City Council - Regular Meeting

I call the workshop session to order. It's 530. Monday, July 27, 2026. And the first order of business is a discussion and update regarding correspondence from the Central Texas Water Supply Corporation.

Mayor and Council, let me go in here. Thank you. as a water supply corporation. We need to show them in the current contract that we want the plant to be in better shape disagree. They believe their plant is in great shape. They believe it's in maintainable The plant's been maintained very well with the amount of money that they're putting into it. I do believe the operators are doing an phenomenal job. I also believe that they haven't spent capital dollars maybe as wisely as they to be very wise.

Christ. comment, citizens comment, any citizens who desire to address the City Council on a matter not included on the agenda may do so at this time. For possible posting and discussion by Council on the future agenda, the City Council may not deliberate on items presented by

I think to waste the city financing time. And y'all don't need all that. And I don't either. So I just want to be able to come to some concept.

1.2, citizens comment. Any citizens who desire to address the City Council on the matter that is included on the agenda may do so at this time. And there is none. 2.2, on the consent agenda, discussion ordinance to modify the city building ordinance.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Miffy Tarping. I'm the Parks Administrative Assistant. I'm here to present the Parks and Recreation Department Annual Report for 2026. Our mission statement is, the City of Limehouse's Parks Department is committed to enriching the lives of our residents and visitors by maintaining beautiful, safe, and accessible parks. We strive to celebrate the unique charm and natural beauty of Limehouse and WM Brook Park. Projects that we have completed in the Parks Department is the new walk trail from the Senior Center to Brook Park Bridge, the shade cover at Brook Park Playground, the way stations were installed, six new trees were planted along the new walk trail, a 6x6 concrete was completed at Campbell Park, installed at the hostess house, those were really nice. And the concrete repair at the hanghub pool. Here's the pictures of the projects that we completed in the parks department. Projects completed at the parks facility, up there at 580. The 580 complex, 18 nights were repaired on the soccer fields and parking lots. The gates and the rock wall. We installed 15 trash-canned pedestals. Waste stations were installed. At Turner Complex, there were four new scoreboards that were donated by the LCYLA. The concrete walkways and sidewalks were replaced. A new chain link installed around the Geico field. And the saving my project is wireless Projects completed at the cemetery. We received a new 2025 Maverick 60-inch mower from the Cemetery Association. We completed the reflection area, which was donated by Michael Roden. We replaced the fence by the quarter entrance, and that was done by staff. We installed new alley chains and reflectors on the east block. We cleaned over 50 headstones throughout the cemetery We installed new signings on the perpetual care with the city regulations. And there were about, we sold 80 sites from July 2025 to June 2026. We conducted 70 burials from July 2025 to June 2026. And there's the pictures from those projects that were completed out there. The calendar events for 2025 to 2026 started in July. In July, we have the Spring Co-Festival. In August, we have the Back to School Bash. September, we have Art in the Park, and we begin prep work on the Christmas displays. In Stormton, it's a 75-year celebration. October, we have Boots and Blazers. In November, we have the Land Passes AGTV. barbecue. In December, we have Carol of Lights and Christmas on the Creek. In March, we have Stars at Night. April, we have Kids to Art in the Park and the Riot Out Roundup. And in May, both pools open for the season. In one, we have the LTX Barbecue Cook-Off.

And then in June, we have the Suffolk Creek Park Tourism Group Park.

Stephen Knowlton, our supervisor, is here. If you'll have any

5.30 p.m., charter a review.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. We're looking to purchase the transformer from Texas Electric Cooperative for $25,674.42 for the pretreatment plant at AFNA. It is the low bid.

and possible action to approve the first reading of the ordinance and modify the city plan passage of the ordinance, chapter 82, utilities, article 2, water division 1, generally, and division 2, insert a possible question.

Mayor, that is so dependent on my interview. in the homeowner's home and revision of division three that meets the storage capacity and completely removes the spring storage to reflect the accurate tank capacity.

What part of that? All of it.

Okay, so the revision change on the meter goals. Just swing the cost of that water meter on to the homeowner and let's go to them. Okay. So the cost of the water meter goes to the homeowner? Yes. And then after that, the responsibility...

The individual water meter? Yes.

After that, it's on the city. If it fails, it's easier to replace. So the city takes out all the stuff, but the homeowner only has to pick it up in the initial time. Cool. The ordinance itself revolving around conservation of storage tank capacities. Well, the ordinance kind of completed itself three ways. One way said the three-quarter inch meter was free, and then in two other sections, it actually referenced two different numbers. So we omitted the section that mentioned that it was free, and just said the initial cost of the water main will be on the homeowner. After that, it will be on the city. So they're just, most of them, probably the 90s. This one's fairly recent. So currently homeowners get a free water meter? Currently they've been charged the water meter because it's in a fee schedule to be charged. The ordinance for responsibility of the water meter can be stuck, conflicted with the fee schedule itself. The feast is all white sands. I think ultimately some places may say they're not charging for the water meter, but it's probably the tap being itself. So I think it's more so correct just to outline exactly what your customers are paying for in the service space. You can call it tap-a-tap. Don't include the meter in the tap. Call it the meter.

Call it the tap-a-tap. We've been charging for the meter for a long time.

How many new connections have we had from year to year? I don't have that number off the top of my head. Do you know about how many connections and excess we've had over the last year?

Our number of new meters is fairly small as it flows, but we don't see a lot of new water customers from month to month.

Question?

Does the customer ever have a say in what type of water?

Not to any real degree, to be honest with you now. In the scenario where we're in today, could they possibly, as we transition to a smart meter, where we're looking at utilizing some sort of RF network, potentially to read the meters, that meter would have to be compatible with that system. The meter would have to be compatible with any reading software that we're currently utilizing. So to give the homeowner control over the meter would kind of be counterproductive with the kind of software we're utilizing, potentially. Because then the city is going to maintain it. Right. The city wants to maintain the meter that they want. They want to maintain it in the long run. So typically, years ago we used a Badger meter. Today we use a Neptune meter. The software is specific to Neptune meters as we transition to a smart meter. The network that we utilize to get the meters is going to be specific to Neptune meters and possibly our

Mayor, Mayor Grosin, and Council. This will be the second Sportsman Solutions contract brought to you. So if you look at a thousand foot view, a parks master plan is going to look at what physical assets the department already has, such as sports facilities, pools, anything that's going to essentially bring in money to the city. And then it's going to use data through focus groups, through surveys, geolocation, any number of different qualitative and quantitative information gathering and then it's going to tell us what fiscal assets we need to add now and what fiscal assets we may need to add down the road to be able to help supplement our citizens in all the offerings that we have but also as we touched on briefly at one of the And so you'll see in the contract with JMT Engineering, they actually have three staff members here this evening, if you have any questions for them specifically. But this is going to be a mini parks master plan. We can call it a phase one master plan that's going to be focusing on those sports facilities in order to This is also going to give us ammunition to turn around and apply for large grant opportunities to supply these additional sports fields or additional amenities that we may want within the city. Again, this has been evaluated at $60,000, and this is going to be a completely in-kind service to the city from JMT Engineering.

Well, those are the parts of that. Are you going to get feedback from our community, or are you just going to let this committee go?

The plan is for us to collaborate with the community, gather a lot of that data from citizens, and even form a staff committee in collaboration with JMT Engineering. So there will be a lot of local feedback. Correct.

What is the relationship between this and the Comprehensive Plan?

we'll use ours as an example look at what we can do for small city look at what we can do on a budget when you're looking at large-scale master plans they can run in the ballpark of two hundred thousand plus dollars so you can really look at this as again phase planning or a mini master plan but at the same time we're getting a very very large service at

And their engineering firm's logo is on that plan. So when we think to go out for RF,

Because we do reference a lot of other municipalities' plans. No, I totally get it. That's just what I was trying to clarify. What are they getting?

Would it be fair to say to the city, land passes, having a parks master plan gives us a little bit more credibility in writing grants and that type of thing?

Absolutely. If you look down the road 10 years from now, say we wanted our parks and recreation department to be current parks master plan. It is almost single-handedly one of the most important documents you have to have as a Parks and Recreation Department other than making sure that people get paid and making sure everybody is safe. Texas Parks and Wildlife grants to y'all's attention about this time last year. Unfortunately, we didn't get those, and we were specifically cited for not having a current master plan. We were scored high in other categories. But the weight of that master plan is so significant, you can't compete with anywhere else. In comparable cities such as Gatesville, and Gatesville is one I'm thinking about off the top of my head, received. almost the exact same ask from Texas Works and Wildlife, but they had a part-time master plan, and we did not.

I move the motion to approve the sponsorship agreement between the City of La Paz and JOT Engineering in the amount of $60,000 of in-kind services. I have just one more question.

and we've talked about it multiple times, is we don't have enough ball fields. And so, we will be able, these are, if we identify in order of importance to get master planning done on parks, sports facilities, these two are at the very top. Now, we may turn around, let's do the next three parks on our list, or let's do the next four parks on our list. This would be a basis. Correct.

This would be our baseline. So this is only supports because I know that the last one just applied for a LCRA grant to help in Campbell Park.

Correct. So the master plan would not necessarily hurt or help a non-profit. It will be $15,000 will come go to Sportsman Solutions. And with the oil states approval from last month, we still have that pot of money we can pull from. But again, we don't have to pay Sportsman Solutions until we receive the parks master plan in hand. And that will be almost a year from now. And so if we start tomorrow, there's a quarter by quarter breakdown in your packet. We'll still be a year out from having

we would confidently have an engine within one year but it would look closer than nine

But we will need, like, a council representative to sit on the committee for the arts master plan. So we don't have to.

So that'll be on another agenda.

And if someone just wants to volunteer for it and not get a vote for it.

It would consist of about three in-person meetings.

Our conference room, the unit that services the main conference room, break room, and two offices at City Hall has gone out completely. About 78 degrees in there for most of the meetings that we have in there. So we received three quotes for replacement, one from All Seasons, one from Miller's, and one from Texair. Texair came in at low bid for $8,850.

How does a fund get replenished?

Just with the budget each year.

So each budget year there's...

There's money in there for building and grouts maintenance. Okay.

I'll make a motion to approve the board innovative text area.

I've been in a gas unit is what I was explained, but I don't know the details.

According to estimates, we've been in a five-ton gas unit. We've got a 10-year parts warranty in Texas.

Miller's is the only one that gave a one-year warranty, and I did reach out to them to request to

I'd like to introduce Sean McNeely. He's our new golf course superintendent. He started with the City of Winnipeg today.

So if you can look him a little way, Sean. We're excited to have him here with us. As you guys are familiar, rule number two has been unusual since July. We were set back a little bit earlier this year with government shutdowns, and we were finally able to get bids out. We did receive multiple bids for replacements of green number two. The low bid came in at $288,655.98. It's a little bit higher than we were anticipating, but after speaking with this coming in a little bit higher than we anticipated we don't expect any issues with the 75 percent reimbursement and we know we have enough money marked in our december budget amendments to cover um our portion of this awaiting reimbursement they will reimburse us 75 percent It would be ideal. It's not going to be eligible for FEMA reimbursement, so that cost would be entirely on the city. That is something that they would consider then? It will require the green to be, I think it's all

I assume we do. I can't speak for sure.

That's your problem now, which is kind of our problem to help you get it fixed.

A lot of good questions. I mean, I went out and looked at it for the first time today. You know, it actually went over there, but...

It did. Yeah, I mean, because that's the only thing that really blows my mind now. So that would be a good starting point. We did not go back to the place that you said the numbers were out there. You're talking about roughly $170,000 or so.

Because I think what we've talked about is upgrading that bridge and potentially not getting FEMA reimbursed for that. So I think we have to pick our battles between these two. Thanks.

We have a motion to award the . And then I have one quick question. Sure. How many, because I know that the bridge has washed out like three times. How many times has this bridge washed out? I don't have an exact number on that.

Mayor and Council, just a reminder that we had released an RFQ for engineers for the Gulf Course Bridge earlier this year. We didn't receive any responses at that time. Prior to us releasing this RFQ, we had come to Council and asked maybe to narrow down the scope a little bit. I was looking at Wooden Bridge, Metal Bridge, some other sort of water crossing. We did not narrow down the scope. They were then scored by staff, and I'm sorry, I lost their name. Schomburg and Polk, SPI, was the high score on that. We're not actually having you approve a contract tonight, but it's reaffirming staff scoring that they will be selected. And I would like to point out, I had a question asked earlier. So the state views engineers differently than they do cities are prohibited from using competitive bidding procedures to obtain the services of engineers. There's other qualifiers in there. Instead for contracts involving engineering, a city must first select the most highly qualified provider and then attempt to negotiate a fair and reasonable price. If the city is unable to negotiate a contract with the most highly qualified provider, We did meet them on site last week and explained to them that they've worked on FEMA projects before so they're familiar. They did recommend a silver bridge rather than, we talked about maybe culverts and a little water crossing because that creek is wider. They didn't think it would be very attractive with the culverts there. to FEMA that this mitigates future disaster by having a steel structure there rather than wooden, it is possible that it will still qualify for the FEMA reimbursement. next time they see me but in 2020 the city council helped ABC out quite a lot with a million dollar investment in the business park and we know that the golf course spurs quite a bit of economic development in our community people come here and spend the night we come here and buy food they come here and buy gas and spend the night

We still have a governor that's talking with us about...

He needs to see the engineered plants first. correct we're selecting them based on qualifications in accordance with state law and then and then the city negotiates 20 million dollars it won't be 20 million we did ask that the ballpark surprising for Roughly, that's a

4.7 discussion of possible actions regarding the renewals of the city's dental and vision insurance coverage for city employees with principal for october the 1st 2026 to september the 30th 2027 including the progress of the city manager who actually wrote the related documents mayor dunkel we've received our renewals for her vision

It's $902 for the year. Again, that's for all employees, not individual employees. Provides the same level of benefit that employees have this current year. Yes.

All in favor? Aye. 4.8, discussion of possible action regarding the first reading of the pardons of any city that has a cohort.

Council, we have run into a problem with a few of our boards where we are not able to establish a forum and our meetings are having to be cancelled. This particularly comes into a problem with our planning and donating committee since we meet only once a month. If there's a forum not able to be JC recommended that we do a blanket ordinance that allows for alternates on all committees or boards if you choose to. Each one of them for appointment would come back

So this is completely up to you.

JC actually recommended that we talk about this. You can do it two ways. You can require that the alternative attend every meeting. I mean, basically have the same roles as every actual board member. So they would attend meetings and they would only fill in in the need to establish a forum, which means they would only have a vote if they were needed to establish a forum. Otherwise, they are essentially an audience member that is just up to date on what is happening with the committee or the board. You can also do it in a way where they don't have to attend any meeting until you have a call up on them, but you do run into the issue of them not knowing, you know, what's happened in the past, or what you've been talking about, or it's a little different for P&D because obviously there are different cases every time, A lot of things do. The planning commission does not. The airport board does. I need to double check on the construction board. I think it does. The zoning board does. Parks board does not. I really looked into it mainly because planning and zoning has a lot of state law that affects it. But there's nothing in state law that says you can't count on ultimates. So that's really where this is barking from.

My opinion is state ultimates need to be here. So they know what's going on.

If we're going to do ultimates, I agree.

I'm curious. Years ago, when I was on the EDC, we had a rule that if you missed your meetings in a row, you're done.

We did build that into the bylaws. It's not three meetings. I need to double check again. We did change the bylaws in the past year or so.

Well, that's my concern. We have somebody that's missing the meetings. They don't need to be on the board.

They don't do what?

They don't need to be on the board.

I don't disagree with you, but we don't have an ordinance that establishes that kind I can look into that if that's something that you'd like me to entertain, but so say what you think.

If you're going to be on board with it, it's like we won't wait.

So the one thing that's in front of us is your alternatives as we are discussing today. Yes.

And the way that this is written currently,

regarding the first reading of the ordinance and ending the city of Lampasas code ordinance regarding the adoption of policy providing for a reasonable limit on the amount of time to be spent without charge or repeat public information to requesters as per Texas government code.

Mayor and council, this is recommended from JC for us to put in front of you. Getting a lot of multiple open records requests from the same person. A lot of times we'll get four or five in the same day sent to different staff members. The state changed the TPIA regulations to allow for us to start charging for computer time. There's a little bit of calculation on the bottom of the summary, which is long, I do apologize. But it shows you just that 20 seconds on the computer is $3.33 an hour. So we essentially would be giving a cost estimate to every open market request that comes through before we issue the documents they're requesting, letting them know how much the cost will be to fulfill their open market request.

I guess it's bringing up the question of open record. Yes.

Now, if it's something that we have easy access to and I could just send you an email with the document you're asking for, we wouldn't mess it up. Considerable amount of time. We have been in the past week trying to kind of create a better process for open records requests. I am the records keeper for the city, so they should funnel through me, but they haven't really been doing that a lot of times they're sent. I mean, you guys have received them. They'll go to the police department specifically. They'll go to the municipal court. Parks will receive them. So we need to make sure that they're all being handled in accordance with state law. And so this kind of helps us navigate There are some weeks where you could have one staff member that does nothing but fulfill open records requests due to the number that are coming in currently. Now, in the past, you could go maybe two or three weeks and get maybe three open records requests.

But in today's age, that's not happening.

I don't think people realize how much work there is to gather information and sort it out.

A lot of times, you have to seek an opinion from the attorney general as well, which is a process.

work.

So it truly is the process from start to finish.

So we're just trying to streamline this a little bit.

All right. We'll get a motion.

I'm moving to approve the first reading of the ordinance admitting City of Lancaster's credit ordinance regarding the adoption of a policy providing for a reasonable limit on the amount

Before we go into the report and take questions, there are a couple of amendments just because of minutes. I wasn't able to get the replies back into the packet. So the first amendment on your common budget is it actually is Q3. It says Q2, but it's Q3, just so everybody knows. And then in line item G, tourism conferences, and I, annual visitor centers. for a different number. So I'll go for the first one, G, Tourism Conferences. That number is $1,676.03. The next line item is I. That number is $750, which brings the balance down to $44,262.75. So those are just a couple of updates for the minutes. I also wanted to So my treasurer is here with me this evening, Jennifer White. Very glad that she came to be at a council meeting. She hasn't been in one in a long time. So we've been working really, really hard on the budget. Erin, I'll have that to you by this week. So that's wonderful. And we have also done a lot of research in regards to different marketing campaigns. So as I mentioned before, when we were doing, when I was submitting my reports, It was really, really important to break down how we were utilizing that $22,000 fund, $22,500 to be exact. And we kind of entered into an agreement with a couple of different marketing agencies, one for print and one Lamp House's promotions, it shows 16,571. We are on track and estimated to use any Sorry, I'm on my budget. The yellow highlighted actual report, the annual report.

I think it's 98 or 99. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's a number, and I don't have the packet. Okay, it's 99. Yeah, can you start over? Yeah, I sure can.

So the code in the line is $1,676 And then in the land passes promotions, as I was mentioning, that's the homework that we've been doing and entering into agreements for digital and print marketing for tourism. And we actually have four videos. We have three 48-second videos that are narrated. They put land passes in such a beautiful light. I'm so excited. And then we have a two-minute, 48-second one. And that, obviously, is a little bit more expensive. But these can be used on the Google platform, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google Maps, Apple Maps, and all of our email marketing and our signatures. It's going to be on YouTube. So really, really excited. And they have actually also created a website for us. And so we are re-ranked to visit their houses. It's American Marketing and Publishing. And they actually have a lot of different clients. They've never, which I was really excited

Alright, that's going to be a productive session tonight.