City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. We're going to go ahead and call the evening session of the Arlington City Council meeting to order. It is September 29th. I can't believe how fast this year is going. It is 6.30 p.m. And I'm going to ask Mr. Jim Bergen from Mission Arlington to please come forward and lead us in an invocation. Can you all please stand if you're able?

Amen. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

SECRETARY KERRY, Thank you. You may be seated. Come on up, Chief. I'm going to invite Chief Al Jones, our Arlington police chief, to come up and join us for this proclamation.

Next Tuesday. November 6th? October 6th. October 6th. Thank you. Lord, help me. I was about to say I forgot my glasses, but I may have forgotten my mind as well. October 6th, next Tuesday, is National Night Out. So Arlington has always done extraordinarily well on National Night Out. And with that, we'll issue a proclamation. Whereas this year, National Night Out is Nationwide Crime and Drug Prevention Month. will be held on Tuesday, October 6th, and whereas this 43rd annual National Night Out will provide Arlington neighborhoods with an opportunity to raise awareness of crime prevention progr

OK. Ms. Garcia, speaker guidelines and general decorum, please.

Thank you, Ms. Garcia. Do we have any appointments to boards or commissions this evening?

Thank you, Ms. Garcia. Do we have any speakers on any of these appointments? Thank you. I have a motion from Council Member Gonzalez and a second from Council Member Ware. Please cast your vote. The motion passes. Ms. Garcia, consideration of minutes, please.

Thank you, ma'am. Council, do you all have any additions or corrections? Seeing none, Ms. Garcia, any speakers on this item? Thank you. I have a motion from Council Member Galante, a second from Council Member Pham. Please cast your vote. The motion passes. Ms. Garcia, consideration of consent agenda, please.

Thank you, ma'am. I want to recognize Council Member Galante.

Yes, Mayor. I want to pull out item 719, Tarrant County, November 26th, 2026 election polling places for separate voting.

Thank you, sir. I'm going to pull from the consent agenda item number 7.19 for separate consideration.

I didn't see Kelly in here. Did you all kick him out? No. Okay. Kelly is not in here, so next speaker.

Thank you, ma'am. I have a motion from Councilmember Gonzales and a second from Councilmember Pham. Please cast your vote. And the motion passes. Councilmember Galante. Okay. Did you want to say something on the one item we removed at your request?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. So this resolution about the polling places. We have new locations for polling places. I'd like to make some remarks for the residents of Arlington. There was a concern. the reduction of polling places in early voting, and also a significant reduction of polling places during election day that affects every resident's will to cast their ballots on election day or early voting. We discussed this this afternoon. I thought it was very interesting, some stats that one of my colleagues, that I invited him to say some remarks. I'm glad City of Arlington has the via that will b

Thank you, Council Member Galante. Council Member Shelton.

Thank you Mr. Mayor for the opportunity to speak. You all know That decision was recently made that significantly limits the number of polling locations here in our city of Arlington, Texas. And I've heard from a number of you all through phone calls and emails about, hey, Dr. Shelton, can you look into this? And I did. As a professor who studies race, ethnicity, religion, and politics, this is what I do for a living. So I asked Molly Shortall, our city attorney, and her team for some maps of the city of Arlington. In particular, I wanted to look at two maps. I wanted to look, imagine a map of

Thank you, Dr. Shelton. Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you Thank You councilmember Gonzales Voting is a right that we should not take for granted In today's world of divisive and hateful rhetoric and people drawn a party line trying to protect themselves and the redistricting that we voted against in Arlington here with a resolution. I believe you'll see tonight that council will also stand together and vote for a resolution opposing the reduction of polling places in our city. We should be making it easier for our residents to vote, not more difficult. especially those with lesser means than others, as Dr. Shelton so eloquently said. So wit

Thank you. With that, I have a motion from Councilmember Garcia-Dumas and a second from Councilmember Ware. Please cast your vote. And the motion passes. Okay, we're gonna move on down to 10.1, Ms. Thoppel.

Mr. Ramirez, come on up to the podium, please.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Council Member Shelton.

Dr. Shelton has a question for you. Sir, I appreciate your project, I really do. I just have a question. The recommendation was to, what are your thoughts about a recommendation to keep the master bath, keep a full master bath there rather than turn that master bath into a half bath? Do you have any thoughts about that recommendation?

Council members, don't run off yet. You got these other council members wanting to say something to you. Council member Galante.

Pretty much the same question my colleague Jason Shelton had. I mean, I'm okay. I'll support you taking care of Mamacita and doing what you got to do. It's family first, right? Yes, sir. But I just have a hard time changing the master bathroom, right? To accommodate for that. I mean, you said it would be difficult for you guys, but it won't be impossible, right?

I'd love to see you following the recommendations from the staff. And think about those recommendations, not just because they want to. There's implications for safety, for transit inside the house. In case of an emergency, you have another egress opportunity, you know what I mean? So when you build those things, There's a reason why they recommend, and I'll urge you to agree with those recommendations. And I'll put a stipulation on that, that you will abide for the staff recommendations. Then you have my vote. What do you think?

How much more is it significantly more expensive to do that? Because I'm not willing to vote in favor of amending this if it's going to cost him a lot more money to do this type of stuff. And you know your living environment better than any of us do.

Okay. Do you have anything else, Mr. Delante?

It will affect you economically too hard. It will be too hard for you to do it. Because of the staff recommendation. Mayor's right. We don't want you to incur such a big extra cost. But if it's not going to be that big, if you agree.

Yes or no? You agree or not with the recommendation? That's all I need to know.

Thank you. They're just going to put a ladder in there so his 85-year-old mom can climb up the ladder. Okay. Ms. Garcia, any other speakers on this item? Thank you. I'm going to close the public hearing. I have a motion from Councilmember Gonzales and a second from Councilmember Pham. Please cast your vote. The motion passes. 10.2, Ms. Thoppel.

Mr. Rodriguez, you got anything to say? You're okay? God, you're so good at this. Any other speakers, Ms. Garcia?

Yes, Ms. Rader, so the transformer will be inside, and you have the masonry walls built around it, correct? And how high is that going to be?

How about the inside? Will it be gravel or concrete that you guys pour inside?

Yes, that's correct. It's a crushed rock material. So you just stood up to say she's right. Absolutely. I take Holly's lead on this. Thanks for your input.

So I got another question for you. So with a strong wind, were there any dirt picking up and? blowing away through the neighborhood because they won't complain that they're afraid. I know the sound, but I don't believe any sound would come out of that area. If it does, it's going to be very minimal. But any dirt would come out because you have rock, you know, on top of it.

I just want to make sure. All right. Ms. Garcia, any other speakers on this?

Okay, I'm going to close the public hearing. I have a motion from Council Member Gonzales and a second from Council Member Pham. Please cast your vote. And the motion passes. See, Council believes she was right, too. 11.1, Ms. Sarah Stuppelfield.

Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Garcia, any speakers on this item?

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please.

Thank you, sir. Thank you guys very much. See, now the good news is you don't have to search through the phone for any other words.

Hold on one second. Darren, will you come back up here? Dr. Shelton, did you have something you wanted to ask this gentleman? You were just, okay. You can go sit down. We'll bring you back up if we need you.

Thank you guys so much. Don't run off, Josh. Any other speakers, Ms. Garcia?

I don't have a question for him. I just want to make a point.

Is that now? Okay. Before you run off, let me jump in ahead of you then. Yes, sir. Josh, you came to see me this morning. I did. Me and Council Member Gonzalez were there. And I feel we had a good, productive conversation that was left with you and I have an agreement to disagree.

That's right. And I told you then, I told you right before City Council started this evening, and I'll tell you here on the record tonight, that I don't want our dialogue to stop. I intend to come and visit you, look at what y'all are doing over there. We'll bring staff with me so we can talk about how we can help your business over there. Uh, we value what y'all do. I believe we're, as we talked about in detail this morning, we're looking at two different types of enterprises doing similar type of artwork, but for different purposes, we think that's where the mature disagreement came from. Th

With ability to articulate your position. I look forward to us talking some more on this thing following today's vote. We are not done. We value y'all. We love that you've been here in Arlington. We want to make sure that we don't ignore you on things. And I think we can get to some type of area where we're all feeling better about things. We may never totally agree, but that's okay. You may find this hard to believe. I don't totally agree with everybody sitting up here No, I don't agree with you all the time. But I do appreciate you. You're a class act. You handled yourself that way today, an

Dr. Shelton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This one was a tough one for me, or it is a tough one for me. Out out to UTA and the glass blowing, good lord. My wife and I have taken our girls up there for years and bought a whole bunch of gifts for people. But the challenge that I have here that I'm looking at a group of folks in the back of the room that gave their blood sweat and tears for ten years to this city and built a small business and they were doing their thing and it reminds me of my own family back home in Ohio you know the oldest black owned business in the state of Ohio and about 30 years

Thank you, sir. Council Member Garcia-Dumas, your name popped up all of a sudden.

Hi there. Darren and Josh, thank you so much for coming and for using your voice here tonight. Josh, thank you for coming to my office today and for having a conversation with me. Darren, Josh, Clifton, and your crew, thank you for being artists. Thank you for being artisans in a world that it's very difficult to be an artist. There's a lot telling you not to and I know financially even especially as a nonprofit It's very difficult to do But you guys really lift up the communities that you're in by being artists and doing what you do and holding that commitment to the arts So thank you so much

I think it's obvious that we have enough hot air here in Arlington to accommodate all glass blowing entities. Not myself, mind you, but everybody else up here. Council Member Ware.

You guys back there know how I feel about this. So I'm going to talk with you up front here. I went to your place. You were in a gas station at one time over in Fort Worth, right? And I went there and it was cool. I really enjoyed it. Looked to go back. And I just want to say to you, I'm going to vote against this tonight, but what I want from you is to prove me wrong. As a non-profit, Your job is to encourage glass art and the appreciation of it, am I right? You want other businesses to get in this, stay in this if they're here. And so I challenge you to collaborate and cooperate and let's ma

Thank you. Thank you for all showing up today. My guests here, they're all buddies, right? Glass-blowing buddies on the UTA in the same realm, right? We are friends. But I'm going to follow the opening of my colleague, Jason Shelton. That is a hard one. It's a hard decision to make. Especially being a small business owner, also on the District 1, which I represent, 10 years of sweat, blood, and tears to make it happen, and then they are faced with this. I just wish we had more time. to get this agreement to accommodate the local business here in Arlington. And at once, we can all start it sing

Okay, with that, seeing nobody else on here, I'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing. I got a motion from Councilmember Garcia-Dumas and a second from Councilmember Hunter. Please cast your vote. And the motion passes, congratulations. Okay, we're going to move on to citizen participation. Ms. Garcia?

Mr. Burke, I don't see him in here tonight.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. OK. Ms. Garcia, any other speakers?

Thank you, ma'am. Council, do you all have any announcements for tonight? Council Member Gonzales?

Any other announcements on this side? I have one announcement. This Thursday, October 1st, we'll have the first in a series of town hall meetings called Arlington Unfiltered Straight Talk with the Mayor. This Thursday, we'll be at the Bob Duncan Center down in the middle of Vanderriff Park. It will start at 6.30. You don't need to be pre-registered. You could show up and ask questions and engage about some of the recent ordinance modifications that have been done here in Arlington, including anti-discrimination, vaping, etc. So, Ms. Garcia, announcements tonight, please.

Thank you all for coming out tonight. Love the troop being here. God bless you all for being here. Thank you, and we are adjourned.