City Council - Regular Meeting

Again with the invocation and pledge, led by Councilwoman Marsh.

All right, I'll entertain a motion for approving the minutes from the June 24th meeting.

All right, I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion from Councilman Nichols and a second from Councilwoman Hawkins. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Minutes are approved. All right, today begins our budget presentation. Mr. City Manager Ed, P1. Are you okay this morning?

Thank you. I appreciate the presentation. I also want to thank Kedrick and Lauren. I see them here this morning. Thank you very much for your time, detail and efforts and your entire office for putting in the work on this budget. Thank you very much. I know this budget wasn't an easy one with the constraints that we are facing with the state right now. So thank you for your tenacity and working through this one. I know, Ed, I have some questions for you, just some follow-up questions, and then I'll open it up to everybody for some additional questions. Ed, you briefly mentioned when the dollar

Thank you, Chief. Ed, you talked about CEOs. That's not something that we are considering with the adoption of this budget. That's just initial discussions that we'll have for later down the road, correct?

We're still going to need fire trucks going forward, and that kind of plays into our ISO rating and the CALEA certification. Talking about the police department, you know, we have the best departments in the nation, and that's something we want to maintain. And with that comes the responsibility of keeping our equipment up to date, keeping our equipment where the firefighters can use it and respond to calls efficiently. So that's That is something that we are going to have to consider as we go down the road to ensure we have the right equipment. On the equipment piece, there was a lot of techn

Will the goal be to still repair potholes once they're reported within 24 hours?

Switching to water, you mentioned the water rates will likely not change for the residential users because the first 25,000 gallons will remain at that current rate. For those that are listening and watching, I'm sure there's a ton of people watching our city council meeting. Do you know what the average household uses in water?

Not only are we changing the ERU structure, but that's also a state requirement. We're coming into compliance now with how the state wants us to kind of determine that ERU value.

All right, last question for me. We obviously talked about the regulatory compliance fee with the consent decree projects. And we hear a lot of, you know, we're almost finished with this project. Does that mean those fees will then start rolling off of our utility bills? And so, yes, we're wrapping up year nine, getting into year 10, but just so everybody's aware, kind of explain why those fees are on there and why they will not roll off after year 10 when we complete this mandated project from the federal government.

Thank you, Ed. That's all the questions I have. Again, thank you for your work with this, and Kedrick and Lauren, thank you. This is a budget that... places an emphasis, like you said, on public safety, protecting the residential consumers, and at the same time recognizing our civil service employees and our employees here with the city. So thank you all for y'all's work on this. Thank you, Mayor. Anybody else have any questions?

You're welcome. A brief question. You had mentioned grants. Do we receive any federal grants for our water infrastructure replacement to assist with that?

We got one with the airport related to the work that we're doing to hopefully get a second airline.

yeah we i met with him last last week i believe it was and we talked about federal grants for the airport and and other options that we can explore with his office yeah kate's coming up here i don't know if she has anything i said something wrong

Kedrick didn't wear a tie for nothing, so come on up, Kedrick.

Anybody have any other questions? All right, we have to schedule a public hearing on the proposed property tax rate and proposed budget both for August 26th and September 9th. So I will accept a motion to schedule public hearings on the proposed property tax rate of $24.2063 per $100 of assessed value in the proposed budget on the August 26th and September 9th, 2026 council agendas.

I have a motion by Councilman Childs and a second by Councilwoman Hawkins. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, motion passes. also have to have a motion for placing the adoption of the tax rate um on the september 9 2026 council agenda so is there a motion to place proposals to adopt an ad valorem tax rate of 24.2063 cents per 100 of assessed value in the fiscal year 2026, 2027 budget as action items on the September 9th, 2026 city council meeting. So moved. I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion by Councilman Nichols and a second by Councilwoman Dark-Bays. All in

Anybody have any questions for Leigh Ann? So moved. I have a motion by Councilwoman Hawkins. I have a second. Second. I have a second by Councilman Nichols. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And one is approved. Thank you, Leigh Ann. All right, M2. I've gone down my list. It was going to be Darren, then it was going to be Chief Coble, and now I think it's fallen to you, Cameron.

I was interested in seeing completed, and we tell everybody, it's like turning an aircraft carrier up here on council. Nothing moves quickly, and so it's taken a while to get to this point. But I'm proud of this project and the team that we have on this project, so thank you for your work on it. I'm excited to see this one. Anybody have any questions for Cameron?

1972. Oh, wow. So we've got a good, useful life.

Wow. Anybody else have any questions for Cameron? All right. With that, I'll entertain a motion on M2. So moved. Second. I have a motion by Councilwoman Dark-Bays and a second by Councilman Nichols. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And two is approved. Thank you, Cameron. Consent agenda. Anything need to be pulled or approved as is?

I have a motion by Councilman Nichols. I have a second. I second. Second by Councilwoman Marsh. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The consent agenda is approved. Mr. City Manager's report.

Thank you, Ed. You're right. Today, Tyler has to start his school back. So, you know, those of you on the roads, exercise a little more caution, exercise a little more patience. Traffic patterns changing this morning and again at 3 o'clock this afternoon. So just be mindful. Parents are taking their kids back to school today. And then we mentioned the fire department a couple of times. Our very own Councilwoman Dark Bay's recently stopped by fire station number one and visited with those guys up there. And I know they really appreciated that. And that's something, you know, if y'all haven't do

That's right, yeah. They always appreciate when we stop by. Anybody have any questions for Ed or anything else?

You want more questions, Ed? Yes, ma'am. Just joking.

All right, with that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. All right, we are adjourned.