City Council - Regular Meeting

chaplain in prayer, Gary and Marcella Jenkins. Let's start this off right, please.

Good morning, everyone. Let's pray. Dear wise and loving father, first let me thank you for your many and abundant blessings. Thank you for the life itself, for the measures of health we need to fulfill our callings, for substance and for friendship. Thank you for the ability to be involved in a useful work and for the honor of bearing appropriate responsibilities. Thank you as well for the freedom to embrace you. Thank you for loving us even so from your boundless and gracious nature. In the scriptures, you have said that citizens ought to obey the governing authorities since you have established those very authorities to promote peace and order and justice. Therefore, I pray for our mayor, Mayor Tom Thompson, and the various levels of city officials in particular. For this assembly of council and for our first responders, I'm asking you that you gracefully grant them wisdom to govern among the conflicting interests and issues of our times, a sense of the welfare and true needs of our people, a keen thirst for justice and righteousness, confidence in what is good and fitting, the ability to work together in harmony even when there is honest disagreement, personal peace in their lives and joy in their task. I pray for the agenda set before them today. Please give an assurance of what would please you and what would benefit those who live and work in and around the beloved city of San Angelo. It is in your precious, blessed name I pray. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I pledge allegiance to the Texas flag.

I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one and

Okay, with no proclamations or pledges this morning, we'll move straight into public comment. Members of the public may raise issues or concerns not listed on the regular agenda. During this time, to participate, please sign in with the city clerk prior to the beginning of the meeting. Speakers will be called in order they signed in. When speaking, citizens must speak from the podium, address all comments to the dais, begin by stating your name and address or single member district number, and limit your remarks to three minutes or less. Heather, let's start public comment, please.

Judy Fulgram.

Hello. I'll start by saying my name, Judy Fulgham. I always have to correct the pronunciation of my name. I am a resident of District 5, and I wanted to come today to talk about the issues of trust in the city council. And I'm concerned about the lack of trust that I hear other people talking about. And although this is my first time speaking, it won't be my last. And I spent my career as a teacher and Believe it or not, and you'll probably believe this, the hardest part of being a teacher was handling parent anxiety, and especially for me because I was a kindergarten teacher, and I knew I knew that I had to establish an in-person, face-to-face contact with those parents of the children that I was charged with. And especially today in this age of misinformation, over-information, and challenges in communicating, I think face-to-face is the way I need to go. And that's why I'm here, meeting you face to face, because I want you to recognize my name when it starts appearing in emails. And I want you to trust me that I am putting my trust in you to responsibly lead the city and also remind you that there are a lot of emotional issues that you deal with on a daily basis. And it's your job to manage the anxiety that's produced by these issues. That's part of your job, just like it was part of my job as a teacher. to manage the anxiety of my parents. You need to be able to manage the anxiety of the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Judy.

Jamal Schoenpert.

Jamal Shumpert, SMD3. She had a really good point. And as an educator myself, she is right. Those parents, once you lose them, you've lost everything. But on to my subject, I've been wanting to do this all summer long. I want to congratulate Ms. Karen Hesse-Smith on changing my environment for my life. The dogs aren't running in packs. They aren't attacking kids in my area in SMD3. It is a dramatic change. I think whatever she put her hands on this last year and did, it was a success. And I would like you guys to focus on the women and listen to them. Since I've been up here listening to the women, they've done nothing but great things. Ms. Lucy Gonzalez back here wanted sidewalks in public safety. And at the end of her term, she enrolled. And she finally got it at the end of her term with Mr. Patrick Fryricks and the government's assistance. But she pushed so long for community connectivity. kind of slipped out of y'all's purview, I guess, over development and trying to expand. And Mayor Gunther, although I might not agree with you too much with the downtown fixing up and the one of the things you have on agenda today, the concert venue we have down there, but Looking at it now, we put all that money into it. We should have finished that probably right as she was getting out of it before. We put way more money into other projects. We're on phase two. We should be completed. I've looked at you guys' projects. One of you guys mentioned paying the employees more. I've talked to the employees. They haven't got paid much more. not of any substance. Another person's was the arena. We haven't started construction on it, and I have yet to hear about the $25 million extra private investment. And Mayor, yours was planes, trains, automobiles. The airport's been sucking up money. And we've actually put in a study so that we can see who actually uses the airport, if it's feasible. So the women have far exceeded you guys. It's not to push you guys down or anything, but it's to give you guys a lift up to say, hey, maybe we should step up. Maybe we should listen to them. And maybe we should co-lead and have our voices have a seat at the table. Thank you.

Thank you, Jamal.

Coco Simpson.

Coco Simpson, SMD1. I have a couple things that I wanted to talk about today. The first one, and I know this is kind of a touchy subject, but new city manager, I don't know why you sit up there with them. And I think this is an old subject, but the elected officials should be the ones sitting at the dais. No offense, and I don't mean that any way personally. That's where the elected officials should go, not anybody else. Second thing, I sat at the meeting, the last meeting we had, and there was one thing I was still really confused about the buying properties on the north side that flooded. Did you all spend $1 million or $5 million on that? um and then looking through the rest of the stuff the money that was allocated during that meeting it was like 11 million dollars i mean y'all spend money like drunken sailors it's pretty wild and at what return um i mean i i have empathy for everyone whose home was was harmed and everyone who was harmed period in those floods but where does that end we bought flooded homes that have flooded once in a century. What happens to the people whose homes are damaged by tornadoes? We're not hurricanes here, but tornadoes. It happens all the time on the north side. Great Creek, are we going to start buying their homes? I think it was just a it was a bad precedent to set, and it was a lot of money that was spent on people who bought homes, who made an investment. They didn't figure another way out of their home if it was a bad investment. That's not your responsibility. That's not our responsibility as taxpayers. The backhoe, y'all spent $178,000 on a backhoe. You can go down to the Yellow House or John Deere and buy three backhoes for what y'all spent for one. And it was all on buy board. And I understand what buy board is for it, so y'all don't have to run comps on anything. But it costs us money. That is my money. Y'all don't generate revenue anywhere. It's all taxpayer funds. We need revenue for our police services. We need revenue for our city officials. We need revenue for all kinds of things. We need to, it would be helpful if you guys in your position would start looking at where the revenue that is generated from taxpayers goes instead of just rubber stamping things and using the easy way out of it. Thank you.

Number four. China Young.

China.

Good morning, council and mayor. My name is Chyna Young. I am a resident of SMD4. So the first amendment of the United States Constitution, it reads, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. As we all know, there are many petitions circulating the community right now. And I want to just remind the council as well as citizens here in the room and watching somewhere else that it is our First Amendment right to petition our government officials to address grievances as citizens. WHETHER WE AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THOSE GRIEVANCES, IT IS OUR RIGHT. It's called exercising our rights because it's a muscle that we must use to keep toned and able to use when we need it. And I believe that we are in a moment where citizens have just taken our rights for granted. They will be there whenever we assume that they will be there to work for us. But I think history, And many events today show us that unless we are actively exercising those rights, they are potentially not going to be there for us. And so the citizens of San Angelo are exercising their rights right now in various petition forms. And I just want to honor that. It is a time when all citizens should be exercising those rights and toning these muscles so that we can be a stronger nation and a true nation of we the people. So I just want to again encourage the support of that exercising of rights and Discourage the comments from official leaders from their official seats to discourage that exercising of rights because that is what we have experienced and it feels mildly insulting to the citizens. So just take the note and let's see what happens. So thank you.

Any additional public comment? Does that complete our public comment today? For general. Gotcha. All right. Now we're going to move into the consent agenda. As we move down the dice, we'll see if anybody has anything to pull. We'll start with you, Mary. If you got anything you want to pull.

Karen.

Patrick. Patrick wants to pull item E. I have nothing to pull. Harry. Joe. Mr. Hebert. All right, so I'll look for a motion for all items except item E. I have a first from Harry Thomas and a second from Joe Self. Is there any public comment on any of those items except E?

Jamal Schumpert for B and D. Which ones? B and D. Got you.

Thank you, Patrick.

Jamal?

Jamal Trump with SMD3. I just wanted to know a little bit more information on B. I didn't know what it was for, a lot of stuff. Maybe I missed some of the meetings y'all had about it. I just didn't know a lot about what's going on with B. I thought maybe I would pull it and discuss it. But with D, as I spoke about last time, I know the public comment period is over for it. But I emailed staff for, like, a link or something for me to put a public comment in, like you did with the capital improvement plan, but I never got a response. So I didn't know if there was a link for those public comments to be placed on there because it's being submitted for, you know, funds. And I wanted to make sure my public comments on that because I made a public comment on the annual action plan, I think, three years, and I haven't really seen it. adjusted or reflected in annual action plans. So I just was wondering maybe could y'all create a link for next year's annual action plan so that the public can actually put comments in and it don't be geared towards the people y'all have on y'all's housing committee? Because I think that's the only public comment I see coming to you guys. Because up here, nobody comes to speak about houses. Nobody speaks about your home programs. Nobody speaks about your rehab programs. It's some of the greatest work you guys are doing. So I'm not understanding what is it. Is it really that great? Or is there some type of edge to it? You got to know somebody or something. But yeah, I just. wanted to be sure that my public comment would be included on the annual action plan and also if y'all guys could create a link next year. Thank you.

Thank you, Jamal. Any additional public comment?

And Coco Simpson for item G.

once again coco simpson smd uh one um my concern is um the the gentleman came and gave a a beautiful speech the other day two weeks ago about the flag banners um is this really a problem it it seems like y'all are gonna or the enforcement code enforcement is gonna spend a lot of time and energy regulating flag banners in businesses on businesses and to what end are they falling in the road and they're hurting people are they causing a distraction um the the one the one picture he put up here of the corner of uh what was that oaks and chadburn and and l or whatever there are like 10 businesses in there um there is no way that those businesses can afford to put a real sign up in that shopping center, nor is there a place for it. Sometimes flag banners are all that you have and all that you can afford. I mean, the economy is not doing that fabulous for most people in this world. So, I mean, banners are, being a business owner, banners and signs are expensive. They are really expensive. And sometimes that flag banner is all that you can afford to advertise your business or to draw attention to your business when you're in a crowded shopping center of 10 different businesses. It's item G on your thing. I understand the signage about the estate sales. I understand the signage about real estate. I understand 90% of it. The flag banners, I do not understand, nor do I agree with. And I think that y'all are going to create a huge issue. Who's going to maintain what's been up for 30 days? You know, there's a whole other issue there that code enforcement is not even thinking about. You're going to waste an exorbitant amount of money trying to enforce a stupid rule. Please reconsider that item. Thank you.

Any additional public comment? No. All right. I have a first and a second on all items except E and what was the other one? Just E. Just E. We'll take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All items passed except item E70. We'll go to item E. Consider authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute an agreement with Technology Towers LLC in accordance with Chapter 380 of the Texas Local Government Code for reimbursement of property taxes to be paid in an amount not to exceed 75% of the increase in value only in property tax payable to the city for a period of not to exceed five years commencing with tax year 2026. Ryan Getty.

Good morning. Good morning, City Council, Mayor, Mr. Uridia. I think Brandon and I will tag team this one. He'll address primarily the legal issues, and I'll try to address the operational issues, the business issues. So could I answer any questions?

Well, it's mostly to show people what the city is getting out of giving any kind of tax abatement. So on this, just to clarify a few things, so it's 75% of the increase in value. So what the building was worth before they put several million into it, right? Six million or something like that personally?

Correct.

So before that, we're going to get the full tax revenue from that, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Yeah. then so then they spent their money and increased it and we're going to give them a little help on that as long as they have several employees 40 50. yeah they're going to maintain i think the in the contract it's going to be 59 employees combined between the two entities and do they have a certain wage that they have to keep paying on that or is it just that many employees

Well, they've already made the investment. So typically, most abatements or any incentives at the development corporations are based on the amount of investment and typically either new jobs or retained jobs. So this is a combination of new and retained jobs.

To answer the question about the wages, that is something that we could put in there in the draft that's before you. We don't have that. But I think we'd have to figure out what the average, wages for that type of position, and I don't know what all jobs they have.

We do have their wage information, so we could incorporate something like that in the contract.

I believe currently they're over $50,000, right? Is their average on their 59 employees?

Yes.

So we at least know what they are currently?

Yes, we have their wage information. So we know what their current salaries are, and we can incorporate into the contract. at least that amount of wages going forward, which I would expect that would happen anyway. Right.

No, I think it's a, I just, this was, And Brandon, maybe you can kind of speak to it. So this was kind of talked about before they invested in this building, right? This was kind of worked out beforehand. It's just now getting action.

Yeah, so it was originally intended as an abatement. Council created the zone before they did all that. There's some much harsher procedural guidelines that you have to follow for abatements. And there were some timing issues in order to do the abatement. So That's why we've gone with the 380. But, yes, it was all contemplated well in advance about the improvements that they would be doing.

So this, not only are they, I'm sure, created a ton of jobs while they were putting 6.5 million into it, but they were under the impression this was going to happen. It's just timing. So this allowed them to keep moving on it, spend the money on it, and then this will help them down the road. That's right. Yeah. No. I'm for it. I know tax abatements are a touchy issue, but they've spent a ton on the building. They employ a lot of people, and that building was sitting just going down if somebody wasn't going to take it over. So they're one of the few that seems like they have the manpower needed to

take it over and utilize it so yeah and one clarification it's not technically an abatement they are going to have to pay their property taxes up front and then it's going to be a reimbursement once we've you know got all the records that they paid and all that good stuff perfect and it's only five years correct okay thank you no you're welcome so ryan once they complete with all the compliance then we start the rebates correct correct thank you i need a first

I got a first from Patrick Keeley. I'll make a second. Any public comment on this item?

Jamal Schoenberg.

Jamal.

Jamal Schoenberg, S&B 3. Thank you, Mr. Keeley, for pulling this item. I wanted to hear a lot more about it. I was wanting you all to focus more in the future on good jobs, ones that offer medical, maybe paid time off. This company could have a four-year, five-year, five-year project and hire all contract workers, not offer any of that, and pay them low and mistreat them, and y'all have issues. So part of that development corporation is to bring in those jobs, but they want good jobs. Those are the jobs that my generation wants y'all to offer us. We don't want to go all in for our contract type situations. Some of these companies paid at work is good enough to even offer dental and all these other things, medical, but they don't. It just doesn't make any sense why you wouldn't even match them or even give them $100, $200 towards it. Those are the type of jobs we want coming into San Angelo. Maybe I'm speaking for myself. I don't know about the town, but I would guess if you want to pick a job, With the same pay, you will want medical, and you will want maybe paid time off. And maybe some of those employee access center things, like discounted child care. There's several different things where it's the difference between a job that's just a job and a career. So I'd like the Development Corporation to focus more on jobs that bring in career-minded people, and not jobs that bring in bag chasers, is what we call them. Thank you.

Any more public comment? With that, we'll take a vote. All in favor of item E, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? E passes 7-0. at 9 p.m we will move into the regular agenda comments regarding items on the regular agenda may be made by the public when each item is discussed as outlined above to participate please sign in with city clerk prior to the beginning of the meeting speakers will be called in the order they signed in comments are limited to less than three minutes Applicants, proponents, and appellants are exempt from the time limit above and instead must limit the remarks to less than five minutes. Item A, consider approving task order 13 for ETJ jurisdiction floodplain studying the amount of 350,000 sourced from stormwater fund balance under IDIQ PW01-23 master contract with Frees and Nichols Incorporated and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents. Patrick Frerich, you're on.

Good morning, Mayor, Council. This item has been queued up for staff for a little while now, for almost a year now, as we work through the best approach for this particular project. This is an item that was brought forth to us by the development community in order to help them with assistance with the federally mandated stormwater obligations that they have in their developments. So, as you well know, in a new development, they are required to accommodate the additional stormwater runoff that that new development is going to generate based on compared to the existing conditions. In most cases, that means that they're going to be building a little bitty pocket pond within their subdivision, taking up valuable real estate for themselves in order to accommodate that regulation. What this item is going to do is it's going to give us a broad study that's going to show us, as development happens throughout the city, where can we be focused on regional detention instead of smaller pocket ponds. The development community has also come to us as staff, as a city, to say, how do we properly maintain these ponds in perpetuity? From staff's perspective, we don't want a bunch of little bitty ponds throughout the city. We would rather have regional detention where we can focus our efforts, focus our resources, and mow those and maintain those in efficiency or with efficiency. So what this study does is this is the first step in identifying where are those places for regional detention. So it's going to be looking at our entire ETJ, looking at the topography of the existing terrain, and then identifying where those natural drainage flows, where would the best place for regional detention be, and where might the city look at either acquiring property or working with developers to get property in order to have a regional detention in that area instead of a bunch of pocket ponds. This is the first step to identify the where. and then we can identify the what and the how moving forward. But we need to get this in place so that we're not just throwing money at something. We have a very succinct plan in place, and we know that we're using our money wisely as we make those investments in property moving forward. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Well, I think what's great is this is planning. It's not emergency response, OK? And so any time we start forward with that, it has been a big discussion for a long period of time for those people that are watching. And I know the previous assistant city managers worked with this, is where are we going to put retention and detention ponds? Where do we structure this? When do they take them over? When does that become a responsibility of the city versus a citizen? I've had several conversations with Shane about that. I think this is long overdue. And I think it's a great thing that we actually plan those. We actually had a discussion earlier about people that may be wanting to provide some property that they don't want developed actually for basically a retention or a detention pond. And with that, I'll open it up to the dice. I'm highly in favor of this. I'm glad to see it. Mr. Hebert? Your light is flashing red. Maybe that's a warning you shouldn't talk. I don't know. Maybe borrow Joe's mic.

Okay, thank you. Patrick, what kind of time frame are we looking at for the study to take?

It should take about nine months, nine to ten months to get this done. We have most of the topography already flown, so they'll be pulling that in, and then any gaps or any holes, they'll just have to go and they'll have to get survey on that, and then it's just running it through their models to identify where those flows are going to be. So it should be a fairly quick turnaround.

So is this something, is this like a plug and play that the development community can have once these areas are identified, their engineer can take what is produced out of this study, put in their data, and then that will give them where they need to direct their drainage?

You're absolutely correct. So the way we intend this is to have a, so as those developers are making investments in property, now they know. They know that As I develop this particular parcel, I'm going to need to funnel my stormwater into this particular area. So they're having a bunch of that information on the forefront instead of having to figure out after they've invested their money into a particular piece of property and maybe find out that it's really not going to work or it's going to be super expensive in order to get drainage and so on and so forth. So it's getting more information on the forefront so that they can make an informed decision when they're investing their dollars.

all right um i agree with the mayor i have just just in the last six weeks eight weeks been through a situation where detention retention was a question um and it would have been nice to have something already available to do something like this i agree with the mayor this is something and i also agree with him STATING THAT THIS IS A PLANNING TOOL AND NOT SOMETHING THAT IT'S NOT A KNEE JERK REACTION TO PUT OUT A FIRE. SO THANK YOU, PATRICK.

AND JUST FOR CLARIFICATION ON THE TIMELINE OF WHY IS IT TODAY AND NOT A YEAR AGO, WE SUBMITTED AN APPLICATION TO THE TEXAS WATER DEVELOPMENT BOARD FLOOD INFRASTRUCTURE FUND. THIS IS A QUALIFYING PROJECT FOR THAT PROGRAM. WE SUBMITTED THAT APPLICATION two three years ago and we've been waiting on that award to date the flu that the texas water development board has not granted any money out of that program we got tired of waiting we're going to pay for it up front and and get this done so we've been waiting on for grant for grant money to get it done got tired of waiting we need to move forward and get this get this available to our development community you just having said that does that mean we might qualify I can't get reimbursed for it, so we're just going to have to drop that off of that request.

But will it increase future eligibility potentially?

It absolutely will. Anytime you have a plan in place, it absolutely gives you better credit to those people looking at grant applications.

Right. So there's a question of FEMA risk, but as long as it increases our grant eligibility, absolutely.

Right.

So this says ETJ.

Does this give us the ability to control that stuff that's right outside the city limits in the ETJ?

It doesn't necessarily give us any ability to control it. It just gives us a plan as those are annexed in, as it develops, that we can, again, point developers It doesn't mean that just because they're building in the ETJ that they can't use this information. It just means that the city may not have direct control over it, but it's still valuable information no matter what you're doing in the ETJ.

And that's a challenge we face on the north side across from 2105. It got developed. It's outside city limits. And there's no retention ponds. And it all comes into the city. And so I think that's good for anyone in the future that might look to that. Right.

And it gives us that tool, too, to say, you're doing something. We know this is going to have a potential problem in this direct area. Let's work together to accommodate it so it doesn't become a problem.

Harry? I don't want to miss my opportunity. When I first came on council a number of years ago, one of the first plans I worked on with city staff was the Avenue P detention pond that we put up behind Intertel and that has worked. We know that there are several areas in the city per the hazard mitigation plan that need some help and hopefully this will allow builders to go ahead and take care of that before we get any additional THAT NEED HELP. SO THANK YOU. I APPRECIATE THAT.

PLEASED TO HEAR YOU. PATRICK?

This is tough. So we're going to do the study, but the developers don't have to do it. We have no control over anything. It's just giving us ideas of where it needs to be if they are willing to do it.

In the ETJ, but it'll also encompass everything inside the city limits as well. So we absolutely have control over that within the city. And this is, like I said, this is the what, and then we figure out the how, or this is the where, then we figure out the when and the why, or the how. The how, it comes down to the regulatory side of it. If y'all adopt this as a thou shalt, contribute to here or, you know, we've got to work through those issues then because in the end, the developers want the city to maintain these ponds. So we do have a little bit of clout. We do have a little bit of say-so in that regulatory sense. But how you all adopt this and how we utilize this in regulations moving forward, that will come from future councils and future decisions. Irregardless of that, we need this in place so that we can we can plan properly and developers can plan properly.

So what are they using now when they do a new development in the city limits? Because they do it, they do it right now.

So right now they're required to put a detention pond on the property that they own. So you have these little bitty pocket ponds all over the place that are one acre, acre and a half in size. That's taking up buildable lots. That's taking up profitable lots. It's also taking off property off the tax roll that the city could benefit from in there. we're utilizing we're putting holes in the ground where we don't need holes in the ground let's get that into a singular place let's get it into a regional detention so that we can manage it appropriately and we can make sure that we're maximizing the buildable space within those develop developments so we can maximize our tax revenue off of that as well will it be able to help any of the ones that are already there like will they be able to fill those in put houses on them and find it potentially i mean there's that potential um Are they willing to make that investment? You know, that's for them to figure out. If those lots are valuable to them to do that and get that infrastructure to get it into that regional detention, that's a business decision that they'll have to make. But can we require that? No, we won't necessarily require that. But it's absolutely a decision that will be available to them after this plan is in place. Tom, go ahead.

Karen or Mary?

You have emphasized that this is a proactive measure rather than a reactive measure. And you've given lots of supporting data as to why you think that's critical. Can you kind of distill that for us, those of us listening? And can you tell us how this kind of notion of planning, pre-planning, will slot into the upcoming comprehensive plan?

So the comprehensive plan is the guide, and it also references all these other plans, whether it's the downtown master plan or the master drainage plan. If you remember the master drainage plan that we just had updated in 2020, that identified areas of existing stormwater drainage problems. So we now have a plan that shows what needs to be done on existing problems. This will be the plan to avoid those and get it done moving forward. But every one of these plans should be referenced back to the comprehensive plan as that guiding document as we move forward, both as staff and as the development community. So as long as we have that comprehensive plan updated and in place and it's referring back to these documents, so policymaking, ordinance establishment, all of those decisionmakings are tying back to these plans, that's the end goal. That's why we're investing the money in here. we get something done on the forefront and not having the large expense of having to fix it on the back end.

Ms. Merrick, any questions?

Just a couple of, most of you have already answered some of these, but I just want to make sure. This, these new ponds will be owned and maintained by the city, right?

That's the intent. So the intent is, again, multiple developments contributing to a single spot. Right now, in our stormwater plans, there is an option for developers to turn over those small ponds to the city. We have some construction requirements in order to do that so that we can ensure that we can maintain that in perpetuity. Those requirements aren't necessarily supported by the development community because their costs, right? Anytime we add something, it costs them more money. And so we want to do away with that. And we want to make sure that we can build a pond that meets our requirements for long-term maintenance and that they can contribute to how they contribute to it and you know what that partnership is needs to be determined but ultimately we want this singular place that we can send all of our resources to in one spot instead of go mow an acre here and then go travel two miles down the road and do another acre and then another acre in the middle of neighborhoods, right? And so anytime you're running bat wings and mowers and weed eaters inside a neighborhood, it's disruptive. We want these to be more isolated, more in, you know, in planned areas so that we can avoid not only the nuisance but, you know, the lack of efficiency as well.

Will the developers have a say or at least have an input into this?

They always have input, yes. So we do listen to our development community very, very well. Sometimes we don't move as fast as they necessarily want us to move, but we do listen and we do work with them closely to make sure what we're trying to do meets what they're trying to do and that we can come to a good compromise in the end.

Good deal. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

So just to be clear on that, Patrick, we'll have jurisdiction and governance over inside the city limits and outside and into the ETJ will be

Marginal. As we annex in or as developments go, it can at least be a reference document for those for future, you know, ETJ is future growth patterns, right? It's planning. And so we need to make sure that we can have as much influence on that ETJ as we possibly can, even if we don't necessarily have the authority to require something.

Gotcha. With that done, I'll look for a motion.

Or if you've got more questions, Tom. No, no, no. I'll make a motion. The program is presented. We have a question.

Sure.

Hey, Patrick, how did you all come to the freeze on this one? How did you come to them as the?

So we've worked closely with freeze on several projects. Several drainage-related projects. They're the ones that helped us with the Bell Street, you know, right there at the East Angelo Draw, so they're well aware of it. They did our drainage study for the Avenue Pea Pond. They actually designed that. So we've had a good relationship with Freeze when it comes to drainage, when it comes to these type of plans. They were a natural segue into continuing using the data that they've already collected for us. utilizing that again to go ahead and develop this plan. So it's kind of an efficiency thing, kind of a using past investment that we used with them in order to not have to duplicate work. If we used a different firm, they may have to duplicate some of the work that freeze has already done. So again, kind of driving that cost down a little bit because we're utilizing data that already exists.

I'm just curious on that cost, because if you look, unless I'm reading it wrong, their hourly rates, even their intern is going to get paid $74 an hour. So it just seems like they're very expensive for something that doesn't have to be done now that we ought to put out for a bid and at least see if they're in line with everyone else or if they're not.

They're part of our IDIQ, so those rates are established for us. But again, our comfort with Freeze, the relationship that we have with them, I'm fully confident. They also helped in the master drainage plan. So again, they're very aware of our existing issues. It just gives us a leg up and gets this thing started much, much quicker than someone else that's having to come in dry and figure this out. Our comfort level, the fact that they already have existing data, just led us to believe that freeze is the best pick for this particular project.

Councilman also, on professional services, we're not allowed to bid those out. It's an RFQ process. It's based on qualifications, not on price. So are they the only ones qualified? No, there are other qualified firms through our IDIQ process. They've just gone through because of their existing experience with this existing firm that they've chosen this firm based on their qualifications and based on our experience with them in this engineering realm.

More questions?

Just a point of clarification. Aaron did tell me we do have some supervision over subdivisions in the ETJ. I don't know what the limitations are of that necessarily, but that's more his world. But apparently there is some regulation that we do have in that. So I'll work with Aaron to figure out exactly where this, when we get to the how, I'll work with Aaron closely to make sure that we get those coordinated.

I think he's probably talking about platting in the ETJ. I just don't know how the stormwater works with that.

Philip, did you have a comment?

No, sir.

All right. I've got a first from Tommy Hebert. Can I get a second?

Second.

Second from Harry Thomas. Is there any public comment on this item? Jamal Schoenberg.

Jamal Shumber, SMD3. There was a lot of discussion on there in a lot of different ways. One of the things I wanted to look at was, are we going to require independent drainage studies after we've done this one? on those properties being annexed. I think that's some of what Mr. Vernoy was talking about. And I know that we've cut a lot of these, what is called restrictions, red tape that the developers like to talk about on some of our things that we just passed. Does that affect this in any way? Can they get a variance? I didn't, because y'all passed that stuff so quick, it's hard really to go over. You have to go back over and go back over it. But another issue is, would this eliminate the requirement if we do have a requirement for them to do independent drainage studies? Because it looks like we're going to do one in the entire area. And I would think that if we annexed it, that the property we annex would be similar in order with the properties we already have here, which have drainage studies in areas. Another thing is these are going to be ponds built for aesthetic looks, but we're going to use them for water. Why would we let that water just evaporate? Why haven't we put our engineers or even went at the state level and asked them to create some type of rainwater catchment system underground to where that water runs into the area just like a pond, but it sucks into the ground and it gets pumped out and put into our water system? That seems like a more reasonable effort and collaboration between local, state, and federal government to fix the issues we have. It just seems like if we're going to be preventative, maybe they would have did this three years ago without waiting for the fines. But it seems like every crisis, especially when it comes to low-income people, y'all want to jump on and fix for the developers to take advantage of us and continue taking advantage of us. Do you think that this study is going to actually help the town with the problems we have i don't i don't even think this is a preventative i just think this is just eliminating tape for some of your developers so they have to spend money on drainage studies it is a good idea but it should have been done like you said two or three years ago i'm just i'm just tired of the inefficiencies we got going on and it's it's just the decisions y'all making behind not here But it's your bars, it's your clubs, it's your family get togethers that you're talking to your people. Because I can tell the things y'all said up here isn't really being enacted down here where I'm at living. But thank y'all.

Patrick, do you have some comments? So the requirement for a drainage study is not eliminated by this. They still have to do a drainage study. They still have to determine how much runoff that their particular development is going to contribute. And we will be able to use that data to figure out what the remaining capacity within our existing ponds are as we identify these regional detentions. That requirement on the developers is not going to be exempted by this process. It's only going to be enhanced by this process because now they know as they go through that development and that drainage study where they can contribute water to and how they need to push that water.

All right, Patrick, thank you. That's all I'm going to do. Is there any more public comment, Heather? With no more additional public comment, we'll take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Item passes 6-1. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you. Item B, consider approving change order one with basic IDIQ and the amount of $146,865 for the Bill A. Orr Memorial River Stage project, utilizing $32,145 of civic events fund balance and authorizing city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents. Presentation made by construction manager Alfonso Torres. Al?

Thank you, Mayor, Council, City Manager. My name is Al Torres. I'm the construction manager for the City of San Angelo. And as you know, we've been working on the river stage, trying to get it improved. This phase one has been mostly ADA issues, but we've also added storage capacity, green room space, increased the size of the ticketing booth, the concession area. So we're getting a lot done. We're nearing completion, but we've got some change orders that some of it was stuff that was UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES AS WE WENT THROUGH CONSTRUCTION. SOME OF IT IS STUFF THAT WE KIND OF DID SOME VALUE ENGINEERING AT THE BEGINNING, PULLED IT OUT, AND NOW WE'RE GETTING CLOSED. WE HAVE A CONTINGENCY FUND, AND WE HAVE, AND WE'RE WELL UNDER THE 25%, SO WE WANTED TO GO AHEAD AND PUT THAT MONEY BACK IN THERE AND GET SOME OF THESE THINGS DONE. SO THIS IS A LIST OF WHAT WE'RE DOING. and I'll explain each one of these as I go through, but electrical relocation, 64,880, retaining wall at entrance, curb at pavers, 6,400, mini split AC, and concrete slab, 48,000. So the original contract amount on this project was $1,318,126.17. This change order is a total of $146,865, which brings us up to a total of $1,464,991. And like I said, those funds are available in this account number. So change order number one. Underground electrical. As we were adding on to the concessions building, we ran into an underground electrical line that we weren't aware of. You can see the panels over there. That line was running right underneath where we were adding on to our building. Nobody knew it was there. So in order to keep construction going, we went ahead and authorized him to, I mean, he went ahead and put it in because we didn't want to stop construction. But that's a change order that we needed to put in there. Item two is a retaining wall. Basically, this is at the entrance to the, you know, the concessions is over here to your left. You can see there's a hill and that retaining wall was going to go right along here to keep all that erosion from running out onto the sidewalk. So in order to, when we had our July 3rd concert, they wanted to go ahead and control the So they went ahead and put this fence in on the right side, but that's still going to cause maintenance issues. It's going to cause erosion. It's going to go on the sidewalk. We're going to have to clean it up and maintain it. So we still want to put that retaining wall. The contractor will go back in there and just cut that fence loose, put the retaining wall in, and then put the fence back up.

Al, do they get to reuse the fence?

Pardon me?

Are they going to reuse that fence?

Yes.

Okay.

So the curb at pavers again, this is at the entrance by the ticketing and these pavers here extended all the way out to the end over here. But for ADA compliance, it didn't quite meet the slope. We had to put concrete in here to change that slope. It's creating a little bit of a tripping hazard here. So we had them put in a curb there, and then they're going to fix these pavers to where it's pretty, and then they're going to have a rail that comes down along that curb this way and then down the stairs. So again, to not slow work down, they went ahead and put it in, but it's work that's not in the contract. Mini splits, there is air conditioning back there, but it wasn't quite enough, so we need to put another mini split in to kind of help alleviate those new dressing room areas. And then lastly, this is an issue you can see. Every time it rains, we get a lot of water ponding here. This is a new dock that was added on the end there. So this change order will cut out all of this concrete here regraded to where it goes out to the street that's been newly paved. I don't know if you guys, I'm sure you went out there for the July 3rd concert. You saw that all of this over here was regraded. We had an area where buses were losing mufflers as they came over the hill. So we regraded that and repaved it. When they did that, they re... change the slope so that all that drains out however it's still catching right here in this area so we're going to cut all that out regrade it to where it goes to uh where it's going to start over at the other end and then also part of this is this we're going to fix this gate issue that's here uh maria you saw that um It caused an issue during the July 3rd concert, and we all realize that. We just couldn't fix it that day. But we are going to fix that as part of this. So that's our change orders. If you have any questions or if you have any questions about the progress overall, let me know.

Now, so we're bouncing back in with the contingency there. So two or three of those things to see, they're unforeseen. You know, we can't help that. And there's things there that show up as we've dealt with that on Chapman, on 29th, everywhere. So those are certainly understandable. Are some of these design-related problems that we could avoid it up front?

Yes. The mini-split, for instance, in a way, it's my fault that engineers were supposed to put in new AC, but it wasn't on the drawings, and I missed it. the gate was another one it should have been a double gate it was there was a double gate there before right but i know when we did the drawing somehow or another it became a 10-foot gate so that was a design issue as well

Right, but we've gone through and requested these changes. This is going to be one of the best things as we develop and come back to more reliance on our river stage. We're going to, I think nobody understands how much pressure y'all were in to get it rolling prior to the July 3rd. Correct. You did get it there by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin, but we had it. It's going to be great to get it finished, all right, and I think we'll be looking for this to be great for our river. With that, I'll open it up to the dice. Mary, we'll start down there with you.

Thank you, Al, for that. And it did. It went off without a hitch toward the end. There was a little bit of a vapor lock on me. There's a lip, and I don't know, this may get corrected, but going into that gate where it was a double gate, you know, and it was a pretty good 8 or 10 inches, but he was high centering pulling up.

That will be corrected as part of this. Like I said, that concrete's all going to be regraded to where it's... It slurps down to match with the existing concrete down there.

That lip is going to be gone then. What are you going to do with the gate that's going to happen to be reused?

It'll probably be reused. It'll probably be another gate that matches the size and everything. In other words, we're not going to buy two more gates. We're just going to have one more gate and then rework where the support posts are.

What's the time estimate on this?

I don't have an exact time frame. I'm guessing it's going to add 30 days.

Okay, so it's not going to be July 2nd?

No.

Okay. I can only handle one nervous breakdown a year or so. Anyway, well, thank you very much for that, Al. I appreciate it.

Morning, Al. Morning, Patricia. So this was bid out, correct?

Correct. Correct.

And then what was the original contingency amount that we had set aside?

I don't remember the exact amount. It was almost $200,000 that we had. We had $1.5 million in that account, and we bidded at $1.3 million.

Have we already blown through the $200,000? Yes. Okay.

Yes, and to let you know, there's two or three other items that we're looking at, but we didn't have enough in the contingency for those items. So right now, Civic Advance is pursuing funding for those items. They are aesthetic items, so they don't happen. We can work on that later. But hopefully, you'll come through with those.

On that picture you've got up there, is that new concrete that was put in there?

Yes.

Why is it not their responsibility to fix the grating if they have it where it's pulled?

Oh, no, no, no. This is existing concrete.

Okay.

I thought you meant the dock itself.

No, no, where it's pulling there.

Yeah, no, that's existing.

And then if you'll go to your electrical picture. How did we not know it was in the ground right there? I mean, looking at it, that's the only place it could be to me.

It wasn't on any of the information that we had when we designed this. The engineers didn't show it, didn't have it. I mean, everybody can see the meters there, but originally it was going this way right underneath the addition that was being put in. But nobody knew what direction those conduits were going as far as we knew they were going to back towards the swimming pool.

Do we get these line located beforehand to kind of find all those places so they know what's got to be moved?

I'm sorry, I didn't understand.

Line located?

Oh, yes, but they don't typically do stuff on private property.

And so we have no way to find out where, is that going to be?

Not unless we go out there and start digging, potholing.

Yeah. That was $64,000. We're not seeing that.

For something like that, it might have been a good idea to try to go in there and figure out where that was.

What can we do going forward to actually get these projects to go off without having to use all our contingency funds? What are we missing?

Like you're saying, suggesting more exploration, I guess, if you suspect something like that. But sometimes it's hard to know. This is an old facility. A lot of it was just kind of done without a lot of plans i mean the river stage itself had a lot of plans i've got those plans so we had a pretty good idea what was there but the lift station for instance we don't know where any of those lines were going we know where the lift stations are but and a rough idea of which way they're headed but on a project like this it's just kind of hard to pinpoint everything

With our software and technology now, is your predecessor in 20, 30 years going to be able to look at that and say, and know exactly where things are so this doesn't happen in the future?

Should be able to, yeah. Yeah.

So we've kind of got that figured out where, at least in the future, we know where everything is?

Yes. Assuming nobody goes in there and deletes my files.

Yeah. Let's try to do that. Perfect. Thank you.

Does that go into our GIS system to some degree?

I'm sorry?

Got you. Any additional questions?

With all of our new stuff that we're doing now with water lines throughout the city, any of our utilities, any of our things that we do, we actually do go out there. Our GIS team will go out there and they'll actually take points of all of that stuff as they're moving along. So we actually will now, moving forward, know exactly where our stuff, well, within a foot or so, we'll know where all of our utilities are.

And as a reminder, we are going to be doing a Phase 1B on this. We don't have the funding for it, but we're going to start. We've started designing and looking at it, and it involves a new lift station, new water lines, and the lift station is going to serve this and the swimming pool. So it's going to be an increase. But, yeah, it's going to take a lot of exploration to figure out where all those lines are.

Shane, what about other utilities that are not city-related? When we make a discovery like this, is that something that is noted in GIS?

Sometimes internal utilities, like on a project like this where it's our property, we will go ahead and map other utilities as well. A lot of times out in the field, like we're reworking a street, those type things, we don't always collect that data. but Atmos for gas and or AEP with electrical, they are collecting that data for their databases, and we do work with them very well in our coordination when we are working utilities in the streets and things like that.

If we had updated technology at some point, could we all... get that in our system so we would know where Atmos, AEP, other utilities, fiber.

We would have to work with them probably on some agreement because it's a lot of times, maybe not so much on AEP, but a lot of times gas and things like that. Those folks get fairly protective of locations and things like that for security purposes.

Yeah, and like on this one, the contractor did work with AEP to make sure that we're using the right size lines and everything, but it's on private property, so when you call dig tests or call you before you dig, typically they'll give you information up to the property line and won't go onto the property.

Seems like if we could figure out a system to... everybody maybe not be quite so protective that we could avoid things, to Patrick's point, avoid things like this down the road when we have other projects around the city. So I don't know what that would take.

Well, and Digtest or any of those companies like that, once it gets past the meter, they don't do those. And so this is something that we will, you know, since it's on our private property, it's one of those things that we need to map because they're Once it goes past the meter, they're our lines basically at that point. They no longer belong to the utility. So at that point in time, it's on us once it's past the meter.

Might be instructive for the future. Harry.

Since this is the middle of District 3, just in case I'm not around, by the time we get ready to do the ribbon cutting, I'd like to have an invitation to come back.

Of course. Thank you. I know where you live.

Any additional questions? With that, we'll look for a motion on item B. So moved. I have a first from Tommy Hebert, second from Patrick Keeley. Any public comment, Heather? With no public comment, we'll look for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Item B passes 7-0. We'll move to Item C, submission of the recall petition filed on July 15, 2026, pertaining to Councilmember Harold Harry Thomas, SMD3, and the City Clerk's certification that the petition is sufficient pursuant to Section 48 of the City Charter. Presentation made by City Clerk Heather Stastny.

Good morning, Council. So this is just to certify the petition that was filed in the City Clerk's Office on May 29th. The petitioners did return their signed petitions in a timely manner on July 15th. My office then went through to validate those signatures. There were 53 total signatures, which did make the petition sufficient. So that is what is presented to you today.

As this is a non-voting item, this is an action item. Is there anything further we need to do?

Not at this time. There's just one public comment.

Okay. Public comment?

Candy Poole.

Good morning, council, staff. Thank you for letting me speak and public comment on this particular item. I've been around a long time. I've served on many and numerous boards, committees, subcommittees of the San Angelo, for San Angelo and the city of San Angelo. I've been involved for over 25 years. I've sat here and watched this council in years past almost every month, and I just want to say that, in my opinion, a petition like this causes division, and that's a factor that San Angelo, we've never experienced, really. I would also like to say that I've never sat in this audience and watched a city council individually as a member or as a whole try to undermine the San Angelo Public's trust or keep their best interests at bay. I've always seen continued deliberation and and forethought and study on the items that come before you on an agenda. I'd also like to say in behalf of my dear friend Harry Thomas, as a councilman, I've watched him work for now over seven years and before that when he was on other committees and things. tirelessly, and he continues to do so. I just thank you, Harry, for all that you've all done for San Angelo. I would like to say that this type of petition is a citizen's right. I helped redo the charter, so I know the wording of those things, and I understand it. But I'm just not at all sure that all the citizens that sign petitions really understand exactly what they're signing, especially against someone that I believe to be a citizen dedicated to his role as a councilman. I would encourage anyone who signs a petition to read it thoroughly, study the facts, and get to know what it is that you're signing about or against before you put your John Hancock on a petition. I regret that we've had such a situation involved here in San Angelo and I look forward to a grand recovery for all of the citizens of trust and understanding with everybody.

Thank you Candy. Is there any additional public comment? So I will make a comment right here. To reiterate just what Candy said, I've served many years with Harry Thomas. Never once has anything not been for the betterment of the city. I have issues with how trust is valued. I think there have been comments made on this, and to follow up on Ms. Poole's comment, the clarity in how people solicit signatures on this. need to be very well defined. I think there are cases for slander and libel where people have made comments even recently up and down my street about a fellow councilman making claims and statements that are untrue. I think those should be documented. I have a question for legal. I think people set up on city property, which is fine, but isn't there a process to set up and solicit on city property that has to be followed? mayor i'm glad to give you a legal opinion on that i don't know that right now is the appropriate time well i think it deals with how his petition signatures were followed so maybe we could throw that if you want to if you feel better we'll throw that up on a follow-up sure and put that on there but with that we're going to go is there any additional comments on this item okay we'll go ahead and move to item d Consider a resolution calling a special election for November 3rd, 2026 for the purpose of determining whether Councilmember Harold Harry Thomas, single member District 3, should be recalled from office, providing for the holding of an election to be administered by the Tom Green County Election Office and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents. Heather?

So most things are in the caption there, but this is a resolution to call that recall election for single member District 3 Councilmember Harry Thomas. The election would be held on the uniform election day of November 3rd. This is in line with our interlocal agreement with the Tom Green County Elections Office. They will set forth the voting judges, voting locations, and so forth, they have the authority to make those changes as needed. Early voting is set to commence October 19th and end October 30th. So we will do our best to publish all of those early voting locations. But like I said, they are subject to change based on Tom Green County Elections Administration. and then just to authorize the city manager to negotiate the individual contract for this particular election.

Right, so to be clear, Harry stays in his seat until the results of this election November 3rd? that is correct all right this will be a single ballot item on the midterm on the elections in november correct this will be a single ballot item for the city this is a midterm election with you know and it will be in his district his district only will be able to vote yes all right any further questions or comments from council harry just a real quick question what is the ballot language going to say

Sure, I do have that for you here. Give me just a moment. My computer, you have it? Okay.

So the charter actually spells out exactly what the ballot has to say. And so it begins, the ballot at such recall election shall conform to the following requirements. With respect to each person whose removal is sought, the question shall be submitted, and then begin quotation, shall name of the person be removed from the office of naming the office in parentheses by recall. Immediately following each of such questions, there shall be printed on the ballots in separate lines in the order here set out the words for the recall of naming the person and against the recall of naming the person. Very good. Thank you.

Any additional comments? So, once again, this is a non-action item. We'll move on the item.

No, that is incorrect. We need a motion and a second and a vote to call that election.

So, I'll need a first. Does anybody want to make the motion?

I think the citizens expressed their right, and I think Harry, well, regardless of what I think will happen with Harry, but I think they did what they were asked to do, and so I make the motion.

Okay, we've got a first from Patrick Keeling.

Tom, I'll second it.

And I have a second from Tommy Hebert. Any public comment? No. With no public comment, we'll take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Item passes 6-1. Move to item E, presentation and discussion on the financial performance, claims experience, and funding projections of the health insurance plan for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. Presentation made by HUB International Senior Account Executive Julian Fontana, Human Resources Director Veronica Sanchez, and Finance Director Jonathan Flores. Veronica, you're on.

Maybe. Good morning, Mayor, Council, and staff. Veronica Sanchez, HR Director. A few meetings ago, there was a budget amendment item on the agenda that was pulled, was not discussed because we didn't, we wanted to provide you an update on the financial, a financial update on the health insurance. And so Hub International is here to do that. Both Julian and Corey are here to give that for you. There is a presentation. I'm not... It's actually printed. That was provided for you in case... Oh, there it goes. So they'll be going over this information for you. With that, I'll let Julian come up.

Thank you, Veronica. Julian Fontana, Hub International, Corey Hood. is also here with me. Mayor, Council, I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you all this morning. So the memorandum that was prepared for you all is to, one, provide some context around HUB's work with the city. We were contracted for the employee benefit consulting role in April of last year. And through our due diligence of the plan review, the contracts, and underlying funding, we had discovered that or uncovered that contractually, the city was funding about 71.8% of the plan costs. And what that means is once you develop what the contractual costs are, the underlying planned administrative costs, the stop loss reinsurance, there are financial liabilities that are protected in the stop loss reinsurance contract. which create an expected claims value and a maximum claims value. And so that's the sum of the self-funded plan, the health plan. And the premium equivalent rates are what are designed to fund that liability, the portion funded by the city and the portion funded by the employees. And the total of that... premium equivalents was only funding 71.8% of the plan costs back in 2025 for fiscal 2025. It had been a practice of the city to fund revenue to the health plan. You know, once those costs were incurred, that perhaps exceeded what the funding of the plan was for the city. But we had worked with staff and finance to kind of create some transparency and some understanding about the different inner workings of the health plan and how it needed to be managed going forward. So with the plan renewal for plan year 26, the year that we're in, plan design changes were made. to the benefits that the health plan benefits and employees were offered as well as premium equivalent contributions were increased by 36% over what was in place there was no change in funding to the city's budget of nine point one million dollars or whatever it was during the fiscal last year for fiscal 26 And so that's kind of where we're at today with regard to the request that's being made to make up funding for fiscal 26. Through the plan year for 2026, plan funding is set at $14,455,077. That includes the premium equivalent contributions of $12,655,670, health fund contributions, that's funding to a health reimbursement account for employees, and projected rebates of $1,542,907, with an expected plan cost of $14,024,395. Now, within the stop loss reinsurance contract, there is an expected cost and there is a maximum cost. The city's claims are running more toward the maximum plan cost this year. I think it says it's 135% of expected and 100% of the maximum claims attachment. So on average, the funding of the plan needed to be more aligned toward the maximum plan costs versus expected plan costs. And we'll do another review of that during the budget planning for fiscal 27 that is going on right now. Just for your information, the planning in and of itself is experiencing increased claims costs, but medical inflation, inflation on medical costs is an average of 9%, and pharmacy costs are between 12% and 13%. So in the budget projection that we've initially provided of 19%, a large portion of that is purely attributable to increased medical and pharmacy costs that are inherent with economic inflation that we're all seeing today. So the budget projection that we have initially provided is for fiscal 27 of 19%, but for the plan year, a 22% increase to premium equivalent rates. The fiscal year does not coincide with the plan year, the fiscal being October through September, but the plan year running from January through December. And so we've got a little bit of carryover cost at the end of the fiscal, the beginning of the fiscal, and the beginning of the plan year. So that's why those numbers are different. Any questions you all have, I'm happy to answer or entertain.

I'll kick it off. I mean, this is, as we get to here, is this a one-time? Is this structural? I mean, how are we looking at this expense, and how are we prepping for it for next year? I mean, this does come at the tail end of our budget. We've got to come in. So structured, or are we looking for a one-time? Is this something we're going to see again, or do we have a few specific claims that have driven this?

I think this is this.

Julian can speak to the projected cost. As far as what we're planning to fund in the budget in this fiscal year for 26, we are requesting one-time funding. But we will be building some portion of this into the fiscal year 27 budget. I think right now we've currently got it budgeted at the FY26 levels. We're going to need an additional increase there. So during the budget cycle, we'll be bringing that to you guys for consideration for funding.

How is that going to affect employee contributions in 27? Or are we getting a little in front of the eight ball here?

We haven't made that decision quite yet, but it's something we're considering.

Right. Well, it's something that a lot of people are watching. Well, that will be a primary concern. And I ask that just to let everybody know, we will be watching that specifically.

I'm sorry, you've got a lot of us up here because a lot of us are working on this itself. So to answer your first question, and Julian can speak more to this, but the plan itself is functioning as it should function. The issue is the underfunding that has occurred in the past. As far as what does this mean for premiums, that's still in the works, like Jonathan said. Once we know what the funding looks like, we do like to get a little bit more claims data in order for us to make those decisions. This is what I would consider a bad claims year, so we have had some significant claims. We do have stop loss for that, but it does still affect, obviously, the funding.

Thank you. With that, I'll open it up to the dice. Mr. Hebert?

Julian, how much help are we going to get from our specific stop loss coverage and our aggregate stop loss coverage?

There is a significant portion that at the end of the plan year is expected on the aggregate side of the equation. I think it's $600,000 potentially that we'll see.

Unfortunately, what appears to me to be just a perfect storm, probably the biggest piece being that we have not done our job probably as a council funding this appropriately, and now this is what we're faced with. plus then you have the medical trend of inflation, which is not helpful at all, and that is not going away ever. It is probably going to be in the 8 to 10, maybe 12 percent range on a go-forward basis. That is not going to go away. Then, unfortunately, this has just been a bad claims year. We have folks, unfortunately, that have had to call upon this and Glad that we have it, but again, this is unfortunately a perfect storm that now we've got to deal with.

I did want to make one comment just in terms of context. So Hub International does public entity benchmark that shows the average per capita cost for health insurance and how that's split between the employers and the employees. So the public entity benchmark for 2026 was a per capita cost of $14,955. The City of San Angelo's premium equivalent contributions were only $12,601. And so that's kind of what we're looking at, that 20-25% difference between what the plan's reflecting as the cost and what the true cost really is that wasn't being communicated appropriately. I think we have a good plan in place with the changes and benefits that were made in January are just now being kind of realized, and I think we'll get some more participation in the health fund plan in the new year. It's running at a much more favorable claims per capita cost than the PPO plan itself.

It looks like we need to hedge a little as we go into 27 on what we're going to have to fund, but once again, this affects every staff employee and it affects retirees and it's something that everyone will be watching today with that. Any additional questions? Any additional questions? Patrick or Mary? Mary, you were up.

Last year we had this too. It was a $4 million deficit. I'm not trying to put you on the spot. Do we know what it was the year before that? Because if I'm reading this correctly, we're at least a million dollars better than we were last year. I know we had to make up some difference, but when's this going to... What's the stop loss on this loss that we incur, it seems, every year?

Who and we haven't funded the health fund appropriately in the last couple years we've been relying on the fund balance in that 3, 10 fund that to help cover those costs. That's depleted now so there's no fun balance in the health fund to cover those costs which is why we bought that amendment last year for the funds to cover a little bit more bring this amendment today and we'll talk about in the future covering this. on the front half of the budget rather than bringing this to you guys as a budget amendment halfway through the year.

That timing does help. It makes it a little more palatable. I know a lot went into this and it's just one of the unfortunate things of Our city government, but we do have to take care of our employees. I mean, without them, we don't have a city. To me, it's our citizens and our employees. And it's just, I hate to say this, but it is what it is. But I do appreciate your diligence and your attention to this because this is a very big deal, and we cannot fail our citizens and our employees. Thank you.

Good morning, Julian. On the expected claims, are you all the ones that set that number? Do you just look at past claims and kind of come up with an expected number? Do you use our current staff to kind of use the specific actuary at the table based on the age of our staff? How do you come up with the expected claims?

So when the stop loss of reinsurance is purchased, It has a maximum claims attachment factor, which is 125% of the expected. So through the math, the derived value of the expected claims is a factor of the maximum claims attachment. So and then within our budget projection, our own benefit analysts make a projection of the future claims, which is what we're staying here. We're not procuring stop loss at this time. That'll be done later in the year. But our budget projection includes inflationary trends. indexes to cover the cost of plan year 27 from January of 27 through December of 27. So again, there are additive factors for that time period and these factors based on medical inflation and pharmacy inflation that go into creating that number. But the expected and the maximum are derived from the stop loss reinsurance contract that's purchased.

But where does the initial claims amount come from?

It comes from the proposals and the carriers that are bidding on the stop loss, and we validate it with our benefit analyst determination of what that factor should be.

So they basically look at our city and say, here's where we think your claims would be.

Yes, and where we're willing to reinsure you at. Gotcha.

Thank you.

Right.

Harry, you got a question?

More of a comment. We talked about the last two or three years during budgets that we come up shortfall, but there was a period of time and Tommy can attest to this, where this particular city funded that, and at the end of the year, there was a positive fund balance. Now, we've gotten away from that a little bit, but part of it has to do with the condition of this whole country and the cost of pharmaceuticals and medical and all of those things that And that's why you guys are here today to get ahead of this particular game. There was a period of time when this group up here did what they needed to do and funded that. And at the end of the year, we had a positive fund plan. So I want people to understand this group has traditionally done what they needed to do. The cost of this stuff just got away from us. So thank you.

This may be a Jonathan Veronica or it may be the HUB folks too. I don't know who the question is for. What does this teach us that we need to do either beginning right now or that we should have begun or that we begin in the future to avoid another one of these situations for future councils?

I think we all have a little bit to add to that based on our perspective roles within the city or as a consultant. I would say we need to work on our wellness program in order to be able to control some of those costs. Jonathan would probably tell you and I would echo that we need to fund this appropriately so that we can start creating that fund balance and rely on that when we do have bad claims years. And Hub, I won't speak for you.

I think, you know, what Veronica said, it's really just proactive planning. And, you know, prior to Hub coming on board, I don't know what the discussion or dialogue with finance and the council was in regard to, you know, what the real cost is and how the funding was being managed. But we're having these conversations today to make sure that there's, you know, clear communication.

Wait. You folks are the subject matter experts. We look to you for your advice, and then we have to weigh that. So I would say to our folks, As painful as it may be, when you come to us with the funding levels, let's make sure they're adequate on a go-forward basis so that next year's council hopefully doesn't have to deal with something like this. And then whatever... Plan design changes may need to be implemented, whatever it may be, so that we can get the fund back on solid financial footing. Thank y'all for, I know y'all probably took over a tough situation, Julian, from where we were, so thank you for your candor and your work to show us where we are.

So as we look at changing our reserves, And we understand, and you answered my question earlier in the statement, that you all take in and factor the pharmaceutical costs. And I mean, it's not any new news. They're looking at taxing pharmaceuticals and generics 50% on incoming, which affects probably 70% of what we would get dispensed to our staff. We're looking at, you know, it's a $1.2 million ask as far as put more reserve fund in there to help us to go with that. Is that comparable with what other cities are doing? You talked about our per capita being at 12,000 versus 14,000. Can you give us a quick, Julian, I asked you this last time you presented, a quick benchmark of maybe where we sit against our comparable cities? I know it's a hard ask, but are we following the right track? Are we missing something? Are there questions we're not asking?

Well, again, I can't speak to the gap before we started that this kind of, the cliff kind of, y'all went off the cliff. But our practice is to fund the plan appropriately through council and finance and to recommend that the fund balance the reserve beyond what the funding is creating as 25% to 35% of annual claims. So if you had that fund balance today, you would have between $3 and $4 million in a reserve that when you have these years where you're running to maximum plan costs, you're able to pull some of that money to offset the next year's revenue needed. So it's just guidance and planning and communication.

And we understand, and y'all are in a very hard position. One of the most extreme things, health care becomes probably one of the most significant costs for staff we have, and that's something there's a lot of eyes, a lot of optics on it, a lot of scope. So with that, number one, we thank you very much for what you've done for us. We understand you're in our court. We look for you to help us as much as we can. If you see ways for us to get back within the guidelines and the guardrails and keep from getting outside of them, we appreciate that very much. All right, Jonathan, how are we going to wrap up item eight?

I think it's just a presentation discussion item, so we can move on to the next item, which will have the action.

All right. With that, thank you very much. We'll go to item F, first reading and public hearing of an ordinance amending the budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2025 and ending September 30, 2026 for health insurance claims and premiums. Jonathan, you're on.

So this is the budget amendment for fiscal year 26. These are the numbers Julian was talking about as well as some numbers for the over 65 portion of the plan. We're looking at contributing out of the operating funds about $4.2 million. Just for additional background, the general fund portion of that is about $3.2 million. And then water and wastewater make about another half a million of that $4.2 million. And then on the operating funds contribution for the over 65, as a total, that's a smaller increase of $98,000 from the funds. And then we're budgeting appropriately in the health insurance fund for those as well so that we can continue to make those payments, those premium payments. Are there any questions?

Just how we have to fund it. I mean, does anybody on the dais have questions?

Tell us one more time where you're getting the money.

So the $4.2 million is sourced from all the operating funds. That includes general fund, water, wastewater, stormwater, anything that has some personnel costs in it. $3.2 million of that's coming from the general fund and about half a million is coming from water and wastewater combined.

Does that put any of our fund balances less than 90 days?

No, they're... Maybe one or two, maybe with the sports complex, some of those smaller funds.

That was minimal, but as long as we're maintaining at least 90 days.

Yes, sir.

I don't feel at risk.

OK. Any additional questions from council?

With none, I'll look for a motion.

I got a first from Karen. Second. Second from Tommy Hebert. Any public comment, Heather? With no public comment, we'll take a vote. All those in favor of item F say aye. Aye. Any opposed? None opposed. Item F passes 7-0. At 10-11, we'll move into closed session. Executive session under the provision of government code Title V, open government ethics. Subtile A, open government chapter 551, open meeting. Subchapter D, exceptions to requirement that meetings be open under the following sections. Item A, section 551-071. Consultation with attorney regarding county withdrawal from the tax increment reinvestment zone, item B, section 551-071. Consultation with attorney regarding Texas local government code chapter 380 and Texas tax code chapter 312, item C, section 551-074. Personal matters to deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of the city manager. With that, we'll move into closed session at 10-12. That was so, anyway. All right, we're going to go ahead and bring the meeting back to order. What time have we got? 1149. Coming out of closed session, we're going to do follow-up and administrative issues. We're going to consider items discussed in executive session if needed. I don't believe we have anything there. Any announcements or considerations for future agenda items? I'll start with you, Mary, if you've got anything for future items. Karen? Harry? Patrick? I just did a shake here. I heard a move. I was trying not to give it away that I missed it. My apologies. Tommy?

No, sir.

All right, Joe, I skipped you. Are you good, Joe? Okay, I've got one. With the demand on the infrastructure that appears to be coming to the north side of town, I'd like to look and investigate the potential of a second tier zone, a tier zone that would include the tax base of the industrial park and the avenue that it runs across will have to be very specific on how we define it but i would like for that to include parts of north bell street i want to make sure that also includes the old ballinger highway this is for critical infrastructure i look forward to come across the city limit side of 2105 carry over to north chadburn from 29th street north and also north bright It'll be a map that will take some time to look and define, but we also need to base that on incremental revenue, not off existing. So I want that to only come off any incremental taxes that come in so it doesn't burden anybody any further. That's the only thing I have for now. Any other additional items? If not, I'll take a motion to close.

Move we adjourn.

Could I get a second? We've got a first from Tom and a second from Harry. All in favor say aye. Aye. Meeting closed. We will go have a grab lunch for a working lunch and come back to the dais and we'll work through our budget. Hopefully we'll be starting within the next 10 minutes. I think as Patrick says. So we have a quorum, let's roll. We're going to head and open the City Council Budget Workshop. Today is August 4th, 2026. Notice is hereby given a regular meeting of the City Council of the City of San Angelo to be held August 4th, 2026 at 8.35 a.m. We're a little late for that. At the McNeese Convention Center, South Meeting Room 501, Rio Concert Drive, San Angelo, Texas. We're going to call this meeting in order. We'll go to a workshop itinerary. A, discussing of matters regarding the fiscal year of 2026 and 2027. budget preparation including but not limited to one enterprise funds revenue and expenditures and number two other items needing council direction presentation by made by finance director jonathan flores jonathan you're up

Good morning, Mayor, Council. Like you said, we are going over the enterprise funds today. That is primarily made up of the utility funds. We're going to go over the airport. We'll go over COCDC as well as hot funds and funds supported by the hot funds programs. So to start off, just an example of what we'll be going over today. we'll start with the water fund sales are currently being budgeted at 37 000 an increase of 37 000 that's primarily due to consumption trends we've seen an increase over the last uh bit or so so uh we're projecting that increase of 37 000 um in the other revenue line we're projecting an increase of 460 000 uh that's primarily due to interest of 455 000 On the expenditure side for the Water Fund, we're seeing an increase to personnel. That increase is primarily due to overtime and the benefits associated to that overtime. On the operations and maintenance line, we've got an increase of $700,000 for contract services. That's made up of $260,000 of an increase for our data pros contract. That is a contract that we have for paper billing. So they send out our paper bills to citizens every single month. That's increasing $260,000. The water fund is now paying for that. It was previously in the general fund. We're also seeing an increase for software maintenance of $300,000. In that $300,000 increase, Neptune is increasing $120,000. And then we are purchasing new engineering software at $120,000 as well. And the capital line, we're seeing a decrease there on the capital line, and that's really to offset the increases that we're seeing in the operations and maintenance. Revenue isn't increasing enough to cover the inflation that we're seeing on the O&M, so we're having to decrease the amount that we contribute to capital. This will just impact the amount of projects that we can fund pay-go-wise, as well as at the end of the year, the amount that we can add to fund balance for future capital projects as well. The other expenditures line there is primarily made up of indirect costs and a transfer out for debt service as well. The next slide we have for you is just considerations. We kind of wanted to go over the water sales again. Slight increase due to consumption trends. We did want to let you know that we are currently in the middle of a rate study that is being conducted for the water fees, sewer fees, as well as some storm water fees as well. This will go to helping us cover those future capital needs as well as the increases to O&M. As we saw on the slide before, we're having to decrease our capital, and we've got some big projects coming up. Currently in our CIP, we have about $462 million worth of projects in our CIP that need to be funded. And then on top of the capital needs, we spoke about this morning, health benefits are increasing for 27. And then we would like to implement some version of the comp and class study. So both those three items there at the bottom aren't addressed in this budget quite yet. But we wanted to make you aware of these. The next fund we're going to go over is the Water Reclamation Fund. The Water Reclamation Fund is increasing on our fee, or not increasing the fees, we're seeing an increase on consumption, which is increasing the total amount of revenue of $425,000. On the other line there, that is primarily due to interest, that full $245,000 there. On the expenditure side, there's a slight increase to personnel. This is due to a new position, wastewater operator position that we'll have at the wastewater plant. And then operations and maintenance is increasing. 230,000, 165,000 of that is due to vehicle maintenance. The remainder is made up of indirect cost and IT. We are able to contribute a little bit to capital on this fund, primarily due to that increase in consumption. And so that'll go to funding pay growth projects right at the end of the year following the fund balance that we could then pull for future capital projects as well. Other expenses is increasing slightly for debt service payment as well as billing payments. Considerations for this fund looks very similar to the water fund. We have a slight increase in revenue due to consumption trends. This is also part of the rate study that's currently being conducted, and we'd like to, with that rate study, hopefully fund future capital needs as well as health benefit increases and a comp and class study as well. The stormwater fund is seeing a slight increase for consumption again, $67,000 there. On the other line, we aren't seeing the same growth in interest in this fund that we saw in the other two funds. And that's due to the fact that we have been using the fund balance in the stormwater fund. So there's not as much in this fund to continue earning that interest. So we're seeing a slight decrease in our projections for FY27. on the personnel side on the expenditure side personnel is decreasing 41 000 that's primarily due to changes restructurings in the storm water fund operations and maintenance is increasing 135 000 and that is primarily due to vehicle maintenance of 100,000 and systems maintenance of 37,000. Systems maintenance is where we use, that's the account we use to purchase materials like pipes, lumber, storm drains, grates, and then there's slight increases to IT as well in the operations and maintenance line. The capital line is decreasing next year, $44,000. This line is offsetting the increases to operations and maintenance. Again, our revenues aren't increasing enough to cover our operations and maintenance increases, so we're having to pull from the capital lines in order to balance the funds. This one in particular is really hurting on the capital side. We're not able to fund PAYGO projects at the level that we need to. In the past, this capital account was funded at $400,000, or at least there was a line in there for $400,000 for PAYGO projects, but we've had to reduce that over time to cover the operations and maintenance lines. Other expenses is made up of transfers out for indirect costs as well as billing charges. And then for the considerations for the stormwater fund, we'd like to request the ability to increase stormwater rates by 5%. So we'd appreciate some direction on that when it comes to the stormwater rates. This would help us with that operations and maintenance increase. That 5% would add an additional $159,000 to the budget. Not only would it cover the operations and maintenance, but it would help us cover health benefits, implementation of a comp and class study, and help offset that decrease in the capital budget lines. Just for example, residential customers at most will only see a 26 cent increase on their monthly water bill. Can you say that again? the residential customers at most at the highest tier will only receive a 26 cent increase on their monthly water bill and again that brings us to this next slide we wanted to give you a picture of what that would look like implementation wise so of course fees would increase to a total of 226 000 that would allow us to cover on the personnel line health benefit increases as well as a three-year implementation, and a 2% COLA for personnel for comp and class study. Operations and maintenance would be at that $135,000, and we would be able to leave capital relatively flat, at least for this budget year. This fund is included in the rate studies, so we'd like to come back with an additional, whatever that rate study comes back of what's needed for capital. We have some capital needs in this fund as well. So we'll bring that when we bring water and sewer rates.

Jonathan, do you have a target on your capital balance? Is it back to 400, 450?

I think part of that rate study, we take our capital projects and we'll build that number in. It's going to need to increase. 400 was good three, four years ago. It's probably going to need to be a little bit more. But we'll build those projections into that rate study.

Jonathan, when's the last time stormwater had a rate increase? I believe it was 2020, 2023. Okay.

But tell me, before that, it was 2010 before I'd seen a rate increase. So in 2023, we did a 4% across the board rate increase just to kind of keep the fund afloat in lieu of the rate study that we're working on.

Like I said at the end of the meeting, we are requesting some direction on this fee, so we'll need input on this at the end of the meeting. Solid waste fund, these user fees are increasing contractually on both the residential and the commercial side. On the other line, that is primarily made up of interest again, $19,000 increases to interest. The rest is an increase to leases. On the personnel side, we had a position move out of the solid waste fund, so we're seeing that decrease of $66,000 on the personnel line. Operations and maintenance is staying flat in this fund, and then we're contributing the majority of the increase in revenue to the capital line. We'll use that for future permitting of the closure of the landfill. Other expenses has a slight increase for indirect cost and billing charges as well. The next fund we'd like to go over is the airport fund. The airport fund is currently projecting a decrease in revenue of $102,000. The primary decrease to this fund is related to Hertz no longer operating out at the airport. On the other revenue line, that is $33,000. That's primarily made up of interest as well. The personnel line is increasing $28,000 for benefits primarily, group insurance, as well as a slight increase to retiree insurance. And then on the operations and maintenance line, there's several line items here. They have a $25,000 increase in direct cost, a $24,000 increase to contract services. That's where we pay our trash services, intertel, operations and maintenance of the escalator. And then we're also seeing an increase to insurance liability as well as slight increases to vehicle maintenance and natural gas. The capital line in this fund is taking a hit, $195,000, and that's to cover the loss in revenue that we're seeing in leases, as well as the increase in operations and maintenance. That's primarily coming out of the vehicles account, so the ability to cover vehicles going forward is decreasing $183,000, and that leaves $84,000 in that account for vehicle replacement.

Jonathan, real quick on that. With the loss of hearts, do we expect to get any more revenue from the other, from Enterprise or anybody, or is it?

Justin's coming in. Yeah. Add some context to that.

So just to clarify, we did not lose Hertz. What we lost was Dollar and Thrifty. They were two brands that operate under Hertz, and they were not performing. And those two companies pay a $2,500 per month concession fee. The revenue that they were generating was surpassed by the concession fee, so it made sense just to pull those two brands. So we lost $5,000 a month just by those two rental car companies pulling the concession fee. So Hertz is still operating, and they're still performing quite well. We still have Avis and Hertz operating.

Basically, is our revenue only coming from them being on-site, not per actual rental? Does that make sense?

It's per rental. We get 10% of the revenue that they generate at the airport.

So if somebody rents a car at the airport, we get 10% of that revenue. Do we think that their portion will go up any? Like, I realize we don't have a guarantee, but do we think they'll be renting more vehicles now because Dollar and Thrifty are gone?

They're going to continue supporting the Hertz brand. And as long as Hertz continues to support, continues to perform strong, then I think Hertz will continue operating at the airports. And it's also tied to our passengers as well. The more people we have, the more rental cars we have. So when we have strong passenger employments and de-employments, we have strong rental car and concessions within the terminal.

That's what I was going to ask. So have we lost employments and de-employments? Are our numbers down overall? Is that why we think?

We had a strong year last year. We did have a strong year, 58,000 employments, which was a good year for us. So... We're holding that trend. We might be a little below it right now. We are seeing our rental cars down. If you look at our trend data, our rental cars are down across Avis and Hertz. So it's down over prior years. And that could just be utilizing other services, utilizing Ubers and Lyfts and other taxi operators rather than rent a car, whatever is more affordable right now.

Perfect. Thank you.

If there aren't any other questions on the Airport Fund, we'll move on to the next fund, which is CoCDC Economic Development. CoCDC is funded by half-cent sales tax. Twenty-five percent of that half-cent or 28 percent of that half-cent sales tax goes to the Economic Development Fund. And we are planning on budgeting for an increase in sales tax of about 2.87%. We believe that number is a little conservative right now. We're waiting on August payments to come in before we set that number. So we might have a little bit room up or down depending on how Sales tax comes in in August. Right now we're budgeting for an increase of $102,000. Interest on investments is increasing $26,000. And on the expenditure side, operations and maintenance is increasing for increased grounds maintenance at the industrial park. Partner affiliations is increasing 14,000, and this is actually for chamber events. This was previously budgeted in the operations maintenance line, and we're just reclassing it to partner affiliations. So it's not a genuine increase, but it's showing up as an increase in that partner affiliations line. CoCDC staff is increasing $20,000 for their support. City services is the indirect cost portion that's paid to city for services provided to the development corporation that's decreasing slightly in this economic development fund. And then advertising is increasing $12,000 for the marketing agreement with Media Advantage. And then the remaining amount of revenue is falling to future projects. That full $2.4 million is what the development corporation and their board can use for business incentives allowed by the type B sales tax. On the ballot side, so this is the 72% of that half cent sales tax. We're seeing sales tax at the same increase. This is going to bring in an additional $263,000 into the fund. Interest on investments of $32,000. And then on the expenditure side, city services, this is the indirect cost portion on the ballot side, is increasing to $26,000. And then a slight increase to debt service payments for ballot projects. And then the remaining amount of the revenue is falling to future projects that can be used for future water supply projects. And that's restricted by the ballot that the voters voted approved. Next up is hotel occupancy tax. Right now we are projecting revenue flat. We're seeing revenue at budget in the current fiscal year. We don't see a need to increase that budget for next fiscal year at this point in time, so that budget is staying flat. There is a slight increase in interest income of about $9000. On the expenditure side, the destination marketing organization is allocated $950,000. We're the third year of that contract with them. The next three lines are contributions to different city funds, Fort Concho, civic events, the sports complex. $90,000 for Fort Concho, $1.1 million for civic events, and $200,000 for the sports complex, and those go towards maintaining those facilities. Wayfinding improvements is decreasing $25,000. We had set aside that money for wayfinding for the Water Lily Garden, and we've accomplished that goal, and so we don't see a need to budget that going forward. And then we have $444,000 budgeted for ARCH programs. These are The programs that bring in hotel stays for different events.

Can you itemize what's in that category, please?

So that's made up of $50,000 for the Performing Arts Council, $50,000 for the Museum of Fine Arts, $50,000 for Art and Common Places. $25,000 for the Railway Museum, $100,000 for downtown San Angelo, $100,000 for Concho Christmas, and then we have some smaller ones, $25,000 for the Symphony, $16,100 for the Ballet, $15,000 for the Angelo Civic Theater, $17,000 for the Broadway Academy. And then we have two events that we fund for the Hispanic Heritage Museum at $2,500 and the Mini Miss Wool Pageant at $1,900. So that's what makes up a majority of that $444,000. We are currently in the application process for those organizations. So we've sent out applications for those organizations for funding for this year. Those applications are due August the 21st. Once we get those applications, we'll go through and vet them. Those applications are meant to have those organizations show to us their attendance, how many hotel stays they're actually intending to bring into the city, as well as why hot funds are needed for their program. and how it enhances the hot fund revenue overall. And so we'll get those applications on the 21st, and then we'll provide those to you guys the next week in your Friday packet. And then we tentatively have scheduled on September 1st an item on the regular agenda to go over the allocations of those funds for the next fiscal year.

I made a request to get some information from the chamber to help quantify the traffic. Jeremy, could you come up and tell a little bit how Datify would actually and how we evaluate some of these items.

Good afternoon, Jeremy Bartz, Vice President, Destination Marketing, with the Chamber. We utilize a software called Datify. Most of you have heard of. I mean, it's not a secret. Most of you have seen our presentations on this. Essentially what it does is it utilizes these things. It uses a location device, location service, to tell us where our visitors are coming from. ESSENTIALLY HOW LONG THEY SPEND IN TOWN GIVES US A SPENDING BREAKDOWN ESSENTIALLY OF WHAT THEY'VE SPENT WHILE THEY'RE IN TOWN AS WELL AS WHETHER OR NOT THEY MIGHT STAY IN HOTELS. SO WE SET A RADIUS WITHIN THIS SOFTWARE AT 75 MILES. NOW, AGAIN, AS WE'VE TALKED IN THE PAST, I KNOW THAT IF PEOPLE DRIVING FROM SONORA OR ABELINE ARE COMING TO SAN ANGELO, THEY MAY OR MAY NOT STAY IN HOTELS. BUT IF THEY'RE COMING IN FOR A SPORTS TOURNAMENT, THE IDEA IS They would have a 5 o'clock game on Friday, but an 8 o'clock game on Saturday morning. We've taken my kids up to Abilene for sports tournaments in the past, and we will stay in a hotel because you've got that early morning game. So the idea is setting that 75 miles just to understand we're not pulling any local traffic into these analysis at all. We want to maintain as many people outside that 75 just so that we know. But to give you a little bit of context, 2025 museum of fine arts essentially had 21 000 visitors from outside that 75 mile radius who had an average length of stay at about a 1.4 day now again we get into the semantics of 1.4 two days a day and a half we don't need to go through all that downtown san angelo same similar situation we use all points of interest in downtown san angelo essentially 149,000 visitors who came through, spent time on average about two days within downtown San Angelo, okay? But, again, you're talking essentially from 6th Street at the Loop back down past SAMHFA. So we're, I mean, it's a broad range of places that they can go. Lily Garden, same thing. We can do it for each individual organization that is on this list, as well as those that Jonathan mentioned for Saba, for Angelo Civic Theater. Just to kind of give you some breakdown there, Angelo Civic, I did do that. An average of 1.3 days with 6,000 visitors who came into the Civic Theater in 2025. In 2026, we obviously will only have through July. This is a long process. It's not something that we just get immediate results. But these are numbers that we have for 2026. And they mirror very closely to 2025. We're not seeing a huge increase through the first half of the year at this point. But to give you some context, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, roughly 6,700 visitors, average stay, again, 1.4 days. Downtown, average stay of two days, 98,000 visitors coming in from outside of 75 miles. So, again, I think that the context of this is that we're tracking the best we can to see where these people are coming from. where they're spending their time. It's not big brotherish enough that we can say they stayed at the, can I say hotel names in this discussion? A specific hotel. How about that? They didn't stay at this specific hotel and eat at this specific restaurant. I can't tell you that when Tom walked into town, he went here, here, here, and here. But what I can tell you is that these folks are coming in from outside of those those radius that we set up. They are staying in town. They are spending money. We can't guarantee that they're staying in hotels, but we can also tell you that they are here for more than one day. They're not stopping through, grabbing gas and hitting the road again. They are actually spending some time here. So that's sales tax dollars. That's hot tax dollars. It's kind of a combination of everything.

A concurrent visit where they visit two or three of these. How does that track?

It's very difficult because again, it's kind of one of those things. I can't see specifically that they stayed at this particular hotel, ate at a particular restaurant downtown, but also visited SAMFA. I can't tell you that that same person did those three things, but what I can do is just get an understanding of, okay, there were a lot of people here for this particular weekend, and at that particular time, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts had a brand-new art show unveiled, and we saw people that came in, spent two to three nights in hotels. They stayed downtown. They spent a lot of money downtown, but they also attended SAMHFA. That's essentially what we can do. It's correlated data.

Well, every year when we get to this, there's always a, I would say a struggle to figure out how to allocate these funds. Yes. So we're trying to do this the most fair and appropriate way based on headcount and traffic. Yes. And Datify helps us solve a lot of these Questions?

Absolutely. And I'm willing to do this for any of the organizations that are mentioned here. We do this free of charge. And this is kind of my job. So it's part of that job. And I'm happy to do that. So when any of these organizations have reached out to me in the past or even just in the last couple of weeks, I'm happy to do that. I'll give them everything that I can. Obviously, again, it's all representative sample. There are people out there. I was in the AT&T store just a few days ago. I saw that they still have flip phones. I would buy one. I would take one right now. But they still sell flip phones. Those don't have location services on them. So it's primarily smartphone data that we're analyzing. We also utilize that software for targeted marketing, which helps us out because we are going after them where they live. We're not just hitting them with a blind ad. We're going where they are. We're utilizing that software for that purpose to draw those people to San Angelo and for all of these organizations, not just for ourselves.

Thank you, Jeremy. Does anybody have any questions for Jeremy? Thank you, sir.

Absolutely.

Jonathan.

The last piece on the hotel occupancy tax fund is operations and maintenance. We're having an increase of $25,000. This is going to go to fund hotel audits as well as short-term rental software. That'll help us collect from those as well as keep them in compliance as well. The next couple funds are all hotel tax supported funds. Civic Events is the first one up. Again, they receive $1.1 and almost $1.2 million in hotel occupancy tax funding. The big change in their revenues here is in the other line. This is related to concessions of about $10,000 out at the Coliseum. We're planning on renovations. eating into our ability to collect those concessions. We're not going to have as many events out there. We're seeing a slight decrease in personnel of $2,000, and then in the operations and maintenance line, the majority of that decrease in operations and maintenance is to electricity. Again, we're planning on seeing less events out at the Coliseum or Renovation State Place, so we won't need to pay as much in utilities. The next fund is the Texas Bank Sports Complex Fund. Program fees are increasing to $150,000. That's an increase of $44,000, almost $45,000. That increase in program fees allows the general fund transfer in to decrease a little bit. As the fund becomes more self-sufficient, it doesn't need as much of a transfer in from the general fund to help with operations, so that's decreasing $35,000. The other line is interest and increase on interest earnings. On the expenditure side, personnel's increasing $10,000 for the maintenance out at the sports complex field, and then operations and maintenance is increasing $13,000, primarily for operations and maintenance of the turf and the grass and the fields out there. The Fort Concho Fund, we are seeing an increase in Fort Concho rent of 16,000. This is rent that the state office building plays to the fort. And then in the other line as well, that increase of 60,000, $51,000 of that is made up by a transfer from the state office building, again, to cover or help with the fort's operations and maintenance. On the expenditure side, we're seeing an increase on the personnel line. This is for the addition of a part-time assistant archivist position. So the increase in salary and benefits is an increase of $27,000. Operations and maintenance is increasing $28,000, and that's due to an increase in insurance liability of about $15,000. And then we are able to contribute a little bit to this capital line of $21,000 for any projects that they need out at the port. The state office building is increasing their rents as well, $53,000 in the next year. This is... This is rent received by the state office building from the state. The state rents out some offices there, and so that's a contractual increase. The other line is an increase to interest. Personnel is a slight increase. Operations and maintenance is also increasing slightly. The big change on the expenditure side is that transfer out to help support the fort at $51,000.00. The Fairmount Cemetery Fund, next year we are planning a decrease in charges for services. Last year we increased the price of the burial plots out there up to $4,000. We think that kind of priced us out of the market, so we're not seeing the same volumes sold. We're going to recommend a decrease to that feedback bound to the $3,500, which is what it was at previously. We think that will help us maintain competitiveness in the market. But as a function of that, we're going to see a slight decrease in that charges for services line.

So are we going to do a study to compare where we sit pricing versus Others?

Yes, sir. That's part of what we do annually is a fee review. And so Jeremy will go out and get some market rates for different cemeteries. And so we believe that $35,000 is going to get us in that market range.

Jonathan, real quick on that. What is our plan for long-term maintenance of it, though? If we drop our rates and then don't have a fund balance, eventually we'll run out of space or even any lots to sell.

So the Fairmount Cemetery has a trust fund. $500 of every burial plot sold goes to that trust fund that then earns interest to help with the maintenance of the Fairmount Cemetery once all the plots are sold. Also at that time, we'll have less operations. We'll be doing less funerals at that point, less services. So we will see a decrease in our operations and maintenance. It should level out a little bit. I think we're going to get to the point where we might have to subsidize it a little bit, but these numbers will change significantly when we get to that point.

Is the $500 that's going to that, will that remain the same even if we lower our rates?

Yes, sir. Yeah, that will stay in effect.

Thank you.

A couple of notes. Because the public is listening to this, the space sails, we bumped them up last year to $3,000, where Christian bumped down to $2,500. He had said $4,000 to $3,000. THE SPACES AREN'T THAT HIGH, AND WE'RE REQUESTING TO BUMP THEM DOWN FOR NEXT YEAR, BECAUSE WE DID SEE A TREND GOING DOWNWARD IN OUR SALES. THE OTHER THING IS THAT WE HAVE THAT ONE PROJECT, WE PURCHASED THE KELLYMORE PAINT BUILDING, AND WE'RE FINISHING THE RENOVATION design work on that once that that's done we'll have a better idea what it's going to take to renovate that we'll come back to council asking for some funds to renovate that once we do that that'll free up the existing office building which we could sell to help pay off part of what we've used to do these projects purchase the building and renovate it and then also because that the new renovated building would have the offices and the maintenance function will vacate the maintenance building free up that space and because a while ago we were looking using the property we acquired from asu to build a new office that will also free up that space and with those two spaces combined we can increase Space is about 1,400, which will help extend the life of the cemetery with space cells and services. That's looking long term.

Thank you. Good information.

The next slide we have for you all is just an overall slide. This slide's titled General Fund Considerations, but all these funds that we went over today are seeing increases similar to these that we're seeing in the general fund. The first one we spoke about this morning is we're going to expect to see a projected increase to health benefits. This is the amount that we need to cover next year's claims as well as administration of the plan. And then we are on the tail end of the class and comp study. We're looking at what a three year implementation of that study would look like. Just for context on both those numbers for health insurance At the low end, we're expecting an additional increase in the general fund of $1.7 million for health benefits for the class and comp study. And again, that's the three year implementation with a 2% COLA would be a $2.4 million increase that we need to fund. And then specifically for the general fund, the fire pension We're looking at what an increase would need to be for that pension fund. Right now that's coming in at about 1.5%, which means that we'll have to increase total contribution dollar amount by $250,000 a year. And that 1.5% would be staggered over the next five, six years to get us to where the fire pension is fully funded appropriately. And then we have contractual increases. These contractual increases are made up of increases for software we currently own. They also include increases for contracts like the contract that we have with the appraisal district. So those contractual increases equate up to $489,000. And then we've got department target increase requests. These are requests from departments. Majority of these requests help departments maintain their current level of service. These requests total up to $887,000. And so we just kind of want to put these in front of you guys as we go through the rest of the presentation as well as considerations as we move forward through the budget process and in advance of the next general fund workshop as well.

Jonathan, as we look at that, we get down to the target increase request. everybody always throws something out and so what we did with budgeting our sales tax at a more aggressive level we avoid that end of the year everybody goes for a grab as you come to this target increase request i would like for you to prioritize those as they come forward and maybe assign them a number on importance and significance of one through five and what that is for that department success to get the next one year two years or three years all right because sometimes we have these things that we can manage to get by sometimes we take an advantage of something to like our fire truck to do it all at once but i would like to at least be able to look at these and go that one's a heavy priority this one is not And I don't mean it bad, but when everybody comes up to ask, including myself, oh, my priority is better than anybody else's, but I think we need an assessment, and I would look to the two ACMs and Phillip to manage the priority ranking of what those are. Yes, sir. Just an FYI.

Yes, sir. Yeah, and we go through those requests with city management as well, but we'll go down and prioritize those a little bit more.

It would just help us be able to look at those and understand where that fits into the puzzle. Yes, sir.

And that is my last slide for the day. I'm going to turn the presentation over to Patrick and he's going to go over these land use categories.

Jonathan, was that your first maiden voyage? That was finance.

Yes, sir. My first budget workshop under the bill. Thank you very much. Yes, sir.

Now let's go into what would be the four hour conversation with Patrick.

Four hour or four minute. It depends on you guys.

I'm with you. I'm with you. No, this is, this, I need you to talk a little bit about why and then go into this.

So you just saw some of the priorities that Jonathan.

A little closer to the mic.

Excuse me. Some of the priorities that you just saw Jonathan go over were obligations and and stresses on the general fund itself. In addition to that, we have some general fund stresses within our operational divisions, most namely from our street and bridge division and our traffic operations division. Those two divisions are solely funded out of the street and bridge or out of the general fund, as well as their equipment replacement and their other activities like seal coating and stuff like that. That is all coming out of the general fund right now. So you see that we have a burden on the general fund right now that we're trying to figure out how to take care of. This is one possible solution to that. So I want to kind of walk you all through the methodology of this. You've seen this twice before in our strategic planning workshops based on your direction there. We're bringing this back to you in a final form with a couple of different options in order to get some true direction from you guys on how we would like to move forward within this particular project. So what I'm going to present today is a right-of-way infrastructure fee. What this would do is it's a fee that would take those two divisions specifically, the street and bridge and the traffic operations division, and it would give them their own isolated funding source from the general fund. So this particular fee would generate revenue that would be dedicated and attributed to the operations within our right of way in order to fund those activities. If you remember back whenever we presented this, There's this right-of-way infrastructure fee. It impacts the residential and non-residential properties within the city. So every property within the city, whether it is a home, whether it is an apartment, whether it is a business, whether it is a nonprofit, a church, whatever the case may be, a for-profit business, this fee would be assigned to that particular business. The methodology behind this is all driven off of, on the non-residential side, is all driven off of these land use categories. Land use category is a category that is defined within a nationally published Institute of Transportation Engineers manual. This is a manual that looks at every business type in the nation, and attributes a trip factor or the amount of traffic that that particular business generates on average per factor, per unit. So whether that's per thousand square feet or per acre or per fuel pump, whatever the case may be. We took that entire manual and we paired this down to the top 49 land use categories that are most applicable for the businesses within San Angelo. And that's what you see before you there. So essentially there are 49 land use categories. They're similar to a single family equivalent. So it's the number of trips that a single family would use. And we'll get into that just a little bit more when we start looking at the rate tables. But for the most part, this is the 49 categories that each business and each entity within San Angelo that is non-residential would be assigned underneath. So we wanted to bring you guys a couple of options. If you'll remember back in the strategic planning workshop, we presented what I call a comprehensive right-of-way maintenance approach. What that does is it takes our entire street and bridge division and its activities, our entire traffic operations division and its activities, our equipment replacement, Those things are happening today. So it takes those, moves those over. In addition, it provides us an alley maintenance program that is not funded and has no resources assigned to it today so that we can properly maintain and ensure the viability of our alleys, as well as provide some capital money for pay-as-you-go projects. whether we cash flow those or we invest it in debt or whether we use that as grant matching funds, there's some availability of cash there in order to do capital infrastructure projects. And when I say capital infrastructure, I'm talking streets, curbing, sidewalks, traffic signal, ADA, pedestrian, anything within our right of way can be handled by this particular fee. So if you give me the full gamut of that program, the full comprehensive program, I need about $16 million a year in order to do that. The fee table there in front of you generates that amount of revenue on an annual basis based on this fee. Like I said earlier, there is a residential component and a non-residential component. For the residential component in this $16 million structure, you're looking at about a $23 per unit fee for that. So that is per house or that is per apartment unit or anything that is residential in nature would have a $23 fee assigned to it. For the non-residential, there's nine different categories that they could fall within. And within that, we go from $50 all the way down to $1,400, depending on which category is in there. I'm going to back up one slide because I think there was a slide that I missed. There it is. This was supposed to be before that rate table. So let's talk about how is that figured out, right? Let's talk about the formula then on how this works. So we just said we have a land use category. And in that land use category, a particular business is assigned a category. So in this example, we have a medical clinic, a walk-in clinic. That walk-in clinic is classified as a clinic down there, as you can see. And the department unit of that clinic is per thousand square feet. So based on this table and based on that ITE trip manual, a clinic generates 3.28 trips per thousand square feet per day. So if you look down there at the formula at the very bottom of that screen, you have a 2,000 square foot clinic. So 2,000 divided by the 1,000 per square foot unit gives us 2 times the 328 trip fee, 656. And that carries you over to the right-hand side to that fee table. And you see that that 6.56 falls in between the 5 and the 8, which is a C4. So in this case, this particular clinic would have $150 per month charge for their for their trip generation. Now this is, again, I think you can clearly see this is all dependent on that development unit. So not every clinic is 150. Bigger clinics may have a higher rate. Smaller clinics may have a smaller rate. So it all depends on that development unit and that formula. So every entity in sound, we would assign this formula to come up with that category and then what a subsequent rate would be for that. So again, following that methodology brings you to which category in that C1 through C9 it would fall into. So in the $16 million option, you're going to either pay $50 a month all the way up to $1,400 a month, depending on which category, based on that formula, you fall within. We also wanted to bring back to you kind of a bare-bones approach and a bare-bones option for you. What I want to note is, based on that comprehensive program that I talked about earlier, this gets us nothing more than what we're doing today, but it still isolates those particular funds from the general fund. So to do our street and bridge budget, our traffic operations budget, and our equipment replacement, I need about $10.5 million this first year in order to cover the cost of those funds. Those are the funds that are budgeted today for those particular divisions exactly within the general fund. So in this example, to generate $10.5 million of revenue, I need about $15 per single family unit. And your non-residential rates are going to go anywhere from $25 to $1,000, depending on which tier they fall within on that formula. In both of these cases, we as staff would encourage you to also appoint an annual escalator to this. We've seen within the Solid Waste Fund we did that, and we were able to sustain that fund and that funding source with very little are actually no issues. Contrarily, on the stormwater fund, we implemented that in 2010. We did not have an annual escalation in that. And you see what the problem that we're at today within that stormwater fund. It just slowly trickles down. Your margin trickles down to where it's not functional anymore. If we are going to implement this program, I want to make sure that it's sustainable in the long term. So I want to make sure that we plan for inflation, we plan for personnel adjustments, we plan for insurance costs, and we have that annual escalation to make sure that our revenues are fully covering the cost of this program without us having to come back in year three, four, five, asking the general fund then to contribute back to this program. I want to make sure that it's a standalone and that it sustains itself in perpetuity. So let's kind of talk about what that looks like and what the distribution of it is and kind of give you some real-world examples of where these would fall based on those two options. If you'll notice there, that Tier 1, almost 40% of the non-residential businesses are going to fall within that Tier 1. So they're going to be paying $50 to $25, depending on which option the council would like to pursue. you're tier two through tier six you're about ten percent you know in each one of those and in those higher tiers those tier sevens through tier nines that's really where you see a low low majority of the businesses it's those large impactors it's those large generators are going to be falling in there but those are very few few businesses especially in those higher tiers There on the right are a few examples of tangible, if you will, examples of where particular entities would fall depending on the two. So Trinity Church, $50 or $25 because they're in that C1 category, that C1 tier. If you look at Grace Temple Baptist, it's a little larger church, so it'll be $80 to $40 per month. All the way down to Taco Bell, you're looking at 325, 250, and you can just read through that list and kind of pick out some real world examples about how this would be applied based on actual businesses here in San Angelo. So what would we do with this? Again, like I mentioned earlier, This would allow us to comprehensively take care of everything that we need to do infrastructure-wise within our right-of-way, our streets, our signals, our striping, signs, sidewalks, ADA. I think you are all very aware that we've been very successful in our grant program. We've acquired over $31 million in grants with that. Most of those grants have a matching component to it. I don't have any more money for match. I am tapped out on all my matching money. So for us to pursue more grants, I need a funding source for matching. I would be able to acquire some level of funding for a matching component for those grants. So I have to be very selective today moving forward on what grants I apply for. And I don't want to do that. I want to make sure that I'm grabbing all the free money out there that I possibly can so that that's $31 million that the City of San Angelo didn't have to pay on infrastructure improvements. And we're getting that for usually 20 cents on the dollar. Equipment replacement, we're making sure that we can keep our equipment up to date, that we can keep it serviceable, that we're maximizing our value in that, that we're replacing it on an appropriate replacement cycle, that we're not overly spending money on repairs unnecessarily, that we're getting out of those pieces of equipment before they become costly in repairs. Signalized signal replacements. We have a TIR for you guys every year for signal replacement. So things are about $450,000 a piece. Some of our signals in town were put up in the 60s. So you can imagine the age of that infrastructure, just what the wear and tear does on them. We've replaced some through some grants through TxDOT, through our street rehabilitation programs. But those are few and far between. probably well over 100 signals that need to be replaced within town, but there's currently no funding source in order to do that. This would allow me to systematically, at least one signal per year, start tackling that burden. And then capital projects as well. I think you all can acknowledge how amazing that $80 million was for our streets, for those main roadways in town, but I think you can also acknowledge just comparatively how far that did not go. There are still a bunch of streets that need to be handled. There's a bunch of streets that need to be rehabilitated within our street infrastructure inventory. If I just kind of put it into perspective, if I tackle Avenue N, Johnson Street, and the golf course road off of 29th Street out there, I need about $35 million just to take care of the roadways, to rehabilitate the roadways that I have currently designed and currently on my list. If I take the top 10 roadways, I need about $120 million. Jonathan has told me, he laughs at me every time I tell him I need $35 million. He says, we have no more debt capacity in order to do that. So I don't know how I'm going to do Avenue N and Johnson Street moving forward. We're still actively talking about that, still strategizing. This would help take care of that if you were able to fund it at that $16 million rate and give me a little bit of capital cash. that I then could invest back into debt service to at least take care of those top four and then also give me a little bit of money toward grants that I could batch and hopefully use some of that financial burden on future projects. Like I acknowledged earlier, this takes care of the full street and bridge budget. It takes care of the full traffic operations budget, our general fund equipment replacement within those two divisions. And it also gives me and I also have a fund balance requirement if we turn this into its own dedicated fund of about $2.5 to $3 million. So depending on which option council would like to give us direction to move forward on, we'll determine exactly what we can tackle here, how we manage it and what we're able to do. So with that, I'll open it up to any questions and we can go back to the slides if y'all want to and look at those rate tables or I'm willing.

So I think in a discussion yesterday, I asked why are we doing this? And I wanted this presentation to lead with our tax appraisals revenue and what has happened this year, what's coming in. Does anybody have that handy?

Yes, sir. So just a quick update on where we are with tax appraisals. After market value increases and increases to exemptions this year, we had $175 million come off the tax roll just related to new legislation for business personal property exemptions. That exemption increased, and so we lost $175 million off of valuations. After you factor those in, our property value number, our certified taxable value, did not increase as much as we were expecting. It only increased by 0.1%. nine percent um which means that we don't have the uh revenue uh up to that three and a half percent cap so we'd have to go up um and that's that's already on top of the previous um impacts that we identify to uh that we always bring to you guys in the general fund workshop the impacts on um uh the over 65 freeze the circuit breaker cap 20 on commercial properties under $5 million, the 10% cap on homesteads, homestead growth, and then, of course, we're limited on the amount of revenue that we can raise to the 3.5% cap per the state. We're already feeling a lot of those pressures, and we continue to feel those pressures from the state. One of the things that's upcoming in the next legislative session is looking at that cap percentage, lowering that cap percentage down. I've seen it as low as 1%. So we're seeing a lot of pressures on the general fund and general fund departments in order to fund these with taxes, property taxes. And so this is an example of a way that we can fund a portion of our operations without having being impacted by the decisions made up at the state level.

And that's really what I'm looking forward to, right? Y'all have charged me and the Public Works Department with making sure that our top priority, our infrastructure, is well taken care of. You guys gave us a phenomenal bump in that in 2015 with $80 million plus increasing our operations money by $4 million in order to get a true eight-year cycle on our seal coat program done. That eight years has turned into 12 for me. That $80 million is gone after I get sunset done. So moving forward, you have tasked me with an obligation that, frankly, is very stressful on how I'm going to continue doing that just through inflationary costs and through the expenditure of the funds. So we're looking for a way in order to sustainably and proactively manage this infrastructure in perpetuity and something that we can plan for we can manage and we can move forward and give the citizens back what they're always asking for which are nicer smoother roadways which you all know is not only just an infrastructure thing it's also a quality of life thing for us too not only for the citizens but for our visitors as well so it has a trickle-down effect for sure and we just want to make sure that we can sustainably manage a program and proactively do that inside without these external entities messing with us

I think one of the key things we've looked at here and across the dais from all of this is how this affects some people that typically have not been in a status to provide us compensation for the infrastructure we provide. This also is insulated from anything that the state would drive downhill and force upon us with regulatory on property tax. So why don't you give me 30 seconds of how this would affect the large people that typically do not pay any type of property tax now? Start with Shannon, Goodfellow, ASU, the city, SO.

So this particular program will be assigned to and assessed to every property and every entity within San Angelo, whether it's a nonprofit, whether it's Shannon Hospital, who does not pay property tax because of its status, It's equitable across the board, right? So you don't have some entities supporting the usage of our infrastructure by other entities as it currently stands today. And that's what you get whenever you're working off of a tax base. This is not a tax. This is a fee that can be assessed to everybody and would be assessed to everybody equally across the board. So everyone's paying their fair share. Everyone is assigned equitably placed on that nationally published manual. This isn't something that the city of San Angelo came up with. this entire concept isn't something that we dropped up this is something that's used across the state in several municipalities already and we're just basically copycatting what's working there in order to to provide that benefit now to the city of san angelo how would you execute it as far as how we how would we decide who gets an invoice So it's going to be assigned in our world. What we envision is it's going to be placed on your utility statement. So lack of a better description, the water bill. It'll just be another line on that water bill. It'll be paid just like that. So there won't be a separate bill that comes for it. There won't be a separate thing that we need to set up. It's just working with our billing agency and making sure that that fee gets assigned on there as another line on that water bill. And then it's paid just through its normal fact normal ways that everybody's set up to pay right now.

So how about things that have a common meter, multiple entities under one common meter? How would that play out? So we evaluate it by visits to a specific square footage.

So we do have a listing of, it's called multi-use properties. So it's single properties that have multiple meters. Obviously, those would be paired out, and it would only be charged to a single meter within that property use. Now, if it's two separate properties with two separate meters, that's two separate fees right so if it's a clinic right across the street from a hospital the clinic gets a fee and the hospital gets a fee so it's going to be it's because those two buildings are going to generate their own traffic and so we need to make sure that again this is equitable and even across the board for those two buildings so if they have multiple meters on a single property then it'll only be charged to a single meter but if it's multiple properties it would be on on multiple water bills

And this replaces some things that we're not going to work into, correct, Phillip?

All right, microphone's working there. Yes, Mayor, I appreciate that. And so I think looking at the budget and being in discussions yesterday, I think the city staff is cognizant of what other rate increases are potentially out there. As we talked about in the last discussion or last meeting, the only increase that was proposed as it related to a utility was stormwater fee, and that was a 26 cent on the highest end for residential utilities. So knowing that increase would be the only one, this is an opportunity for us to look at this fee to be able to assist with streets. But I did want to provide some context as I departed the city of Garland for this role. We were in the middle of budget discussions. And at this point of their budget, they're looking at a 5% water and sewer increase as well as a 5% landfill increase. and sanitation fee increase. And so they have increases going across the board. Talk to the city of Odessa this morning and they're looking anywhere from a three to 4% increase across all of their utilities. And so this would just be an increase that we would focus on at this point related to stormwater and this right away use fee. And so I think that's important to keep in mind that we don't see other increases beyond this.

Thank you, Phillip. Let's open it up to the dice. Tommy, it looks like you got your finger ready over there.

It's green.

Let her roll.

I want to go back, Patrick. You said something that jumped out at me. You said eight year has moved to 12 year. What are you talking about?

So if you'll remember, in 2015, when the council graciously gave us moved us from $600,000 annually for a seal coat program up to $4 million annually for a seal coat program. They also attached the performance measure on that, that every roadway in the city of San Angelo be seal coated within an eight year cycle. We met that goal, proudly, we met that goal. But moving forward, we had to tap in pretty hard into our operational funds in order to meet that goal just due to inflationary costs. What we're seeing now as we go through and we started over in that eight year cycle, we're almost having to cut those areas that we did in year one, we're almost having to cut them in half in order to just make sure that I have enough funding. So I'm still spending $3.5 to $4 million, but I'm getting about half of it done. So that eight-year cycle has moved to 12 years now. And if we continue that with no absorption, we've asked every year for budget for our TIR for about $800,000 to go into that program. Since 2015, that has not been granted. So, again, we did an amazing job up front, but we haven't sustained that, hence why we want to make sure that that annual escalation is in this program so that we can make sure that we sustain that and we get back to managing, proactively managing our infrastructure and keeping it deteriorated. We just spent $80 million on several roadways in town. We want to make sure that we protect that investment, and I can't do that in the current funding scenario that I have today.

You just answered my next question, because it sounded like we were going to be stretching the timeline on those newly rehabbed streets from 8 to 12, which... What does the data tell you all in terms of at what point do things start to break down and then become problematic?

So every street has a deterioration curve on it. brand new roadway i mean it's good it has a 20-year life to it and then it starts deteriorating and about that year seven to eight if you haven't done anything that falls off very very hard so what we as staff has done is we have changed our operation now so that whenever we put a new roadway in within the first three to four months we're coming back in with a rejuvenator we're basically locking in all the good stuff within the roadway Within about three to four years after that, we're coming in with either HA5 or a seal coat. We're capping that so that new pavement doesn't oxidize beyond and become brittle and start deteriorating any further. So we're slowing and we're smoothing out that deterioration curve proactively. I want to do that, and I want to keep that up, but we've been prioritizing that, again, protecting that investment. Just like changing the oil in your car, you've got to maintain these roadways in order to protect that investment. I want to keep doing that. This program will allow me to keep doing that.

So does the $10.5 million keep you on the eight-year cycle, or does the $10.5 million keep you on the 12-year cycle?

The $10.5 million keeps me on the sustained deterioration that I'm at right now. So I'm going to – it's the 12-year cycle plus, so that 12 is going to turn into a 13, going to turn into a 14 as those inflationary impacts continue to press down on us year over year. So the $10.5 again gets me nothing more than what I'm doing today. And it also isn't necessarily sustainable to start bringing that curve or flattening that curve back out when it comes to maintenance.

Thank you.

I'm good. And I appreciate Patrick.

It gives me, as a numbers person, helps me as I sit in front of the citizens. But I don't think we can sustain the infrastructure today unless we do something similar to this.

You mentioned equitable several times. The only thing that, to me, still needs to be looked at is the residential part. It's not equitable. It's a flat rate per home, correct? It is a flat rate per home, yes, sir. With our new zones that we have, with just disparity in lot size, I think that needs to be looked at. I think it's going to unduly burden some people that are already barely make it as it is, adding this onto their utility bill, I think it's going to unduly burden them. So I think that's something that needs to be looked at to try to make that equitable. I have a big lot, for instance. To me, somebody that has a very small lot with a small house on it shouldn't be paying as much as I should because they're not using near as much street use as I am.

So again, when we talk about street use, it's not necessarily the amount of street in front of your property. It's when you get on that roadway and you drive somewhere and you come back, it's that impact on the roadway that we're talking about. So it's equitable in the sense that every home has trips assigned with it. and that it's not necessarily based on bigger lots, smaller lots, in any of that regard. So it's the number of trips that is the factor there. How much impact those trips are having on our infrastructure is how this is assigned.

Right. But that kind of goes to my point. So for instance, you could have probably 10 houses on my lot. And we're all going to use the same amount of street. So you're just saying that there's less cars on the road? And so that's why it's the same. I mean, because to me, I'm looking at like, well, the street that has to be built and maintained. If you're going down my street, I'm the one taking up all of it for quite a bit. So I'm the one going up and down it. And so I feel that the same rate, to me, we have it based on the other usage. We have the commercial usage, non-residential usage. To me, I see where you're coming from. I still think there's an issue there. same lot size, property rate size, all that. To me, it might be tough to go off of property tax value. You know, we can't quite do that because, again, some of the lots may have a big house, but it's not a big lot. But to me, lot size, street length size, something like that, if you're going to keep bringing up equitable, I think something needs to be done about that part of it. That's my opinion.

SO I'M GOING TO PILE ON PATRICK A LITTLE BIT. MAYBE YOU CAN JUST QUICKLY HELP US DRAW A LINE THROUGH SOME OF THESE THINGS. OVER 65s.

So again, those are some considerations that need to be accommodated. We understand that there is a segment of our community that may have some lower income, some fixed income. And in that case, what we as staff would advise is piggybacking off of what's already been established. So within our water and our sewer fund, they already contribute money to the CVCAA to distribute out for those in need, right? They can put in an application, they're vetted out through the CVCAA, and then those utilities and that money is strictly there to help with those utility bills. What I would propose in this program is we attribute some amount of that revenue over to CVCAA in order to assist, further assist those entities as well. whether that's over 65 or whether that's low income, if you're struggling, you can go there and you can find that assistance. So that's how I would like to manage those two entities that you brought up.

Vacant lands, vacant buildings.

So vacant buildings, they don't necessarily have a use. So I need to figure out the exception on what we would do with vacant buildings. Obviously, if they're vacant, they're not going to have a water bill typically. And so just through natural causes, you're probably not going to have that fee assessed to them. If they just have a landscape meter, this wouldn't be assessed to landscape meters, obviously. I WOULD SAY THROUGH YOUR NORMAL ACTIVITY, IF YOU DON'T HAVE A WATER BILL, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE THIS FEE.

THAT MAKES SENSE. AGRICULTURAL PROPERTY.

SO FARM USE IS SO THERE'S A PARKS AND AN OPEN SPACE CATEGORY IN HERE THAT WOULD BE ASSESSED THAT. AND SO IT'S BASED ON THE NUMBER OF ACRES. AND SO IT WOULD JUST FALL RIGHT IN THAT FORMULA FOR THAT PARTICULAR CATEGORY.

So, we learned this yesterday, but for the public discussion, city lease land or parks?

So, just like we did, our council directed us to do with the stormwater fee, every entity will pay this fee, including city facilities. City parks would pay it. City facilities would pay it. It would not be an exclusion for governmental entities in this particular case. And so, again, For equity purposes, I mean, this building generates its own traffic. It needs to help contribute to that impact on the infrastructure.

A bigger picture, there were some pretty spicy conversations about needing to tidy up our CIP. in the not too distant past. So a little bit, maybe cart before the horse, but thinking ahead to that. So maybe that becomes the next workshop so that we're ready for this. Tommy, you want to comment?

I just said to Joe, you were looking at me when you were talking about a spicy conversation, a comment I made about the CIP a couple of months ago. Well, I want to back up just a minute. What I can't get out of my mind is if we do nothing, this problem is not going to go away. If we only do $10.5 million, this problem is not going to go away. Am I missing something there, Patrick? No. That's stuck in my brain.

No, sir, I think you're spot on. I mean, obviously we say the reason our streets are in the condition that they're in today is because we did nothing in the past. We kicked that can down the road. We didn't proactively plan, we didn't proactively take measures to make sure that those deterioration curves are mitigated as they go forward. It's there. The sun's gonna continue to shine, the rain's gonna continue to fall, the snow's gonna continue to accumulate, and all of that is gonna continue to deteriorate this infrastructure. Whether we put money into it or not, those things are gonna happen. The best thing to do is to put a rain slicker on, put some sunscreen on, and make sure that we're protected from it moving forward.

Well, again, back to Karen's point, if my memory serves correctly, one of the biggest things that generates comments when the public can comment on our CIP is the condition of our streets. Is that accurate?

Yes, sir. Yeah, we received 151 comments over our last CIP. 49% of those were strictly related just to infrastructure. So that does include water, sewer, and drainage. When you just looked at road fixtures just themselves, that's 27% of what was requested in those CIP comments.

And then there will be a lot of other categories mentioned, not necessarily that one other category is not going to be 75%. It's going to be multiple categories in that other 75%. Correct, yes, sir. Is that accurate?

Yes, sir. Yeah, so 46% of that was water and sewer drainage.

Okay, so streets are always a hot topic. Streets are always. don't think there's one of us that when we when we ran for office people didn't talk to us about the condition of the streets and i remember twisting off in my first budget meeting uh nine years ago on the condition of our streets um i'm still twisted off because we we've done what we can you guys with the 80 million you've maintained what you can but now we're on a We've had to move to a 12-year cycle off of an eight-year cycle. So from the standpoint of a CIP, this only makes our CIP grow is what it does if we do nothing or we do $10.5 million. Now, that's my opinion. People can disagree with that, but anyway.

So, final point. I agree with Tommy, and we asked you for this last year, and I'm glad to see it. You mentioned a couple of different ways you thought it would work in the budget. You talked about it possibly becoming a separate fund. And Jonathan just spoke to percentages of public opinion, shall we say. So how do you see that right now today? So ideally you would like for it to be dedicated completely to your department?

So this would be, in our vision and what we've discussed, this would be its own isolated fund, just like stormwater is, just like the airport, just like any enterprise fund that you heard about today. This would be one more of those enterprise funds. So it would be isolated. It would be dedicated. And it would be dedicated for these specific purposes. It would carry its own fund balance. It would not burden the general fund with a fund balance obligation. And it also alleviates that street and bridge budget, that traffic operations budget, to go back to the general fund to help accommodate some of the items that Jonathan led in with. when we started this discussion and this presentation. So, yes, it would be an isolated fund. It would be fully restricted and fully dedicated to right-of-way infrastructure and committed to that. How we utilize that, both from an O&M standpoint, a personnel, and then a capital standpoint, really determine is is going to be decided based on the direction that you all give at the end of this presentation on what we can do with that ultimately i would love to see the pay go come into effect what that does is it gives me some extra money to get my last two bond issues so i can get johnson and avenue n done and that AND THAT OTHER ROADWAY FINISHED, AND THEN IT ALSO GIVES ME SOME EXTRA CASH SO I CAN KEEP PURSUING THESE GRANTS, AS WELL AS CASH FLOW A FEW PROJECTS. WE'VE HAD SEVERAL DISCUSSIONS ABOUT AVENUE J, MAIN STREET, RICK'S DRIVE, BUEY. I'VE GOT A LIST OF ROADWAYS THAT NEED HELP, AND I DON'T THINK ANYONE IS IGNORANT THAT THERE'S SOME ADDITIONAL WORK THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. AS IT STANDS TODAY, ONCE I DO SUNSET DRIVE, WHICH IS COMING UP FIRST QUARTER OF NEXT YEAR, I'm through rehabbing streets. I don't have any more money to do any more rehab, rehabilitations.

So are you saying, just bear with me here, this would do away with the solid waste fund

No, it would have no impact on the Solid Waste Fund whatsoever. It's similar to the Solid Waste Fund in the fact that it's an enterprise fund. It's standalone on itself, earns its own revenue, and provides its own expenses. But it would have no bearing on the Solid Waste Fund itself. This thing would be strictly for street operations and right-of-way infrastructure.

I guess I misunderstood. I thought you said there were a couple of funds in here that this takes the burden.

The general fund. It takes the burden off the general fund itself. So the street and bridge fund right there that you see, the traffic operations budget, the general fund equipment replacement, this would remove that obligation that the general fund is currently carrying and basically frees up that amount of money to go back to the general fund to be distributed out at your, at U-Wall's discretion.

The full 7.2?

I'm sorry?

The full 7.9 to almost 8 million?

So the 7.92, the 155, and some general fund equipment replacement money could go back to the general fund.

Patrick, let me jump in there. And I think where the confusion may have come in that when I was discussing the rate increases that are potentially out there, that there were no increases taking place. And the water and the sewer fund, there was just the stormwater increase that we discussed. And so that may have caused a confusion of funds being combined. It was just showing a big picture of what increases that the residents and commercial customers may see across the board. So there would not be a combination of funds.

OK. Thank you. On this ITE trip, Dylan, you went over this yesterday. How were those numbers calculated? I know it came from a manual, but what size entity did those come from? I mean, if it was a 1,000-square-foot building in Dallas, it's not the same as it would pertain to San Angelo.

Right, and so that is why it's a national entity. manual, it is based on the average for that type of entity across the nation. So obviously a clinic in Ballinger, Texas is going to be far different than a clinic in Dallas, in Fort Worth, Dallas. But when you average that out, that's the number of trips that that type of business would generate based on the national average. So again, this isn't something that the city of San Angelo has come up with. This is something that is a nationally published and nationally utilized manual so that we're staying consistent across that nation. we obviously don't have the resources to figure that out that's why this institute of traffic engineers use their funding and their money to figure out what this manual is and come up with those trips but it's based on the national average for that type of business type of business so it's um it's not a ballinger gets calculated the same way that indianapolis gets calculated it's it's averaged all the way across right just scare me to death right well It's a manual about a couple inches thick that we've pared down to 49 categories. So notwithstanding, a difficult task. And two, keep in mind too that this land use category table is a fluid document, if you will. We can add to it if a particular business doesn't reasonably fall into any of these categories, we can add a category to it. If our growth and our future development within San Angelo sees a different business sector come in, we can add a category for that. So it's a live document that we can make sure that, again, we're being fair, we're being equitable, and we're not just putting somebody in a category where they don't assign just because it's what we have available to us. It's something that can be managed by staff very proactively.

Okay, good deal. That helps me. I'm just doing the math on it. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Patrick, would there be any... Way for a business, kind of looking at it, to come to us and say, hey, I don't think my traffic counts near what, you know, projected in these others. Can you all look at this and see if we can look at it for next year? Are we going to have a way to kind of, they can appeal to us?

Yeah, absolutely. So we have a customer service department right now with that takes care of our utility statements. If somebody came into customer service, they would bring them over, they would talk to us, and we would sit down. take a look at it, walk through the methodology with them, and really discuss it and figure out what applies the best way and come to an agreement on that, or at least assign it in the best category that we possibly can. But yeah, if a business wants to know, well, how do I fall into this category or this billing structure? Absolutely. Give me a ring and let me know. and we can talk through that methodology behind it.

Perfect. Yeah, I don't know of one offhand, but just thinking of it and some of the big buildings that may not have a high traffic count just because they need a big space for whatever they're doing to make sure that we're not unduly, you know, justifying them. It kind of goes back to the residents because you're like, well, there's three vehicles traveling no matter what if it's a big house, a small house, or whatever. Right. So I want to make sure they have a way to kind of appeal that and we can look at it.

And that was some of the difficulty, right? You have a large warehouse, you have a medium warehouse, you have a small warehouse. how do we combine those i mean i don't want 200 categories that i'm having to assign people and that just creates more discrepancy so we try to pare it down to reasonably grab as many as many businesses as i can with the fewest amount of land categories but still keep it fair and equitable as we can

Perfect. That's what I would like to see as we go through and is if it's approved and we kind of make the rules following us to make sure that we citizens have a way to go out and look at it and appeal and whether it's appeal to us or however we need to run that.

And how we add those categories will come forth with a if you all approve this today, we'll come forward with a Step two, step three is really define that billing structure, define those categories with our consultants, QA, QC, that list, as well as establish an ordinance bringing forth the fees and the application of it. So how we adjust the land use table, whether that's an administrative function approved by the public works department or by the city manager, or if that has to come to the city council for approval, we can work through those small details there. But I think there's absolutely a way to keep this fluid and make sure that we're doing right by assigning the proper categories to the right businesses.

Mayor.

Well, That said, the Dias had the controls, so I just wanted to make sure. Patrick, we're not reinventing the wheel. This is done in other cities. As a matter of fact, Abilene's got something very similar to this. This is not something that was actually thought up last week or last month. I've been on this council a long time, and we talked about this three, four, maybe five years ago, something similar. You worked out details, and maybe there's some refinement still need to be done on it, but from my perspective, we don't have any choice but to go forward with this. Now, whether the council decides to go with the 10 or the 16, I haven't made that decision yet personally, but we're going to have to do this. The constraints on the budget, not only this year but beyond my council time, is going to continue to be significant. Next year's legislature's gonna put caps on it that's lower than what we've got right now. We're not gonna be able to generate as much property tax. And unless we bring in some additional businesses, we're not gonna increase our sales tax that much. So these types of things are key to the success of the services that we can continue to provide to the citizens, correct?

That is correct.

Okay. Yes, sir. That's all I'll say.

I'd like to reiterate what Harry said on the constraints with the budget. I mean, we've already faced this once earlier today with our health insurance. RISING COST, AN AGING INFRASTRUCTURE, OR AGING AS WELL AS JUST THE COST OF THE HEALTH INSURANCE GOING UP, PERIOD. THIS IS THE SAME SIMILAR SITUATION, BUT WE HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO KEEP IT GOING, BECAUSE WE HAVE TO PROVIDE THAT SERVICE, AND WE CAN'T LET IT JUST SLIP AWAY INTO NOTHING. Kind of like with Harry, it's something we have to address, and this is a good way. It's not something that just came up overnight. Other cities do it as well, so I'm in favor of it. Just which one do we do?

Patrick, we've heard from the dais, and it's pretty good consensus that we know this is a path we're going to have to follow, no doubt there. When I look at this and the distribution of the tiers, as it goes down from tier one through tier nine. I would love to take 30% of that revenue generated off your bottom one or two tiers and move that up into somebody that's in the C4, C5 care. I don't know if that's a possibility. This is just something to take the burden off of some of the people we've talked about, low income, we've talked about 65 and older. I think there's ways to move your curve towards the upper end of the people that are commercial and high revenue to where they look at this and go that's a couple bucks a day i'm running 2 000 people through here doing a head count i get that but the last thing we want to do is create a burden on somebody that is already strained you've talked about ways we can handle that i think what we're looking at overall is this is a good path forward for us to protect the citizens that they'll always have something to take care of the streets. They'll always have something to take care of their infrastructure with what you put forward here, regardless of what the state is going to do over the next five years. For this council and beyond these councils, we have to be concerned about providing you a path to keep us a functional city. So with that, we've heard from everybody here. It's great input all the way across the board. Now, I hear Patrick's talk about the size of the lot. To me, sometimes that would ignore the height of the building. You know, you have to look at how somebody uses the street. But what we're going after here is we're pursuing an avenue that typically has not paid before, all right? And that's going to bring everybody into a fair and consistent. We want a tax base that's broad and thin. All right, and we haven't had that. We're trying to get it there, and this is a good first step. So with that, we're going to wrap up. Phillip, I'll let you close us on this one on what you think the next steps will be that you'll work with staff to bring this forward.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I appreciate that. What I would like to do is to have further conversations with staff and we can answer some of the questions. I wrote down several of them, such as the appeal process that may be out there. I think there's some areas that we can come back and give some tie up some loose ends with the council. And so what I'll commit to and work with the council on is at the next meeting having an update. And we may not have an ability to but at least provide an update of where we are and what potential next steps will be. I think as we also heard from the council, there's still a decision that needs to be made of which level they are wanting to feel comfortable on, on the funding. And so that gives council the opportunity to ask further questions and also decide where they may want to be. But that gives us the opportunity as staff to work on that. So we will be back at next meeting with an update of where we are. of where we are but mayor also want to ask about the the storm water fee before we go uh before we go any further we did want to receive some type of direction or consensus on uh being able to program that on the budget as well and that may be jumping ahead but didn't want to make sure we lose the side of that no that was discussed and you know for five percent we have what 26 cents 26 cents on that highest tier yes on the highest tier in the bottom the lowest tier would be 10 cents a dime per month

I will make the, everybody's thinking it, but nobody wants to say it. I mean, what if we did 10 or 20%? I mean, you went up to 50 cents or 75 cents, and that's once a month.

That's once a month, yes, sir.

Yeah, I mean, so if you're looking at a way to get that number back near 400, where it was before, those are things we, if you look at the total dollar amount of actually pennies that that cost is minimal, when you hear the percentage of it, it's great. That's the total theory of a tax base that's broad and thin. His adjustments in that don't affect your wallet any more than the price of a soda, you know, or I would say minimal there. You wanted feedback on that, Phillip. I don't know if we go to that. Hebert's got the finger over there.

Yeah, I'm in favor of the 5%, Phil. I would be in favor of the mayor's suggestion. I'm ready to give my preference on 10 and 1 half or 16. If that's not appropriate at this time, OK. But I'm ready to state my opinion on that, too, if you want that, Mayor. If you don't, we'll save it till next meeting. I'll wait, but whatever.

Mr. Mayor, if I may, one thing I would like to provide a reminder of as it relates to the stormwater fee, we do have the fee that study that's taking place and that's looking at all of our fees. I think at this time, the 5% gives us the opportunity to get some breathing room within the fund. And then as we return next year with the study, we can have a clear picture of what type of increase we may need related to the fund. That would be a suggestion I have as it relates to keeping the 5% this year for the stormwater fee. And if we want to have further discussion about the actual rate we're going to go with on the right-of-way fee, I would encourage that we wait until the next meeting to do that so we do have that opportunity to provide more of an update and also get everybody on the same page.

Hebert's fixing to get his haul in there. Oh, my gosh. So with that... So we finished up here. So we're at the end of the budget meeting, budget workshop. I think we've heard lots of good input all the way around. You've heard our concerns. Jonathan, Patrick, flip it over. Philip, great summary on that. So with that, we'll let them bring some things back, look at some of the study work that's come. You've heard the decision on the stormwater was keep the existing 5%. I don't agree with that, but I get that. All right. Doesn't mean we have to agree on that, but I understand how that applies. So with that, if there's not any further questions from council, Heather, you got anything to say? Just checking. You had to look. I'll take a motion to conclude the budget meeting. I got a first from Tommy. Second from Karen. All in favor say aye. Aye. Meeting's closed.