City Council - Special Meeting

Bastrop County
Wednesday, September 9, 2026

The Elgin City Council held a special meeting to discuss the FY 26-27 budget, including tax rates, new positions, and employee compensation. Public comment addressed the Flock camera program, and the council agreed to use existing funds for one-time city department purchases and to contribute to reserves.

About this meeting

Government Body
City Council
Meeting Type
City Council
Location
Elgin, TX
Meeting Date
September 9, 2026

Published excerpts

Only published remarks appear here. The full transcript is not published.

18 sections

25:44•Liston Crim

But I assume some of those items are included in this.

54:27 – 54:39•Liston Crim

I wonder if one consideration might be to tie it to our revenues as a percentage of saying, you know, eventually we will have a bigger tax base than what we have today.

1:01:09•Liston Crim

So leave us with 527.033. Are there any positions up there that you guys

1:02:07•Liston Crim

I was going to say, what role does this person play in IT? I mean, is it just support?

1:10:38 – 1:10:58•Agatha Mayfield

We also wanna make sure that we don't, assume the March date and then fall into a deficit if we end up hiring somebody before March. Now, the possibility exists. We won't. But I would really not like to revisit this at the end of the year with the deficit because we didn't properly plan.

1:11:35•Agatha Mayfield

For you right now. You got to wait until March.

1:12:36•Liston Crim

And all these salaries based on the market? Yes. We're not bringing them at a deficit?

1:17:19•Liston Crim

Well, just to again to clarify this, these figures covered those 13. Yes, positions.

1:17:43•Liston Crim

OK, so from what I understand, going back, if my memory serves me, the vast majority of our employees are still below in that one bottom one fourth.

1:18:03•Liston Crim

Somewhere I heard 70% of our employees were still in the bottom one quarter of their pay scale.

1:20:08•Liston Crim

And this won't do anything for us when we're talking about compression and stuff like that, right?

1:24:55•Agatha Mayfield

And you have a whole quarter to figure it out. That's the key.

1:28:28 – 1:28:45•Liston Crim

Okay We're we're might Refresh my memory. What are those 36 folks? How do they compare to the other the bulk of the employees that are still below the market baseline? I mean we said they're in a critical position, right and

1:28:50 – 1:29:04•Liston Crim

Well, I do too, but I'm trying to figure out how to distinguish between what I feel like I want to cover all employees, but I'm trying to figure out how would we determine these 36 votes. What criteria did we use?

1:32:11 – 1:32:26•Liston Crim

If you look at those positions that we're talking about, newly funded positions, those that are mandated And we're going to require a tax increase because we don't do anything without a tax increase other than a zero balance budget.

1:33:23•Agatha Mayfield

I do not. No, good, I'm not. I do not, I'm not, nope. I'm verbalizing. Okay.

1:36:47 – 1:38:31•Liston Crim

One of the things I think we need to consider too is that when we talk about the impact on the average assessed value of a home in Elgin is about $290,000. That's not market value, that's the assessed value. The total impact on that person would be $203 a year, about $17 a month. I'm not saying that's good because there's nobody on this council that wants to raise taxes. There's no incentive for me to do that because I pay taxes. But my point is, for what we're trying to do, when you talk about employees, I've always made the comment it cost us to lose employees. The average, when we lose thre

1:44:37 – 1:45:14•Liston Crim

Would you, Beau, would you do me a favor and include that impact on the taxpayer figure for us? In other words, we suggest it's $203 a year for the average assessed value at home. And then what 67 and 68 would do. And remember, guys, too, there was a comment made about how that impacts our most vulnerable part of our community, which we always consider 65 and older. Their taxes are frozen, folks. They don't pay a dime toward any rate increase. Again, none of us want to raise taxes, I believe.

These excerpts are remarks by officials whose identity a person confirmed, from a transcript generated automatically from the official public meeting video and presented unedited. Accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.