City Council - Regular Meeting

all right welcome to mount pleasant city council meeting at 6 p.m tuesday may 19th 2026 we have a quorum and uh we'll go ahead and i believe our assistant city managers there's their prayer for us dear heavenly father lord we come here today to do the business of this

We ask that you guide the ones that will make decisions, not only for themselves, but for the city, Lord Jesus, that we all reside in. God, I ask that you just watch over us each and every step of the way. Lord, I ask you to bless the ones that are coming, Lord, that they make it safe and sound, and that we all return home safe and sound. In your holy name, amen.

All right, we'll move into open session. Public comments, the city council welcomes. citizen 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 the Texas Open Meetings Act requires the topics 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 in the agenda the council will discuss the topic on the agenda at that time that the topic is discussed and deliberated do I mean public comment All right, good. Let's go ahead and move into the consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda are approved through a single council motion, which applies to all items listed. Consent agenda items are considered routine, not likely to require discussion or deliberation, and may be discussed prior to making a motion. there will be no separate discussion on these items unless a council member requests an item be removed and considered separately i'm number one consider approval of the may 5th 2026 meeting minutes item number two consider pay request for number 11 for j2 construction industrial park lift station item number three consider pay request number 36 for great construction south side wastewater treatment plant so do we have a motion on the consent agenda

I make a motion to approve all consent agenda items as presented.

I second.

Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please?

Yes. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, vote was unanimous. We'll go ahead and move into regular agenda item. Item number four, presentation of Mount Pleasant Sports Complex flag to the council members, public works director Houston.

Good evening, Council, Mayor, City Manager Vine. It's my honor today to present this beautiful plaque honoring those who put so much hard work and dedication into bringing this Mount Pleasant Sports Complex into action. I'm going to read the message there on the plaque. With heartfelt gratitude, we honor the individuals listed below. for their unwavering dedication, visionary leadership, and tireless efforts in bringing the sports park to life. Your commitment to Mount Pleasant's growth and recreation will inspire generations to come. We're honoring Mike Aarons, City Manager, Jacob Hatfield, Director of Community Services, Mayor Paul Merriweather, City Council Members Tim Dell, Michael McGahee, Brian Hefner, Robert Nance, and Danny Muskrat. If everyone could join me in a round of applause honoring these individuals. It's brought a beautiful place for people to play and get to just enjoy life and the quality of life here in Mount Pleasant. So I have the pleasure of taking care of it, and thank you all.

Thanks, Garrett.

Can we get everybody up there in texture?

Come on up, guys.

Thank you.

I'm financially and very physical conservative and I could not get over what this was gonna cost and so I was a hard no on it and about two weeks after I got elected Mr. Nance called me and sat down with me and he told me why this was important and that it was not necessarily for now, which at that time was about 10 years ago. But he was looking way into the future, way farther out than I was, that we're gonna grow, we're gonna have people coming in here. And he convinced me what an asset it was. So Mr. Nance is 100% responsible for turning my no vote to a yes.

I just want to thank everybody on the council and the city manager and mayor for this honor. Like Michael said, probably spent three years finding the location, getting things organized. We applied for two Park and Wildlife grants totaling a million dollars. It really helped. And we spent a lot of time and effort on this. We are very proud of the way it turned out and we are taking care of it. Thank you again for this honor.

I'd like to say a word or two on behalf of my father. He had three loves in life, the Lord, his family, and the city of Mount Pleasant. And he would be so happy to see this. And I want to thank you all for this fact with his name on it. And I continue to pray for the city of Mount Pleasant.

when's that going up Garrett thank you guys all of you for what you did way back then all right let's go ahead and move on to item number five discuss and consider accepting the canvas results of the may 2nd 2026 general election that's our city assistant city manager

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So the Canvas results for the election came back and it was Councilmember Hageman against Mr. Tevin Neal and Councilmember Hageman won with 58.58% of the votes. And so this is just accepting the election that was held on May the 2nd with the election results.

any discussion all right we have motion i make a motion that we accept the canvas results from the election on may 2nd of 2026 yes aye aye

Aye. All right.

Passed unanimously. Awesome. All right. Number six, which leads us to the swearing in and oath of office for council members on place three, place four, and place five. Talk to our assistant city manager.

Yes. So I just asked for council member Hageman, council member Hinton, and council member Faulkner to step down, and we will do the swearing in.

And congratulations to all y'all.

So I ask that you please raise your right hand. And I'm going to say I, that's a blank. I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will faithfully execute the duties of this office of the city of Mount Pleasant, state of Texas, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and the state and charter and ordinance of this city and furthermore solemnly swear that I have not directly or indirectly paid, offered or promised to pay, contributed nor promised to contribute any money or valuable things or promised any public office or employment as a reward for giving or withholding of a vote at the election in which I was elected, or if the office is going to appoint me to secure my appointment.

Everybody knows it, but that's just reiterating the great job y'all are doing, and we appreciate you. It's a lot of work, so we appreciate y'all taking another run. All right, we'll go ahead and move on to item number seven, presentation, discussion, consider acceptance of fiscal year 2025 financial audit, and this is our financial director, Elliot.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Councilwomen, Councilmen. It's my pleasure to introduce to you tonight, John Watson, partner CPA with the firm Brooks, Watson & Company to present to you your financial audit for fiscal year 25.

Thank you, Rebecca, Council, Mayor. Appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening. You each have a bound report. That's the report I'm going to go over. If you flip it open, there'll be a handout of the presentation I'm going to go over. We've got the PowerPoint as well. So the audit was completed over the year, ended September 30, 2025. So just keep that in mind as we go through this financial data. Quick overview of the audit process. The audit was conducted consistently with U.S. Gagas. That's generally accepted government auditing standards. It's a three-phase approach. The first phase is planning. It's where we assess the current year results. We compare them to prior year and our expectations. We try to determine what areas are most susceptible to error or fraud. We focus our testing on those areas through our field work. agree balances to underlying reports, draw samples of those balances, vouch them to underlying evidence, make sure things are recorded properly. We send confirmations to third parties, make sure they're showing the same results as the city. Where there are differences, we determine as to why and propose audit adjustments and have findings over those areas. And that's really the conclusion and reporting phase where we accumulate those results and prepare the report that you all have in front of you. So that's a quick overview of the Gagas audit there. The report itself, there are seven sections to it. Those are listed here. Introductory section has a letter of transmittal, so a letter from management describing where the city is and where they're going. Audit opinion follows that. That's a letter from us, your independent auditor, describes whether the financial statements are consistent with U.S. GAAP or if there are any modifications. We'll look at that on the next slide. Managements discussion and analysis follows that. That shows current year results, prior year results as well, discusses significant changes year over year. So great place to look to get a high level over those significant changes. Basic financial statements follow that. Those are presented on two different basis of accounting. Government-wide statements are full accrual, so it has all your capital asset debt activity. And then fund-level statements are modified accrual for the governmental side. more of a near-term look at activity. Toward the back of your report, we've got your budget actual schedules. We'll look at that for the general fund on a slide to come, and then your pension schedule we'll look at as well to see how well-funded your pension is. Very back of your report, we've got some statistical section. We've got a lot of 10-year trend data, so you can see where the city was 10 years ago and kind of where they've come to today, so a great place to look historical for the city of Mount Pleasant. I mentioned the audit opinion. There are four types of opinions you could receive, and those are listed here. Unmodified is at the top listed in green. That is the best you can receive, and then it kind of gets progressively worse from there. Good news, the city is receiving an unmodified opinion. That basically means there are no material errors or inconsistencies within this report we're aware of. It is the highest level of assurance the EPA can provide, so happy to do that today. Grateful for the team, finance team, Rebecca, and her team, city manager, Ms. Vine, coming through and getting us everything we needed. We really pride ourselves on doing a thorough audit, and it's quite a bit of work to get there, and just grateful to everyone to be able to be here this evening and offer that opinion. So some financial highlights, flag some things for you to consider and look at, just kind of work top to bottom. I'm not going to go through every number, but just good to look at here. So cash and investments decreased year over year, top line, about 11.8 million, so 63 down to close to 52 million. Net position went from 63.7 million up to 68 million approximately, about a $4.3 million increase. Governmental fund balance is very consistent year-over-year, $13.8 million there to $13.4 in the current year, so just a $400,000 increase. Unassigned balance within your general fund, that was $3,145,000 in the prior year. This year it was $3.2 million, so pretty close. We look at that as a metric compared to annual general fund expenditures. You were 19% in the prior year, 22% in the current year. That's about two and a half months worth of reserve, which is not bad. So GFOA recommends at least two months. So two and a half is just fine. Of course, if it's trending downward, then that's something to consider. But you're sitting in a fine position there. Proprietary funds had a significant operating income for the current year. 0.2 million relative to prior year, which was 1.6 million. So $4.6 million increase there. Outstanding debt did increase by 1.6 million from about 122 million up to 123.5 million. Your net pension liability decreased year over year. About a million. Okay. So we'll look at that, but that was mostly net investment income on those pension assets. So it was a good year. Liabilities decreasing, better position. So I think I went over that. I didn't mention this, but your decrease in cash was capital projects. So a lot of capital projects spending led to that decrease in cash, and those funds were earmarked for. So pretty consistent with our expectation there. Okay, so this will look at your governmental activities revenues, so pie chart for you of where those revenues are coming from. Total governmental revenues in the current year were $20,549,000. Prior year, it was $19,271,000. Sales taxes makes up 31% of that. That's $6,450,000 approximately. Prior year, really close to $6.4 million. Property taxes make up 29%, 5.9 million approximately. Prior year it was 5,647,000, so a small increase there. Charges for services were 9%, about 1.9 million in the current year. Decrease from the prior year, which was closer to 2.5 million. Franchise and local taxes made up 11%. 2,232,000, really close to prior year, 2,225,000. Royalty income was 5% in the current year, 1,070,000. Decrease from prior year, which was 1,154,000. So that's the revenue side on the governmental activities. This is the expense side for the governmental activities. Another pie chart for you. Governmental expenses in the current year, $21,529,000 was actually decreased year over year. Prior year was $22,560,000. Public safety made up 52%, $11,244,000. Prior year it was less, $11,034,000. General government made up 15%. 3,249,000 prior year, about 3.8 million. Parks and Recreation made up 13%, 2,846,000 prior year was about 3.4 million. Public Works was 16%, 3.3 million there, 3,341,000 small decrease year over year, that's 3,431,000. Okay, so that was a government-wide look. I mentioned two different bases of accounting. This is a more granular look at some of your funds. Okay, so this is what we call modified accrual, just a different way to account for it. General fund on the left here, street fund, park improvements fund, and then a lot of non-major governmental funds on the far right. So just circle the net change. So this is revenues, less expenditures. We can see your general fund operated at a slight deficit, $48,326. just circled right above, with transfers in of 282,000. So it really has a larger deficit of 331,000 before we get the transfers in. Just a small deficit there. Street fund operated at that surplus, 672,000. Non-majors, cumulatively, were a deficit of 1,051,000. About half of that or more was capital projects funds. Those are gonna run deficits some years. We get capital money in through debt issuances primarily in one year, and then the next year we'll have spending, so deficits aren't unusual. The other component is debt service fund. The debt service fund did operate at a deficit. That is less common, so that'd be something to look at property taxes, making sure we have sufficient INS property tax allocation to cover those debt service needs. So I just wanted to highlight that point. That's a part of that $1,051,260 on the right there. Okay, I mentioned the budget actual schedules. There's several of them, but your general fund is where the majority of your activity occurs, and taxes in particular, so we'll just take a look at that one. This is a summary schedule. There's more detail on pages 88 and 89, and there's citations on each page as well if you want to look at that detail. But what this is, you've got your final budget for the general fund in the left column here. Circled in red, $56,827. That is your net budget. So revenues, less expenditures, and other financing sources. You budgeted a slight surplus there of $56,827. We can see the actual results just to the right. So that was that deficit I mentioned earlier, $48,326. So if we just compare that. That's a variance, a negative variance of $105,153, bottom right, circled in red. How did we get there? So revenues, top right, revenues were a little under budget there by $494,834. That was primarily sales taxes and royalty income, royalty income on your landfill. So both those were below expectations. expenditures were under budget which is positive is surplus addition to this three hundred eighty nine thousand six hundred fourteen so you had several several different departments were contributors that they were they were under budget okay that's how we get to that net variance there of negative 105,000 Just got a few more slides for you. So everything to this point was all governmental side, the taxes and how low are those taxes being deployed for those expenses. These are your proprietary funds, okay? So the water and sewer fund has its own fund and then the airport fund. So we call them proprietary funds. It's also referred to as business type activities. These generally should be operating on generating profits for future expenditures. And so we always look at operating income for these funds. We can see water and sewer generated that $6.8 million surplus. I mentioned that figure earlier. So that's kind of consistent with expectations. Airports deficit of $561,766. Not that uncommon for airports to run deficits just from experience of seeing those. But that's what we see here. So obviously it's going to take some subsidy to cover that. And that's what we see. So we see transfers in and out. Got some transfers out going from water and sewer. That's the $1,481,000. So that's going out. And then the airport has transfers in at $1,570,000. That's how we get to that change in net position of both being positive. There in the bottom circled in red, about $4.5 million and $1,007,000. That's a proprietary fund. I think I have two more slides for you. This will look at your pension, pages 90 and 91. It is a 10-year look at your pension if you want to see where it was 10 years ago. I put four years on this page so you can just kind of get a trend look at it. Bottom left is the most recent position. That's $7,127,416. So you can look just to the right of that. you'll see $8,184,911. So the liability decreased year over year by approximately a million, which is a good improvement. The reason is really that net investment income that I circled there, $5,278,000. So it looks like a return of about 10% on your assets, which is a pretty good return. And that's how you were able to gain ground on your pension year over year. Your funded ratio, which is just a measure of the total asset to that actuarial estimated liability, is 89%. So the asset's 89% relative to the estimated liability. Is that good? Prior year was 86%. So it's improved. National average in 24 was 75.4%. So it's well above average. So I'd say it's in a good spot. Where do you feel this? Why does this matter? Really, on the near term, it's contribution rates. So every year, TMRS is giving new guidance about contribution rates, and that's what hits the budget. That's what you should be contributing, and the city is contributing what's suggested. So the latest contribution rate is 15.8%. That was in 25. And you can see it's kind of hovering around that 15.5% up to 15.8%. It looks pretty stable at this point, and I would expect that when your funded ratio is close to 90%. So everything looks good on the pension side. Okay, I guess I have two more slides for you. Communication, a couple letters for you. Those are in that packet as well. Okay, the first, just standard communication with governance letter. Audit was conducted in compliance with all ethics requirements regarding independence, so we're completely independent of the city. Don't have any relationships outside of our contract audit. No difficulties with management. You know, we kind of dealt with different people with a little bit of turnover. I would say everybody, though, either before or after, were faithful with responses, just appreciate their diligence in responding. And that's always a challenge when you deal with that transition. But anyway, no difficulties. No uncorrected misstatements. So all adjustments are proposed. So those are listed in that letter. So anytime you get an audit, auditor should be listing the audit adjustments. You should have copies, and you do in this case. Also, the city adopted a new accounting pronouncement, GASB 101. It relates to compensated absences. Basically, we're accruing more now. It's based on estimates. It really comes down for a lot of cities to sick time. Before, sick time was only accrued as a liability on the statement in that position if it was paid at termination. Now they want the city and any governmental entity to evaluate the likelihood of usage. So more estimates and more liability in most cases. So that was a new accounting pronouncement that was adopted. So when you see that, that's what that is. That's really everything in that first letter. Some other standard stuff in there that I welcome you to look at, but I'm not going to go through. The last letter, internal controls. Another letter, we do a lot of walkthroughs of your processes, talk with a lot of folks, try to get a feel for how things are working and potential weaknesses. So as a part of that, we have that letter to communicate those findings to whatever extent they may be, and that's what that is. that's really all the communications uh last thing there is a gas report government auditing standards report it's really a regurgitation of that second letter uh it's a requirement because you all did require us uh qualify for a single audit this year so when you see that form that's what that relates to um that's everything you have high level and hopefully was was helpful to you if with that if you have any questions i'm happy to address them at this time thanks again

i have some questions and maybe you can educate me i'll try um on page 11 and it's just because i'm trying to get my my mind on all these figures yes um on page 11 trying to compare you know you brought up some past years but comparable yes so um 22 it appears that under net investment income a loss that's the only year that we had a loss 3 million 438 761 sorry i got the wrong page what page did you say people at this being i was looking at the

No, that's...

Yes. Schedule of changes in net pension liability and related ratios.

Yes, I'm sorry. Go ahead. If you could take it from the top, because I was trying to find it on that page.

So, obviously, anything circled in red or a parenthesis.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, under net investment income, which was a loss for 22... we have a loss for $3,438,761. And in 21, 23, and 24, that was not a loss. And then if you go back down a couple others where it says net change in planned fiduciary net position, that line is showing another loss. Can you explain to me, because again, what you circled, or what we have at the very bottom,

So this just to kind of start with the basic part so Plan fiduciary net position. That's what this is. So this is just a look at the asset side So there's two sections to this. This is the asset side and above is the pension side So just to make that clear, this is just what's going on with those assets so if we look at 22 We've got contributions of $2,413,564, and the assets, you had a negative change. So most of those assets, there's various investments, but the majority of them are in the stock market. So my assumption would be, In that year, 22, generally the stock market had a loss that year. And look, it doesn't track percentage-wise exactly to the stock market, but it's pretty well indexed to it, has been my experience. So in years when the stock market's down, the investment assets usually lose ground, and that's what we see here. That's why it's negative. And then the benefit payments, those are payments to those retirees that are receiving benefits. So that's also negative. So those assets are being liquidated to pay those participants. So that's why you get that negative $2.6 million. And it increases the total liability because that asset is just being offset toward that that pension liability. So if that asset grows faster than the liability, then our liability, the net, when we compare the two, goes down. But in years that even the asset decreased, well, it definitely isn't keeping up with the liability when the asset decreased. And that's just the risk of investing. The idea being, you know, years like this one, we had, I mentioned around 10% return, which is really high. And then years like that, you actually had a loss. So the hope is, you know, they estimate 7% to 8% return is what they're projecting. So if we smooth that out over the long haul, we hope the peaks outweigh the valleys to that extent. We get that around 7% to 8% average. Yeah, absolutely. Any other questions?

I have one. Yes, sir. I was reading some of the recommendations and things in the letters. When y'all did this audit, were y'all provided anything from the previous? I can't remember. Did y'all do the audit last year?

Yes, sir.

Did y'all kind of compare any of the notes from the recommendations that were or were not followed last year? I'm just kind of like trying to find a cadence, right? Are we taking directions when provided opportunity to make fixes? And less of a rear view, but more just wanted to know if y'all did that. And if not, then maybe we can kind of start looking at that for the future.

You know the big one, the closing process one? The answer is yes. Yeah, I saw that, yeah. Yeah, and there definitely is a lot of room for growth in that area. and kind of to be expected with a little bit of transition. But, yeah, I would definitely say yes on that one. The other one, I'm remembering these, just looking at them the other day. So, yeah, no, we did. I did look at them, yes. Okay. Yes, sir. Awesome.

I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.

Yes, sir. Any more questions? Discussions?

I will just add my two cents worth thank John and his entire crew over there at Brooks-Watson not only for their patience but the perseverance working with staff as he mentioned we have had quite a bit of turnover in two very key positions that does create a little unstructure or create some where things could fall through the cracks by no means creating or allowing for any excuses just saying that this is the situation we find ourselves in we do take the information and your findings of the material weaknesses and the recommendation and then of course our official response and we are making the appropriate and necessary changes to move forward so next year can be even but well not even be much so but i do want to thank you publicly you and your staff thank you certainly appreciate it

All right, can I get a motion?

I'll make a motion to accept the 2025 audit. Is there a second?

I'll second it.

All right. Madam Secretary, can we get a vote, please?

Aye. Aye.

Yes.

All right, is it unanimous? We'll move on to the next item. That is item number eight, monthly financial report for month end April 30th, 2026. And that is the finance director, Elliott.

Mr. Mayor, council, city manager Vine, Rebecca Elliott, SGR consultant, and your interim finance director. It is my pleasure to present to you tonight your April month and year to date financials. We'll take a look first at the general fund revenue. In the general fund, on a straight line, our target would be at this month, 58.33%. and we are currently here today at 71.9%. So we're trending very positive in our revenue for the general fund. We also, in comparison to this time last year, were above target, but that was 63.7%. This slide takes a look at your property tax collection. And your target this time of year is 90 to 95% minimum because you've collected most all of your current property tax at this point, which is the bulk of your property tax revenue. As of April, you're at 92.4%, and we have recently made a correcting audit adjustment and referred you back to a cash basis. You were on an accrual basis, and in governmental accounting, we are on a cash basis all year until year end for audit, and then we do an accrual basis. so we'll see that there is zero but we actually know what's coming in on time in may because we have received that money so as of may you're at 94.5 or rounded up 95 so i feel very good about your property tax on target and don't think we need a budget amendment your april sales tax When we look at the actual versus budget, you were at 9.09 above where you expected to be. And that's in comparison to this time last year of 7.78%. The state of Texas is currently trending at 9.8% as of April overall. So we're right on target with that. And that's what was recently released from the Acting Texas Comptroller, Kelly Hancock's office. Your general fund expenditures year-to-date, we have a negative for the month of April of $260,674, but year-to-date actuals look strong at $2,581,450. And that's above almost, or above more than a million of this time last year at $1,521,793. For your utility fund revenue, you are at 58.1, and that's almost spot on to that 58.3 of where we would anticipate being on our revenue for year to date. That's up from 49.8 last year, so about 8% up from where we were last year. And on your utility fund expenditures, you have a positive month to date of $542,020, a positive year to date of $1,490,402. Just under the, you know, 58 market, 53%, but up from 48 this time last year. and we know because we've received what our May sales tax looks like. As we said on the other slide, we were at 9.09% year to date, and as May, 9.23%, and in comparison to last year, 8.7%, which is up from 7.78%. Any questions? Rebecca if you would could you also mention the letter yes sir the AG yes so the state of Texas has had a compliance ruling on your financial audits that you have to have that done in 180 days that's been in place for a while this last 89th legislative session they enforced that and if you did not have that done which is at the end of March for us that are on the fiscal year of October 1 to September, then they were going to enforce that by not allowing cities to increase from no new revenue to revenue increase on your property taxes, which is obviously very significant. Sales tax, property taxes are your largest funding sources for the general fund. The AG was very serious about this. They shot it out last year and got a little ahead and realized, wait, it's this year. But they sent out compliance questionnaires and audits to us on the list and they're sending out now a list of cities that did not make that cut and the ones that did. And I'm proud to say with John and his team's help and your finance team, you made that list. So if you so choose, you can increase your property tax. But you're in compliance. So that's always a good thing to stay on the nice list, not the naughty list with AG.

Can I ask for clarification? Yes, ma'am. Because I'd seen where Mount Pleasant was on the naughty list, and that's where I was asking. And then there was a public statement that we've turned everything in.

we are good we are good we've received that confirmation from the ag i think some preliminary facebook things may have gone out but we are we are good with the ag um so they've listed you know the people that were not in compliance with that deadline so and as rob mentioned you know you've got a real strong hire at the cpa on board now and she'll do everything possible and I feel like you'll be absolutely timely.

Anymore discussion? Thank you. Move on to item number nine. Discuss and consider adopting federal procurement policies related to the city's federal grant awards and this is our assistant city manager, Webster.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I would like to take the time to introduce to you Mr. Wesley Traylor from Traylor and Associates, and he is just going to give you an overview of what this policy is and what it is for.

thank you candace good evening mayor council and city manager vine like canada said my name is wesley trailer i'm with a grant administration firm called trailer and associates and we help the city with several grants and the reason that we're here tonight is just the adoption of federal procurement policies The good news is this is a formality because y'all are already following these policies. But in my little world of grants, the common saying is if you didn't document it, it didn't happen. And so we can tell them all the time that we're following these procurement policies, but if we don't have it in writing, they don't believe us. What does a bureaucrat do to stay in shape? They jump through hoops. So they're making us jump through hoops. We're just adopting federal procurement policies to make sure that we have that documentation on file for the city. You might ask, what's in these policies? A lot of them are very obvious and common sense when it comes to making sure that you can document the practices the city has for the procurement of services, equipment, and things of that nature within the confines of a grant. I do want to be specific that this procurement policy is particular to your federal awards for grants, but things to keep in mind as it relates to this procurement policy is fair and open competition, making sure that you take into account time and cost for contracts, making sure there are no apparent conflicts of interest. If there is one, noting it and then consulting with your city attorney if you think there's something you might want to dig into a little bit deeper there. We typically don't see that on most of what we do, but these are federal regulations. If you're having a really hard time going to sleep tonight, I encourage you to go to Part 200, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 318 through 327 for just some light reading. But with that, I really want to thank you all for your time, and I want to thank Candace for getting this on the agenda and all of your constant helpfulness, responsiveness, and quick action on anything that we ever need. You make our job that much easier. We know what we're doing. Often the hard part is just getting stuff from the communities that we work with. We understand everyone wears many hats, but thank you so much for your help in getting this on the agenda and all your help as always. But with that, any questions? Any discussion?

All right. You got a motion?

I make a motion that we approve Resolution 20, Resolution 20-26-13, adopting a federal procurement policy.

I second the motion.

Madam Secretary, can you give a vote, please?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you so much for your time tonight and your trust in us for helping with your grants. I appreciate it. Thank you.

All right, let's go ahead and move on to item number 10, discussing consider a change order number four from KSA and Drake General Contractors LLC for work performed at the wastewater treatment plant. And this is our utilities director, Marshall.

Good evening. Uh, tonight I have a change order request that we're bringing to you. It's technically two time extensions put into one. 60 of the days were already given to them. It's just putting into the contract and then another 150 added on top of that. We had a meeting. It was, I don't think it was two weeks ago. Last week. Last week with Drake and KSA who are also here in case y'all have those more questions. important questions that I can't answer we sat down talked and discussed how much time they would need to get to the end of the day of the project as a whole and 150 days added to it the to the contract would suffice what we agreed upon at no cost for the city this does not change any dollar amount on the contract just gives them extra time on the contract So the 60 days was already given, and I think it put him to April 17th. And then, since then, the contract technically, date-wise, it stopped. So this is also, for this 150 days, makes up the time that's already passed, and it's technically 120-ish days from now is what the final date would be, putting it around end of August. End of August is where this date should be now.

What was the reason for the time extension? Just weather or something like that?

You have weather. We had a little freeze a few bad weather days before we went through a drought. Right.

I figured that's how it was.

Then you have delays in manufacturing and... commissioning. So every single piece of equipment has to be commissioned. And they go through it thoroughly and make sure it all operates, but we don't have a screw pump issue again. So everything's gone through thoroughly and made sure everything works fine. And the manufacturer has to do it, so we have to wait for them to show up. If they don't show up,

week after they said they would be here that means that was waiting just sitting there for a long time so it's just added days on top of that it has slowly pushed it further and further back that's great we appreciate it any discussion yeah i got a question um so with those 150 days how do we know we're not going to come back and 149 and go hey we need are these schedules set with the manufacturer for these commission time frames I mean, that you know what I'm saying? So like, we're proven 150. Are they gonna play ball with y'all? Or like, hey, these guys aren't playing ball. So we're good.

Okay.

I know how the third parties can be sometimes. That's what I wanted to ask. All right, cool. Thank you, sir.

Any more questions? Good. Can we get a motion?

I make a motion that we approve change order number four from KSA and Drake General Contractors LLC.

I second. Madam Secretary, can you get a vote for us, please?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion passed unanimously. let's go ahead and move on to item number 11 so this is to hold a public hearing and consider ordinance 2026-13 to approve a request from applicant chile johnson cano on behalf of owners ivan and juan zambrino to rezone mount pleasant block 156 lot 3b from general retail to multifamily zoning district, addressed at 206 East 9th Street, Z-2026-1, and this is our development service director.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, City Manager. So we are in the process of doing a little cleanup where we come upon properties that were not maybe categorized in ways that were exactly developmentally friendly. These are the first two. We're also talking to another group So as we find them, we bring them. They're one lot rezonings, basically cleaning things up. So this is an existing vacant structure. It is in general retail. It is envisioned to be remodeled into a duplex. However, you cannot have a duplex. general retail so the property is actually in adjacent to an industrial zone commercial but it's also kind of warehouse area along 9th Street it's a small property the remainder of the land use along the south side of ninth street are also duplexes and they're also zone general retail but they're not proposed for any permitting or any that haven't stopped being used that's the key here so this is the property you've probably all seen it um it is for sale and the potential owner came to us about remodeling it and it had to be rezoned first so um it's kind of a cleanup um this is the existing neighborhood looking down towards jefferson this is um her proposed remodel once it's finished, not that that really has anything to do with the rezoning. It is to a multifamily rezoning, which is one, basically one step down from general retail, and there was or is an empty multifamily lot across the street. We did notify 13 property owners within 200 feet and got no response to what else they ran in the newspaper. so just kind of as a reminder we don't do too many of these there is a public hearing that's required and there's an ordinance that changes the boundary if you vote to do that that would allow the new uses for the district which basically the way our code is it is more restrictive at the top and less restrictive at the bottom so actually you're removing the retail uses from the property and allowing the residential uses including one and two family dwellings. It would require the appropriate development standards for that new zoning district which would require the parking setbacks and of course all permits for any building would be required. That standard across the city but I just wanted to make that point. We are recommending city staff that it be rezoned to multifamily due to the fact that the current land use in the area is compatible with the original intent in that area. It has available utilities. It's not going to impact anyone, and it is adjacent to multifamily across the street. Planning and zoning commission voted five to zero to recommend approval on last Tuesday. Any questions?

All right, comments or discussion?

So on 9th, where this duplex is, next door, or maybe I'm on the wrong street, Is that where the old garage still used to be? On the corner of, it's across the street?

Just to the left, it is out of the picture. There's a new warehouse just built right across the alley. that's that zone commercial so it's commercial general retail all the way up but they're all developed not as general retail and um that particular building apparently based on the signage that's painted on it did have a business at one time on the bottom and a residence at the top she's proposing this one's kind of twofold so number one she couldn't have a duplex there um without rezoning it to multi-family because you cannot have one and two family dwelling units in general retail for our code the other one is in order to get a top and bottom if you'll remember from last month a top and bottom duplex has to actually come forward with a code change to allow it even though it's allowed by building code it's allowed by best practices for whatever reason it was specifically dated not to have it here and my guess is it probably predated having the building code allow it if you're looking at the picture there you're looking back toward jefferson correct yes okay the building to the west of it is zoned commercial correct to the left it's out of the picture yes though that building and the other two going towards industrial that is those are commercial in fact I think it goes in on the map but then everything from the building that you're wanting to rezone to multifamily there you see the red strip that on the on the right hand side that is the commercial for niblets warehouses that keep going okay and everything to the east of this building is still in general retail correct yes because this was just for her there was no application in fact the owner of that property is the owner that signed this application so obviously a potential purchaser doesn't own the property so the property owner had to sign that they were in favor of this she brought it forward because she wants to purchase the property but he had to sign but he didn't do that for the rest of the property which he doesn't have any reason to remodel that's the trigger it stopped being used as a duplex and she wants to remodel it and she couldn't get a building permit because it wasn't allowed use

Okay, my question is, if you've got two different zones to the east and west, you've got commercial on one side, you've got general retail on the other, changing that to multifamily, does that create a spot zoning?

No, because it's across the street, multifamily. The brown across the street, it's an empty lot, but it is multifamily. Yes, ma'am.

Any more questions, discussion? All right, we'll go ahead and open the public hearing. All right, let's go ahead and close the public hearing and get a motion.

I make a motion to approve ordinance 2026-13 to rezone the property to multifamily and allow residential use.

I second.

All right.

Madam Secretary, can you get a vote, please?

Yes. Aye.

Yes.

Aye.

Motion passed unanimously. Let's go ahead and move on to item number 12, hold a public hearing and consider ordinances 2026-14 to approve a request from owner Jose De La Rosa to rezone Mount Pleasant City Block 124, Block 1C from single family SF2 to general retail. zoning district property id 10774 located to the north across the alley from his property at 107 north miller avenue z-2026-2 and this is our

again another cleanup um this is a vacant lot that is adjacent to an existing business um and has been used as overload overflow parking for that business for quite some time i'm not quite sure how long the property used to be owned by sweptco and they allowed um this gentleman the business owner mr de la rosa to park his um cars that he is working on that people have brought for him to work on they're not it's not like a junkyard but they're just cars that he's either waiting for parts or the people have to pick up because he has a small site so he's using that for overflow parking the issue is it's owned residential and so this is the area map which is right across the street from the cemetery And you can see on the case map, the blue box is the property. It is grass. It's a residential lot. It's next to a house to the north. There's a small little alley that separates this property and Mr. De La Rosa's job. You can clearly see it's zoned single-family, too, where the circle is. And it is general retail, too, going back towards Perth Street. This is a photo that shows he doesn't I mean, it's not packed with cars, they move their license and that sort of thing. It has had this use for quite some time. However, it is out of compliance with our zoning. It is single family he is using it for for business and because it impact an existing business in a way that would cause him to have some serious issues trying to figure out how to move his cars and where to store them. The simple, what he had done was SweatPo sold him this property so that he could use it for parking, but nobody really insisted that he rezone it. And so it's one of those things that we found. And then from a code compliance status, there's one or two things that needs to happen, either make it compliant or make him stop. the property owner in the house has never complained in order if you remember the case we just had that chart I said it said that all rezonings have to be compliant with the standards So the development standard for general to place a parking lot on it is that it's paved and that there'd be a screening fence between the parking lot and the adjacent residential property, including the house. And away in the back, you can't see it, but there's a house at the rear of that property. The gentleman who, Mr. De La Rosa has agreed, if the rezoning goes forward, he has to be in compliance with our rules and he is going to get a permit to behave and get a permit to put up this fence to the rear and to the side adjacent to the house so it will actually help people um with the kind of the adjacency to this It's a small lot, and so building a house there would be a little tight anyway. Of course, the neighbors across the street aren't complaining one way or the other. I was wondering if anybody in the neighborhood was filing complaints so we've notified 12 people and there were no property owners that received letters none of them responded and we have had no responses from anyone from our advertisement in the paper and this is just kind of would you back that slide up a minute

Do you know who has that little, almost appears like an alleyway? Do you know who has ownership of that? I'm sorry.

Your mic's not on.

All of the properties receive letters um i the the actual property um just to the south of it that is um an alley that it actually goes to the the property that goes uh 13 687 um there's connects and that piece is ai this valley And so we, of course, part of the property is Mr. De La Rosa with his shop, but we also receive no complaints from any of the people in the neighborhood behind. just you know just a reminder the same screen as before this is what it would require for that particular rezoning it has to be paid he'd have to get a permit and he has to place their appropriate screening or the use is not compliant with our code continue after discussing that with him. And so he is using it. I don't, it's been a number of years in that way. Again, I don't, Swepco had it. They must have stored things on it. And it also was single family. It's my guess. okay yeah so we're just making it compliant so his business is not unfairly impacted um and and without and trying to make it clean it up from a code perspective so um they did approve it unanimously um on tuesday as well Both applicants were told about this hearing, but I don't think Mr. De La Rosa's hearing. He was gonna try, I thought.

All right, any more questions, discussion? All right, we'll open public hearing. Nope, okay, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing. And can I get a motion?

I make a motion to approve the Z-2026-02 to rezone the property to general retail and allow the parking lot with the required paving and screening. Second?

I second.

Madam Secretary, you can give a vote, please.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Yes.

All right, motion passed unanimously. We'll go ahead and move on to item number 13. Presentation to discuss the Mount Pleasant EDC report update with Executive Director Carter. All right.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. My honor to be here to give you all a quarterly update on the happenings at the Mount Pleasant EDC. I'm going to try to remember to run this thing. All right. So we premiered our new website. It's up and live. And so we're really excited about that. We've gotten a ton of compliments. on our new website again our website as we when we premiered it at the state of the economy it is not for our mount pleasant residents it's for outside people that are interested in mount pleasant so it's geared towards site consultants companies that are interested in mount pleasant and it's really neat for residents of mount pleasant but just know that it's not going to have the quality of life stuff like the chambers website and and some of the city's website but it's going to talk about the opportunities here in Mount Pleasant as far as land, the business profile, what other kinds of businesses that we have in Mount Pleasant. And so we have got a ton of compliments on this. In fact, we have been nominated for an award with one of our big associations, so we're excited about that, and we'll keep you updated on that, but we've been nominated, our website's been nominated for an award this year, so. Project highlights, we had one project that we brought to y'all that y'all approved, and this was an expansion of LPS material handling. It was a $500,000 capital investment. They're gonna have four new positions, but they are the largest Toyota forklift dealer in the nation. They're out of Tyler, and they have started the work. They have started the expansion out the south side of the building, and as soon as that, is complete Justin Stancils doing the construction and he had asked us I know that we approved a road to be built alongside that they gave us some property that would also benefit us to allow some more access to the other property that's on the other side that we have Justin asked us to delay building the road where they could get their trucks in and out without getting stuck in the mud. And so they are almost done with that. So we should start the road that's right next to their property. And so we'll start marketing that other property across the street with that road, which will help. And I'm sorry you can't see on the screen the other.

Yeah.

We did 11 business retention and expansion visits. As you can see, we did look at Ruby and Begonia. That was a project that we did late last year, and we went and toured the new kitchen facility where they're making their commercial kitchen of the space that Sabrina and them expanded to. It is a beautiful space, and so we were in there and did a tour with them. And then in the middle, we went out to Mid-America Pet Food. We were supposed to take a tour. City Manager Vine went with us, and then they were having an audit, so we did not get to go in the plant. So we're going to come back to that. But had a great visit with them and learning about Mid-America Pet Food and what they do. We went to Diamond Seas Tax Center, which is the other building that's located in the I-30 business park. And so they are looking at adding maybe some more space to that. It's a wonderful facility. We got the tour, that was my second tour, but this was the walking tour, the two or three hour tour, and I turned it into probably longer than that because I can watch steel manufacturing all day long without getting bored. And then that bottom one is Tantrip Coffee, which is located on the square. A wonderful family. Father and son-in-law that run that company. They're grinding coffee.

So they're in the Joe's coffee shop.

They're right next to that, where that building is. They're right next to where Joe's was.

So that cell is not going to affect them or anything like that?

hopefully not they wholesale I don't remember how many coffee shops he told me but several coffee shops in the area we did receive an economic excellence award which means that our board members have done gone through certain trainings that staff has gone through training i think there was 80 edc's across the state that received this award we've received this award in the past but we just kind of wanted to say that we've got that this year and then some of the things that we did Jeanette participated in her first trade show out in Anaheim, and it was MD&M West, which is a medical device and manufacturing trade show we marketed with Team Texas. And so really good show out there, and you can see some of our colleagues from across the state. Carol is there.

I believe that's Patrick.

Thank you. We did a site selection summit. That's with the Southern Economic Development Council. They had about 30 site selectors come in last month. And with that, I was asked to do a podcast, about a 10-minute podcast about Mount Pleasant at the site selection summit, and had a good time doing that. And that's always fun to do those. And so it was good to see some of the site consultants that did not know that I had moved to Mount Pleasant. uh visited with them and followed up with them and so i'm excited about what that potential did a team Texas Roadshow and so Pacific Northwest with several of our colleagues across the state Jeanette's getting ready to do one of those to Detroit and Ohio and or Michigan and then they may reach over into Toledo Ohio she's going to do that early next month but one of the ways they do four roadshows year and what a roadshow is is we go and represent Team Texas to the company and then once we get home we can market ourselves to that company but Team Texas sets those appointments and we've had nine appointments I believe with different companies that are in the stage where they may want to expand We did the State of the Economy, and I know many of y'all were there, and I appreciate that. We had, I think, over 200 attend that, and so that's our annual event. Next year, we are gonna try to move that to a breakfast event. We wanna encourage more people to come. It's free to the public, and so we're gonna try to move that to breakfast next year. And so I appreciate Rob participating in that and giving sort of the state of the city. We participated in career day. That was just, that's probably one of the funnest things I've done since I've been here was for kindergartners in first grade. It was exciting to see we borrowed you can see the blue barn in the background on that um the biggest picture um sweet shop um let us borrow that little big fudge is one of the companies that they bought next to make the fudge pork and so they let us use that prop and so we set up jeanette came up with the idea of showing kids how you get from the factory to the retail shop it was really did a good job on that but we had a lot of fun and then we have played a game where we showed I think nine or ten logos and asked the kids what those logos what what jobs are with those logos and it was cool to see the kids light up either their grandparent or their parent worked at that place and for them to say oh my grandma worked there That was really neat, and we did a mock ribbon cutting with the business and let the kids play. We had several people that were mad because we didn't invite them to the ribbon cutting. One of the counselors said, so we let her cut the ribbon. You can see the second ribbon cutting. That young lady there to my left is retiring after 34 years in education, so we let her cut the ribbon. and so it was a great day and it's exciting to see the future of our workforce and the teachers that are training our future workforce we're very appreciative of that but that was at Vivian Fowler We did boots and biz and I think we had probably about 70 people and so big shout out to Prefort for letting us have that in their hangar. We just had John Anderson came, got up and talked. We had LTS get up and talk and then and the lumens gave an update on their project and so it was a great night I will say hats off to John Anderson we asked him just to kind of talk about what's going on Anderson town crossing he did a great job of explaining what development is I thought and how that works and how you it's a slow process sometimes and I thought he did a great job just some other updates We went to the chamber banquet. We had Christmas ribbon cuttings, other things that we did over on the right. Illumens, just a little bit update on Illumens. They received their funding from the Texas Bond Review Board, and so that's exciting. And we're looking forward to them hopefully breaking ground middle to late of next month. We submitted our annual comptroller's report. We're required to do that by April 30th. Jeanette does a great job of doing that, and I appreciate her staying on top of that. And then we are working on an incentive policy like the city did. We've kind of got that matrix, and then I worked on making that look better last Friday, and so hopefully we'll bring that to our board in the next board meeting or two, and then we'll bring that to y'all to look at and to see.

but just some of the things that we participated so certainly would answer any questions any questions discussion all right we appreciate you kevin thank you for the update though for everybody yeah thanks i love those yeah and i appreciate you you know giving us updates at least like twice before you bring something to us that so then the stump does not slap in front of us, and then we have to vote on it, so I mean, it's great, I appreciate it. All right, let's move on to item number 14, discuss and consider a performance agreement between Mount Pleasant Economic Development Corporation and Sweet Shop Candies Inc., TVA Sweet Shop USA, with our executive director, Carl.

all right hey this is the fun part of my job right here projects so um actually it's all fun so but these are the ones that you guys pay us to do and so um this is exciting uh tweet shop usa uh is expanding and so uh this performance agreement would be a um an investment of $250,000 by Sweet Shop. They're gonna create up to 75 new full-time equivalent positions. This would be a three-year agreement through December 31st of 2029. We would actually pay them $7,500 per FTE that they create. We would pay that out over three annual installments. So it may be a four-year time. Some may not get all created this year, and so that's why it goes through 2029. It would allow us to pay as they perform. That way we don't have to ever activate the clawback clause, which is always awesome when you pay them as they perform. And so the EDC did vote 6-0 to approve this on May 14th at our last board meeting. But I will say that we had a group in from the Sherman EDC today, the Forney EDC, and Sulphur Springs. And we all toured the sweet shop today. And it's always exciting to go in there and just to think about that they're the largest handmade chocolatier in the US. It's incredible what they've got going on in that small space. But they have 80,000, it doesn't look like it, but that building's 80,000 feet of production space. But Michael and them do a great job there, and it's something to really be proud of. The businesses that we have that people may or may not know that you have in Mount Pleasant. They may know that they have the retail shop, but what's going on behind the retail shop, it's really exciting that their candies are going all over the world. And so very talented folks back there, hand painting or hand decorating all that chocolate. The total incentive would be up to $562,500 if they achieved all 75. Discussion? Question?

Kevin, I just want to say that I appreciate how you approach it, and it's performance-based and not fallback. I'm more comfortable with it that way. Thank you.

All right.

Can I get a motion?

I make a motion to approve a performance agreement between Mount Pleasant Economic Development Corporation and Sweet Shop Candies, Inc., DBA, Sweet Shop USA. I second the motion. Madam Secretary, can I get a vote, please?

item number 15 discuss and consider an agreement for accounting investment and payroll management services between the Mount Pleasant Economic Development Corporation and the city of Mount Pleasant Texas

yes thank you mayor council this is what the mayor just said an agreement for accounting basically our to be our fiscal agent the city's been doing this for quite a long time but we never had an agreement so i wanted this something that i wanted to do when i got here was to put this together and so we looked at several policies and agreements across the state kind of shortened ours it's a very short document I think it's three pages long but it just outlines that the city is going to allow us to use their HR service their financial services and so we appreciate the city being a great partner on that it allows it's great for staff because we're paying to be basically we're paying to be a city employee even though we're employee of the corporation but it allows us retirement which is probably our biggest benefit it's having tmrs and so i know it is for me at my age to start thinking about those things but i know that we're very appreciative of what the city provides for us couple of those folks that I know that we work closely with Holly and Rebecca are here and so we really appreciate what y'all do this just outlines kind of what y'all are doing for us and what we get in return. And then we do pay the city $15,000 for those services. And then I do think there's actually, there's another 5,200 that comes out for the transfers between bank accounts. So it's really about 20,000, but in this agreement, 15,000 for these services. and the board did vote 6-0 on May 14th to enter into this agreement with the city and it does I mean it does expire but if nobody has any changes then it's going to be it'll automatically renew every three years

And basically, you're just documenting what's been going on. That's correct. Yes, sir. So I love, like, you two getting all this stuff documented. Like, I forget who it was that said if it's not documented, it didn't happen. So I appreciate that for transparency and accountability.

And I will add that $15,000 is a very good deal for EDC.

Mm-hmm.

right it's all about our relationship we are doing that because we want to be a good partner with pbc but i did want to point that out in case anyone thought that number might be a little low right family discount one thing i just want to bring up correct me if i'm wrong this 15 000 is really just bookkeeping where we're just doing the input and i want to make sure that's clear because i remember about a year and a half ago there was some false narrative out there that Our people would flag if there were some inappropriate spending on you guys, and I had to check to make sure, and we don't, that it's you guys approving your own stuff.

that is correct but if there's some anomaly the city is going to catch that and so but yes we do but we do have a checks and balance system to go in that like just so you know I do sign off on staff expenses but either the chair or vice chair is signing off on my expenses I don't sign off on my own expenses and so um we do have a checks and balance um when i take off a day um either chairman hensel or vice chair price does sign sign off on those and so um and then signs off like if i you know have a travel report um i'm not signing those myself there is a checks and balance i just want to make sure that was stated in open thank you

Well, and I'm pretty sure Kevin's like we are. If there's any questions, just let us know what it is, and we'll get it out there.

Absolutely.

He's the man. All right. Do I have a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve the agreement for accounting, investment, and payroll management services with the city of Mount Pleasant. Second. Second.

Madam Secretary, can we get a will, please?

Aye. Yes.

aye all right motion passed unanimously let's go ahead and move on to item number 16 discuss and consider the proposed amendment to the bylaws of the city of mount pleasant texas uh economic development corporation the busy man yeah absolutely so mayor uh council um last one of these for me tonight um but uh

this is really kind of a modernization of our bylaws there's not any like sweeping changes in these bylaws these bylaws were adopted in 1979 which is just crazy that we actually had a corporation before the sales tax passed but the last time i mean these were written in 1979 and they have not been changed since 1979 So this is really just a modernization. Really, here's kind of an overview of kind of the changes. We did come to y'all in May of last year, get the name change. So instead of doing a DBA as the Mount Pleasant EDC, that's actually our official name now. And so every document now has changed to Mount Pleasant Economic Development Corporation. It didn't have a purpose of the corporation. We did that. We changed the office address. Council did approve to go to seven member boards, but updated the number of directors. The old one, you had to have an annual meeting. Now you don't have to have an annual meeting. That's not required anymore, but you can suffice your first meeting of the year suffices as your annual meeting. talked about notices it talked about the titles and duties of officers that was probably the biggest change in there to go from president and vice president it goes from it goes to chair and vice chair of the board and then also you're not required to have a treasurer anymore and so we remove that you have to have a secretary you know with the state and so we changed that so there's three officers and then it talks about the duties of the executive officer which is me that the board can dictate or can give that authority to a person that a staff member that can be paid to do the duties and functions of the corporation talks about the fiscal agent talked about our fiscal year because it was calendar year you know Some of the younger people may not know this, some of the older people know, but it does make the removal of the corporate seal. You used to, you had to put a corporate seal stamp on everything. And then the craziest thing that's in the bylaws that, I mean, Jeanette didn't even know what one was, is in the corporate document, you had to have a fax machine. And so that's not in there anymore. I mean, she's never even seen one, so... anyway and then and then as there goes in there that requires City Council for approval on certain things that was not in there and so we've updated that you know projects you know the three main functions of Council for the EDC board is you select our board you approve our budget and you approve our budget and so that is outlined in there It just modernizes the document, like I said, no major changes, but certainly would answer any questions that you may have. Councilwoman for Baylor called and asked a question about conflict of interest. With that, I told her it's not in the bylaws, but it is in the policies that we updated last fall. And each board member does have to sign certain statements and staff about conflicts of interest. If you have a conflict of interest with a project, you've got to refuse yourself. And so, anyway.

Any questions?

So on section you've changed it to section 504 Where it says that Which I agree. If y'all have anybody on your officer in the board that is stepped down, that y'all can put a new officer in that place.

Correct. And so, kind of the changes we made. So the board can remove an officer. They cannot remove that board member. So let's just say... You know, everybody gets mad at Herman. I know they're not going to, but they don't want him to be chair anymore. They can take his chair away, but he's still a board member because y'all appointed him. They can't take that away. And then also, you know, if they do that, then they can select the next chair.

The only thing with the wording, and again, I don't know if it was you or Jeanette, but it says at the bottom of it, it says, if the office of any officer becomes vacant for any reason, the vacancy shall be filled by the board. so i know what you're talking about yeah but i thought you might just want to so that way someone won't read it that they can replace anybody i think somewhere there's another statement in there that says that they can't replace a member of the board i believe that's right okay but

that's just but I understand what you're saying but if you want me to change it okay but if I do that then I got to come back to you to get it done so no we can I mean I can change it with the motion if you change it and we'll change it with the motion and we can yeah we can change it I'm not telling you what to do but that's how you need to do it that way we don't have to come back

But I don't mind coming back because I love seeing y'all's shiny faces.

Oh, you're so sweet. So I make a motion to accept the bylaws for the Mount Pleasant Economic Development Corporation, but with the exception of Section 5.04, that the wording be corrected or clarified to make sure that the vacancy shall be filled by the

board of directors okay certainly i will get back clarified i second that crazy motion madam secretary can you get a vote please yes yes aye all right motion passed thanks kyle appreciate y'all thank you All right, item number 17 is the city manager's report.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, this last week I started meeting with the assistant city manager and our interim finance director with all of the department heads in our first round of budget meetings. And during these meetings have been very productive, but during these meetings we're looking at not just what we're doing, but why we're doing it, and also the funds that are being allocated for projects, programs, materials, supplies, and of course operations those meetings have continued on to this week we will have a second round and our goal is to have all of that information prepared so when we have our first budget workshop with council we will have a very very finely tuned rough draft if I can put those words together our compensation study is coming to a close we had a meeting this last week and went over some of those findings in preparation to provide that information as a whole to the council. But as we're going through these meetings with the different department heads, we're looking again at budget, but the finance department Candace and I are also looking for funds that are currently in other places that we might not be able to we might not need them in that where they currently is where they currently are we can move them over so should the council make any adjustments after the compensation study comes in there are funds available for them so lastly well there are two things I'd like to take a moment to publicly acknowledge our leadership team our department heads the men and women that I'm able to serve with the men and women that serve our city daily on easy days on difficult days and on the days in between I think we have a very good team here I would put them up against any team I've worked with in other cities they don't get the acknowledgement a lot of times in the public and they sometimes if we get to hear from them here and they get acknowledged I would just like to acknowledge the entire team this city is very blessed and lastly uh i would say i've asked development services director she's produced a development video i think she's focused on four projects this is something we're still fine tuning how this looks um but we are going to bring different uh development projects periodically um to share not just with council but also to share with the public so this is narrative narrated excuse me by lynn so i will just let her close my

This is the site of the new extended stay hotel off of 4000. As you can see, there's progress on the underground plumbing is in and the retaining walls are in, so construction's underway. This is the site of the new project for Symmetries World Class Headquarters. expansion for their offices that will highlight their products, which is in the artificial turf business. It has been under construction for quite some time, but it now is ready for a walkthrough where you can see kind of the elements that are put into it and the thoughtful design. to become extremely large part of how Mount Pleasant is developing as we move forward into the expansion of the offerings that we have development-wise in the city. So it ends in a courtyard patio plaza that highlights their product on all of the terraces. And landscaping is on the exterior as we are looking out of town. And once this is finished, it will be an absolutely gorgeous facility that the entire city can be proud of as Jason Bell has put this vision into reality over the last few months and years.

If that one doesn't fly, you can just go to the last place. That last site was the feature academy site. we will continue to work on how this is presented but again we want to focus on the development but for not just for council but for the public for those that can't get or haven't had a chance to get out to see there's a lot of construction uh throughout the cities thank you for putting that together

All right, now we come to the point of council comments. Council comments limit to the announcements of upcoming events, recent council member activities, or requests to add agenda items for upcoming meeting. Two minutes per council member. Do I have anything? All right. Madam Secretary, if you can add an agenda item for me. Basically, just take accountability for the closed session, the executive session comments that I made on Facebook. We can get that on the agenda and see what the repercussions are. Anything else? All right, we'll go ahead and go into executive session. Pursuant to Open Meetings Act, Chapter 5... 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, concerning possible settlement of city of Mount Pleasant versus Ginger Lou Redfern McDonald, cause number 43310, Titus County, Texas. And personal matters, Texas Government Code 551.074, discuss the duties and objectives for a city manager. So we will move into executive session. Oh, and it's 7.40.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we're going to go back into regular session. It is 824, and I need a motion on the City Council, or sorry, City of Mount Pleasant versus Ginger Lou Redburn.

I move to authorize the attorneys to complete the terms of the settlement of calls number 43310 concerning Ginger McDonald's appeal in accordance with the direction provided in executive session.

I second the motion. Madam Secretary, can you vote, please?

Yes. I recuse myself in the executive meeting.