City Council - Regular Meeting

That's what it used to be. I can't .

All right, we will start this city council special meeting public hearing on August 20th, 2026. Roll call.

April Arand. Here. Mayor Turney.

Here.

Jane Ridgway. Here. Alex Gasqueville.

Here.

Dr. Pam Sardo. Here. Gary Chappell.

Here.

All right, if you'll stand for the pledge of allegiance. 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. Pam, you want to do the invocation?

Thank you. Please bow your heads with me tonight. Gracious and loving God, we come together today to do the work of our city. We thank you for this community and for every person who calls it our home. Please give our council members and all the staff clear minds and open hearts to make wise decisions for the city. And please always protect our first responders. We ask in your name, amen.

All right, this time we will open up the mic for citizens' comment. Do we have any cards for tonight? Do we have anybody in the audience who would like to speak in citizen's comment? If not, we will move forward. To new business, this is the City Council's schedule to continue the public hearing. That was open on August 20th and considered option of the proposed property tax rate of .481878 per 100 of taxable value. This is a 7.99% increase in the tax revenue. The tax rate will effectively be raised by 3.5%. And we'll raise taxes for maintenance and operations on a hundred thousand dollar home Approximately thirteen seventy six and we will open the public hearing at 6 o 2 p.m We have anybody in the audience who would like to? Come up and speak All right. If not, I will close the public hearing at 6.02 p.m. and move for discussion and consider an act of adoption. This year's property tax rate exceeds the no new revenue tax rate. The vote on the ordinance resolution or order setting the tax rate must be a record vote. 60% of the governing body must vote either in favor or against for the adoption of the tax rate. A motion to adopt the ordinance resolution. order must be made in the following form I can if we move to making a motion I can read it at that time but just to put that out there for the council this must be a record or a record vote of 60% one way or the other

I'd like to discuss for a moment. Hunt County has long-term obligation debt of $9 million for 123,000 people, which is about $73 a person. Based on the investment pooled cash reports, It looks like our claim on cash has gone up from 33,583,000 to 33,686,000 between May and June. And for that reason, I would urge city council to find a few items to pull in our belt a little bit For example, with engineering consulting fees, general admin, there seems to be a 700% increase. And also for training, continuing education, and travel, there's a $14,000 increase. And in the PowerPoint last year, I mean last couple months, on the building Josephine's future, On page 213 of the agenda, it did talk about controlling expenditures and reducing the long-term financial obligations. And I think it would be prudent for us to trim a little bit. For example, not having a $74,000 truck, not having an economic development manager. And I move to adopt the current revenue rate of the 46,8097 versus the proposed rate, which is higher.

So we have a motion on the floor. Does anybody second the motion? I'll second. We have a second. We have to do a roll call. Roll call.

April Arand? No. Jane Ridgway? Yes. Alex Esquivel?

Nay.

Pam Sardo?

Yes to my proposed motion.

Gary Chappell?

Nay.

No, nay. Okay. Mayor Turney present and not voting.

I'll make a motion that the proposed tax rate be increased by the adoption rate of 0.481878, which is effectively a 3.5% increase on the tax rate.

I'll second. We have a second. Roll call.

April Auran. Can I say something before I vote?

Yes.

We have a city that is growing, and we have things that have to be paid for. They have to be paid for. We want to have new places to eat. We want to have roads that do not have potholes all through them. We want to have nice things here, and I expect my husband to get a raise every year, so we do expect our city employees to also get raises. like our city is growing. We're getting houses, but we don't have all the houses yet. There are a lot of houses that are outside the city limits. They don't pay city taxes. They help to pay police and fire within their water bill, but they don't pay all of police and fire. We just put in a whole fire department. We have a whole staff that we have to bring in to take care of everything. And when I call the police or I call the fire department. I want them to come to my house and I want them to be the most prepared to take care of whatever my issue is. So if that's gonna cost me five extra dollars a month, I'm gonna pay that. So my answer is yay.

Jane Ridgeway. That's for the $0.48. That was on a $450,000 house that it was going to cost me an extra $5 a month, just FYI.

I'm gonna go now.

Alex Esquivel.

So Pam, in respect to your proposal, the training and traveling piece, we're talking $14,000. That's definitely one thing I wouldn't want to cut out. I can understand the economical development in prior settings. I think it is crucial to have that. extra staff available and on top of that with the new fire department and new officers coming online to include administrative staff they're going to need that training and travel expenses so if we remove and and tighten our belt in some of these areas that i feel that are crucial you know it's uh we're going to be accountable for any shortcomings if the budget's not there if if these departments can't train their new hires or have reoccurring training, and we're only filling the citizens. The citizens are going to pay that cost by not getting the services or the proper training they need once they go respond or to help out the citizens. So I'm going to vote yay. Yes.

Dr. Pamsardo? Thank you for all the comments. I do appreciate them and I respect you both very much. My concern was to trim the increases, at which point we could keep the budget balanced. But for us as a city to have a long-term obligation debt of almost $10,000 per individual versus all of Hunt County for $73, that's a huge difference and I think we can And the increase in the, it was just the increase in the travel, keeping the travel same. So we had 30,000 in travel expenses. The goal was to increase it to 44,000. I think 30,000 is good. And also for the other issue of the engineering consulting fees general fund, for example, We spent $88,000 on the fireworks, which everybody loves. I do that too, and I show up every time. There's an increase to $100,000 on that. So it's simply trimming the increases was my goal. But my vote is to not vote for the increase to $0.48. Thank you so much, everyone.

All right. So neither motion passes. So before we move on, I'm just going to state that Pam, the last?

No. I vote yay. I have to. So it does not pass.

Pam voted nay. Oh, you already voted? Yeah.

So it's three to two.

So it passed. So you get the increase. It's over.

No, it doesn't. It requires a four to one vote.

For our city attorney, a 60% vote is required, and that includes the entire 60% of the entire governing body, even though the mayor doesn't vote. So four is required. So whatever rate you land on to approve, there has to be affirmative four votes. Okay.

So bringing up your trimming the fats, how can you justify specifically that number? You said 30 seems fine to you, but... But how can you make that assessment based off of the increase of personnel that we received? The fire station has grown. Of course, the training expenses is going to need to be increased. We've got more staff to train and certifications. You may think 30,000 is fine, wherever that number sits well with you. I don't understand. why 44 doesn't sit well with you. I mean, I know one class alone, just to go where I go, is at least a couple grand. So I'm assuming as inflation continues, those prices are going to go up in the same as our traveling costs. Things don't cost the same thing every single year. Things go up in prices.

Well, there's some training that's available by webinar. There's some trips to other towns that might be curbed. There are some issues regarding, and I would love to have an exact breakdown that was given to us. I only have a total. I don't have the exact training sessions.

It's because you don't run the day-to-day operations. It's not our job.

I do not have the exact training sessions. I only have the budget items that were given to us in the past two months that I'm relying on my numbers for.

How come you voted in favor of the tax rate? I did not. You voted in favor of the ratification of the tax rate.

I did not.

You did. It's on record. You voted against the budget for the tax. She voted in favor. And then the next item up, you voted in favor of the ratification of the tax. no yes you did it is on record that last the last meeting you voted in favor of the ratification yeah she was it's in the minutes i pulled the minutes and looked down you voted in favor of the ratification i'm just asking on the voting wise i have given my reasons and i stick by my reasons i'm only stating i feel like sometimes we don't know how are we going to lower we don't even know what we're voting for i don't i'm not voting i'm just stating i read every single page you know that so go read the minutes from that meeting because you voted for the ratification of the tax rate reflected in the budget i was i was i wasn't here but anyway

we have 33 million dollars in long-term obligation debt yes we're growing but the houses are growing we're getting commercial so the rate of growth should be

We have revenue. Proportional.

Proportional.

Right now, we don't have the commercial stuff. Our current inflation rate is 3.4. We're asking for a 3.5% increase in our budget. That's it. We started a fire station last year with no budget. None. Zero. There was nothing in it. No, we did not for the fire station. No.

Yes, we did.

That public safety building, not the people inside the fire station. Not the people. Yes, and all the equipment that came over, how much did the city pay for all that equipment?

Okay, I'm requesting that we de-escalate a little bit and have a mature conversation without escalating.

I am not escalating.

Thank you.

I am not escalating. You're out of order for making that statement to me. You want to see escalation, I can escalate.

All right, don't do that. We don't want to see it.

Right now, we're having a discussion. I am not upset. I am not yelling. I am not screaming. I'm having a conversation.

I appreciate and respect every single one of you.

No, you don't.

And your votes. My vote is different.

I understand that.

I'm in the community. You know that. And so am I.

You act like I'm not either.

I have people that don't have jobs come up to me. I have talked to somebody down the street who said to me they were still mad about the mud situation. Where are they? I don't know.

I agree.

Where are they?

I don't know. They may be online. I don't know.

is anyone online that wants to speak up they're not allowed to so i don't have to make the i'm gonna all right the floor is closed i'm gonna for the next uh meeting we don't have to have a motion or nothing to set the next one or i can so where do we go from here because there's we're gonna have another hearing we're gonna have another public hearing and this will go on until we come to a resolution

So you could, if somebody wanted to make a different motion, you could keep going it that way. Or if you wanted to wait and come back on the 14th, we can re-advertise and do this again.

We can do it before the 14th, right?

You have to ask Patty when she can get it advertised. The budget actually isn't on here tonight. It's just the tax rate. So whatever you decide, if it is a lower rate, we would just bring back an amendment for the budget.

This is just the maximum tax rate we can do, correct?

This is setting the tax rate.

This is setting the tax rate.

But we advertise that .48 number as the maximum.

Yeah, this is the max we can go if it was approved because that's what we advertised.

What I'm struggling with is we had the workshop. We had a budget review. We walked through everything. We justified everything in the budget. Now tonight when we come to set the tax rate, all of a sudden it's not any good.

And all the questions for the emails were answered.

I provided comments every time. I provided questions about the truck.

they were answered they were answered in the meeting and they were needed all those things were needed you can't cram four people in a ford ranger to go two miles it's not what do you want to do walk two months do you want to walk two miles in this heat with equipment and everything else toolboxes okay and that doesn't make sense

So we want our employees, half of them, walking.

No, I did not say that. I think we can trim some money somewhere to keep the balanced budget so the tax rate doesn't have to go up. That's my opinion. And I'm entitled to .

Yes, I agree.

The voters voted for me to be here.

one other little bit of information if this is this can move to September because we're not going we're not proposing over voter approval but if it is not improved by the deadline it goes back to the no new revenue weight rate not the current the deadline is September revenue 21st or something what is the no new revenue rate no it's a few cents less it goes down yeah

It goes down. The no new revenue rate goes down.

And essentially that would put us behind. Yes. When we come back again. Because you can only increase so much. The maximum we can only go is like what, 3.5% or whatever? Yeah. And then so if we, if it goes less, yes, it's going to be a compounding. So it's going to hurt the city even more. And that's going to essentially. Yeah. Yeah. So.

And honestly, just so you know, and you do what you want, but the reason that the 1.3 concerns us and going backwards is not really so much about this year, but it is about next year and that compounding effect over a period of time that it takes to catch up. Does that make sense?

Is there a way to split this between the 0.48 and the 0.46?

Any of you can make a motion.

How much money do we actually have to take out of the budget to get to the 4.6?

To get back down to the rate that we were?

What would we have to lose? What would have to come out of the budget to get there?

$57,000.

Right about $50,000.

That's all we're talking about is $50,000.

Yes, but that's this year. I understand.

Yeah, an extra year.

And then legislation is trying to put caps on us in addition to that.

That's right. If you cut part of the fireworks, how could that compound for the next year? You're thinking inflation?

The price of everything goes up every single year. I mean, like our parking, we just went on a cruise, and our parking cost us an extra $23 than it did last year for the exact same amount of time. So everything is going up. And that's parking. Like, that's nothing. Like, you just think about going to the grocery store and buying groceries. Every single year, our grocery budget is going up. And there's less people at our house. So, I mean, everything does go up.

And that's the thing. I'm sorry.

In the trimming pieces, we're talking about bringing, we're cutting training down. We're talking about assets that need to be used. it's we're talking about essential staff well and these are things that we were trying to trim but it doesn't make for me it doesn't make sense if like it'd be one thing if we were asking for if there was something just a toy farm or something or narsi track or something like it but like these are essential items that the city needs to continue to grow and for the city staff to have to benefit and that benefits the city and we went through all this conversation essential people like

The fire department and the police department. We agreed on those.

I'd rather have two fire people than an economic director.

Well, that economic director is going to be huge with the things that are, which can't be spoken of, that are moving in the discussions that are already happening.

I keep hearing trim the fact, and sorry that I'm jumping here.

Maybe. They're talking. There's people out there.

We're talking about $50,000. We're talking about a half of that. Sorry, $57,000. Call it 60. One firefighter is that much. We're hiring two. So obviously, the city had to do trimming somewhere to get us to the point where we're at without being raising it even more. Can we buy a 40?

Can I finish, please? Sorry. Yes, sir.

So when you keep saying we need to tighten our belt, we need to tighten our belt, the city obviously did. The employees did. Otherwise, we'd be going for way more than $57,000 more. When you look at it holistically, we're talking 3.5% versus the national average of 3.4 that everything else is going up. I think that we did a great job.

We've definitely tied in the bill. We've dropped the tax rate since I've been on council for 10 years, 13 cents. It used to be 0.61. So there's been a lot of adjustments and they're growing.

It's understanding the history of where we've come from and where we're going.

Is there a way for us to get to a point where we could go to a 0.47?

Make a motion.

And we could all agree on that. where it's not the 0.48 and it's not the 0.46, but it does give us a little bit more. That way we have stuff to work with, but it's not the highest that it can possibly be. Because the voters did vote on the 0.48, so it's there available for us.

The formula came out to that. If we go above that, then we have to go above. So I mean, that formula came out to that. I'd be willing to split in the middle.

I think we should have gone higher, personally.

But we made cuts. We're not going to get to that agreement. Right, we made cuts. We made cuts. We made a lot of cuts.

That's the point. We had to, as a city, make a lot of cuts so we wouldn't have to go to that, right?

I mean, we could have went out even further, but we didn't.

When the fire chief was here, he was saying he needed six people.

The PowerPoint that was presented in the packet said estimated property tax rate unchanged from previous year, 0.468 on page 215, 301 of the July agenda.

That was the draft before.

Yeah, I understand that. I understand that. And the personnel budget is $7,600,000.

Which is a big cost usually for most cities, local governments. so the um are you making a motion on that so to answer your question i i i that's a possibility all you have to do is read the motion that was read yeah just change just change the number i i think it's too low i think we're going to end ourselves

i i can't come up here every night i have a job how about what if we go down one cent staff what are we at you'd still get a 30 000 net increase from inside city limits but if it's costing on a 450 000 house if it's increasing your tax rate by five dollars Like, if we cut that in half, that would be... $250. Well, it wouldn't... The increase would only be $250, or it would be like $3,350.

The current one on a $100,000 home is approximately $13.76 a year. A year, yeah. That's a year, yeah. But that's a year. She's speaking in months.

I mean, that's a coffee.

So if you have a $300,000 home, that's a $39 increase a year.

We all have subscriptions that we pay for every single month that are more than that that we don't even know we're paying.

Except me and I don't do that. You're rare. I am rare.

Melissa, you're still working on it?

Yeah, give her a minute.

We can't keep asking for things if we're not willing to pay for them. I mean, you're asking for... No, she wants them to walk to the jail. You are asking for stuff. We all are. We want stuff. We want stuff in our city. That's going to save us a ton of money in gas. But we have to have the money that we have to have to make this city look good in order for people to want to come here.

Go ahead, Melissa.

If we dropped it to 4.471878, that would be a $33,000 difference in revenue.

Can you say that number one more time?

0.471878 would be a $33,000 change in revenue.

An increase of 33?

Will it be a decrease over the 57?

Yeah.

so a difference of twenty something twenty thousand i'll make a motion to adopt a 0.471878 tax rate we have a motion do we have a second i'll second roll call vote please

April Arand? Yes. Jane Ridgway? Yes. Alex Esquivel?

Can we skip me for the moment? Does it have to go in that order?

It doesn't have to.

No.

Dr. Pamsardo? Yes. Gary Chappell? No. Alex?

So in respect, so we're talking from the previous that was proposed originally, it's a $20,000 difference? Or is it a $30,000 difference?

It's about $25,000.

So make that make sense to me. Sell that to me how the previous number wasn't perfect, but this one works for you.

Because I'm willing to compromise for the better good of being able to go home tonight with not everybody trying to be very, very upset. So the interest of compromise, there was a 700% increase in engineering consulting fees in general admin. 700%. That's a lot. It went from 25,000 to 200,000 requests. That's 175,000 increase right there. Even if we cut that, that would make me very happy.

There's an increase in engineering because of the growing of...

yeah like i said the entire county has less debt than all right we gotta make sense vote on the floor yes we do alex so it just doesn't make sense to me i'm gonna vote no on this one okay so we're still in the same spot then so we have a three two is there any other motions if not do we have any more motions

I'll remake my previous motion. The property tax to be increased and adopt a tax rate of 4.81878, which is a pretty mad percent increase.

Do we have a motion? Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Another roll call vote, please.

April, I'll run. Yay. Jane Ridgeway.

The only reason I'm going yay is because I remember that Jason said he didn't want to raise the tax rate, but it acts like he wants to now. So this is for Jason. I will say yay.

Not for me, but for you. Alex Esquivel.

Yay.

Dr. Pamsardo. Nay. Gary Chapman.

Thank you, Jane. Yay.

All right, we have a motion that passes that sets the tax rate at .481878 per 100 taxable value. Motion passes.

Can I make a suggestion? When we do this next year, can we get this all out before we actually get to this point at night?

I did every session.

No, Pam, we really need to have an argument and debate and actually get it done where we're all in agreeance before we get to this point. So the one thing I ask of this council is that we truly work together and get to a rate that we all can agree to, and we actually have a united front going forward with the citizens. Stuff like this does not help us out in our city. We need to make sure that we're having a lively debate well before we get to the finish line and try to change it.

We did with our work sessions.

I thought we did, too. I thought tonight was going to be five minutes.

And from those surveys that they had us do, we did that survey after.

so if we need i i totally agree i think we need to have more work sessions in next year and i'm full fully on board with that so i think yes we need to have lots of workshops yes because i want to make sure that we're doing the right thing for our citizens as well i think all of us care i think we all want to make sure that we're doing the right thing and as a council we need to be going forward as one group together and not be so divided on the budget we if we need more work sessions let's just do it i'll put the time in i don't care i mean this is all voluntary i get it but we need to be making sure that we're doing the best decisions for the city moving forward

I agree.

And whenever you start rolling in the commercial, you can always roll that tax rate right back. But you can only go so far if you're in a negative. So anyways.

We're in a difficult position with the city because we're growing so quickly and we're bringing on new city services. That fire department was a huge expense to us.

There's a justification because of the fire department. That's the only reason.

The fire department alone, the fact that we didn't go up higher is astonishing to me.

And when the ambulances are running around here shortly that have the city of Josephine on the side of them. Right. It's going to be appreciated, and they're going to be stationed here, always here. Anyways, if you were at a council meeting, you heard that, but that will be a big news drop by the fire department here in the coming days. So I'm looking for a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn. Do we have a second? I'll second.

Voting signs in favor? This meeting is adjourned.