City Council - Regular Meeting

Yes, and I want to echo the pastors. Thank you, Pastor. Always a beautiful thing when we start with a prayer and also remember our patriotism. So I ask everyone to please stand, remove headgear unless you're on duty. Let's place our right hand over our heart and let's say together, 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. Thank you.

I'll just go through this very briefly, and if you have questions...

And just a general statement for everyone here. I want to thank MedCare for those great response times. and for providing MISU. It's a big deal when it's a paramedic that shows up. But just so people understand, four years ago when I came into office, EMS was getting paid $0 a year. So it's very hard to hold EMS to a certain standard because they weren't getting paid to be here. Luckily, during that time, there was some ARPA monies. There was COVID funding. We were able to pay EMS. And happily to say, every year EMS has been paid to make sure that the ambulances standing by waiting for your fa

Yeah, I believe it was the neighbor in front was one of the opposition, and then somebody... There was two that were very close. There was two close by, correct.

I'll make a motion. We'll go with P&Z and staff's recommendation on this item, which is to deny the rezone. I'll second it.

Yeah, I want to tell the investors that I think multifamily is needed. I just think it needs to be in an area that you don't have single family all around it. We tend to look at use. I think that's part of the reason P&Z went against it and staff's recommendation because there's nothing but single family homes around there. That's the reason for my motion.

Sorry, I had a question. I see here planning zoning approved. Staff is recommending Nile specifically because of the use, but also the only question and concern I had, it's right next to an elementary school. Did you guys reach out to the school district at all to get either their support or lack thereof?

And your plans right now are just to have a regular fencing, no sort of true buffer between the school and your storage units? Just the fencing. Just regular fencing.

And right now it's a parking lot for a trailer park? Is that what you said?

And you guys are allowing parking there? Is that what it's for at this time? So we're looking to buy this. Why is there RVs and why is there parking there now? The current owner is using it. Oh, current. It's a different owner. Yes. I see. Yes. Thank you. That's all I have.

SO MY ONLY CONCERN IS THE SCHOOL NEXT DOOR. OPERATING BUSINESS, CAMERAS, 24-7 ACCESS, ANY CONCERN? I KNOW STAFF IS RECOMMENDING DENIAL, BUT I THINK I WOULD FEEL BETTER IF I HAD AN OPINION FROM THE SCHOOL DISTRICT. HAVE WE EVER THOUGHT OF THAT OR CONSIDERED?

That's the only question I had. And so can you discuss your reason for recommending to not?

And the discussion at P&Z, what was it? Could you tell us the gist of that?

Just... Just so you know, I'm going to vote against it. I wish I'd had the ECISD opinion on it. But, you know, the motion has been on the floor.

So, Fern, to answer your question, not only is it single-family, it's large single-family. It's a little bit larger than normal, yes.

Well, I want to say thank you for choosing Edinburgh. Thank you. So is it QT or QT? QT, quick trip. Just making sure.

Could you give us some facts on QT, you know, How big, how many, and what would you compare yourself to?

Beautiful program. If you don't know about it, business is the flip program. Won a national award. Thank you for applying. A lot of people think it's hard to apply. If you don't have anyone to help you, the EDC will go to your business, help you fill it out. You don't have to have, there's some requirements, but they can work with insurance, they can work with anything. So please get involved. I was lucky to be in the EDC when we instituted that, so it's been in effect almost three years now. We're helping 40 businesses a year, so this year will be 120 businesses that we've helped with that gr

Okay. And we do have private drives in other private subdivisions. The only difference here, there would not be a gate.

And P&Z approved this, so can you tell me what their discussion was?

I think the design is great. I really like the use of space. I just wanted to compliment you on the design. It looks really good. I like how you put your office there in the corner because that's an awkward little triangle, right?

I think you can advertise it as a car and a golf cart garage.

Thank you for talking to the neighbors. I always tell developers with their ideas, be a good neighbor. Talk to them. Let them know what you can do. That way you won't get the opposition, and you can a lot of times also get their support. So thank you for doing that.

Another plus for me, I always talk about instead of our trash cans having to stop at 10 different residences, they can stop at one and knock it all out.

So they didn't get any projects last rotation?

Architectural services. One has an asterisk.

Okay, just making sure. I know sometimes, depending on the list and the rank there, if there isn't enough projects, they don't get... I'll just make sure that they did work. Yes.

37 is on there? 37 was not part of the list.

Are we okay with this? Last year we had 16.

Well, he added 37. That was one MEP we had from last year. So you're going to amend your motion to add?

On that, not everybody can do every project, right? Like the parking garage, for example. Not every project manager could handle that. So you'd have to go on to the next one?

So you're okay with that number of project managers?

They've been very helpful. That was a $6 million project, so we had to go out for RFQ on that one.

Just going with staff recommendation. I'm sure they're going to explain a little bit.

Other questions? Ma'am, you said that you don't evaluate the information?

Did you hear that, Fern? We're lower than the... No new tax rate.

Yes, sir. Right. And so just some comments. We had actually entire council, the mayor and council were here at noon. We had a budget work session. Another very important number, the taxes on homes, We always talk about it goes up as it goes up, and we always get all this money from land evaluation. We only got $259,000 added to our budget from last year's taxes. So not a lot of money was added to the budget yet. With the inflation, we know everything's more expensive from last year. The loss of all COVID monies, ARPA monies, we're talking millions that we got. That is not part of this budget.