify.

Perfect thank you. I don't have any other items on there to discuss. Oh no I do I'm so sorry. Dee we wanted to talk about the resolution to approve A contract with Casey Sloan for the Longview City Hall building. I think Sydney asked for that one.

I'm going to let Mr. Berryhill.

No, I had two of them. I know Josh and I are excited about this, right, Josh? Yeah. Okay. Hey, do we have any idea how quick this process would start, and did he kind of give us a timeline? I know there's still some more work to do, but kind of a rough estimate timeline. So I get Josh in there with all his guys, and they've got a space to work, and they're not working on top of each other.

Once y'all approve this tonight, they'll have a pre-con meeting to set a start date, and they hope to be finished by the first of the year. Josh, is that going to work?

Okay. I'm good if Josh is good. Because I'm telling you, can't anybody work in there and take their shoes off if their shoes are too tight? No, sir.

I'm telling you, they're sitting on top of one another.

Go ahead. I want another question. No, I'm good. We've done... maybe I miss it we we've done some construction I've I've seen the trucks pulled up with the debris out front in this building is that that must be different from what we're talking about we have done construction in this building yes sir we we we did a reconstruction for utility building Okay. So that's what all the stuff inside was done. Yes. Okay. All right.

Yeah. Restricted water. Yep. Got it. One more question. So on this one, when we did do, because we did do reconstruction of City Hall before, correct? Utility billing. No, I'm talking about prior to, was it one in a 2018 bond?

There was one in 2008. There was one in 2008? There was one in 2008 that these seats and the bathrooms, and now you're testing my memory, but yeah. Okay. It was back then.

Okay, I just want to go. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

All right. I don't have any other items on the consent agenda. Can I have a motion to approve in a second? Second. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Those online raise their hands. Thank you. Any opposed? All right. Consent is approved. Thanks, guys. Moving on to action items. Action item A is consider a resolution awarding a contract to and directing the city manager to execute necessary documents with GC4 Security Consultants, LLC, to conduct a safety audit of public works. We heard the presentation last time, so tonight we are moving on to action.

That is exactly right. You have heard two presentations from vendors who submitted proposals for the safety audit. Based off of last council meeting, we would be here tonight for a vote, so I'm here to answer any questions you have, and GC4 is here as well, who would probably be able to answer your questions better.

yes and this may be answered by them uh but i i talked with the mayor and i said you know i know you guys are going to be in communication with roland on a regular basis but i think it would be great as we go through this process if you know we could be tagged as city council you know maybe weekly i think we're looking at 10 weeks correct I see the heads nod. If we could be notified weekly as well, because if you recognize something, we want to immediately ask Roland, Rick, you know, anybody who it applies to, like, what are we doing to kind of fix this ahead of time, we don't want to wait till the end of the process. And I just think it's a good, open communication for everybody to understand, hey, this is where our problems at or no, hey, we're in great shape here. So

sound okay yes okay thanks guys I looked at them they said yes given and with details on the scope of what they're doing and the expectation is it in here is that yes it has been I don't know if it was in the agenda for tonight but it has been provided previously with all of the quotes received okay so it has the the weekly check-ins which

to emails to Council.

I know because that request was made we will add it to the final agreement signed with them.

And then also so I was look when I was looking over it. I want to make sure that we understand the what we're looking for and that for the first indicators like how they're going to start and things like that because when I was reviewing stuff and it seems like who's responsible for the certifications? Because that was one of the fails of it is not having certain certifications. So is that part of the scope?

Yes, they're looking at all of the documentation, certifications required, SOPs, manuals, and that will all be brought back into their findings.

And then will previous anybody involved in the incident, whether they are previous employee or present employee, be interviewed?

Will previous employees?

do not believe previous employees will be but we can discuss that well I think it needs to be I mean if they can answer that I think that would be important so that we know the whole incident absolutely I mean we will they will have to answer and decide so they're shaking their head yes as well of course we don't have the ability to make them but we can certainly request I mean we can request but I mean I'm not saying we can make them but I do want to see that we requested in their response as to you know why they're not wanting to answer any questions because In order for us to, I think that if we want to actually do what we need to do in this instance, we need to know exactly what happened from the people that were there, whether they're current employees or not, so that we can make sure that we're going in the right direction and what we're looking for. Because, yeah, we're doing an audit, but I don't want anything to be overlooked. I wouldn't think council wouldn't because we wouldn't be going through all of this. Because to me, when I get a question from a constituent and it was really, I mean, I understood what they were coming from, but I know as a council why we're doing this, but their question to me was why are we paying somebody $86,000 for a 10-week to come and do an audit when we have supervisors, city managers, and things of that nature. So to me, to clarify for the constituents and the taxpayers with their taxpayer dollars to make them understand why we're doing this and to make sure that everything is done the most efficiently as possibly without leaving no stone unturned. And my thing is starting with exactly what happened and making sure that we do encourage people to talk to them and make sure that the employees feel safe in saying whatever it is. And so I do want that to make sure that that is in the scope of practice because it is a very, very, very serious thing that we're doing here. And when we look at, hey, we have somebody that unfortunately did lose their life. And for me personally, and I know the council feels the same way, our goal is to make sure that all our employees go home safe. And so if there's anything that we can do in this process, I do expect to see it. I do expect emails from GC4 when we go into this with y'all. I don't expect for anything to be unturned at this point because there are certain situations because I couldn't understand myself as to how another department is working on tcq certifications and that was done in I think development services so it's things like that that if I can already find this I need that I need to see those things absolutely

Yeah, they said they will communicate, so. Sure, I think that's actually a really good point. You see what I'm saying?

Sure, and the reason you have that third party is because if you have someone that's still an employee answering to their supervisor or manager, you may not get that factual answer. So I think that is one of the benefits of having a third party come in and do it.

And I just want the third party to be, you know, going straight to the source versus, because when we're asking the people that were already supervising this situation, that's a different thing than answering the interview and the employees. And I want to make sure that happens. Sure.

Derek. We did mention at the last meeting about this is an outside source, like you just mentioned. And as far as our taxpayers, we don't really want to spend $86,000, but we want to make sure we establish, I think it was mentioned last meeting, about protocols in these meetings and being able to monitor and see results from this. And so, you know, When we look at money, we want to also understand we've got to take care of our people and make sure they're safe. And I think I love the explanation we just had by Ms. Moore and Ms. Ishihara that this is a one-time outside source, and let's get this right. And I love what Mr. Berryhill mentioned about getting the updates because we'd like to be involved with it and make sure tragedies don't happen again under our watch.

Yeah, good call. I see Brandon's hand. Go ahead, Brandon.

Yeah, last meeting, I believe Dustin, he spoke about recording all data in the app that he had. And he mentioned giving us six months free, but we didn't discuss keeping that going. And if we do, what that app costs us to continue to record the data that we received during this whole process and after it's all over.

Yeah, do you know offhand what it costs to keep it if we did it after the free trial?

It's tiered by the number of employees that would have the service.

Okay. Could you maybe email that to us after the meeting? Yes. Okay, perfect. We will get that information.

Yes. So how many employees do we have in Public Works?

Oh, in Public Works, we have 175, 180.

So with employees with about 175, do you have an idea?

If you wanted to give everybody access to it, it would be...

Employee on a monthly basis. Thank you.

That helps.

We won't hold you to it. It's OK. Yeah. But that helps.

We'll get a breakdown of the program, the software, and the different levels so we can share. Thank you. Excuse me. Yes.

Access to what information? I mean, to everything or what? I mean, it's obvious that a fella running a backhoe doesn't need to know what the guy's doing the trash trucks or what their safety procedure is. When you said all information, I'm a little... We're not making any decisions.

We're just kind of... Brandon's right. We had the free six months and then we didn't know what it was after is all he was asking to start with, kind of started the conversation, but... We're not deep in the details, but who would need access to the information on there?

Oh, okay. Who would need access? Right, right. We're not going to dump a whole bunch of information on everybody out there. No. No. Okay.

Thank you. That's our thing. Just roughly looking at about $15,000 a year if you chose to do that for every employee that was at public works.

Seems very reasonable. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Any other questions while we got them up there or other discussion? You guys were good with kind of a weekly report. Is that okay to counsel? Okay. Perfect.

Let's get started.

well you need to make a motion i make the motion we approve c g c for security consultants okay and a second second i have a motion in a second all in favor please say aye or raise your hand aye any opposed item is approved thank you guys so much for being here we appreciate you very much and look forward to working with you Action item B, consider a resolution of the council approving the annual action plan for CDBG in home grant budgets, fund reallocations, and supporting policy documents with Mr. Parker Harrison, our community development manager. I will turn it over to you.

Good evening, Mayor, council, city manager. I'm requesting the approval of resolution to adopt the 26-27 one-year consolidated action plan and amendment to reallocate some previous CDBG and home and home ARP funds. Each year, the action plan and any amendments to previous year plans with change to scope and activities require an approval of the city council. We would like to consider some changes that relate to supporting some of the city projects and directing some additional funds to support agencies that assist families, individuals who are experiencing homelessness. with shelter enhancement needs technically called the non-congregate shelters. These funds are provided through our CDBG home and home ARP funds that HUD gives us annually. At this time, I'm asking for your approval on this resolution.

Go ahead, Cindy.

I will, I will admit I've been a little negligent on this. My Lord, we got attachments that we got. I mean, there's more numbers here than I can comprehend.

Federal grants.

Yeah, I will. I would just ask that in sometime in next week or so if I could visit with you and sit down and I could get a little better explanation. I mean, I'm okay with it. I just I would like to understand it a little more.

Yes, sir.

All right. We can do that.

Is this a routine thing or was this changes as a result of our council conversation a couple of months ago?

Well, the action plan we do every year, the reallocation of funds from previous years Those are just some monies that we didn't spend because the project that we were doing at that time didn't need that much money. So we're just taking that money, reallocating it to these three different ones, really, to a parks project, public works project, and a new pilot program for removing slum and blight, a demolition project.

Do we have any slide that would have those projects on it on our consent agenda? No. Okay. Just tell us a little bit more about those projects so people hear what they are.

So the parks project is looking at a pedestrian bridge at Grace Creek for the engineering, planning, and geotechnical surveys for for that project whatever is remaining from that will go into that project itself and then we're looking at um adding some money to that for the 27 28 year once we know what our allocation will be where would this pedestrian bridge be on grace creek

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well, thank you. I think that was responsive. I know we had had a CDBG conversation several months ago, just kind of an update to council with a little more direction to can we do things that would be like benefiting our parks, trees, those kind of things. So that sounds responsive to me. So any questions for Mr. Harrison or comments?

no i'm just looking at all of the projects on here that's highlighted and um i mean there there's some good things on here so i know i have no questions and a motion to approve yeah all in favor please say aye or raise your hand aye any opposed item is approved thanks guys

Next is action item C. Consider an ordinance to accept Temple Emanuel property conveyance and dedicate it as a parkland for the future Emanuel Park with Mr. John Albertson. I do have a speaker card for Ms. Barbara on this one. John, do you want to go ahead and give your presentation? Go ahead and give presentation first, and then we'll let Barbara come on up.

So this would allow us to accept the Temple Emanuel property as a donation to be named Temple Emanuel Park. And I'll answer any questions after a comment.

I know, Miss Barbara, do you want to come on up? It's your turn now.

I have a new knee, so come on over here.

Greetings, honorable people. Thank you for what you do. I'm Barbara McClellan. I'm speaking on behalf of the Jewish Temple donation to the city. I am not Jewish, but I am a member of Temple Emanuel. I'm the soloist there. Well, I'm 87 now. I sort of croak a little. but it's a very sacred, holy place to many of us. The temple was built in 1957, and it has been a really great place for those of us who feel that the Jewish people deserve their same rights as all the 99 Protestants, and I am one of those too. Rollin knows same church and all that But I we don't want to see it turned into a parking garage or a whatever because it is a holy site and We think if it were used as a community project of some sort by the name of Beth El Park, we would still be honoring the many generations. I've been in Longview since 1967. When I moved here, all the downtown stores, almost all, were owned by Jewish merchants. And we had temples full. I didn't start going then. I started going regularly about maybe 10, 15 years later, and the temple was packed. You had to get there early to get a seat. And if you were ever, you're probably too young to remember when the temple sold the wonderful Jewish lunches, and you had to line up or make a reservation. Fabulous. The heyday is not now, but the temple is still a sacred place to so many of us. I urge you to consider carefully accepting it as a part to be used by many. Thank you for your service, all of you up there. I'd rather teach my seventh grade kids I did for 40 years than be where you are.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Barbara. Can we ask? Don't ask her questions, but you can ask John questions. Yeah, I and I do want to I do want to just publicly talk about the donation they are Offering to donate to the city which has gone through the parks board We have been very upfront that if the city receives the donation, we will have to tear down the building We cannot maintain it and the church knows that in giving us the donation. So I Understand I know that a lot of members would like for us to maintain it. We've reviewed all the costs We simply cannot receive dated buildings and bring them up to code and then have the city maintain them. So just so the public and church is aware. If we receive the donation, we will tear down the building and find a way to honor its long, very important legacy in a meaningful way. I'm sorry, Sydney first and then Derek.

John, what kind of, she mentioned not a parking garage or something, which I agree with her completely. In this donation, what kind of restrictions are written in on use of the property?

They specified that they wanted it to be a park permanently, so that's in this as well. They did list some items that they would potentially like to see on the property, and those were a pavilion with picnic tables, pickleball courts, park benches, and a bocce ball court.

Fun stuff that we don't have any money for, but yes.

It's a wonderful, I've actually been, myself have been to several services there in the past years, and it's a shame to see these, of course they're all over Europe, these religious monuments. That's not a very good word. Anyway, these religious places of worship being torn down, but that's

It's a very generous donation, and I think it's an excellent opportunity for our community to come together and potentially privately raise some funds so that we could build something nice there. But this would be a great opportunity to have a public-private partnership.

Derek had a question. Once we put it in the park system, we went through this several years back. It's very difficult, isn't it, to take it out of the park system? If somebody comes up here five years, ten years from now and wants to go sell it, isn't that a very difficult procedure?

Yes, sir.

We did that at Hensley. It's a voter-approved thing.

The voters, individual voters, not council, but the voters have to prove to take it out of the park system. So that pretty well guarantees it will stay as a park in the city of Longview. Yes, sir.

Green space. Yes, Derek.

Okay. Greatly appreciate the donation. Just curious about the cost of the...

Zach ran that number for us. Do you know what it is?

Yes, so it's not going to exceed $100,000 is the projection that Zach gave us.

Oh, I'm sorry. Tell us about ETCOG also.

Yes, we will know better. So we're actually in the process of applying for a grant with ETCOG to be able to do a review, an environmental review of the facility to tell us how much lead or asbestos there is in the property. That will also help us to formulate our better process. What is ETCOG?

East Texas Council's government okay and I just want to say John I know you we've made a lot of advances months recently in the parks but I do want to like you just like we mentioned the mayor mentioned anything we can do private funds at the beginning because we still have a few projects fit to complete the parks that were that we have we currently have so just want to make note of that and just We do appreciate the donation, and I do agree about making sure that that holy space remains sacred.

Janet, you've got a question?

Yes, so you said that it will not exceed $100,000. Do we know where those sorts of funds will come from?

It'd have to come back to us after the grant application, figure out exactly what that is, and then if we were going to need to take funds out of savings, we'd review it and know exactly what that is.

Because, I mean, for me, and I'm greatly appreciative of the donation or whatever, because anything for us to come together as a community, I agree on that. But I also think about the buildings that we have that just off of gum the arc building that has been there and it is in horrible condition and we're sitting there and it needs to be the demolition yeah mm-hmm is it see is that not correct I'm pretty sure I know what yeah it is it's on by the city okay and so it I mean it's substandard as of right now so when I think about things like that I look across you know the districts or whatever and buildings that we do have that are hours that you know a poorly we don't have the funds to demolish them so we are gonna what are we going to do about those sure I'd be glad to talk about that I don't know if you know the answer to it but if we have a city-owned building that needs to be demolished we should talk about that and come up with a plan for it I agree

Do you have a question? From Zach, right? Yes, sir.

OK. I was asking, I think we got a preliminary cost from Zach on this. And let me ask you a question. So if we're going to say, hey, not to exceed $100,000, And if we, why do we not just say, hey, if there is other buildings like this, because I think that cost was substantially less, why could we not say, this is a good time to take this opportunity and demolish this building that Shannon's speaking of? And I don't know what it is. I don't know any details.

Yeah, I think, no, I actually totally agree with that. I would love to demolish buildings. We need to. I think tonight all we're doing is accepting the donation. And at a later time, we'd be looking exactly at the dollars. But we should also look at that building. If that's in our system, yeah.

Yeah, and that's all that I'm saying because I want to make sure as we do accept, you know, things like this because we will be paying the cost to demolish that building. And when I look, like I said, when I look at around and other buildings that look just awful, you know, that we own, that we're sitting here and we're not talking about doing something about them and then we're taking on this project to have to demolish it as well.

Yep, I agree. Oh, I'm sorry, John has a question. Thank you, Richard.

Yeah, I just want to say I appreciate the Parks Board review and recommendation of it, and then also to the Temple Emanuel for the generous gift. I mean, this is a great opportunity. We're getting about almost six acres on a major roadway in an established residential neighborhood that can benefit generations to come. So, again, thank you to the Temple Emanuel for their generous gift. I'm very grateful for it.

any other conversation or discussion we'll add to john's list of things to do to look at the art building oh i'm sorry brandon and john i just want to ask uh with the property that comes with i mean the city will own that uh five six acres there we will own that outright or yes sir All right, so, okay. And as far as the demo on it, I mean, that's something we will be strategic on, not just spending that money, but that's something we might be waiting to maybe demo then, redevelop, or when we get okay on two demos, we just probably just knock it on down or what's the plan on that?

Once we complete the review through ECHOG, then we will likely go out to bid for that and then bring it back to council for approval to demo.

Okay, thank you.

Perfect. Sounds like a plan. I do.

Make a motion to accept the generous gift from Emanuel Temple. I need a second.

I got a second from John. All in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. Any opposed? Adam is approved. Thank you so much, and thank you to all that are here with the Temple tonight. We really appreciate your contributions to the community, and we promise to do our best to honor the legacy that has been there with Temple Emanuel. Next on our agenda, very exciting, budget items, presentation of the proposed FY26-27 budget for the City of Longview. Roland McPhee, it is your show now.

Very good. I would say that you saved the best for last because Angela follows me. First, I'd like to say good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Today, I'm honored to present this fiscal year budget for 26-27 fiscal year. I'd like to first thank the budget team, which expanded a little bit this year just due to the nature of what we were trying to tackle. I'd like to thank Assistant City Manager Mary Ann Hagenbucher, Director of Finance Angela Cohen, Director of Administration Bonnie Hubbard, and Senior Accountant Angela Walker for their help on this months-long process, as well as each director or manager for taking the time to carefully consider their division's needs and working with us to build this proposal. Before we look forward, I want to take a moment to look back and celebrate a few of our collective wins from recent years. Specifically, we want to highlight some of the great decisions that you, the City Council, have made that are directly and positively affecting our budget this year. Here are a few areas where Council's leadership has paid off immensely. Our switch to Emergecon billing in the fire department has been even more successful than originally anticipated, generating an additional revenue increase of $800,000 in this current year alone. The council's proactive investment in the fire apparatus replacement plan has already begun to positively shape and ease our budgeting process this year. Council also made the wise choice to increase our minimum fund balance to 15% to safeguard our financial future while simultaneously investing in one-time projects that directly enhance how we serve our residents. The budget proposal before you tonight includes approximately $70,000 in fuel savings due to the fuel station potentially coming online next July. Finally, looking to the long-term financial health, I'm super excited to report that the community's ongoing investment in the fire pension fund continues to improve the health of that account, with the amortization rate decreasing from 29.6 years to 26 years as of December of 25. The other successes that I want to highlight are the tremendous public safety recruitment efforts that have led our police and fire departments to be at or near fully staffed, which has already reduced the overtime pay, which has been a concern in discussion in recent years. All of these continued investments in the FIRE program have also helped secure our community the highest possible ISO rating available. So I want to talk about a few things we're doing internally as well. Our high performing organization challenge teams, which is made up of employees across the city in different ranks, in different responsibilities, have tackled hard questions like recruitment and retention, mental health and wellness, and the implementation of our core values. Each team has together made actionable recommendations to improve the work culture for our employees. The recruitment and retention committee launched a dress for your day policy, letting employees wear outfits that were appropriate for their daily job duties to help build a better work culture. They also hosted an employee appreciation luncheon to simply say thank you and give everyone a chance to come together and dine and visit. Finally, they're revamping the What You Need to Succeed or Supervisors Training program to provide training for our future leaders. To support well-being, the Mental Health Committee added training for supervisors to help recognize when employees are struggling with those mental health issues and to help remove the stigma from discussing mental health issues. They're making a continuous effort to communicate the resources available to employees through emails, through the clinic, staff meetings, and during our annual enrollment process. The Values Committee actually streamlined the employee's evaluation process so it focuses specifically on our core values and daily job tasks. They also began development of a new brand icon that will be used both internally and externally to help make the public and our employees aware of our mission and our values. It wouldn't be a budget proposal without me talking about the headwinds that we continue to face from the changes in Austin that do impact our ability to serve residents. Just one concrete example of this is the proposed budget that you will be hearing includes the loss of about $1.5 million due to an increase in the business personal property exemption. As we prepare for the legislature to return to session next year, our state leadership is vocal about their desire to restrict cities' ability to generate revenue. I will continue to work diligently to connect with our local representatives and make them aware of how their decisions will impact our residents. With that, here are the top headlines from the proposed FY27 budget. This plan includes no adjustment to our city's property tax rate. It includes no utility rate increase. It does include a minimal sanitation rate increase. So our staff are truly grateful to this city council's decision and foresight in approving the market pay plan earlier this year. In this budget, we have been able to fulfill the city council's directive to bring staff salaries up to market pay while successfully minimizing the impact to our residents. This plan further provides a minimum of a 2% increase for all those employees that are not affected by the market pay plan. If you take a look at the investment in the employees that is proposed according to city council's directives, it totals $3.6 million with 2.1 million of that being within the general fund. So then the next question really is how did we do this? And I've said this before, but I want to enhance this message this evening. It truly would not have been possible without our directors and their teams that they bring with them. Every one of them worked together, understood the assignment, and diligently pursued and worked through their budgets, finding ways to do more with less or work together to find cost savings. I'd also like to note we eliminated seven full-time and ten part-time positions, which were vacant from the budget. This saved $528,000 in our general fund and another $105,000 in our other funds. One example that I think is worth noting is our traffic engineer position. With the vacancy in this role and the inability to fill it, it was determined that these services could be completed by an outside engineering firm because it is highly specialized engineering work. And they'll be able to do those things more efficiently and help us avoid any interruption of service. One of the things that's exciting to some of you, some of you have mentioned to me the signal timings. Those are the kinds of things that with this resource we'll be able to have the additional resources necessary to look at those things and provide recommendations for traffic and signal modifications. As we were able to, we evaluated our fleet usage and reduced vehicles where we could. Here then is a snapshot of our proposed budget for FY27 compared to the budget Council originally approved at the beginning of this year. You'll want to note that many of the categories stayed close. Our special reserve funds, revenue funds, however, drastically increased. That increase is due primarily to the tremendous work of the Director of Grants, and Human Services, Laura Hill, and her team by securing additional grants of nearly $10 million to help offset increased costs and fund projects. Yes, it's okay to give her a round of applause. The change is also due to a change in our budgeting process. In the past, we only included grants in the budget if we had already officially received the money. And new grants we received after the budget, we brought to the city council in budget amendments. So this, instead, this reflects the actual expenditures being in the budget as opposed to returning for budget amendments every time. As always, we'll focus on the general fund for the majority of my presentation, which is our tax supported fund in the one that is most critically impacted by our residents. This year it is at $102.6 million. This chart shows the breakdown of our revenue for the general fund. And if you'll recall for the last few years, I've said it's always a third sales tax, a third property tax, and a third permits, user fees, and fines. That trend is shifting. Right now, this budget is funded by 36% property taxes. thirty two percent sales taxes thirty two percent permits user fees and fines the reason i point that out the property tax revenue is the largest contributor to our operations and maintenance i want to remind council that the legislature wants to continue to reduce our ability to collect those property taxes which will impact our ability to maintain these services as residents expect. Here's our year by year sales tax data. As you can see, it has been steady. It has been consistent and we anticipate that trend continuing the budget before you relies on a property tax rate of 56 19 per $100 valuation, which is unchanged from the past few years. The only time the rate has gone up has been with voter approval of that 3992 goes to the maintenance and operation and 1627 is dedicated to the interest in sinking or debt this is an interesting slide you'll note that this rate of 5619 proposed is less than the no new revenue rate I just want to make sure that resonates. Our no new revenue rate would be higher than what we're proposing for the total property tax rate. The voter approval rate, what could be allowed to increase to the tax rate is 66.88 cents per valuation. which is specifically, this is the highest it's been, and I'm calling out attention to it just because I want you to know, these are the headwinds we are facing. As far as our FY27 budget proposal, we do a handful of minimal adjustments to our fees and fines, which are shown on this screen, impacting animal services, our fire department, and the convention complex. I draw your attention to the fire department charges to note that our relationship If you'll note, our relationship with Emergicon for the billing EMS has gone so well, we're beginning to work with their firearm branch, Emergifier, which actually bills out responses to motor vehicle accidents depending on the severity, hazmats, bills, EV fires, and things of that nature. Then, as always, I want to take a minute to look at the fund balance, just to take a look at what that looks like. You can see the impact of increasing the minimum threshold to 15% and the allocation of those one-time expenses. Currently, we have about $5.8 million in unrestricted funds above the 15% minimum. Our budget proposal for expenses, you'll note that once again, police and fire both make up about a third of our general fund, with all other tax-funded services making up the rest. This does include an increase of 8% for street maintenance and repairs, which I know has been something that council has requested. And while this budget maintains our current programs and services, there is not any proposed expansion of current programs or creation of new ones. Also included in this budget are additional costs related to our health insurance. As healthcare costs continue to rise, it was necessary for our rates to increase. But the city is able to cover 95% of the cost of the increase in cost for employee spouses and dependents coverage. There are no adjustments to employee only costs on the health plan as part of this budget. The remaining 5% of those coverages which are not absorbed by the cities will be paid for a biweekly increase, depending on your coverage, whether you're family, spouse, or dependents, between $7.85 per check and $24.79 per check, depending on the coverage level. It is important to note that the 2% minimum pay raise more than covers these additional expenses for every employee. So here again is the look at the budget snapshot. The notable item is the proposed increase to the sanitation rate. In order to cover the market pay increase for our employees in sanitation, it is necessary for the sanitation rate to increase by 46 cents. That represents approximately half of the market pay adjustment. The other half was absorbed in the budget that was proposed by Mr. Evans and Mr. Archer. Here's where our city of Longview would fall when evaluated with our comparison cities after that increase has been included. This chart also highlights the different level of services between our current comparison cities. I think this is an easier way to look at the data. You can see that this is where our rates would hit and it is evident that we would remain competitive with our comparison cities. Our budget calendar is the last slide I have for you tonight. It includes a discussion on the budget and fees and preliminary vote on the tax rate at council's next meeting on August 13th. On September 17th, public hearings are scheduled to be held and the council will vote on the budget. Council will also hear from LEEDco and receive a presentation on the capital improvement program at that time. Then on Friday, September 18th, the council will vote for a proposed tax rate. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Derek's got to stand up first. Go for it.

Well, I think we'd all agree, excellent presentation. Excellent presentation. I wanted to highlight a few of the facts, because this is my third opportunity to be involved with the City of Longview budget, and I just want to appreciate you and, like you mentioned, the directors for a few highlights. I mean, we're so... we're looking at a six approximately 6%. I'm looking at 6%. I don't know if I'm looking at this right line on the line items, but the budget expires, our expenses, 6% less approximately. Is that right? And with that, we're going to hit, um, we're 5 million above almost 6 million above the 15% savings. We, with that. And we did a lot of, you mentioned the one-time projects, but I guess the highlight for me would be, uh, again, I'm just comparing it to, I haven't had a lot of experience on the city council, but in the, this is the third year. And I appreciate all of us that are sitting up here because this, uh, we're paying our people better. We're fully staffed. We, one of the issues that we had originally was overtime for our safety. Um, love the fact that we had a concern of the iso and that's it's maintained that with a with better recruitment and retention um i just i just don't i mean i want to highlight we're talking we're going we're we're paying our people better we're we have better retention fully staffed less overtime for our safety people six percent less budget without raising taxes and Overall, not just safety, but we have been very extensive in our discussion here and using an outside source to be able to pay our lowest paid employees, which was a big topic discussion last summer. I know we're going to look at this a lot deeper. I want to continue with the fact that we're out of control sometimes on what happens with insurance, but being able to cover the insurance costs and still maintain this budget. And then I just, I just think I just want to echo and highlight what Robin just mentioned is that not only are we not raising taxes, we are well underneath what the new, um, no new revenue tax would be. And then, um, As you can see, as far as the comparison cities, though, and I do know we do have a concern because of our state legislator. That's happening not only in city government, but in municipals, but also in school funding. But I do, I mean, I know we're going to look at this and we'll make deadlines to approve it. Just based on the highlights, I just feel like it's, I hope more people in the city of Longview understand that there's been a lot of work that's happened in the city hall to not only take care of our people and our constituents, but also not raise taxes and increase our savings.

Yeah, I love that, Derek. I feel exactly the same way, that it's good financial management on behalf of our staff to be able to do that. But then it's also, I think Roland did a good job celebrating the long view, long reaching, yeah, I'm sorry, the forward thinking things that we've been able to accomplish as a team. You see those savings in that budget, the things that we fought through and put in place. We're seeing that happen here. So we're doing a good job for our residents and for our employees. So, yes, I feel very proud of it as well. What questions do you have or comments or discussion?

The only comment I have, I mean, I echo what you say, but I just want a council can be provided like a lot itemized on like expenditures with the hotel tax drainage fund. Looking at the increases in different departments or whatever uh like can we get a line itemized on things like that sure you bet i saw john had his hand up too i'm sorry shannon are you done no go ahead if i have something i'll come back okay john did you have a question

Yeah, I just want to echo Derek's comments and appreciate city staff and the directors, everybody doing all this stuff, you know, everything that Derek mentioned, but also increasing the road budget as well is also a great thing. And then can you put the list up there, the things that we were able to accomplish as council that we had? So those are there, too. One thing not mentioned on there is we did the peer city study. And so I appreciate, Roland, I appreciate that we actually have the sanitation comparison between the peer cities that we have as well. So appreciate that. Great work. And looking forward to the continued discussion.

Good.

Yes.

First off, great presentation. I like where it's at. but I think a lot of this comes down to the directors. And I know last year I said here, and I said, I challenge you guys to find different things to where we can, because I didn't want to raise any taxes last year. And I darn sure didn't this year. Me and our men were wrestling for next year, uh, with the, with state, not wrong. But anyway, and one of the most important things that was on my mind is I wanted to see our employees taken care of. And, uh, what we've been able to do as a group, and I had it written down here, John, team effort. You know, it was all of us here together, working together and understanding this is our vision and to be able to treat our employees right, to be able to do the right things. We've got to cut, we've got to not cut corners, but we've got to figure out a way to cut costs and make things work more fluid, a lot easier. And I think this group up here has done a great job, very conscious of your money. And when I say conservative, Very conservative. I know a little over a year now I've never asked Roland for anything. Now I did come to him the other day and I've got an idea but I'm telling you this group has done a great job working to make sure we've kept the taxpayers money where it's supposed to be and we had a little incident last year where we had to buy a couple pieces of property and Boy, that frustrated me more than anything because we had just come out of a great budget meeting when that occurred. And I'm not seeing any of those in the foreseeable future, and I don't think anyone else is either. But I commend you, Ron, on what you've done here. But most of all, everybody who's a head coach on this team out there, and I'm calling you that because, man, I love coaches to death. But as directors, you're the head coach in my book with the winning team, and I commend you all.

Cindy was good with no new property tax rate.

Yes, ma'am. I just want, for those of you that are watching on TV, this tonight is the proposal. We're not voting on anything tonight, and it's going to take two more meetings.

They'll put up the calendar for you. Yep, we'll talk about it on August 13th as a discussion again, and we'll come back and actually have a public hearing and vote on September 17th. So you have lots of time to get your input in.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yes, that was my yes.

All right. Good. Any other comments or discussion? I do. I think, yeah. I think you got, oh, go ahead, Shannon.

I was just curious. When we do, when we look at the retirees and when we're paying them, you know, have we ever did a cost of living? Been a long time. When was the last time? I don't know.

Do you know offhand? 2021.

Yeah. And so how do y'all gauge that and when y'all think about that? Just out of curiosity.

they've they've changed the rules a little bit on how we can adopt colas and uh it's it gets extremely complicated and so marianne obviously dealt with tmrs for a long time i don't know whether bonnie or you are the appropriate one for the changes that have happened so 2021 was the last year that we did it the state put in special legislation for tmrs and for tmrs cities that you cannot

give a cola to retirees, except for every three to five years. So we did not do that this year. But it is something that we can look at in the future because we are in that timeframe moving forward.

Thank you. I know we get questions on that from city retirees. Yes, I know. I know. Any other conversation or discussions or anything you guys want to see? I got it. We got a couple of things written down to get back. No problem. Yeah, perfect. Yes, great job. That was, I mean, that was a feel good, feel good about it. I feel like we're all doing our part and moving in the right direction. So good job team, including city admin, directors, all of our employees. Appreciate what we got going on now. Anything else you want to add? No, good job.

I couldn't have done it without them.

Next on the agenda is budget item B, which is a resolution establishing the date, time, and place for a public hearing on the proposed 26-27 budget with Ms. Angela Walker, our senior accountant. Come on up.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and Mr. McPhee. The state statute requires a public hearing be held when the annual proposed budget, sorry, state statute requires that a public hearing be held on the annual proposed budget. We've actually set that public hearing for September the 17th at 5.30 p.m. here in the city council chambers. This does require a vote. It's a very convenient time for us.

Do I have a motion to approve and a second? Second. All in favor, please say aye and raise your hand. Any opposed? Item is approved. Thank you, Ms. Walker. Now we will move on to items of community interest, starting with Derek.

Let's see. I don't know if there's any, probably not a lot of students out there watching on TV, but school's coming. Here we go. So, you know, one of the things I love about Pine Tree, and I know all schools do this, but make a very big effort for the annual Meet the Teacher night. They're going to start, let's see, Meet the Teacher will be on August 13th at the middle school. the 17th at Parkway Elementary, Birch Elementary, Junior High and High School. And then the primary, the little babies, will be on August 13th. There's meetings throughout the day. I just want to encourage parents, school and the relationship, the partnership with you and the educators, the administrators, and the more you can get to know them and connect with them, please feel comfortable coming up there and asking questions and getting to know them because I know they're excited to meet you and just know in my experience that's one things I love about our community is I mean there would be at the elementaries I mean it's almost 95% participation on these nights I think that's a very big key to the success of educating our kids so those dates are coming up mark them on your calendar and get to know your teachers and administrators and leadership and I hope it's a great year for pine tree next I don't want to steal the thunder of my colleague over here because I know But I just want to say that we just mentioned a lot of successes. I mean, a big win a couple Saturdays ago at Stanford Park. And, you know, it wasn't just the fact that the facility is awesome. I just, I mean, it was so impressive. And I know looking around, I mean, I know – I know it was hot on that grill. I mean, we got a lot of our people in here that were there. Just, I mean, that – and all you guys that were there, thank you. I mean, it was just a – you know, there's a lot of sometimes negativity about – communities and governments and just i just feel uh that that day was just a perfect illustration of what's awesome about longview and just that i know what probably everybody was there that everybody just coming together doing what's best for our our community and our kids and just uh really proud to be a part of it so thank you so yes um stamper park family aquatic center um

So July 18th, we did our grand opening. When I tell you it was very successful, just to give y'all some numbers, on the grand opening day, 1,100 people swam that day. 344 people were at Ingraham at capacity. So just to see the smiles, the diversity, because I had so many different questions with this process and going forward. And like what Derek said, we took a lot of negativity and just people didn't feel that this was something that the community wanted. But if you could just see the videos, the pictures that are all over social media, that it was something that they did want it. we heard you and this council did the right thing about the community and it was a great experience and I have to give a big huge shout out to John and his team for all that he does and the work you did to secure the lifeguards and everything that you're doing going forward to make this successful because we could not do it without your team and I'm very grateful, I'm very happy about the feedback from the community and how well it was enjoyed. And like I said, I mean, my hat's off to the staff because it was hot. It was hot. It was hot. It was hot. You know, I was there until about 2 p.m. They were there until closing, and so it was hot. And I just want to, again, thank y'all. I did forget to send a flyer, but I did start an initiative with Off the Street Movement to provide safe places for children to be able to have fun be themselves without fear of anything and so we did it for the high schoolers we had about 75 to 100 kids show up it was a great time I wish I had sent the pictures to show y'all they had a great time And so we were asked to do it for the middle schoolers, so we will be doing that August 7th. And thanks again to John and his team for always supporting things that I do. And I do because I know sometimes I can come up with some things, but it's all in the interest of the community and to make it a better place and to make everybody feel inclusive. So anything that I do is for the city of Longview. So all schools are invited. We had teenagers from all high schools, even Hallsville, so hey, I encourage y'all to come out again. It will be from 7 to 10 p.m. Security will be provided, and there will be food provided and gift cards. We already have John donating gift cards. We already have people donating. So just, I mean, come and have a good time and enjoy yourself before you go back to school.

Thank you for doing that. I did want to just point out. So the 1100 people at the pool were not at the same time. No, it wasn't.

It was a lot, you know, and they waited and they waited and they lost. Some of them went to Ingram, but some said, no, I want to stay.

You know what I thought was really cool. One, you guys handled that really well. Just the cycling. But everyone's attitude was amazing. Like they were so grateful for the new facility and getting to use it and everything I've seen has been positive. Whereas, you know, you could complain about waiting in line for a long time. Everybody was just so excited and just the feel was so positive. It was a really lovely day.

I got to thank Mary Ann for that, too, because we were doing a little crowd control and kind of letting them know what was going on.

But we were doing what we needed to do. Yeah, yeah. I took Brianna back and we ended up going to Ingram because... Stanford was so full, but then I dropped her off at Ingram, and I was like, well, this is also full. So anyway, great day. Good teamwork. Brandon, you're next.

All right. I just want everybody to be aware that I think starting this weekend, I know there's a back to school drive at my car. But every weekend here on out through August to until school start, there is a back to school drive. I've been seeing a lot of people online looking for looking for assistance. So you see someone, they share those flyers that you're seeing circulating on Facebook or wherever else and just give everybody the opportunity to to get out there and get their kids what they need for school. There's a lot of things out there. So. So I want everybody to just be aware of what's out there and share it.

Perfect. Thank you very much. Very true. John, you're next. I know that he is going to announce the 4th Street study. Do you know what else is on his? Yes, it is. Drive to, oh, there we go. You back?

Let's see, I'm back. Yes, am I up now? Sorry.

Your turn.

No, you're here. All right. So the only thing I wanted to go over was, so this is my presentation for the Aspire. We have the Drive to Aspire golf tournament going through. So make sure you sign up. This is a great program. It benefits partners' prevention. Mentoring, Aspire mentoring is a key, crucial thing that we provide service for. So please register for that and set up a team and have a great time out while you're raising money. Also, 4th Street Corridor Study is going on. This is an opportunity for you to express your thoughts on the corridor between 4th Street from the Loop to Hawkins. The initial response, the survey's live now, so you can go there to do the survey. The initial response from the MPO is this is the most completed survey that they've done. on the initial launch. So a lot of people have opinions about it. So please go on there, do that. There's also the public open house at ModCob as well there. So go there and you can do it in person and go through there. As I mentioned in a conversation, if they've included the Facebook comments, we'd have a lot more survey responses. So take those comments, go on the survey, fill it out, let us know your thoughts, and that'll help us guide in our plans. Thank you.

Thank you, John. I think Brian told me they figured out a way to bring the Facebook comments in.

Oh, really?

Okay, that's awesome.

Jody, you're up.

All right. Everybody knows it's getting back to school time, Spring Hill. They have their back-to-school pep rally, kind of meet the Panthers and everybody that's involved there. That's going to be on Monday, August. I was looking up there. I'm like, where's Richard at? He's not getting it. Sorry. That will be Monday, August 10th at 6 p.m., Also, tomorrow is the last day for in-person registration at Spring Hill, but they have information on all their meet the teachers and just like they're done up by grades and different campuses. It was just too much for put on, but you can see the website right there on the lower part of the screen. I encourage you to do that before we get to the next slide. You know, one of the things talk about schools. You know, when a kid comes through, you never know what they're going to turn out to be. You know, and there's a lot of teachers and coaches and custodial personnel that put a lot of time and effort into them. And when they come back and they're successful at what they do and they make an impact on the community, that is awesome. And so our next slide, Michael Shirley.

Hey.

Back when he might have been a little younger in the class of 1997, but this year, Michael is one of the distinguished alumni at Hallsville ISD, and Michael, congratulations. That's a great honor. And we always like to recognize our own, so.

my turn okay um this is a little bit of a maybe anyway it's it's a matter it's it's it's a earlier this week i had i was coming home for the evening you know and i went in the house and and it was a getting sitting down and my wife was there and she said well how was your day today and I said it was really nice and and I even I dropped by City Hall I got some other things done and I started on talking I was on a roll well I was doing good she's listening to me and abruptly she stood up and said Sydney go back to City Hall they get paid to listen to you and I do not

Good for Annaleigh.

But anyway, that's my lighter moment. I hope all of you are enjoying the new overlays on the streets. They're absolutely wonderful. It's just we're doing good. We had a lot of catch-up on our city streets, and I think we're doing a good job of that. Yes, thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Are you done talking? You got more.

I just want to say, Derek, thank you for the comments that you started with and the praise that every one of you gave as far as the initial presentation. Really, really good. We have a great team. We have the best directors. In the state of Texas, I truly believe that they are firing on all cylinders and really united in serving our citizens. So I just appreciate the support for this budget.

Absolutely. Great job. I have two items tonight. First is Connect Longview, which you guys are familiar with, hopefully. This is a program that seeks volunteers to assist residents who are physically or financially unable to maintain their yards or a little bit of property maintenance. Currently, we have over 20 locals waiting for help. So we are looking for some additional participants. You can find that on our website, longviewtexas.gov backslash connect Longview. But if you are part of a group or even individuals, sometimes families will come do this, churches, civic organizations. But if you just have a group of hardworking friends that want to do it, we'd love to have you. Next, I wanted to brag a little bit on our animal shelter. We have been, you know, I love celebrating wins, getting lifeguards, seeing things advance in our budget. This is one of those things that our animal shelter recently celebrated its 10th year, and they have been so proactive in leading the way in everything animal welfare. What they did this weekend is using private donations through Longview Paws, they brought in a group that taught our volunteers and staff how to run our own spay-neuter clinic. And over three days, they spayed and neutered 151 animals with the goal of being able to put this on in our community to speed up the preventative matters of having our animals in the community spayed or neutered. We've been running the Spay It Forward program with private donor funds for a couple of years, and we've given out thousands of vouchers and seen that help in a number of ways. However, if you get a voucher today, you may not be able to make it in for about six months. So this is a way for us to just really make an impact, and I'm so, so proud of everything that the shelter does, but very, very excited about this. We also continue to have... free shop clinics, microchip clinics, lots of ways to improve your pet ownership here and fully supported. So if you have not been to the Longview Animal Care and Adoption Center, please go and see the wonderful things that we're doing and bring home a new family member as well. So that's all for me. We will be adjourned and we will see you back August 13th.