City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the Tuesday, June 9th installment of the intriguing City of Belton Council meeting. Before we get things going, we're going to have the Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilmember Craig Pearson, the Pledge to the Texas Pledge led by Director of Communication Paul Romer, and then I will lead us in an invocation before we call this meeting to order.

Before we get started, notice that in our pledges, that we are one nation under God and one state under God, that there's no comma after the nation or start. So that's significant, both in the way we're formed and the way we desire to operate today. So let's say our pledge.

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

Please bow with me. Our most precious Heavenly Father, we just come to you today as we celebrate summer, as we are sandwiched here between Memorial Day and Independence Day and 250 years of this great nation. And depending on where you stand in the political realm, sometimes you feel that one leader leads us with patriotism while the other one doesn't, and sometimes it flip-flops. And so we're always reminded as we look back at the The first president that was elected was 100% unanimous in the electoral college. We had a nation that was united, and it was united for a purpose. It was a great experiment. And while the experiment has had challenges in the past, we see it today, even in our local elected officials here in Little Belton, Texas, that we are citizens doing the citizens' work. for $1 a year to serve our fellow man. And I think that all communities and all nations would do better to serve each other in this way. And just thank you for those civil servants, those that dedicate their time and their careers to service to the public. Also, thank you for those that have chosen the elected office to uphold the laws of this country and hopefully the laws that you have set before us. All right. We will call this meeting to order at 5.32 p.m. First item is public comments. If anyone wishes to speak and address the council on any item that's not on the council agenda and something that we have somewhat control over, you are welcome to do so. I do have one listed for public comments. If you did not sign up, that's okay. You can volunteer in a minute. So the first one I have is Paul Romer. If you don't mind, name and address for the record.

Paul Romer, 333 Water Street, Belton, Texas.

So you can see from the screen, I'm here to talk about the TAMI Awards for the Texas Association of Municipal Information Officers. Last week, we took home three statewide awards. And you can see we took a first place award for Logo, That was for Polka on the Square. That award was passed through you guys today so that you can kind of see it and feel it. We also won an award of excellence for Best Small Shop. That's a composite award. You take four different categories. of your work, you put it to judges and then they judge you against peer cities. And for the second time in four years, we placed their second place, which is pretty significant. And then award of honor, a third place award for best photography, And that photography included, you know, we hired somebody private to do some, but we also had staff photography that was excellent, including that picture right there from the 4th of July. Just wanted to share that we won these awards publicly. And then to recognize Catherine Mutchler, if she'd stand. She created the logo for... for Polka on the Square. And then Christina Waits, our public relations coordinator, Christina made significant contributions in video photography, putting these entries together, but they were really the talent and the skill behind this award and would like them to be recognized. Also recognize that these things aren't possible unless the council has vision and executive staff, you know, and acts that vision and then talent, you know, takes that vision and puts it into practice. So we're big winners at the state level and express appreciation to everybody that helped make that happen.

Congratulations.

Best small shop for the best small town. All right. Any others that wish to address the Council in public comments? There being none others, we will go to item 3, present a lifesaver award to Parks Maintenance employee Ethan Vander Plaats. I guess this is the joint police chief and fire chief. From the big screen to right here in person.

Mayor, council, management, I'd just like to thank you for the opportunity to get up here and present this award. On May 22nd, a woman who was in mental health crisis decided to go ahead and step up on the Penelope Street Bridge. The water was still rising from some of the rains the night before, and she decided to leap off from the bridge. But the quick thank you, the selfless service of Ethan Van De Plas, which if you'll come up and join me.

Mm-hmm.

with his quick thinking and jumping in there, the water was raging pretty good. And he just, without any regard for his own safety, got in there and was able to pull her out, ultimately securing her and getting her out of the creek. So it's not every day we get to do this, but it just goes to show you that parks, streets, fire, police, we all work together. We're all frontline, you know, first line folks and stuff. So it's just congratulations. I want to go ahead and send you with this today.

Thank you so much. I know that

Instincts take over in situations like that. And I know that that's probably something that will be with you the rest of your life. And thank you for intercepting. Someone's path and in a positive way, so thank you very much. Item for recognized director of human resources, Megan. I'm sorry for my pronunciation for receiving for Texas municipal human resources certification. Thank you. Mr. Listie.

Mayor, we appreciate the chance to recognize Ethan. Great short-term employee with the city. Just a short time work for the Parks Department, but heroic thinking in that act, saving that woman. We're proud of him. We understand he's about to head out for the Air Force. He's been accepted into the Air Force. And so we just want to congratulate him for that continuation of public service. So very, very proud of him and look forward to what he's going to do in the future. So excuse me for making that little comment. So of course, Megan began the process with Ethan not too long ago as she hired, brought him on board. So go up here. Yeah. We're very, very proud of Megan. She has received the Texas Municipal Human Resources Certification certificate. She's completed that program. It is a program that's hosted by the North Central Texas Council of Governments. And in just the second class, they graduated 63 folks in HR professionals across the state. They engaged in a rigorous curriculum covering topics of public sector employment law, a unique branch of employment law for sure. employee relations and engagement, the Fair Labor Standards Act, compensation and benefits, performance management and conflict resolution, and organizational development. Through that program, HR professionals such as Megan have demonstrated a strong commitment to excellence, to ethical leadership, and to continuous improvement in public service. And we are indeed fortunate for her commitment to Belton. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Not only congratulations to Megan, but not only congratulations to Megan, but I had the opportunity to work with her on several committees and especially the HR policies for the city. And she absolutely hit the ball out of the park and I'm looking with that. And let me just tell you, municipal human resources is its own beast. And so we really appreciate you, uh, The certification, the efforts you put in, and you've just absolutely done a great job for the city. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate everything. Council, you know, you guys create a vision for us staff. You invest in us and you make sure you put a line item in the budget so we can go to trainings and certifications so that we can gain the knowledge, skills, and abilities that we need to do our job the best we can. So I appreciate you guys and all of staff for being supportive of us. Thank you.

The next 3 items 5 through 7 are on our consent agenda, and these may be enacted by a single motion by the council, or maybe pulled off for the record. I will read these into the minutes and. Council can enact those at the end item 5 is adopting the minutes of the May 26th council meeting. Item 6 is pointing the following boards and commissions for the parks board is and Pearson and for the zoning board of adjustments. We've got Hutchinson. Bailey, I can law as alternate and we'll have 1 alternative future meeting and item 7 is authorizing the city manager to increase the professional services agreement with half. And associates for engineering services related to the. 14 extension project segment 1 design.

We approve items 5 through 7 on the consent agenda.

We have a motion and a second to approve these items. Any comments before we vote? All in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Passes unanimously. Item 8 is hold a public hearing and consider a zoning change from Agricultural to Plan Development Office 1 on approximately 25 acres located at 4951 Toll Bridge Road. Ms. Tina?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, council members. The applicant actually sold this property to a new property owner and has withdrawn this application. Therefore, to keep up with our policy, we're going to postpone this indefinitely without formal approval tonight.

We have to postpone this item indefinitely.

Jagan? Motion a second to postpone item 8 indefinitely. Any comments? All in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Passes unanimously. Item 9, Chair would entertain a motion to table this item to the end of the meeting so we can conduct the other business and finish with this one. So moved.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to table item 9 until the end of the meeting. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed? Passes unanimously. item ten hold a public hearing and consider approval of ordinances on first reading granting franchises to the following companies to operate and maintain non-emergency ambulance transfer services within the public streets and highways of the city of belton both acadian ems and scott and white ems chief

Mayor, council. This agreement has actually been in place for the last seven years, and even before that. So this is, the agreement is expired, so we're pushing up a new agreement. So basically what it is for, it allows... Baylor Scott & White and Acadian EMS to operate non-emergency within the city limits. They give Zelma a license to do so. It also protects AMR's exclusive emergency response. So it covers... Scheduled non-emergency patient transports, transfers between hospitals, medical facilities, nursing homes, residents, those type of transport. Now, it only covers ambulance transports. It doesn't cover like ride shares or a handicap van type. It only covers ambulance services. And it does not cover 911 responses, emergency medical transports. any of those sort. So why is it important that we have this? Well, we maintain AMR's exclusive right for EMS, but it restricts them from advertising that they provide EMS services within the city. They can't self-dispatch to emergencies if they are in town. They must use our communication center and may only respond when requested by dispatch. So it's a five-year term with two additional one-year extensions. There'll be an annual city review and analysis, make sure that they're keeping up with what they're supposed to be doing. And the city may revoke that franchise at any time. It makes sure that they are state regulated and state inspected and state licensed as a BLS or an ALS provider. Make sure that they have certified EMS personnel operating their vehicles and operating that dispatch. It also ensures that those type of transports are available 24-7. And it restricts them to a one hour response. So if a nursing home calls as an example, they have one hour to get there. They can't leave the nursing home waiting for three or four hours. So there is some regulation there. There is a fee structure. So 5% of the gross bill that happens for that transport should be charged by the city to that transporting company. Now, payments are made monthly. There's quarterly reporting requirements, and the city retains audit and inspection authority. Any questions?

Anybody involved in scheduling at all with any of that, or is that outside services?

That's the outside service handling all that. And 5% is standard? Yes, 5% is industry standard.

Okay. I was just going to ask, you mentioned the transport, like the ride share. I know that is a huge need around here. Is it they provide that, but we're not allowing them? Or what is the...

So Baylor Scott and White, I know for sure, has like a handicap van that can go pick up if they just have a doctor's appointment and they don't have a ride. They have a handicap van, but that doesn't fall under the franchise agreement. It's the ambulances that come to town for more critical type transports.

But are they allowed to do that?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. In fact, we have a contract through our dispatch that if somebody needs to go to the hospital, but they don't want an ambulance, they have the option of coordinating a ride share, an Uber or something like that.

How about the cost of this service? Do we monitor that? And how is it established? Is it the same between both companies?

So the contract does allow us to set those costs. But we're still working the final details of the contracts between both. There's some red line items that they are requesting. So we're looking to make sure that it's acceptable. But for the most part, the contract does allow us to have some regulation on the fees.

And you're keeping an eye on making sure it's reasonable. Yes. Yes.

Thank you. And is there... I assume there's something in place with whoever's dispatching this to make sure that they don't pull all of our ambulances offline for emergency response for these non-emergency... Our AMR does not go to transfers only.

Okay. It would just be Baylor, Scott & White, and Acadian. Okay. Now, and on the flip side of that, if... All the ambulances on this side of the county is out, and Acadian is in town. Our dispatch does have the authority to allow them, as a one-time only, go on an emergency.

One time for the year or one time for the day? One time for the year. It would be case by case.

Case by case. Case by case. Good. I'm going to approve the agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me. Yeah, no worries.

All right. All right. Now that we, uh, sounds like a public hearing, uh, we will close our deliberations, open the floor and let anyone who wishes to speak in favor or against, uh, the two ambulance services discussed, uh, they may do so by coming to the podiums, stating their name, address, three minutes. There being no public comments, we will close the floor and reopen for deliberation. Chair would entertain a motion for this on first reading.

John?

We have a motion and a second to approve agenda item 10 on first reading for Acadian and Scott and White EMS. Any other questions, comments? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? It passes unanimously. Being first reading, we will get to read this again at a future meeting. Item 11 see context clues I pick up on. So, right item 11 consider award of bid and authorize the city manager to execute the construction contract for the 2026 street maintenance plan project and any change orders associated with the contract not to exceed the amount authorized under state law.

All right, Freddie, no, it's the 1st time, but a project I'm very familiar with. So don't let us distract you. So this year's 2026 annual street maintenance is 51 total streets total with this project. 38 of those are on the base. And we have 13 of those that are going to be on the add alternates. Some of those streets, you can kind of see the add alternates. Perimeter streets. Some of the chip seals on the perimeter sections of town that really need some attention. Last year's chip seal, we were able to do that. So we're kind of carrying that over to this year, too, to make the roads better all over Belton. So some of the roads in here, Crest Drive, kind of see there. West Avenue F, same thing, alligator, cracking, pumping. East Avenue W, a lot of the same. Mitchell Street, that's another street there from B to 1st, and that'll go from 2nd to Avenue D. Leon Street, kind of see there, alligator cracking. Maintenance. 2nd Avenue. That's one that if you notice right now, we got that road closed. I want to touch on this one a little bit. You can kind of see the railroad tracks there at the bottom. Some of these roads in the downtown area, we haven't been able to do because of the railroad tracks. So where we're at now and kind of want to thank you guys because Y'all allowed us to buy some new toys. We have an excavator. So what this next slide here show you kind of what we're able to do here. We're able to get those tracks up. It makes it a lot easier for us to get that out and actually repurpose that road, resurface that road. We're going to reconstruct that. That'll be a brand new street there to kind of to match what we got there next to the journal. So appreciate you guys letting us get those toys, the right tool for the job. So in 125 miles of road is kind of where we're at right now. 4.505 miles is what we're projected to do with this 2026 street maintenance. We typically do three to 4% average on the yearly SMP. On the right there, you'll see kind of a cost breakdown from 2020, your average price per square yard, and then a cost per linear foot. So we basically did a a normal residential road, 31 foot back to back a curb and a price per foot, what it costs to mill and overlay that road year in, year out, you see 2022 marked out. That was the year we kind of moved them funds to the following year to do a bigger project because that cost was just, the prices were very, very high. So things have stabilized and we've been kind of year in, year out seeing a more stable price. So, We had bidders, five contractors, three rooms, and Bennett Paving, it was a low bidder at $1,136,355.50. Very competitive bids that came in. So kind of with that, we kind of see staff recommends authorizing a 2026 street maintenance project. And we also have Bennett Paving here, if you guys have any questions. Has Bennett worked for us before? They have. And they were here not last year, the year before last. And they were in and out in about three weeks or so. Very, very efficient. They're very good. So we're excited about it. We're ready for it. And we know they can do the job and a great job.

Freddie, one quick question on that second street. If I have my bearings right, I think part of that is maybe a parking lot or is there some, are we doing some curb and gutter there or no?

Not on second street. So if you look, what you'll see is the road is a little wider. The driving lanes is often wider. almost an optical illusion. If you go curb to curb and you match where those radius kind of come out, you'll see it's a little wider. It looks like more of a parking lot than the actual roadway. Um, so these train tracks kind of follow that. So our, what we're going to do is kind of restore the, it's going to appear to be wider, but it was always intended to be the road, but it's kind of just the way, the way the train tracks pushed everybody over. It made it seem a little smaller than it actually was. So, um, No, not all of it is the parking lot. It's mostly the roadways, but it's just been kind of used that way as more of a parking lot than the actual roadway. So with this kind of reconstruction here and the resurfacing of the roadway, what will appear to be a wider roadway, but it's actually what it's all intended to be. Yes, we're going to tie into the existing parking lot so everybody will have access and

You need to cut out a little piece and donate to the museum of that old track.

We, we, we got, we got, we got a lot of tracks, so we definitely got them saved for you. So it, this starts, it comes out of the big bridges, uh, cleaning and it goes kind of to the East there and it goes through second Avenue. So you can kind of see them exposed there right at second street. Um, but they're right at the top of that road. So, but with the excavator, we've kind of in the past, we haven't had really the tools to get in there and, get some of that stuff out of there. So we're kind of breezing through it.

And you have ones underneath first street.

We, we, we sure do. So again, now, you know, this gives us the ability to kind of address a lot of the next year. Very. Yeah. Next year.

Freddie, how do we decide which streets we're going to do each year? Is that something that your staff does or police department calls and goes, hey, we've got a bad road? Or neighbors call and say, the road in front of my house is terrible. I mean, how do we put that together?

A combination of all three. But we do go out and we assess all of those. So everything that we've done, I know we're kind of working with our road asset services on our – street analysis. Preliminary data shows that everything that we've been doing aligns with early on data. So that'll be complete probably mid-summer. Typically, we evaluate our roads, and what we are evaluating is a combination of coming in from complaints to PDFD and what we're seeing, actually, and we're tracking it. We have a year-to-year, 15-year cycle of when we're going to go in and look at every street. We get out there, and we do pretty well with it, and I think that'll show. That's great. And the analysis.

Did Mesquite Road show up on that little map I saw? I thought I noticed that. That's kind of been a problem for a while.

Yeah. So, yes, Mesquite is. And again, that's another one where the residents have called. The drainage is terrible. It is. And you can kind of see there. So the drainage has always been a problem. And some of the bad storms we get, it seems like it's all or nothing. So some of that pipe even washed away. So we went in there and we had to basically put the drain back and asphalt some of the slopes in there to kind of keep it every, you know, keep the road together. So we basically overlaid the bad portion, which was in the drainage area. So now that we've done that, we want to go and chip seal a lot of this and really protect that road. It's a Kind of a cost savings, but it'll lengthen the life of that road. And then the other one that caught my eye was Rocking M. Rocking M is going to be striping only. It's just to add a double yellow down the middle. No actual road work, but just the striping.

Awesome. When will this start?

It's already...

Well, when will this be done?

When will this be done? Before October 1st. And my guess is Bennett's doing it. They probably want to be done in about two weeks. By the 4th of July. And he's not lying.

Other questions?

Good job.

All right.

Share with our kind of motion. I'll make a motion to approve the street maintenance bid as presented for the second motion a 2nd to authorize the city to contract with.

Bennett, any other comments or questions.

I will say that that presentation is hot off the press. I mean, that that was. From today, right? I drove this like, what the heck? It's like, oh, those are the railroad ties from that. It's like, it took me extra 2 minutes to get home because I did, like, go around the construction. So, all right, we have motion a 2nd, and all in favor say, aye aye aye. Opposed. Passes unanimously item 12. Is consider award of bid and authorizing the city manager execute a construction contract for the spring street East Central Avenue bridge replacement project and any change orders associated with the contract not to exceed amount authorized under state law.

And I think we have 1 of our partners here.

Yes, we do. Mr. Sam Garrison.

I'll let you.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This is an exciting project I think we all are aware of and so happy to get this going. Basically, in 2022, the City Manager's Office worked with Congressman Carter's staff, Sam Garrison and everyone over there, closely to get the funding for the community project funding for this project, which was approved in 2023. in the amount of $5 million. Also had some tax increment reinvestment zone monies in there also for kind of a local government 20% match. Also have been working alongside KPA for the design. I know we've got Casper, Patrick, and associates, John Simshick back here, and I've been working with them and TxDOT during this. And now we're finally in the construction phase. So it's an exciting time for the city of Belton. Just to give you a little view of this area, you're pretty familiar, you've seen this before, but you'll have a bridge span over Nolan Creek there on the east side of 35, and it'll have some street parameter improvements that'll tie you back into central going towards the fire range to the east. It'll be a 325-foot linear bridge that goes across Nolan Creek. Two-lane roadway, 31-foot wide. Connector, obviously what I said there for connecting the roadways to the east side of Central, which will play a factor in such down the road. I also have a eight inch water line that'll tie into that area to increase the line size and some street lighting. Wanted to kind of give you a little video here to show you this area. Over the past few weeks, you know we've had these rainfalls that have came our way. We've had 11 feet at Main Street Bridge on our monitor flood levels. And basically what you're seeing there is probably at about eight to nine feet level. When you get to this one here, this is when you're hitting about the 10 to 11 feet, and that's an after effect of what you saw in the video. Basically, this is gonna allow for flood mitigation in the area. It's gonna allow for emergency vehicle access, essential city infrastructure and facilities that are back in that direction. We have our main lift station for our sewer, plus the shooting range and all that for the PD. Developmental opportunities in that area will thrive and flourish. And also we have the removal of the low water bridge crossing, which is the big, big aspect of all this. We had 10 competitive bids and they were opened on May the 5th. The OPC for this was a little over 5 million and we had a bid differential there between 4 and 7 million. Low bid was Yoko Escavating out of Belton. that Javier and his team over here also with Yoko went through those bids and Yoko had the qualifications and the capability to do this project. And we feel great about moving forward with this. The construction schedule right now is a 360 working day project. So hopefully within the next year, we'll have that done and out of the way. Is it staff's recommendation to authorize a city manager to execute this contract and any change orders that come with it? Awesome.

Any comments or questions? Two questions.

With this project, a couple questions. On the proposed layout, the road with the turnaround, the cul-de-sac, with the proposed plans we've seen from TxDOT, is that... Do we have anything under that road or like easement, anything we have to keep or is it even worth building that portion or like rebuilding?

I'll take that one. Yes. We think it'll actually be valuable because we have the right of way, the most important thing. But for the time being, obviously, we're talking to time between this getting built and the road. So we do think that that little construction, that little turnaround, it's actually going to open up a really nice park section down there. But yes, the jug handle, which we have coming soon, hopefully, would really possibly tie in well to what we've got designed.

Oh, I wasn't even thinking that far ahead. Okay. And then on the... Do we anticipate a... potentially a FEMA reevaluation after this. We went on frontage road project.

That is part of the process. It will play itself out post-project. So it'll take some time, obviously. We do expect to see some effects from this little water cross removal, but we're just waiting to see what lays out.

I'll add to that as well, Scott, real quick, because this transcends many years. I should start with all of this started with Amy probably painstakingly putting together the hardest RFQ, RFP that we've ever had to do. But real quick on that, on the FEMA, we moved that by taking out this last low water crossing, the base flood elevation would reduce in our area. And we have a lot of businesses along Central Avenue and the surrounding areas that obviously have, that affects a lot. It affects your ability to loan money. It affects your annual flood insurance. We were hoping to see that come down. Unfortunately, the base flood elevation only really came down less than an inch, virtually nothing. But what John and his team with KPA were able to do was really analyze the area and get better information. And you'll see several areas around our town, around our downtown, come out of the floodplain. But that will happen post-construction. They will submit the clomer. The big impact, what I was hoping would happen the first time, we now believe will happen with TxDOT because those frontage roads, moved and they'll be elevated. And so you can, if you've ever been down Liberty Park, you see how that just dams up and it compounds the problem. So we think once that gets done, you'll have a very quick moving creek through town because it's in getting out. But that would hopefully reduce the base flood elevation and maybe give some real relief to business owners along Central Avenue.

I'm kind of glad I don't know much about bridge design, but... log jam. It just is amazing what all we catch.

It will, as Matt mentioned too, it'll free flow in that area where that low bridge comes out, low water crossing. The I-35 component will also be a big factor and a big help because that piles up significantly also. So I think with both of those taken away from there, waters are going to flow. And I think it's going to play a huge role.

And I'm really excited to see this happen. It's something that we needed for so long, and I'm glad it's finally coming to fruition. As we get a good bridge across there, are there any plans? And I could look at the thoroughfare plan, I guess, but I haven't. that'll take us additional roadways up into the Grigg Heights area and that sort of thing?

Well, it's yet to be, you know, seen, but with development, we're hoping. With development, it'll kind of play itself out to where it'll have a corridor through that area and such. And there are, you know, road improvements to the thoroughfare plan, but that's still hoping development kind of

As we're communicating with TxDOT about the jug handle and the connections to Central Avenue, we're also looking at those extensions of our thoroughfare plan to the east. And so those are, they rate very, very high as we're trying to accomplish all that and make sure we don't just fix the problem here, but that we continue our circulation plan throughout this eastern part of the community.

I move to approve agenda item number 12.

Second. We have a motion and a second to approve agenda item 12. And again, thanks to Congressman Carter for helping this. Couldn't happen without you guys. And so this is a great project for a relatively neglected area of town. So appreciate the work done there. All in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Aye. Passes unanimously. Chair would entertain a motion to pick up item number, item eight, I believe, from the table, or item nine from the table. So moved. And a second. Yeah. Motion second to pick item nine from the table. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Now that it's back on the table, Mr. Mike, save the best for last.

Thank you for picking that up, Mayor.

Yes.

So good evening. We're here still trudging along our budget adoption process. Tonight we're going to talk about the Water and Sewer Fund, the Drainage Fund. So let's have some fun. Okay. So as you always, as I always do, I like to finish, start FY27 with telling you kind of where I expect to end FY26. And so... For FY26, we budgeted $14,745,000 of revenue in the water and sewer fund and expenditures of 14,374,000. We're looking like we're gonna be short in both of those cases. Revenues I've updated just yesterday. Revenues I have here is 13,766,000. It looks more like it's gonna be around 13,900,000. So some improvement there in revenues. Expenditures, again, still below budget, but instead of increasing reserves by $370,000, we're likely to kind of break even or use reserves a little bit around $30,000 by the time we end FY26. Moving then on to FY27, on a budget-to-budget comparison, you can see that revenues are are down by $473,000, 3.2%. And expenditures are also down from FY26 on a budget to budget comparison by 145,000. We will recommend some rate changes for both water and sewer, but no new positions are included in the FY27 budget. If that comes to be, $14,271,000 of revenues, $14,229,000 of expenses, that's basically flat, slight increase to reserves, still remaining just over $5 million at the end of 2027. So what I'd like to show you here on this chart here, You can see the red lines, the red bars that you see is the actual unrestricted reserve balance in the water and sewer fund. You can see it stays kind of above $5 million from 25 to 27. Then the orange bars that you see going up are the minimum reserve requirement. We have a 30% of budgeted expenditures minimum in our policy, and you can see that that's been in. So we're getting a little closer in 26 and 27. On the other side, we have some other funds that are capital-related funds for the water and sewer. We have two bond funds, 2022 and 2025 that have, the 2025 has a lot of cash there sitting now, but that's all assigned for projects. You have another $11 million in that capital project fund, but all but $1 million of that is assigned to a project as well. We also have a project. I'm sorry?

You say those are a standard project. How far out are we talking? A year, right?

Not years, no. Like $5 million of this is the wastewater treatment plant expansion that's ongoing. And so these are – there are – Generally, when we're putting aside money in capital project funds, it's based upon the CIP and it's based upon the current year kind of CIP. So these most of these projects should be either in process or soon to be in progress. Like I say, a lot of that is. No, it's not in there. I was thinking it was the bridge project we just approved had some a lot of money in it, but that's not in here. So on the revenue side, again, comparing a budget to budget kind of comparison there, this number here I revised today, that actually went down by about 130,000. So it's a little bit worse there, but the sewer went up about 235,000 with my revised budget, about 5.3. But you can see looking at bottom line, $14.7 million budgeted in 26, $14.2 million budgeted in 2027. So let's talk about rates for a tad. Our meter, we have rates structured. We have a base fee by meter size and then volumetric rates as well. So there's a lot of numbers here, but let me walk you through some of that. So when we did our utility rate study in 2024, that's this side over here, our rate study recommended rates for the next five years, so 25, 26, 27, 28, and 29. And for 2027, so you were supposed to have a jump from 2025 to 2026, and then another jump from 2026 to 2027. This is what we actually did. So in 2026, instead of having a rate increase in 2026, we decided to leave it flat and not increase rates at all in 2026. We thought about increasing sewer rates. We didn't even increase sewer rates in 2026. We talked about a mid-year kind of thing, but instead we've just left them flat. So what I'm proposing in 2027, let's just look at that top one, about 90% of our meters are five eighths inch in size. And so I'm proposing in 2027, an increase from $18 to $19, which falls in line with this side right here. And so instead of adopting the 2027 rates that are in our study for water, I'd recommend moving up and still increasing, but moving into that 20 column as opposed to the 2027. A little easier to see on this same exact thing. So on the volumetric side, we would have an increase from 375 to 394, which is the rate right here that was in the study for 2026. Instead, it would be the rate that we would adopt for 2027. Our non-residential class is kind of a flat fee. Again, same thing. It would be a $0.20 per thousand gallons increase but it's 420 as opposed to, it's a 5% increase to 420 as opposed to this 441 that you'd see in the study. Our non-residential class, again, adopting the 2026 recommended rates in 2027, you'd see this increase here, 25 cent for the first 25,000 gallons, 30 cents for the next tier, et cetera. On the sewer side, however, sewer is running behind more so than water. So for sewer, I'd like to go ahead and adopt these 2027 rates, or I will propose that we go to the 2027 rates that are in the study as opposed to 2026 rates. You see that increase in a base fee, a 62-cent increase to the base fee, and then a 14-cent increase to the volumetric rate. What you need to remember, too, on the volumetric rate is we cap the sewer charge based upon the residents' winter average. So even though that's a 14 cent increase, if their winter average is 3,000 gallons, they'd only pay 14 cents more because of that cap. I mean, it wouldn't be any more than that for the future years, future months. On the expenditure side, expenditures, as I said, going down from $14,374,000 to $14,229,000. The changes you see there are related to transfers. That's one. Transfers for capital projects is going down. Our water purchases are going down a tad too. Personnel costs going upside. Yes, sir.

There's just a question on the sewer rate is calculated based on winter cost averaging. So we take the three... How many months? Tell us how you're calculating.

We use the winter month of December, January, and February consumption.

Average that out.

Whatever that average is, whatever the usage is of water, it becomes... I'm sorry?

For your household meter.

For your household meter, right? That becomes... the cap on sewer charges for the rest of the year. So the logic is, using winter averaging, is you're not irrigating in the winter months, typically. So the water consumption during those three months is more indicative of water that then goes into the ground, into the sewer system and, you know, are to be treated.

You mentioned that under the

water meter or the separate meter right correct if we there is no longer a residential sprinkler component But the same logic would then apply because if it's, even if you had a separate sprinkler meter and you were using, you're not irrigating during the winter, then you're not, it wouldn't be part calculation. I mean, you'd still be kind of capped at that, whatever the consumption is for those.

We had a point last year where I think folks would charge sewer on their, we had it correct, so.

Yeah, when we first started implementing, we had some hiccups, yes. But we've since fixed it. They're combined now. Yeah, they're combined.

Residential sprinkler meters.

And now the way we do it now is it's, yeah, sum total of water. Water is water, whether it's irrigation or not. That's correct. Non-commercial is treated differently. I mean, non-residential is treated differently. But residence is combined. did it kind of make sense okay thank you um let's see here so let's go through each of the divisions in the in the water and sewer fund Uh, utility admin, um, goes down slightly. It's essentially a flat budget. Um, the change there is barely, um, in salting, um, services goes down, uh, by a hundred thousand made up by personnel on the other way. Utility finance goes up about a hundred thousand dollars primarily due to that debt service category you see there. And, um, Waterside, the water budget falls by $78,000 from 6.3 million to 6,275,000. Water purchases goes down a bit, but generally flat for such a large budget. And then on the sewer, the budget to budget comparison falls by $150,000 from 2.2 million to just about 2.1. It's this transfer there that contributes to most of that decline. So we do have $30.8 million of debt outstanding in the water and sewer fund. You have some debt maturing in 2027 and some debt maturing in 2028. That looks like that graphically.

Would you mind going back just a couple of transfers? We're pulling $427,000 out. Where are we? That's for... Capital improvement or projects that we've identified to a later date?

Some of that is personnel allocations from work that the general fund is doing for others. Some of that is capital project related, yes, based upon CIP. I can give you a better breakdown of what all that's for if you'd like to know. Where were we? So this is our debt service over the next several years. Stays a little over $3 million for the next couple of years, then falls as the 2027 and 2028 debt matures to that level, then falls again as some of this matures. Now, this assumes no additional debt will be added. We're going to talk to CIP at our next meeting, and we'll end up backfilling some of that for these projects. Our other fund is drainage in the utility side. Drainage moves right along in 2026. It reserves about $2,000 to $379,000 at the end of the year. Flat budget here from one year to the next, revenues $682,000, $623,000 for expenditures. No rate increase, though, for drainage. Because we were doing the water and sewer side, we felt that just leaving the rates unchanged in drainage is probably a good way to go there. No new positions as well. Here's another fund where I'm showing you that the unrestricted fund balance has grown with some difference between the minimum fund balance and current. This is another fund also that has $800,000 in it in a capital project. All $800,000 of that is going towards the Avenue Eye Detention Pond project.

Back up to the drainage really quick. Right now, so when it floods and we get all the trash along our drainage ways, anywhere from a little inlet that goes into the creek or the creek itself, how do we pay for the cleanup of that?

That is a good question.

I do not believe it's reflected in the expenditures. I think we're mowing detention ponds.

Mowing detention ponds. Yeah, mowing maintenance of detention ponds is included here. When you have a big event.

A portion of Nolan Creek is also drainage. But I think that's probably parks. I think there's a lot of public works and parks that is doing work for this. And we're underreporting. I think regardless of what the revenues are, I really think we need to look at how we're reporting the expenses of that. And if it runs as a deficit, then it runs as a deficit. And then, because honestly, it'll put pressure on us to get this fund where it needs to be, because I think we're underfunding this pretty significantly.

Yes, that is a true statement.

And also, you would also take that out of property tax budget, move it to billing budget.

That's right, a utility budget versus a property tax budget, which means more people participate on the utility budget. And we're really focused on mainly homeowners on this. Anyway, so I just, it's something... As we think about utilities versus ad valorem tax, there's a lot of pressure on property tax. So I really think we need to at least report it for the next year or something, even if we don't go up on the fee.

Yeah, we will certainly have some discussions with department heads and make sure that we have that kind of everything incorporated that we should.

Yeah, because when we get chainsaws out there to chop up limbs on the thing to then drag it off, I don't think drainage is paying for that.

No, it would probably be whoever, whatever budget that person sits in is probably who's paying for that work.

And no different in a business drainage fee versus a. residential drainage fee?

It's a flat fee for residents. Commercial is based upon impervious surface cover. So your large parking lot would pay more for drainage fees than your average homeowner.

So an example is on Sparta where you've got a lot of those businesses and may have, I don't know, eat a donut and have a cup and it gets washed away. They're contributing. A lot of those impervious areas, Walmart parking lot, True, HEB, the schools, they all contribute to a lot of the trash we pick up in Nolan Creek.

That's correct.

Yeah. So they would have to pay a little more. Perfect. Thank you.

And we do not get reimbursed for cleaning up under TxDOT's bridges, right?

I don't believe that's the case.

I don't think we do.

They clean up under their bridges. We clean up under ours, I think. Unless... We do Maine, I think.

Yeah, they've been... They've got to about annually. Each October, they clear it. And then we tend to do it a couple more times. Where we can. Where we can get to it. So you'll see us on the Main Street Bridge. You'll see us in the, you know, Penelope, those areas we try to get. And what about Interstate 35? Yeah. Once a year. Once a year. Yeah.

So as far as moving those expenses into the drainage fund, practically speaking, you would just, if we have a big flood event and all the park staff and public work staff goes out, then we're just going to pay for this. For these three days, they were doing drainage projects. And so we're going to reimburse them.

And then what we do is we then have to fund the drainage fund with general fund. Because we're doing it at general fund anyway, but at least we're recording it left pocket, right pocket. We know that.

The culprit is sure we have some, do we code our labor differently when things like that happen?

If there is, if we're filing for reimbursement, like with a FEMA type event, it's Wednesday. Yes, we would.

So the tornado one. Yeah. So, I mean, we obviously have a, it's probably.

Well, I don't think we have drainage. Yeah. So when we do mowing, we have to code. Yeah. Yeah. For that.

Yeah, it's a bit of a record keeping exercise to do that correctly. But yeah, we can try to capture some. Again, on the expense side, essentially a flat budget from 620 to 623. The differences there are our flood warning system was upgraded here in 2026. And so costs go down in 2027 for that. Personnel and transfers then pick up some of that slack. So where we are then, a $59,000 increase to reserves potentially at the end of FY27 to get us to $438,000. There is a little bit of debt outstanding on the drainage side. That matures in 2028. And then, so where we are on the utility funds for our proposed budget, we'll probably propose rate increases for water and sewer, and the expenditures for water and sewer are pretty flat. And then again, no increase to drainage fees for FY27. Okay. That takes me to there. And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions or comments that haven't already been asked?

Mike, are we having to pay any arbitrage for the bond funds that we haven't used yet?

I did write the IRS $180,000 check recently. But that's not a bad thing. That just means you're earning more than the yield that was on the bonds. And it was an older issue. I don't remember which one it was. But yes, it was a big check, but we were prepared for it. Each year we ask a consultant to do our arbitrage calculation. So we saw this negative arbitrage that was coming. And then they recommended that we go ahead and so we would get that out of the way. I think it was 180,000 or 112,000. Yeah. Not as bad as I thought. But that money's gone. Yeah. Thank you.

Mike, I have a couple of questions. Yes, ma'am. Just trying to identify just kind of the true cost on the on the residential, the base, the basic residential increase. So you on the you've got on the base rate of dollar.

I'm getting there whole time. Yes.

And then on the rates. Basically for that, anything over the 2000 in that first category between water and sewer is 81 cents.

Correct.

So we're looking at basically, you know, kind of the lower end of everything, $1.81 increase for a pretty typical standard residential dwelling.

If I did a quick calculation of what I'll call kind of a typical customer, and there's really no such thing as a typical customer, but someone who uses 7,000 gallons of water, that's water consumption, and their winter average is 3,000, which is pretty typical. In that case, the change from 26 to 27 would be $2.73 a month. So less than $3 a month with these rate increases that we're talking about for that particular customer. Just for water? For both, water and sewer.

Yeah, I'm trying to look at both. Just an overall increase on your resident. Okay, thank you. $2.73? $2.73.

So my question, percentage increase for that average customer or... 10%. $2.73 divided by 63.27.

Thank you. So it goes to $66 from 63.12%. Yeah. Thank you. And the drainage is just a flat one per bill?

I don't know.

I mean, there's roughly 8,000, 9,000 bills.

Correct.

Residence is flat. Yeah. Well, but I meant like, oh, those are percent. Okay, never mind. So I guess I don't know the answer. I just want to ask you. You can send it out later or whatever. But we know one cent on a property tax is so much revenue. What would that range number be on?

If you did a some percent increase, we could provide some ideas there.

I think discussing prior or just passing on, I don't know, drainage rate, especially in the light of the questions that were asked.

Yeah, if we look at next year's general fund and the pressure that's on it, some of these policies feed that shortfall. And that may have to be an opportunity to...

I'm sure parks and public works would probably love to have just a little bit back and not make it so tight and... Maybe another small project or something along those lines and again. Where it's not based on a number or a meter for the size of the account.

We've carried a pretty empty balance in that it's, I think. Reviewing the general fund drainage, possible fees or charges and looking at what we may be able to shift to the drain fund. and hopefully carrying a much smaller annual balance. And that fund would make a lot of sense before we try to go up on the rate.

Yeah. Is that, you know...

It's been the $400,000 we've had sitting in there every year.

Yeah, so if we... Annual expense is $600,000, $700,000, 30% of $100,000, so we're covering twice the policy.

Yeah, it's a large percentage...

I'll show you here.

It's $400,000 total. We could certainly do some of that. It's just not going to make a significant amount of difference just because there's not that much here.

I guess if the general fund really pays for a lot of what drainage does anyway, is there a need to have a percentage policy on that fund? I mean, what are you saving that for besides a rainy day?

Projects. Typically, we try to do capital projects into that small one.

One of the reasons we had to bet in that fund to do that. need a 30% balance in a drainage fund.

Well, if we've got a policy of 30% on... Because drainage will end up... All of these things end up showing up as revenue. And so if we have a policy of 30% of revenue... Or expense, I'm sorry, of expenses... We're at 70%, right? So we'll be ending. So we're 40% higher.

The one thing that's odd about this fund as well, you may recall when we had our annual report. On an operating basis, this fund has had an operating loss every year for the last 10 years. even though reserves are growing. And what's happening is depreciation is what's causing that kind of funkiness to happen because your asset, the portion that's part of assets fund balance which means unrestricted fund balance is getting higher even though there's an annual operating loss so and that's because depreciation goes into that calculation so yeah long story short is we need to look at this one if we want to consider a rate increase just because there's a lot of weirdness going on here yeah big capital asset is the um the streets we believe yes yeah But tension ponds, I mean, those would be one of the assets that we have, that kind of stuff. I think we kind of appreciate those.

And the meter change out?

Yeah, the meter change outs. We have, I can show you here. Let me back up. So we have, when I said about we have other funds here, let me get to that. Apologize. So we have this, whoops, we have that meter replacement fund. that meter replacement there that has a little over a million dollars in it, a million, one point something million. You'll recall when we replaced all of our water meters in 2015, I think we began setting aside some money into this meter replacement fund for the one day, 10 years later, when we needed to start replacing meters, we'd have some money to go replace those meters because we did all of them. And so that pool has been growing a bit. We've been utilizing that to replace the little radios on the top, the little hockey puck thing, modernizing some of that equipment. But we still have around a million dollars or so for future meter replacement in the event that we need it, or as we need it, because we're already 10 years out now, so a lot of these meters are going to probably need to be replaced.

But we have been replacing some, right?

We do have some that are on time change. I mean, when they hit a certain age, we replace them.

Yes, we have an ongoing program. What we were talking about doing was doing a third and a third and a third of our Radios, the communication device. All of those, you may, and we've done most of those. We've done most of those.

Yeah. Which gives us real-time feedback, right?

Yes. Those help a lot. We can identify leaks that way.

Rates are recommended. We'll have another chance to.

Yes, this is just what I have. I have the revenue that's reflected from these proposed rates in the budget that we're talking about tonight. We're not adopting those rates. We'll have that discussion as we get into it.

But yes. Any other comments or questions? All right. That being the last item on our agenda and being a work session, no action is required, we stand adjourned at 6.39 p.m. on Tuesday.