City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

all right welcome to Mount Pleasant City Council meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday August 4th and we're gonna go ahead and call the order we've got our quorum and I believe on anchor

Dear Lord God, our creator, our sustainer, we thank you so much for the blessings that you give us to be a part of this community, to work for the city, to be interactive with the community. We pray that you continue to watch over everybody here in this meeting, the people of the community, people of the city. Give our council wisdoms to make good choices up there that benefit everyone within our community. We ask for your grace upon us in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. All right, we're going to go ahead and move into open session, public comments. The City Council welcomes citizens' participation and comments. At all council meetings, citizens' comments are limited to three minutes out of respect for everyone's time. The council is not permitted to respond to your comments. And the Texas Open Meetings Act requires the topic of discussion deliberation be posted on the agenda not less than three business days in advance of the council meeting. If your comment relates to a topic that is on the agenda, the council will discuss the topic on the agenda.

At that time, the topic is discussed and deliberated.

Do we have any public comments?

Hello, Mr. Mayor, City Council. Thank you for letting me speak today. My name is Bonnie. Everybody calls me Miss Bonnie. I'm talking today for the young people in Mount Pleasant surrounding Calvary. I'm the mouthpiece God uses for them. And he gave me a vision a long time ago. When I was growing up in this town, we didn't have a whole bunch to do then. We don't now. But I've come for them today. God, we've got three minutes. Okay, first of all, I've been surrounded by them all day. They say we need them all here in Malpaisa where they don't have to wear a detection, Longview, all these different places. They want to spend time in their own hotel. They want a miniature golf course. They want the bowling alley opened up with a skate rink again. They want a swimming pool here like we used to have here for them. They want all kinds of miniature golf courses. They say even we're going to try to get their parents involved in donating money too. Okay, this is the vision I have. These young people, they're going to be the next you, you, you, you. They're going to be the ones coming along behind you. They need to leave, have some kind of legacy from y'all, from their children that's going to be coming. Okay, so today is the day God said this. This vision was going to be spoken out. So I am the mouthpiece for God. And God, you better don't fast. But anyway, there's churches. There's everything for them to go to. But these young people are depressed here in this town. They like to smoke. Some of them smoke marijuana. They're depressed beyond measure. No, they're not going to tell anybody. But yes, they are. They'll tell you they're depressed. We have nothing to do here. We have to leave here to do something. They get out of high school, graduate. Then if they're not going to college, they're safe. There's nothing for us to do here. I'm out there. And Mr. Mayor, is three minutes over?

Getting close, I think.

Okay. So, and I pray for the city council. Our most precious Heavenly Father, as we come before the gates of heaven, the pearly gates, Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for this evening. We want to thank you for this city council. Heavenly Father, we're just all imperfect people living in this imperfect world. Heavenly Father, lead and guide us and lead this city council. Help them to see the needs of these young people in here, Mount Pleasant, Omaha, surrounding areas. Heavenly Father, we're what they have. And Heavenly Father, I know tonight is the annual speaking night. God bless these people that's going to bring this to you. Let Heavenly Father lead and guide us. For you are the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Great I am. We lay each member here down at your feet. With Jesus Christ at your right side. Heavenly Father, let them see the vision. Heavenly Father, open doors. God, bring the money in. Let this town of Mount Pleasant, Texas grow like it's never grown before. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Ms. Bond. Anyone else? All right. Let's go ahead and move into the regular... I know, right? All right, we're going to move into the regular agenda. Item number one, consider approval of July 21st, 2026 meeting minute.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So you have before you a typed copy of our last minute meeting minutes that will be certified once

All right, any discussion?

I make a motion that we accept the minutes. I second.

Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please?

Yes.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. All right, the item passed unanimously. Let's go ahead and move on to item number two, discuss and consider resolution 2026-16, authorizing the amendment of sanitary landfill agreements between the City of Mount Pleasant and Pleasant Oaks Landfill, Texas PXLP, increasing commercial gate rates and other fees effective October 1st, 2020. Good evening.

We have with us Zach and Amy, who are going from Pleasant Oaks Landfill, who are going

Mayor, council, good evening. Thank you all for having us tonight. So I'm Zach Briscoe. I'm general manager over the East Texas market. And Amy Welch is our finance manager for East Texas. So what you have before you tonight is a market adjustment request that we'll be getting into in the next couple of slides. So I'll start with a little bit of an overview here on the first slide. Our partnership with the city and Republic Service, we were a different name at the time, started in 1998. At that time, we signed a life of site contract for the Pleasant Oaks landfill. Currently, we have 111 years left of site life out there, so there's a lot of life there. It's a big site, which would be great for the city for many years to come to have that disposal option. So with that life aside agreement, the price increases each year were based on CPI, consumer price, which is, as everybody knows, costs have extremely gone up the last several years, and CPI has not been able to keep up with those costs. So you'll see in the next upcoming slide that our competitors in the area and our own landfills in the area have adjusted to the market, but we've been unable to just due to being restricted by the CPI. So the ask tonight is to put a $10 increase on the outside commercial rate, and I'll turn it over to Amy, and we'll talk through those numbers.

Yeah, so we did an analysis of your total commercial volume that comes into the landfill, and you're about 46,000 tons a year. So to the city of Mount Pleasant, we pay a royalty. We have a minimum royalty that we pay, and then over that minimum, we pay 10% to the city. This would increase that to $446,000 in revenue, which would be $46,600 in royalty to the city with this income. So our ask is kind of get this market adjustment of $10. And as you can see, we have the Pine Hill Landfill, which is in Longview, which is our closest landfill. And it's at $57 and can change a ton. The new Boston landfill is $83. That is their first ton. And then after that, they go to $48. And then the Boston Prairie is $69. And then they have a two-ton minimum. And so we're also asking for most landfills for commercial customers to have a minimum tonnage that they bring in. Pine Hill has a three-ton minimum. We're asking for a two-ton minimum here as well. And then on our CPI, we have the contract currently paid for CPI, which has been 0.4% by this time last year. This year it's at 2.8%. We want to move that to water-fueled track, which is in line with what our cost in place is.

Just to be clear on the list of landfills here, our current gate rate, at the landfill is $44.73, and the request this year is to get it to $54.73, which would still be the cheapest landfill in this part of Texas. And also, it includes a $5 increase next year at the same time to go to $59, which would put us right where we need to be in the market, and CPI should be able to keep up.

So I've had a couple of residents ask me They were curious, do we have people from other cities coming in and dumping in our landfill?

All the surrounding counties.

Okay. And they're going to be moved to the same rate?

Yes. It would be the gate rate when they go to the landfill.

Citizens of Mount Pleasant get 12 free yards a year. And private town.

Yeah, and that was the other thing they were saying was that the lines are back so far up because of the commercial traffic that, I mean, it's every single day.

We've had some large class one jobs going on. We are in the process of adding a second scale in our budget for next year, which will drastically.

Yeah, it'll alleviate it. And that's what we actually have a request for our area right now to get that approved in November. So on a commercial load, so if you bring it, commercial haulers bringing in, you're usually about four tons per load. So it's just saying if they come in at like 1.9, it would be moved up to two. So it's a ton per.

They'll be charged. Yeah. Always charged two, no matter what. And then from there, increases, right?

Yeah. Correct.

All right. I have a question. I heard the voucher system, but I don't want all of us getting a bunch of questions from a lot of the construction folks that are local. So is that how that manages? So nothing will change for any local business, construction company that's part of the city or the county?

It will affect them if they're hauling their own loads. Now, we're hauling the loads. For the franchise agreement, there's no change to any of the commercial loads.

So if you have a customer like

the reason why I was asking and it may not be up here but it says all rates apply exclusively to outside commercial users which assumes if you're an internal commercial user So what does that mean? I guess that's the definition I'm trying to understand.

We call our volume internal volume, and then outside is everybody else's.

Oh, people bring it in their own stuff.

Right.

So at the $59 next year, are you still going to be the lowest?

Yes, we should be. So that would be like every year Pine Hill gets a price increase, every year all Landville gets a price increase.

Because I'm just curious, I mean, since it's in Titus County, Why not move to 50? Anybody that's coming from outside of Titus County, move theirs to 59 right now, and then Titus County has the 54.

So we have that at other landfills. It's when people come through the gate, you're asked what county they're in, and once they find out, you know, they say they're inside.

They don't have to prove?

I mean, it's really hard to track.

Yeah. Well, no, if they're working, no. It'll be, but you would think that'd be cool.

Well, the only way you could do that is sticker the trucks and whatever that costs, and then you're factoring in a whole, it's a whole other thing.

Yeah. It's a great idea. It's a great idea.

We've tried it.

Not saying we won't do it, and if that's what the city is wanting us to do, we can amend that and put that in here and then see what revenue comes from.

I would love to see that. I mean, the reason I say that is because of the lines. Our residential people are having a real hard time using the dump. And if it's still lower than anywhere else, they're going to be paying a lower price. But, I mean, at least the option is there.

We can definitely add an out-of-county to the amendment. We have an amendment presented in your packet, but we can add to that amendment outside of the county a new line and add that as part of our day-break.

And so we would take it for everybody to 54 and then out-of-county to 54?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I... Take out-of-county up to whatever the highest one is in our competitor's rounding.

is close. Yeah, I think, I mean, Titus, personally, I think Titus and the city needs a better deal than these people that are traveling from out of the county, you know.

Or outside contractors taking work that are in the county, right? That's, I think, the bigger thing. You've got people coming in that aren't from here, that don't have a business here, they're doing work here, and then they're using our dump. Oh, okay. I think that's really the...

All right. That makes more sense to me now because I was like, what are they traveling all the way?

Let's say $10 or $12 a ton. They will drive a pretty good distance.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and if we're still the lowest.

Is this going to affect the price of everybody's daily or weekly pickup with the blue dumpsters?

No, no.

That is – No effect on the franchise. That's no – yeah. The franchise is – what I'm calling the franchise is the contract. MSW is my –

When was the last time that we had a price increase? We have price increases annually, but it's all been at CPI, full CPI, which has fluctuated very low over the last five years, six years. But every year we have an annual price increase. Like last year, it was 0.04%. So it was really low. So it's been one of those that, like I said, our cost is.

more discussion we want to get a motion with that amendment or yes yes yes a county resident

Is it on now?

Yeah, it's on.

How is this going to affect our county ticket? Because obviously our county people are going to be paying to dump out there. So is it going to affect their cost? So is our price going to go up in the county? Are you talking residential?

Residential.

No, I'm talking about our people who pick up in our county. Like we have trash companies like Your Choice that picks up. Okay, so then it'll trickle down to the county residents that we will end up paying more for our trash pickup for this agreement.

Not necessarily. That would be up to the individual. It's not affecting our...

Okay, and while I'm up here, I have another question. What is the lifetime of the landfill out there? Like, how long are y'all predicting that we'll be able to dump trash in it, especially with outside communities bringing trash in to dump? Is the lifetime of the actual facility going to remain? Was it 111? Okay, I wasn't sure on that, so I just wanted to clarify that.

And it's tracking with all this outside stuff? It's tracking where it's supposed to be?

Okay, I just wanted to ask that. All right.

Okay. And it puts in for, like, we account for tonnage that comes in, any inflation in tons, and then we do it for a three-year model so that we can see. And then if it changes every year, we, you know, if it increases, decreases, that's how we do our amortization. All right, great.

Yeah, I missed the lunch out there. I missed the lunch out there. I was doing something.

So, Mayor and members of the council, my name's Kyle Mooring. I wanna ask a question regarding Resolution 2026-16 and the proposed Second Amendment. Subsection 10.4 permits future rate adjustments for regulatory changes, government-imposed fees, taxes, assessments, or other charges, and unexpected landfill operating or drainage costs, The city also receives a 10 percent royalty from actual gate revenues. Although the amendment does not say that an investigation itself triggers an increase a known criminal or regulatory investigation could create or reveal liabilities and costs relevant to these provisions. That makes this a financial and regulatory due diligence question not an allegation of criminal conduct. Before voting on resolution 2026-16, I respectfully ask the city manager or city attorney to answer this factual question, yes or no. On the record, as of today, is the city or any of its officials, employees, attorneys, or agents aware of any criminal investigation, criminal referral, or criminal Investigative inquiry concerning conduct by or involving the city Pleasant Oaks landfill allied waste landfill holdings or Republic services This includes any subpoena preservation notice records demand interview requests or other investigative contact from Tcq's environmental crimes unit EPA a prosecutor a grand jury or any other law enforcement agency If the city will not answer yes or no, please take clearly whether the city is declining to confirm or deny and identify the legal basis

tell you I don't know anything about it is Lee online Austin yes I'm here is that is this was that the citizen comment or yeah I the citizen question do we know do we know if it's a citizen comment we can't respond except with a policy statement but if y'all want to even when it's on our agenda What's that? I mean, it's a part of an agenda. It's not a public comment. This is an agenda item. So I thought that's where they're supposed to talk so we can have dialogue about it.

Okay. What's the question, I guess? I can answer a question from y'all.

Is there just a short question from the public?

I don't know if he can hear you. So he can hear you.

So is there, are you aware of any criminal investigation, referral, or criminal investigative inquiry concerning conduct by or involving the city, Pleasant Oaks Landfill, Allied Waste Landfill Holdings, or Republic Services?

Am I aware of? No, I guess I'm not aware of anything.

Yeah, I mean, to the best of my knowledge, I don't.

I'm filling in for Lee, so.

Can I say anything to that?

I'm not sure how that's relevant to the resolution before y'all though. It's pretty, y'all are just raising rates, right? Yeah. Okay, yeah.

No worries. All right.

The rate's going up about $10.

And then it's going to go up for people outside the county to, what was that, 15?

Yeah.

That's our motion. Do we have a second?

Well, hold on. I did have one more question before we go down that path. After the two rate adjustments that we just discussed, anything further? the citizen said kind of piqued my interest so y'all do need to come back to us if anything past that five dollar next year that is an additional discussion right okay just above cpi just want to make yeah i know this is kind of a clean clean the slate deal because if everything's been wonky but just want to make sure we got a guard right it's it is um in the in the amendment it's all right what the cpi would be following these two adjustments which one is october 26th and the other

Yeah, y'all just trying to get back on track, right? All right, good deal. Hey, we feel your pain. All right. All right.

Yeah. I don't think this reflects what we're going to do, right? I thought we were making a motion with an amendment. Yeah.

You want to make the motion?

Yeah.

I think there's more questions before we do a motion.

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Carl.

Is what you have us to vote on tonight, does it reflect the increased rate for the out-of-county people?

It does not reflect that.

Then we can't vote on it tonight until we have that in front of us.

We're just going to agree with it with an amendment. We'll put it in like they're asking for, but we're going to add an amendment.

It needs to be written down before we vote on it.

I think just my thought on it, and we can all disagree. I'm okay with that. But my understanding is we didn't agree with something that was written. We're going to put an amendment in place. We're all going to vote on it. But until that amendment's in paper, he's not going to sign it. And so it's not legal until he signs it. So I think we're good.

Next motion with the amendment.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

All right. Good. I'll make a motion to hold on another right deal here. There we go. I make a motion to vote on resolution 2026-16. I'm authorizing the amendment for the sanitary landfill agreement between the City of Mount Pleasant and Pleasant Oak Landfill, TXLP, increases the commercial gate rates and other fees effective October 1st, 2026, with the additional amendment of an alternative rate for outside county, Titus County residents and companies.

I second. Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please? Aye.

Aye.

Yes. Aye.

All right, pass unanimous. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it. All right, moving to item number three, discuss and consider awarding a bid for the HVAC condensing unit replacement at the Mount Pleasant Civic Center. And this is our building official inquiry.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. So the Civic Center has three, well, it's a total of five units. It's got two 25-ton units, a 10-ton unit, and two 5-ton gas furnaces. And we put it out for a bid. We had four bids received. And after sitting down with staff and going over the bids, staff had recommended to go with woods, which is $121,701. Discussion?

And is it out, or is it... What's that? Is the unit out, or is it going out, or...

So, yeah, basically, after talking to the department, basically the maintenance costs are getting excessive on it, and some of the units are so old they're actually having to make custom parts to replace the units.

That's why I just replaced mine. Yeah. How many bids did we receive?

We received four. And just in full disclosure, Woods was not the lowest bid. There was one lower than it. But the lower bid didn't include the five-year parts warranty like the bid contract had said. And then Woods is also adding additional copper runs to each unit inside and outside the building, which the other bid did not include.

And they're local, right?

They're local, yeah. So in full disclosure, between the two bids, there was about a $9,000 difference. But staff works with Wood AC. They got them on speed dial. They would prefer to work with Wood AC.

Thanks, John.

How much money... The ads you just spoke of, the runs and the parts, how much money is that?

So to go with the other, the other bid was $94,966. If you go with the, you add the five-year parts warranty, that's an additional $5625. So that takes the bid to $100,591. And then the new lines are, it's anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 per set. So anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000. So if you take, I just did $12,000 on the average. So the difference between that, it would take, it would be $112,591 for the lower one and $121,701 for Woods. So that's a difference of $9,000 that we would be paying more for Woods. So we're getting more from Woods. Yeah, we're getting the additional runs. We're getting the warranty without having to pay extra. And then staff has a really good report with Woods. Yeah, we've got the relationship there. Yeah. He says if a unit goes down on Saturday, he calls them. They're there in less than an hour to get it fixed.

Thank you. Any more discussion?

They were pretty much the same the woods units were a little more energy efficient not by much but a little more and then woods is Doing like for like so we have currently have carrier the replacing with carrier the other vendor was gonna go with train But other than that, they're pretty much the same

I just wondered why you said that some things weren't on the same, the warranty and all. Why wasn't everything exactly the same? I'm just wondering.

Well, I think they didn't include the warranty. They put it on as a separate line item so that it would look, you know.

The total figure looked lower.

Lower, yeah. Yeah.

All right. Any more discussion? Thanks, John. You got a motion?

I make a motion to award bid for the HVAC condensing unit replacement at the Mount Pleasant Civic Center to Wood AC in the amount of $121,701. I second. Madam Secretary, can you get a vote, please?

Yes. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, it passed unanimously. Let's go ahead and move on to item number four, presentation of Delwood Park updates by our Public Works Director, Garrett.

Good evening, Council, Mayor, City Manager Vine. Tonight, I get the privilege of presenting an update for Delwood Park, the project we've been working on for about two years now in the planning phase. I'm going to go ahead and go into the first slide here. This is a project schedule showing the six public meetings we've held, kind of going over the same Information every time we voted on something every time the park board's been involved Most of the monthly meetings and and key points throughout this last two years what we've done a completion marks and Where we're at today. So today we're sitting at about 75% completion on the construction document what that looks like is That's just the That's for all the amenities, the grading scale, everything. That's kind of what we've been working on for so long. We drag out when you get in the mud. I'm going to go ahead and go into the second slide. So the last thing that we brought to council was the construction documents and construction administration documents. fakes, and that's what y'all voted on, approved. You haven't technically approved the project in whole. You've approved us building out the design and bringing that vision to you. You can see the breakdown of what all those fees cost. It's on an estimated budget of $1.8 million. We're trying to maximize every penny we get. The next slide, you'll see This is the project estimation of that 1.8. It goes into detail of everything all the way from erosion control down to irrigation, grass, quartz, lighting, paving, everything. And I can make all these. These are all public documents, so anybody can see them. This is an estimation that could change in the better for us or the worse. In the situation that it gets more expensive, we'll have to take some portions away or find a way around it. My estimation is that we're actually coming a little bit lower, and we've done some cost savings and shaving on the style of pavilion versus the fancy one versus the normal gabled-in pavilion. We're trying to do every cost savings so we can get the most out of our dollars. Probably what I'll do after this is put a little document together so we can post it and whoever wants to see that can see that. Project overview. So as you can see, this is the most recent rendition. But that's where the pavilion will be. Took it out for this rendition because we want to look at what we could do if we just didn't do a pavilion. But you'll see pavilion designs for the pod.

So where is the pavilion?

It's going to be north of the tennis court there.

Okay.

Yeah. But you'll see it in just a second. But the main thing we're looking at is new tennis court, pickleball courts, and basketball courts. Replacing the old, we'll have to do some demolition, take out all the old courts. The new pavilion in the sports court area. Updating sport lighting for all those in that area. New walking trail connections, which you'll see on further slides. They're pretty cool. Well, actually, they're right there. Sorry. Updated playground borders. So right now we've got mixed playground borders. What we're going to do is we're going to come in and put a walking trail around it and make it more easily accessible and get rid of the plastic retaining walls. and the concrete borders that are really close to some of the play features.

Garrett, I have a question. Garrett, I got a question. I had a lot of people talking about the tennis courts and all, could they be resurfaced or anything?

So that was, I beat that to death. So we had multiple companies come out and look into it. There's options, and that's an option that we always have as a city council, or you have as a city councilor. to take what we suggest and change it. So what's the cost of... A court would be anywhere from... They're probably about $30,000 now just to resurface it, but here's what happens. You resurface it, and these are in really bad shape. These are not in good shape.

I would not recommend... Well, I was looking at them, and I didn't... The thing that I saw was they were cracked, but they were all level. They weren't, like, trip hazards. There was one or two small ones that had trip hazards on them, but the rest... And it was just, to me, with... With the money, I was concerned with how much that was going to be versus our whole project. I mean, I know concrete can eat up a project.

Oh, it will. And then the demolition will be in there and redoing the grading. If that's something that I will look at, we can look at that for sure. But in my opinion, they're in really bad shape. They only need worse. If this money was borrowed, we need to put that foundation in for the future. So we may get two years out of a resurface. We're going to get 30 years out of these new ports. It's if we want to band-aid it or we want to go permanent. And I'll get some numbers, and we'll pitch that too. We'll pitch some cost-saving options. The basketball courts on the hill, they're really bad. Those are the ones that are... Oh, I didn't know that. They've got some two-inch gaps and stuff.

I will say that the basketball courts over at Oak Lawn are great. Ours are not.

Our original plan was just to come resurface. I can't recommend it, but if that's what we want to go to, we can put makeup on it and make it look good for a few years.

Well, and the only reason I was bringing that up is because people were coming to me saying, I mean, the park was falling apart, so we're putting in this new stuff. But, I mean, we've done – there's been a lot of movement on the park since we started talking about it, and we were talking about maybe getting ATCOG involved. We don't know if that's going to happen or not, but with the drainage, with the creek and stuff like that, because the bridges flood, because they flood, ATCOG can help us, possibly help us with that.

So we always have continuous maintenance that's – And give a little background. Some stuff we've had to put off for the last couple years because we've been stopped spending for two years. Right. So if it's not essential, I guarantee you we have not done it.

Right.

We've done some catch-up, and I've got a slide about the ongoing maintenance.

Garrett, before you go forward, just tell people. that this bond was taken before we even got on here. So, I mean, this has been designated, and a lot of these things you've been working on were before most of us even got on here.

Yeah, so this is a 2024 bond issue, and the money was borrowed with specific... Just Delwood Park, right? Just for Delwood Park and the improvements that we have listed. Yeah. So we can't, like, say, if we wanted to put a pool in, we can't use these funds for that. These are all within, they're all specifically applied in the bond issue and that actually becomes a legal issue if you change it.

I got a question on this, all this concrete here. So since we're kind of starting brand new, right, getting rid of the old stuff, understanding the soil around here is not always the best. Are we considering any type of soil stabilization, things like that? Not necessarily injections, I know they're cost prohibitive, but generally something to kind of ensure we get more, so we can resurface it in 30 years instead of replacing it.

So we've actually done a geotechnical study of the whole park. and they're going to have to backfill everything to those specs. And the quartz that we are recommending are a... Is it that softer material? No, it's the tension cable.

Yeah, that makes sense. That'll help a lot. Okay, thanks.

So if it cracks in the years, we just come in and tighten it. Post-tension cable. Sorry, I had to break the bar. Okay. But I'll answer a lot of these questions at the end because I have a lot of answers already on the slide. We're just excited. I know. I'm excited too. Hey, it's a privilege. This is the best part of the job is talking parks. So I'm going to go ahead and skip through that one. So I'm going to go through a couple pictures just so everybody kind of gets the visual and the vision that we're trying to bring them out. As you can see on this one, it's just kind of missing that little pavilion area. But one of the things we've added was a few parking spots to enhance the parking down near the port. That's the most recent change. And that's one of the things that we want to hit with the cost savings. We want to trim off the pavilion, get a functional pavilion, but we want to add parking. We're just going to try to maximize as much as we can. This is a zoom-in of the playground area. You can kind of tell what the new walk-in area around all that is. The vision behind that is, say, take your kids out to play on the playground, but you want to walk. You don't want to lose sight of your children. So we've provided the area where you can walk that kind of simple trail and just keep an eye out or take your kids out on a bike. It's going to tie into the old bandstand, and that'll kind of make it a... optional for event one day. I have a little event out there and it all kind of makes a nice little scenic view.

And you're going to have a sidewalk going up to those stairs? Because I see people running those stairs all the time.

Yep, tie it all up. So these are the 3D renditions. You can see the courts. A little bit of shade structured in between the brick wall courts. It'll make a nice little area for some little tournaments and stuff. Sports lighting. This is an optional grass area where the basketball court is. Kind of just keep things a little safe because it's on the hill. We want to put a chain link fence up. You could have soccer practice. You could throw the frisbee around, take your dog out. Throw the dog park. That's going to be a multifunctional. You can use it for both. We want to put a dog park in a different section later. That's one of the things. It hasn't been cut, but it's been... It's pushed to the savings area. Because it's not a very expensive... Yeah, or maybe you're telling me that it wouldn't be that expensive. It's a little change in a couple of minutes. Same kind of overview. But... You can see that pavilion there. That's an upscale pavilion. The one in the estimation. So these are some of the most recent engineered drawings we've got. And that kind of showcases that simpler pavilion, just a regular gabled in with stone columns. It's going to match the aesthetic of the park more than the little fancy ones do. And I'll just leave this up to you, so everybody can look at it, but I don't have too many more comments on that. And that's the enhancement I'm going to make towards the playground. making it safer, making it easier. So ongoing maintenance and improvement. So this is what we've been working on the last couple of weeks. We've been addressing some washouts at Delwood Creek. We've repaired a small bridge on the west side walking trail. We've also removed dead trees in the park, removed old stumps within the creek area. There were quite a few. We are developing a plan to address retaining wall runoff issues and all that by that west end little bridge where we have some dirt run over onto the walk trail. Yeah, so we're looking at putting like a little retaining wall that would be an additional seating area. It could sit on the retaining wall and be kind of a cool little build. The playground has that as well. That's kind of where we brought that from. We completed clearing the blue well. That's the one that has the aerator. It was dirty, but the aerator had been hit by one of our self-inflicted lawnmowers, and nobody reported it, so we got it fixed up and cleaned up. We also worked on the red water well. If you have kids, don't let them throw sticks in the well, please. They're hard to maintain. We had to bring a backhoe in and take out an entire dump truck load of sticks. So we added river walk just like we did the other one, and it's helping to clarify it. We're going to look at updating some park lighting. We've already done a lot, but we're going to go through and replace any poles that need to be replaced with the rusted thing. And a cool one that we're going to do in-house is we're developing a plan to replace three of the large bridges and replace all the decking on the small bridge. know that's going to be it's like why build well i put two million dollars in the park you can have old bridges so we are looking at all those the items so they're gonna be some this winter will probably knock out a lot of those anybody have any questions

I'll just say thank you. Thank you to your guys. And I know we had an issue with Facebook where they were talking about a trip hazard. And it seemed like everybody was talking about it, but nobody had reported it. So when it did get reported, it was taken care of immediately. And I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. If you have any, and to the community, if you have any issues in the park, please reach out to the city. That's the best, most effective way to... get something fixed. We're always going to jump on it. If you have any interest, we'll talk with you. We'll set time aside. We're here to serve. That's great. Thank you for the update. Yes, sir. And there's no action on that.

All right. Let's go ahead and move on to item number five, discussion of City Mount Pleasant spay and neuter program. Ms. Payne?

Hello, Mayor, Mr. Ryan, council members. I appreciate y'all letting me have the opportunity to speak again. We had asked for some information first. I'm glad to see you back with us. I'm glad you're back. Thank you. We had asked for some information, so I'm kind of short on things. But as I told you guys last time, what we do, we spay and neuter animals. We have a website, a nonprofit organization, and we spay and neuter people. Anyone who comes to us with an animal, it's at no cost. Everything is free of charge for them. We have done 169 animals this year. approximately $90,000 in services for a little less than $10,000. We've partnered with five vets from Kilgore, Longview, Mount Pleasant, different areas. They come into Mount Pleasant and we do a couple of clinics a year. We're planning on doing a couple of clinics a year. That's kind of our goal. But we also work with Piney on the as-needed basis. We send people there weekly as funds are available. We have a waiting list right now for people wanting services in the city that are in need of them. When we look at the shelter, we just want to see what we can do to help. Our euthanasia rate is about 38%, 40% out there, which is lower, honestly, than I thought it was. But it could be lower. It could most definitely be lower. I spent a lot of time this last couple of weeks calling other shelters, visiting them, visiting with the directors in other cities all over Northeast Texas. to see what's working and what's not. And one thing that's not working is not being open on the weekend. That's a significant difference from city to city in who is able to adopt more when they are available to the working public. When we close at 4 p.m. and we're not open again on the weekend at all, that really limits working families on being able to go out and adopt a pet. I know that it's difficult. I know that they don't want to work on the weekends, but it's an on-call service. And I think we need to look at that. But in order for us to drop these euthanasia rates, it's going to be about a three-part program. One thing, the hours of operation is a huge thing. We need to network better. Most of the other shelters in other areas have in-house... non-profit organizations that help network for them to be able to use other rescues. That's one thing I think we're lacking. I think they try, but they're busy. They're busy out there. And then spay and neuter to drop those. They have a voucher program. It's more of a coupon program because it doesn't cover the whole spay and neuter. It covers a portion of Most of our residents, even if they get an $80 voucher, it's still too expensive for them to go get a pet spayed or neutered. If it's a $350, $400 procedure, a lot of families in this community cannot afford that. So we've got to find a solution to that. Anyway, that's kind of where we are. I'm waiting on some data from the shelter so that we can be able to better determine if it's working. Because we haven't really looked at the program in order to see if it's working. But I do think that if it was being successful, if it was working, that our euthanasia numbers would drop more than they have. And we're not seeing that. So that being said, I just want us to see what we can do for the city in order for us to help make that happen.

Yeah, and I know that we had talked about it, and basically the two things that we were looking for is to drop that euthanasia rate, but also save a ton of money for the taxpayers.

Absolutely.

A ton of money.

Can you explain, or maybe Mark, or Candace, just maybe about the... I'm sorry, the voucher. Can you explain what that is? I'm not really clear about it.

When someone adopts an animal, they are given a voucher depending on if it's a female. I believe it's an $80 voucher for a dog, a male dog. I believe it's a $60 voucher. They also give $8 vouchers for rabies as well as I think the cat is $40 for a cat.

I can't tell you the exact amounts. It's posted at the shelter. But if they go to the animal protection, they get covered for the cost of that surgery.

Yeah, APL, if you go to APL, the Atwood thing, it'll cover the procedure. It'll cover the procedure, but if you have to go to like a regular vet.

Yeah, if you go to a vet and the additional cost of whatever the vet charges, it's the person who took the animal.

That is correct, except for the APL has some serious things to do with the age of the animal. Oh, yeah, I remember that. We worked with a lot of pet owners who were limited and weren't able to use APL because of those limitations.

Yeah, because of the mobile. I mean, it's a mobile clinic. It's a mobile clinic. Yeah.

Yeah. What is APL? It's Animal Protection League, and they're based out, I believe, out of Longview, maybe, or Tyler. I think it is Longview. But they come to Lowe's, or they set up, it's a trailer, and you can go there and get low-cost spay-neuter. You can get low-cost shot, things like that. We also do shot clinics, and I dropped the ball on the last clinic because I didn't even realize, and I let all those animals go through without doing that. But if we can figure out a way, even where... I'm going to talk to our vets here about doing a drive-by shooting where you can drive through and we just give rabies shots at no cost. You don't even have to get your animal out of the car. We'll come out, we'll do it, and send them on their way. In some way, maybe we could partner with the city in order to help get pets registered if they're here.

What I was going to ask is that I know that we just had an ordinance. We went through a workshop and we had two or three last year And this ordinance went into effect in January or February for the chipping and the licensing. And I do know, and y'all can correct me, if they're at the pound and they're rescued, they are spayed and neutered before they go out, right?

No.

No. That's another problem is these animals, when they leave there, and there's nothing they can do about that. But there's a deadline on the vouchers, correct? Yes.

So we don't have a surgical center in our shelter, so they are required, and they sign a document saying that any animal that leaves our shelter, they will spay and neuter them, and then we follow up. They are required to report back, which we put into our computer system, and if they fail, we send them citations. And it's not we send them one citation. They then are checked month after month, and they continue to get citations until they report back to that spay and neuter status.

And we've only been doing this since January or February, so that's like six or seven months.

No, so we've been doing that program for years. The ordinance that we enacted earlier this year required that any animal that comes into the shelter Like if it's a dog at large or if it's a stray that a citizen brings in from the county or the city or one of our two contract cities, those animals are required then to be spayed or neutered as part of their release. And so it used to just be under adoptions, but now we require it for any animal that comes into the shelter.

I have a question. What is the shelter's, what is their budget for land use?

I'm sorry, I didn't know what conversation we were having tonight, so I didn't bring any budget information or any data.

Okay, that's one of the things that I had asked for was the budget amount for the shelter, and to make sure that all of that money is being used for that program and not going anywhere else on the budget, because I think that's important. We've got to get these numbers down. It's just... It's just, we just can't continue to do that. I'm not a liberal, like, animal lover, you know, beaten on, it's not that. It's just that we are commanded, we are commanded to be good stewards of our land and of our animals, and we are failing them. And so I'm here to help. I want to help. I'm not trying to down the shelter. I cannot imagine doing the job that they do day in, day out. I can't imagine having to go to work every day knowing that I was going to have to kill an animal. I can't even imagine it. And that's got to be hard on morale. It's got to be difficult. So how do we fix that? And how can we help to fix that? We've got really good relationships with these veterinarians. we want to use for the city for the county so that we can help lower these numbers so anyway when we get the information that we've asked for from the from the shelter so that we can better look then maybe we can have another discussion about it so that we can see where we can help

Maybe we'll do just a meeting, a small meeting first, and then get everything together so then we can actually...

I have also talked to the other shelters. A lot of the successful shelters also use... You have a lot of civic organizations in town where these people need community service hours. So we need to use that. I also talked to our adult probation office, Rance Hockaday, about it because he said we used to do... probation out there and for some reason it stopped I don't know why he said but we would be happy to do that again so I know that there would be there would be obviously guidelines on that but it seems to be successful in other shelters as well to use those hours so because community services will probationary hours to help clean to help do things like that so anyway

When you talk to these other shelters around, can you give me a number as to how many are open Saturdays and their hours? And the reason I ask that is because I used to, many, many years ago, I was over the shelter at one point here. And we actually worked Saturdays. And I know it was a pretty busy day because families would come in and all that. So I would be interested to see what everybody else is doing.

I actually put together a diagram, and I didn't bring it tonight, but where I went through and saw the percentages and who was open, and it's a substantial difference in the number of animals that are. I talked to, oddly, Winsboro was one of the shelters that I talked to, and some of these smaller towns, I expected them to be a high kill rate. They're like, no, I don't remember the last time we killed an animal. I don't remember the last time. We're open on Saturdays. We do this. We have a partner with a... a non-profit that does our outreach for us that has volunteered to come in and do our outreach to help establish relationships with other rescuers um and they said we don't kill anymore and so then today i got a call from silver spring and she's like i'm the only person here and i was like do y'all have a high euthanasia right there and she's like no not really now the difference is i will say this is they are city only they're so there's a difference there um she And she said, I've got several danger field logs at home. So we're up to nine foster failures at my house now. So anyway, but talking to her today, she said, I'm the only officer that we have in the entire city. And she said, so I said, are you open on weekends? Do y'all do fundraisers? And that's something I think we should look at for our facility. We do all kinds of balls and fundraisers around here for education foundations and all other things. We need to do that for our animals, for our shelter, not just for them, but for the employees out there who are going through a really hard time every single day. I promise you they are. So if we could do some things like that as a city to raise money to help them, I think that would just really go a long way, you know, to do that. But what she told me, she said, I'm on call every other weekend. And she said, so when I'm on call, I stay up here. She said, I'm happy to adopt dogs out every other weekend when I'm here. I'm happy to do that. So maybe that's something that we need to look at, sincerely look at, is change the hours of the shelter. Maybe stay closed Sunday, Monday, stay open until 6 p.m. in the evening. Because when someone's dog gets picked up and they work every day, it's a working family and they work every day and they get off at 5 and the shelter closes at 4. Is it a week? I mean, how do they get their dog back? So, you know, and then do we charge impound fees by the day? So then, you know, I don't know the answer to those questions. Those are things that I would like to know the answer to. But anyway, if we can maybe look at changing the shelter hours to where, and that's going to be an unpopular thing with them, I'm sure. So. I don't know. Maybe we can look at it like if we could save money even if we took part of the budget for the spay and neuter where we could help with that and then maybe some of that budget and give them a raise to encourage their working on Saturdays. I mean, I don't know. There's got to be a way to give some incentive for that. So anyway.

Yeah, that's some good thoughts. Well, thank you for all of the work that you do with the animal stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's hard.

It's hard for us. I mean, I've got a three-legged puppy at my house right now that was dropped off at a local vet to be euthanized. And in his short little life, I mean, he's already been neutered and his leg amputated, and he's been through a lot. He doesn't know, and he's the happiest little guy ever. But I can't imagine, like I said, every day doing that. And as a community, we can make a difference. I look at these other communities that are, they don't have what we have here. We have a nice little shelter. I know that the people care. I know we care. You know, I know that there's a lot of that country mentality, too, of just a dog, just, you know, beat it to the side. But that just, I mean, biblically, what does God say? He owns cattle on a thousand hills. And all of these animals belong to him. And we are commanded to take care of them. And we are not doing it. point blank. So anyway, I appreciate your time. Thank you, Kim.

Yeah, we'll keep on working on it. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right. So we are on item number six, discuss, consider an amendment to the task order for work performed on the FM 4000 sewer improvements. And this is Director Marshall.

Good evening. So tonight I have an amendment for the original task order for our FM 4000 sewer line improvement. The task order was signed almost two years ago, September 3rd, 2024 with KSA before it was taped Dawson. The task order only included the engineering and design of the project and did not include an inspector. Since then, we went out for bids in April. We awarded the project in May to A Plus Professor of Plumbing Inc. out of Tyler. The amendment to the original task order is an amount of $25,000. The amendment will cover the cost of having a licensed inspector during the project. for the FM 4,000 sewer improvement project. The original task order was for $60,300. Prior amendments, 6,900. This amendment, 25,000. And the total adjustment amount is $92,200. We recommend a motion to amend the original task order in the amount of 25,000 to cover for a licensed inspector.

Karen, I have a question.

Yes, ma'am.

So if this licensed inspector signs it, how long do we have for him to guarantee his inspection? I've had things before where things have been approved and then they come back. You know, there are things that are not approved. I mean, is it pretty like a warranty?

This is an inspector through KSA. So they work for KSA. So as long as... it doesn't get done right, no, the project doesn't even get signed off on. So it has to be done to the T or the contractor doesn't get paid.

Question, so it's $1,250 an hour is what they're charging? I mean, it's 25, 20 hours?

It's for the whole entire project.

But they're only saying 20 hours per week for two months, right? Item B, under 2.

Oh, well, that's what they put on it, but he's here for the whole entire job. So they didn't put a set amount of hours. They just said, hey, this is going to be it. If they're here 60 hours for the week, they're paid for the whole time. The rate doesn't go up or anything like that.

But if they're only out there two hours for the whole week, then it's still the same shoot, right? So how do we know when he's there and not there and all that? It just seems high. That's all I'm saying for an inspector.

They usually call and get with me, and I go discuss what they're doing, and we see how they're going.

Okay.

Just looked at them. Man, that's a lot for an inspector.

It's the same as our other projects.

Okay. We're planting everything. All right, all right.

Fair enough, fair enough. Have they already started this new sewer line? No, sir. We're waiting on one manhole that is specially made for... We had to add... Since this was all done, we have a hotel... No, it's a hotel that's being built right beside us. We have a special line being added to it. Extended stay. It's right behind John Deere. Well, who dropped the ball? Was it us or was it KSA? On this... So we did have an inspector, and he was supposed to do this, and cuts, he is no longer with the city, so it's not really dropped the ball, it's just this was signed prior director, and I did not know that the project did not include that.

That makes lots of sense, thanks.

Any more discussion? And we get a motion.

I make a motion to approve amendment to task order for work performed on FM 4000 sewer improvement for an amount of $25,000 to cover a licensed inspector. I second.

I second. Madam Secretary, could we have a vote, please?

Aye.

No.

Aye. Yes.

all right it passed with three days one day all right item number seven the city managers report mayor members of council good evening as shared with you in the individual meetings I had with you this past week extended we've had extended difficulties with our software for the for the coming up with the budget That being said, Administration Interim Finance Director Elliott went over the first draft and made some adjustments today. The plan is to get you what we have. We will do that again tomorrow and Thursday afternoon. By the end of the week, you will have what we have. It will not be a complete draft, but it will be an initial draft. For those of you who have been out to Anderson Town Crossing, a lot of construction going on. Apartments are moving along well. The construction of the Academy Building is a little bit behind schedule. The walls were expected to be up by this time, but the rainy weeks that we had a few weeks back caused a little bit of delay, so we're looking at about two weeks out before we see vertical and horizontal construction. There should be a crane out there in about two weeks. Chamber Director Richard Bonney and I are working on updating our current agreement with the Chamber. The Chamber agreement that we're working off of is from 2008, so we will be updating that take it to his board and then bring it to council. The I-30 East Corridor water line and I-30 water treatment plant water filtration rehab projects will start the bid process this month and go out for construction next month. And utility directors Aaron and I have been meeting with Tri-Sud. We've been having some very positive meetings. We've met with an engineering firm in northeast Texas about creating a new partnership between Tri-Sud and the city. There's an agreement that Tri-Set has already signed, a very similar agreement we'll bring to council at the very next council meeting to see how we can partner better with Tri-Set in the city. And that's basically creating a water study, a master water study. So we will bring that to you after legal has a chance to review it, we'll bring it to the next council and report.

All right. Any of the council have any comments? Lupe? Good. Did you get the Civic Ready messages set up so all your events are going out now? So I think You put something out on your page, didn't you, Kim, about the Civic Ready app where they could scan that QR code? And that gives right now, it gives us messages for weather, but it also has the ability, if you put a check mark in, you can get events and sweat loopies.

So right now we've only sent out one, and it was the one that we tested just to be sure how it would be sent out. I do have a couple things that some of my staff has been working on, so hopefully we get those sent out within the next couple of days of different events that we have going on. But for right now, just the newsletter has gone out.

Okay, cool. That's great. Thank you. Yeah. She's awesome. Mm-hmm. All right. No one had any comments, right? Oh, did I need to read that? Okay. Council comments limited to announcements or upcoming events, recent council member activities or requests to add agenda items for the upcoming meeting. And no one had anything to say, so we are going to move into executive session four Pursuant to Open Meetings Act, Chapter 551, Texas Government Code, the City Council will recess into executive session to discuss the following. Consultation with Attorney, Texas Government Code 551.071, and Personal Matters, Texas Government Code 551.074, related to appointment, contract, and duties of Municipal Court Judge. So we'll adjourn into that. It is 7.08. It is 7.40, going back into the regular open session with no action. Ready to adjourn? Motion to adjourn.

I motion we adjourn. I second.

Madam Secretary?

Yes. Aye. Aye.

Aye. passed unanimously adjourn okay