City Council - Regular Meeting

I did. I did. I did. Hello. Good evening. It is 6 pm on the dot and we are here tonight for the city of McGomery City Council workshop meeting. Uh I'd like to call this meeting to order and we have a quorum. Miss Secretary and with that um I'd like to ask Mr. Donaldson to give the invitation. We would all please rise and then we'll do this pledge of

Father we thank you for today cuz this is the day that you've made we shall rejoice and be glad in. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity, Father, to uh witness the growth of our city, Father. And we thank you, Father, for these plans, Father. We thank you. We we call them blessed, Lord. And we thank you, Father, for uh helping us, Father, in what we endeavor to do tonight in Jesus's name. Amen. Amen.

Pledge allegiance to the United States flag. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Now the Texas flag the Texas flagged Texas one state one and indivisible. So, as a reminder tonight, uh we have a full house. Thank you for everybody being here. We appreciate the, uh, the involvement. Um, please make sure that your phones are on vibrate or off so that we are not disturbed during this workshop. Uh, number four on the agenda, citizens comments. I did receive one uh, request form and that's for uh, Mark Guest and you please come to the front and you'll have three minutes, sir. Appreciate it. Just state your name and address for the record.

Hey, Mark. Yes. Um, thank you, Council Mayor, for uh giving some time, giving me the time to uh uh really express some interest in the project. I'm here to learn a little bit more about what's going on. Um, just some context. Uh, in my professional career, I did spend a lot of time proposing and and uh reviewing projects. Uh in fact, the last uh uh two or three years with my Chevron career, part of a a leadership team that was deploying about $5 billion a year in the permit. And so you can imagine we spent a lot of time making sure that those dollars were were well spent. So, uh my comments and questions, I guess I'll just kind of I know this isn't really Q&A. I'll just kind of put them out there. Um, first one is around business case, value proposition, whatever term you want to use, but I I guess I'm looking for just a clear statement on why we're doing the project and what benefits would be for the citizens. I know things are kind of crammed uh for the space here. Uh, and I know that the the new project would provide space, but beyond that, is there any expectation that city services would be more efficient? Would they be able to add more services? Is there uh any opportunity for using some of that square footage for uh for the public either recreational activities or meeting places or uh just where where they can rent them out. So So first is kind of a a clear statement of why as a citizen it this project benefits me. Second is how we going to pay for it. Okay. Um the numbers that I've seen I know we're still in your early stages about $10 million. City has revenue of about 8 million. So just relatively speaking that's a pretty big project. When I look at the expense side also raises a couple of questions. If I go back two years back to 2020 24 uh city had revenue of about 7 million and a surplus of about 1 and a.5 million. If I fast forward to this year I know the projections are 8 million in revenue but only a surplus of less than a half half a million. So a little concerned about

the ability to pay for this especially if the surplus goes away. And really I think the only way that happens is you've increased taxes. So if there's a expectation that taxes are going to be raised uh would like to know that sooner rather than later. And I guess the third um third area is what projects are not being funded because we're doing this one limited budget. Uh we can't do everything. So I'm a little bit concerned about our ability to execute the projects we have for downtown. Uh I know that uh you know traffic and road congestion is going to be an issue going forward and even some of the infrastructure if we're not able to provide the water we need to uh the new businesses and new residential areas that's really going to limit the growth. So uh those three areas are probably my biggest concerns. I'm hoping I can get some of that information through the discussion today and supplemental uh information may be provided by the council.

Thank you sir. All right. Next on your agenda, workshop agenda number five, discussion of proposed new municipal building and police station.

Welcome everyone. This is Musley John tonight. He's the architect on the project. We'll start with him and we'll start going through, you know, some of the slides where we're at. uh as you've seen uh you know some of the questions and different things will be answered throughout the the program if you will uh but I'll just let him start and kind of explain where we're at. We're still in the design architectural stage and this is really going to tell us what the price is when we get there. uh the past has been how we're going to pay for this is is looking at getting a bond or getting a loan to pay for this. Uh also CCPD is also a big contributor in how this is going to be paid because a big percent of this is a police department.

All right. Uh thanks Brent. Uh like Brent said, my name is John Stevens. I'm the architect of the project. I work with the MC Group. We're a local company right here out of uh Montgomery. Um just a little housekeeping exercise. We're you might know us as EBI Texas. We're kind of going back to our parent company name as the McPay Group of Texas. So I apologize if there's any confusion there. Um that's kind of more of an internal thing, but I just wanted to get that out there that we're kind of going back with our parent company when they came to Texas. So, uh, as Brent said, this has been, uh, this is the second workshop that I've been done, uh, I've been here for. So, this has been a long lengthy process so far. We started off with the programming phase, uh, good chunk of like four four or five months ago. We went through a programming phase talking with everybody here at the police department and the city hall, looking at their needs and their wants. We crafted a propo uh a program a document before we even started doing any of the design work. Um that allowed us to kind of look at how much square feet was needed, how much square foot was wanted. Uh and that kind of led us to the the decision to inside the existing gyms hardware store go for two floors. Um so uh we will have two floors on the in the gyms space and then a small addition about an 8,000t addition on the right hand side. uh of the site plan, which we'll get to in a second. So, all in all, it's about 35,000 square feet. Um that includes all the common spaces, the corridors, the lobbies, and and so it will be a major upgrade um from square footwise from this facility. So, um let me just go over here real quick. So, if you're not familiar with the site, this is the gym's hardware space. The existing building is here. Uh this would be the new addition that we're proposing on on the uh I believe

that's the south side keeping the access points. We've had other conversations. Uh our civil engineers L squared, they're here in town uh in attendance as well. U Jonathan Payne's been the the uh engineer that we're working with. Um so this layout is already going to be changed. We've had other conversations since this site plan was developed um with Brett and the the chief about needs. So this parking configuration is uh already obsolete. So if you can go to the next slide. Okay. So scroll up just a little bit there. So this is the first floor plan. Um I'll start with the bas the entry into the city hall. We've got entry vestibule into a lobby and then in conversations with the police department and Brent and his team. We've got the municipal side over here, the building department, permits, utilities. Then we've got the court windows. So, we have three court windows that are all accessible here. And then you enter into a large city council chamber. Um, and then off the city council chamber would be a conference room/counsel chambers. And then um through the back area here uh through the building department, we've got offices for the municipal side of things, we've got restrooms, enhanced restrooms. So there'll be tons of restroom facilities. Um definitely more than what's provided in the lobby. And then we've got a large break room that would be shared between the two, the municipal and the police department. And then more offices. So this get this kind of gets into the police department. So, it's kind of like these two, the city hall and the police department kind of wrapping together. Um, coming in from the police department. This is the sally port over here. So, this would be the main point of entry for any any police officer bringing someone in. You

immediately come in. There's intake DWI video and then holding cells right in the middle. There's a large evidence uh room as well. We're working with the the consultant that Chief has sent. I can't remember their name off. I'm sorry. Um I can provide that later. So they've provided a preliminary uh design layout for the evidence room and all the the storage needs there. Um you come in, police department, police officers can come in this back entrance. There's secure parking in the back. You can come in this back entrance here to a corridor that ties in everything. Um off the front, the police department has its own entrance. So you have your uh police department lobby. You've got a small office on the front and then you've got a police department window here. Um then tying the two buildings together is this corridor. You come into a this would be an open kind of monumental stair going up to the second floor. You've got flex meeting spaces directly off of the courtroom and the council room. Those can be used during court hours. Those can be a lawyer and the defendant or uh noncourt hours. Those can just be flex meeting spaces for uh police and the the municipal side of things. We've got police offices in the back, sergeants, captains, chiefs, and then we've built in uh we don't have the mechanical engineer released yet, so some of our mechanical spaces might be a little oversized. That's by design. I'd rather work with a little bit more and then zero that in, you know, as we get the systems designed. Um, so that's the first floor. If we go up to the next slide, the second floor, this would be that monumental stair that's open. So the police department could come up here. There's another, excuse me, another conference room, uh, a dispatch area, some offices, some overnight spaces. One of the things that was very necessary on

the programming sta uh stage that we did was storage. I noticed here in the office there's a lot of people that have just boxes or file cabinets um you know long-term storage built into their offices. So we have municipal storage, police department storage. We have some extra offices. And then over here this this stair here is a communicating stair um for the municipal side of things. So, we've got city administrator economic development. We've got a flex open area here, which could be a lounge. It could be more office space. It could be um some workstations if if needed in the future. So, it's really more just a flex open space. Then we've got more offices and then another small break room uh kitchenet up on that floor. The the layout was basically um I tried very hard to get every office to have a window. Everybody wants I don't want to have I don't really like inboard offices. So where where possible, we tried to ring the exterior of this so that every person that's in their office would have uh natural daylight. And uh you can see this area here in the middle. Um that's intentional because we don't want to have 10ft ceilings in the council and the courtroom. We want to have same thing with the lobby. We want to have a dynamic open space in the the front lobby. So, this is uh for lack of a better point, twotory space that this will have a ceiling in here, but it'll be it'll allow for taller ceilings in uh the courtroom and in the lobby. Um off the police department area over here, there's also a large training/multi-purpose room. So, um that is that is something that uh would be accessible to both the city uh municipal side as well as the police department. Um we do have through conversations with the police department we are incorporating kind of a drone launch area um so that they can deploy their drone um for like search and

rescue and and other things. So that's kind of the programming and the floor plan stage. If you want to go to the we'll skip the next two slides and we'll just go right to the to color rendering. So these are just some elevations that we did, some studies and then everybody wants to see. We'll go to the next slide, please.

So this is kind of this is a snapshot of where we're at currently. Um we've had lots of conversations in the past month with the the team. the team comprised of uh Chief Brent, Miss Tilly, Lieutenant, and then my design team. So, we've had lots of conversations. I tried um to blend the two different styles that the police department really liked, the modern uh the modern, the stone, the wood look that we had. The last time I was here, uh, the feedback I got was to try to incorporate some more red brick and traditional building materials that are that are more local to, uh, Montgomery. And so with that, um, if you guys remember, we used to have that long canopy. We got rid of the canopy, made this a little bit more traditional. Um, so we've got these kind of end pieces. We're also working with trying our best to work with the foundations that are underneath the gym's hardware. So, I'm trying to keep where there's bumpouts to keep bumpouts. Where there's recesses to keep recesses. Um, obviously this this tower is kind of the main focal point entrance piece. Um, this and the two windows on the side that's in the lobby, so that'll be a two-story space. It'll be very grandiose, lots of light coming into that space. Um, and then on the ends, it's kind of these bookend towers. Uh, this is red brick. We've kind of brought some of the wood look into the middle middle sections of the elevation while still keeping the traditional red brick. Inside the red brick, it's hard to see, but we've got some soldier course. We've got some uh different brick patterns in there. And then to tie in the archways of the two entrance pieces, I've proposed, you know, just a simple brick arch on those two bookend pieces of the uh this would be basically the gym's hardware. And this is the addition. So where those two towers are

uh or two end pieces on the existing building are. So um we are envisioning uh kind of uh we haven't gotten to the landscape design yet but some sort of a little plaza some landscape some flag poles um obviously some security ballards pl you know concrete planters to keep cars from um you know infiltrating into the the secure zone the sidewalk zone. So that's kind of where we're at. Um, you can go to the next couple slides and then pretty much for the other three sides would be the red brick. You know, we'll have some stone work, you know, sills and lintils, more a little bit utilitarian on those sides, especially the back and the um less more less public facing sides. With that, I'll open it up comments.

I will add, you know, back when uh we were working on this, you brought the size and the square foot up or we brought it up to meet what we projected that the police department would grow to within the next 10 to 15 years. The same with the municipal department. We looked at how many employees we would possibly add during that time based on the population that we expect the community to grow. You know, it's going to be 5,000 probably pretty soon, maybe 10,000 not too far after that. Um, depending on how tight the houses get and and how much multif family shows up, maybe even 15. So, you kind of calculate based on that. to use the averages uh which kind of tells you how many employees you would need to service this size of a community for water, sewer, trash, all of the different departments that we looked at.

Yeah. And that's kind of how we came up way back in the beginning how we came up with the square footage just Yeah. And we've we've also built in like I I was showing you some of those lounge those flex spaces. We're building in opportunities if the city grows and we need more office space, you know, are there opportunities to carve out more office space or or opportunities for workstations and things like that. So, we're thinking in the floor plans in the space, you know, how we can build in those flexible spaces for future expansion. Very good. Yeah. Chief, I was going to actually ask you to Yeah. Can I uh and give us a lowown of of why we need to expand and the situation we're in right now.

I turn this around for you guys pretty much. Yeah.

And um I think the gentleman's questions are legitimate questions that need to be answered. Uh I brought this to council back at the end of 23. My first meeting was with each council person because uh we were looking at ways to build a new police department. We knew we were going to need one. We knew the growth was coming and so uh we thought, okay, so we can't raise taxes. We don't want to use tax dollars. We've got uh a water system that needs to be put in. And by putting in that water system, I think we're talking about maybe $27 million. So what I did, I looked into uh CCPD. Have you guys looked at know what CCPD is? CCPD is a Texas crime prevention uh uh Texas crime prevention. It was put in by the legislators in 1984. what it says, it says that small cities located within a county with more than 10,000 people can use money just like MBDC does and just like and here in Montgomery uh a half a percent goes to taxes uh for the citizens.

Yes. Another half a percent is a sales tax that goes that was going to MEEDC. What we did is we went through and we took a quarter% we took a quarter% of those taxes from MEEDC. They were not happy about it at first uh because ME was MEC was bringing in about a million dollars. Last year, the voters voted uh for uh CCPD, and that vote for CCPD gave the the police department money to do these things with. And that's what the legislature said. Legislature said that we could use this money for police facilities, hiring, technology, and crime prevention. And those are the things that we use it for. So last year when that vote came in, it was about $500,000 on that budget. We took that $500,000 of that budget and that's how uh the the hardware store was was bought. We spent we put $180,000 a year in CCPD that pays for that. These are all sales tax dollars. These are not these are not home tax dollars. These are sales tax dollars. These are all the sales tax dollars where people go to Starbucks, Home Depot, and Kroger. when they pay those sales tax. That's where this money comes from. This year, last year when we did that, we took uh and we went into this year's budget. Into this year's budget, we took we took back we gave back the general fund $328,000. That $328,000 went back to that fund because we used the money from CCPD to fund the police department. Most of the money that we used last year was to fund the police department came by the CCPD. So, we were able to leave $328,000 in that general fund. This year's this

year's projection for uh tax sales is going to be $862,000. As the city grows, as businesses come in, that's only going to grow. That money is only going to grow. So when we started looking at this building and we started looking at this, like I said, that's how we purchased the hardware store was with that $180,000. We put $180,000 in that budget each year to pay off the hardware store. If you figure about $7 million, cuz when we started this project, it was just going to be police department and the courts. So you figure it would have been about $7 million. That's $461,000 a year once we've once we've taken a loan loan out. That $460,000 is placed in that budget to pay that loan back. Once city hall came along with us, well, it took that they took that up some. So, you figure out $7 million $7 million of this this building will be paid out of CCPD. Approximately 7 million. We've been putting we've been putting the numbers again. I think we got about 19,000 square ft of this department of this uh building, this police department. You asked uh why do we need this? Uh we uh each year we do warrants. Last year we put ourselves in a set. What sensit does is this. Anybody who has a warrant here in the city of Montgomery, that warrant, no matter where they are in the state of Texas or in other states, that warrant will come up. Then we can say, "Okay, that person owes the city of Montgomery money. You either hold them or you let them pay that money." If I put the jail system here, uh, we figure we're missing about $27,000 a year on Sens. Uh, and with Sensic, what it does, and we're starting to we're starting to get calls right now. We're starting to get calls uh from from other agencies outside of outside of

Texas, way outside of Montgomery and Galveston and all over saying, "Hey, look, we got a guy. He's got three of your warrants." Before that, that was not happening because no one's seen our warrants. And what we've lost money to the county of doing is when we take someone to the county jail for a class C, which is a citation, they just turn them loose. we don't get any of the funds back from that. So, we're missing about $27,000 a year on making things like that happen. Also, as we grow with our with our jail, we figured this city would probably never need any more when I give the projections to council, we probably never need more than about 33 uh employees for the entire uh because we're talking about 4 and a half square miles. So, we're going to probably need about 33 to 35 employees as we grow. Right now, we're looking at we have about 18 employees. Next year, we look to employ another four. And three of those people won't be police officers. They will be PSO. And what that means, they will handle our jail system for us. The other person that we'll hire will be a records person. All this has been projected in a fiveyear in a fiveyear plan. So when you're asking where that money is coming from, um, we can look at at least 7 million of that dollars coming from CCPD. CCBD is only going to grow as tax dollars. And as I said, the projection this year is about 800 $862,000. U so it's no tax. There's no tax raising to the to the citizens of Montgomery. That's not a that's not a tax. Nobody's going to come out and say, "Hey, we're raising taxes because we're trying to buy this new building." Now, whatever we end up deciding here uh with the seat administrator and with with council as to where this other three $4 million are coming because what we're talking is

about 10 million. We figure $10 million is going to get the building done. It's going to get furnished. Uh we're going to need things like uh generators. We're going to also put an incinerator there. We put an incinerator uh where you burn where you burn drugs. Uh others others other cities can come here to burn drugs. We figure we charge those other cities about $400 to burn their drugs. Some of those cities burn more drugs than we do. Uh the county was doing it. They shut it down. You've got people driving as far as Baytown now to incinerate their drugs because you have to incinerate those drugs and you have to burn those pistols as well. Uh so by putting an incinerator here, we figure we can also charge we can charge departments and that's departments from here all the way to Texas city. We can charge them about $400 every time they come to incinerate. And you get a you get a department that's larger than what we are. Some of those people are burning four four three four to five times a year. So you're figuring $400. So it's not just uh it's not just a concept. Police departments always spend about 67 cent 67% of a city's budget is what a police department is. That's that's how much a police department spends. Uh so the rest of the city is spending the other part of that. So when it came time to look at we need to get our guys out of here. There's no there's no really room for evidence. There's no room to do the things that they need to do as police officers. So when it came time to look at this, we weren't just looking at it and saying, "Okay, city, can you do this?" No, we wanted to look at ways that we could make this happen without it being a total burden on the city. And that's why we came up with the crime prevention district. And that's where, and if you guys can look it up now, it's legislation was brought in uh uh 1984. A lot of cities are doing it. Fort Worth is one of the largest cities that does it. They don't take their entire city.

They take districts. Uh you also have uh you have Jersey Village who has a who has a control district. Georgia Village first voted for 5 years after it worked for them and and brought their city uh where they needed it to be. The next time they voted on it for the next 5 years, they voted for 10 years. So, this is something that benefits this this is something that benefits the city and something that benefits you the people in the city. It's a it's a needed it's a needed uh thing, this new uh facility. And we didn't go into it thinking, okay, we just need to say we need this and have the city pay for this. We went into this with a lot of thought. It took a vote uh of the citizens. I don't know how many of you guys got out to vote. Maybe when you were checking your ballots, you didn't even think of it. You said, "Oh, yeah. Let me check that too." We appreciate it. Helped us out. Help us out and help us do the things that we needed to do. There was certain technology, police technology changes so much. It gets so expensive. This is the way to do that without being a burden to the sea. Uh we have we have drones. One of our drones, we put it up uh one of our guys put it up last week. We were called out to put one of our drones up. Uh there was a guy in the uh in the forest down here. Uh they didn't get to him in time enough, but we were able to find his body with our with our drone. So these these things that we're doing and the technology that we need is helping. And we're trying to make that sure that that's not just a total burden on the city. And that's where this uh crime control prevention district comes in because it helps us to provide those things for the city without it being a burden on on the city. And like I said, last year we put back uh $328,000 back in the general fund. That means that was money that we put back each

year. We plan on that we plan on that going up. uh at some point uh we'd like to be where we're totally dependent on CCPD and not on uh not on the general fund. And if we can do that, you're talking about 67% 67% of that budget going back to the city of Montgomery and to the citizens of Montgomery. Is there any questions? Anything I didn't answer? Yes, sir. Okay. Chief, uh is it aren't TCPD and CCPD? CCPD. What is CCD? Crime control and prevention district. Oh, crime control. Okay. Crime control and prevention district. So, would you explain to them what happens right now? We have to take somebody to jail.

Oh, yeah. Right now, if we have to if we have to take somebody to jail right now, we go we have to take them all the way to the county. Uh, and that's anything on a class B and above is what we would normally do. But our class C's is where we're missing money at this city. our class C's uh means if we got somebody with a ticket or we've got somebody with disorderly conduct then you got to take them to the county and the county is not going to hold the county jail is u is feeding in for a lot of different cities in Montgomery and they they can't hold class C's they can hold class B's and above they can do that but they can't hold these class C's and when we're not holding class C's then we're missing money in this city

the other thing I want to point out though is how long does it take to get somebody's round?

Oh, yeah. What we're talking about that we're talking about uh when I came to work here, they had one officer that was working night shift. And can you imagine one officer working night shift and he has to arrest somebody. He goes to that county, he stays at that county for approximately an hour, hour and a half, then that means there's nobody working this city. We now have three three patrolmen at night in the city. We have a sergeant and two and two officers. So if nobody's on vacation, if nobody's in training, we still have to take those people down to the county. It's still probably going to take about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour to get back to this city, but the city is not uncovered. We do have at least one or two people that are still here in the city. And that's that's that's the growth. I think uh I think when I got here, we maybe had nine officers. We now have uh we now have 16 sworn officers uh and 16 highly trained sworn officers that do a really good job. Uh so it's it's time to get them out of this building. Uh and and as I said, that was the way we thought we could do it without being a little burden. So yeah, you guys deserve any questions that you have, you deserve to have those questions answered this year.

Got a question for you. Like you said, a class C is a speeding violation. Yeah. So, does it make sense to jail somebody who's been citing a class through all of that or not? Just why not just let the person go home after they get a citation instead of taking them to the county jail?

What you're what you're saying is uh I I get what you're saying. First of all, the law says you can't unless that speeding is reckless, you can't you can't jail anybody for that anyway. I'm talking about if they have a warrant for speed. Okay? If they have a warrant for speed, then that means they've already been they either didn't come to court or they came to court and did not follow those court orders and now they've got a warrant for their arrest, which is a class C. That's when we will take them to jail. But no, we'll never stop you on trafficking. You got a registration or you got a speeding and we take you straight to jail. That's not how that So these are class C's, people who already have an outstanding warrant and therefore you want you want to take them. Yes, sir. The county told you no, we can't take them.

Yeah. the countyy's not they're not going to say no but even when the county gets those guys they're going to say okay uh we'll give them two hours and then they send them down the road they never they never collect the money that we need to be collecting and we we need we need those funds collected more than putting someone in jail we just need those funds collected so it is a lack of the space which people have repeatedly said is an issue for the county like the sheriff's department absolutely judge Christians has made a big deal about it and I and I thought it her because there's a lack of space down there. Is that the reason why you're advocating for a prison down here? It's not a prison. It's a It's actually

holding because here's here's the difference between holding cell. We will get we will become uh we'll we'll look at the state and we'll go by all the state regulations to to run a holding facility. Uh the state says you don't have to do that to run a holding facility, but in my experience, uh I I work uh uh I worked in the city where we had a holding facility. I've also worked uh for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for for a number of years. Uh so uh there's no greater liability that a city can take off uh than having a than having a jail. So it's a holding facility. So which means we're never going to hold you more than uh our judges are going to have to go to work as well, too. We're never going to hold you more than uh more than a couple hours because we want you to pay. If not, the judge is going to come by and release you on some type of on some type of bond and then you're going to have to appear back in court. Uh but if we get someone here, say we get a disorderly conduct, yeah, we need somewhere to take that disorderly conduct, put that person into custody until their bond is paid, and then we can release them there. If the county remediates your issues with the jail and the states, you know, in two years, will this still be necessary?

That's never going to happen, sir. And I'll tell you why it's never going to happen. Is because when you take county jails, they go class of B's and above. You're living you're here in the city. You're here in Montgomery County, Montgomery County, Harris County, and all these other counties are never going to have enough room in any facility that they built. Waller just built a new facility in uh in the city of Hempstead and the facility is already full. There's going to always be a steady overflow in county jail. It just doesn't work like that. That's why cities need their that's why and I think the only the only other city here in this uh in this county that has a holding facility. There is none there there there there's not another city not even cond has a holding facility because uh but that's the way we need to be collecting our funds is by having a holding facility and also for what works for the city.

Thank you for asking my question. Yes. Got one more question. Yes. uh when that warrant system that you says projects out to the state system uh the city's it's called seti sensei and and it goes nationwide too. Yes. How does the uh fund transfers uh happen? I mean to the um uh you trying to get the money. Yeah. Do does that does that get a little cut and then and give you the rest or what? Cut. Yes. No, we don't. Okay, we don't get any. Here's what happens. Here's what happened. All of our All of our officers have have a code QR code.

They all have a QR code. Say for an instance, you get stopped in Galveston. Okay. You get stopped in Galveston. Uh rather than putting all that burden on that Galveston police officer who stopped you, what we do is we say, "Officer, if you can do this, I'm going to send you a CR. I'm going to send you this code." Our officers send them that code. You put that code just like you do everything else. and put it in front of there and you can make a payment there. Okay. We had a guy the other day outside owed us $1,000. She said didn't have money until we got retaken to jail. All of a sudden they had that $1,000. So we gave that code. You don't give away. You get everything. How do you spell?

Don't ask me that. Hey Chief, before you beat out Cessich, so um if anybody's ever seen inside of our court, there were I say decades years old uh files and the only way that we would be able to collect that money that was sitting there, which by the way was six digits is if they came back through town and they got stopped because and so we had people calling these people's cell phones that were disconnected or sending out gosh we paid for a lot of postage sending out saying you've got a warrant, you've got a warrant and still collecting ing very little because we only had the system for us. This allows it nationwide so that we can collect and find them when they get pulled up and you can't spell. It's a wider net.

Call the court tomorrow. I would call the Marshall. Thank you. But but that but but that is how that works. And and like I said, all of your questions deserve to be answered and uh and we know that uh people came here tonight to find out what those answers were. And yeah, we just want to be we want to be transparent because there's nothing about what we're doing. You know, in the police department, we say if it if we can't do it under the light of day, then we shouldn't be doing it anyway. Yes, ma'am. Do you have a question? Has there been any environmental impact studies on the products that you're speaking of?

Yes. Yes, sir. Uh on the doing the uh connection of that of that uh uh furnace, we'll do those we'll do all the studies. It has to be has to be put in a certain place. has to be monitored a certain way. Uh so yes, absolutely. Yeah, no doubt about it. I have one more question. So I agree that we do need a holding facility for sure. Um however, if that was the main focus on this project, then why is the police department only a quarter of the building?

Are you saying the main focus? The main that was one of my focuses. The other part was uh to get to get our officers in a working environment where they could work. If you're talking about evidence, that's still just a very small portion of this building. You're talking about I think we're talking about what 20 20,000 square ft for police department. Yeah, the police department is we just ran ran the numbers today. It's about almost 60% of the building. So twothirds of the building is the police department. So, and the holding cells are are what chief and uh has requested. You know, I think we have three male and one female holding cells at the time. Plus, we have a juvenile facility

and a juvenile

because in that juvenile facility, juveniles cannot be in the same area as adults. Uh so that means when you're when you're coming inside, you can't bring a juvenile in the same way you would bring a you bring the adult in. Uh and and and like I said, that wasn't the main concentration. Some of the main concentrations was was what we could do with the building. As far as we've got we've got evidence back here, and right now, I think our evidence table probably goes out to about here, and we've got officers bringing in evidence all the time. Uh we've taken every room in this uh we took the shower room here and we made it out of offices. We took the bathroom and we we extended our our evidence room. So, if we're not running if we're not running out of room, I I don't know what you called it. Just before uh this this stack of tables here, they used to sit in my office at the front of my desk. So, yeah, we we're we're running we're running out of room. So, that wasn't our main focus. Our main focus was become function. Our main focus was to look at the future uh where we where we're going as a city and what we're going to need as that comes. And like I said, we we tried to do that uh with uh by benefiting what we could do without making a burden on the taxpayers. Yes.

I think I heard you say, if I heard it correctly, the county doesn't have an incinerator. The county cut us off from cut everybody off from the incinerator a couple weeks ago. Uh they said somebody brought something out that exploded and uh the sheriff cut everybody off. And so uh I think the closest place you can get to now with incinerator is Baytown. And uh so that means manpower and and a lot of other in Harris County. Uh no, Harris County had Harris County. Uh Bay County is in Harris County. So that's probably incinerating the most. Yes, sir.

So I have a question. We talk about the building increasing the employees and everything. What is our public parking? Public parking. Uh how many parkings you going to have over there? And who who is able to park over there? Most of the police department will be parking uh keep most of the police department will be back in here and then some How many? I don't have

Yeah. So we're existing facility right now with services gyms is 87 parking spaces. We're going to bring it to almost 16. That does include the the parking area by the police, but the total spaces will be, you know, 70. So, so if you're talking about 160 parking spaces, uh on a uh day-to-day basis, there is no way uh as a police department, as the workers that we work here, because there's going to be another parking lot on the other side. Most of this front parking on a day streets will always be on

and people will be welcome to pass over there. It will be a sign that is say welcome to Montgomery. This is public parking respect. Long as you're not parking in one of the police parking spots, we're good. We're good. So we we can extend our downtown because we have these trucks right here facing over the street being intimidating people instead to take those trucks out of there and let people fight over there right now. Okay. That we have that problem.

We put those we put those trucks there uh once we move them from back here. Those trucks there will actually go to our property located across the street once they start once they once we get started on that building. all those uh construction, the towers will go across the street because we have someone who comes out and looks and does maintenance on those uh on those vehicles. We have to make sure those vehicles are ready to go at any time. So, we keep maintenance done on those. That's why we park them there, but they'll be parked across the street. So, we won't we won't be blocking we won't be blocking any parking spaces with those. Across the street, meaning which across the street?

Liberty. Across the street, Liberty. Uh the city owns that that property across the street there. So pretty. So can we not start those things up in the middle of the night late at night? No. Are the guys that looking at them like starting up pretty late? Yeah. Cuz I live in first house. It's like lights and all that. We're like I can talk to him about that. Come on folks. I can I can talk to him about Yeah. He shouldn't be stuck charge. Yes. CC CCPD dollars may be used for water and sewer infrastructure projects. No. CCP dollars. No. What about EDC dollars? MEDC was when

So you I guess the EDC used to give money back to the city for water and sewer projects. But MEDC was MEDC that they're taking that money back. It just seems like a shell game because and you'd be also sending money back to the general fund. Is that Absolutely. And that could be used on water and sewer. that money, not that money. So, I'm just saying it's kind of a big wash as far as where the money goes. It used to go to EDC, kickback, went back to the city to pay for water, sewer. My only question is if it's all a wash, is this going to pull money away from the water and sewer, which is what 27 to 30 $27 million?

I think I can answer that. You want me to answer? I think that's the original question that Mark was having was is this pulling away from other projects and the CCPD is not the answer to that. I don't think so.

Yeah. So, so if you look at government financing, I know it's kind of crazy, but the utility fund which is water sewer is a totally separate fund. It creates its own money. It runs like a business. The general fund funds the rest of the government, which is your employees, your police department, public safety. So, the 27 million that we just got is strictly paid for within the utility fund. Has nothing to do with the CCPD or the general fund. The general fund is your property taxes. So, that pays for your streets, your I mean your, uh, streets, uh, trash, public safety. Public safety is a big part of it. So when you say they created CCPD, that's strictly sales tax, which is now they're paying for things that normally the general fund would have paid for. So it gives us a little more flexibility in the general fund. There's really not a lot of trade of money there. It just creates a little bit easier. And I think I'm just trying to make that transparent cuz I think I understand all that. I just I think the big question is is there money for water and sewer which is are also critical pieces of infrastructure just like the police department. I think I just I think that's the question. It just needs to be answered is

yes that's exactly what we did is we took $27 million in for water sewer water tower extra water pumps to get it over here. And based on what we know with the developments we have plus the developments we're predicting, we're in actually pretty good shape right now. And as you were as you were talking about that and and it's really not a wash because anytime we can spend money out of CCPD, that means money that we're not getting from the general fund. That means money that we're not going to the general fund to get. But it used to go back to the EDC and the EDC could spend money on water and sewer. So that's why I'm saying it's like the MEDC can still do that. I mean, we got half the budget taken away and

MDC and CCPD are getting their money from the same place. Yeah. What's happening with that? It's been it's been a split from a half a percent, it's split to a quarter%. And from that quarter percent, so you figure you figure if this year is going to be a quarter% is going to be about $862,000, you got to figure it's going to be about $862,000 for MEDC as well. Chief, let let me let me clear this up quick. MEEDC can spend money on water sewer if it goes to economic development. I have to go out and replace the water and sewer with MEDC funds in this neighborhood over here. But we talked about this that is economic activity whenever you're qualified that way to

but that's not how it qualifies and that is the whole point and you have to go by what the state says at EDC and we've read the state rule. You ask the attorney is is sales tax. So it's your food, it's your gas, it's your retail. That's the economic development. If you read the state law and we talk to the attorney, we can spend money. You can spend money. We spend money on downtown Macau. Exactly. Because it's commercial. It's commercial water tower water goes to the commercial district. We can go round and round. I just want transparency of like let's talk about where the dollars are coming from. We have the money for it, but I don't like saying the CCPD is generating this money when it used to go to the EDC and it's

spend on streets. We couldn't spend it on residential streets. We couldn't spend it on residential sewer and water because it was taken out of the general fund. When the when 67% of your funds go to the police department, we have very very little left to spend on street improvement on residential sewer and water lines other than what's going in coming from our water and sewer fund. Right? We have no extra to go back there. If it all goes to MEDC, it can only go to commercial economic development areas. So yes, we can do water. We can talk about this later in a commercial area, but we cannot do it in a residential. It's the way that the state wrote. We used to and we broke the flop bunch. We didn't even know.

That's not what our attorney said when we asked them, "Can we spend money on water and sewer infrastructure?" Water is goes everywhere. Commercial districts in commercial districts, not in residential. Money is funible. There's a no matter how you see money is

and I I honestly just don't care. I don't care about the EDC budget getting cut in half. I used to go to the downtown and we used to give money back. Okay. And understand that. All I'm asking is that we are saying the CTBD is almost like it's generating this money. It's still going into a big bucket of money the city gets through sales tax and other and other means. I just want to make sure all I'm asking is which the original question was K do we have money for these projects? And it seems like we do and that's all I'm asking. It wasn't clear the way that was being presented that it's going through the CTPD. It just wasn't clear. it would, you know, if you're putting money toward this building, $3 million and $7 million in some way, it's being taken away from other projects. I want to make sure it's not being taken away from the water and the sewer infrastructure. It's awesome.

But when you say taken away from other projects, I'm I'm trying to figure out what project I don't understand why like what project would you figure it's being taken away from. But that's not that's not necessarily that's not necessarily right because it's being generated by people who come through this city, stopping at Starbucks, stopping at home home depot, stopping at Kroger's. So it's not being that's money that's being gener generated by sales tax. And and I think I think the most important thing for for all of us here and I think the most important thing is for the citizens here is when you start to do these projects is how much of that burden is going to be on the taxpayer in this city.

Yeah. And I think this that's like I again I don't care about the EDC dollars being cut in half. I just want to make sure that it's clear in everyone because it gets super confusing. Obviously we don't even agree about what tax dollars can go where and that's it's not because we asked the attorney. You and I have a different opinion about what our own attorney said. So, well, here's the thing is that I'm in the MEDC meetings and I'm in the council meetings and I used to be in the CCPD meetings. So, I totally understand. It took me a while cuz it is confusing that you can spend Oh, yeah. I can take MDC money and I can replace pipes and water over here, but I can't over here. Yeah. Right. And I'm I'm not I'm not trying We can throw it everywhere anywhere.

I'm not trying to like cause a controversy or saying the EDC is better about losing money. I don't think we really are. I just it it's confusing for us, for me, and I and for the general public. I think it just needs to be transparent. We have money for these three things. That's all I'm asking is just like, let's be straight about it. We have a water plant that needs to be built. We have a sewer plant that needs to be built. And we have needs with the police department. Can we satisfy those needs? And can we do it responsibly? That's all I'm trying to I think that's what the gentleman asked. And I think that's the question I came came up here to answer is because he wanted people wanted to know where that money was coming from.

And so yes, it's a a huge percentage of that is coming from crime proof and prevention district fund and that is generated by sales tax. I don't think there was any confusion about that. Yes. Yeah. There was other questions I've had. Quick quick question. Did I did I understand right that we have 16 officers? Mhm. Okay. I did there's three eight hour shifts in a day. There's 7 days in weight. So that's up to 21 shifts. We do 12 We do 12 hours. Our officers do 12 hours a day. Uh and then they have their days off. Okay. I was just worried about an officer being out there by himself. No, they do 12 hours. All right. Thank you.

Chief, good night. Question for Brett and M. Hey. Hey guy. President, has anybody talked about what's going to happen to this building once we all move over there? Is is this going to be available for sale? That's the plan. That's the plan at this current time. Okay. And those those dollars could be put towards towards the new facility. Exactly. Yeah. So, that's the other thing, right? We've sold off pieces of property that the city had in surplus

to go towards this that those pieces of property years ago originally purchased to build city council on it's going to do this to help fund it. Okay. So there are some funds that's been there for more than the last three years that's been sitting there uh available and the city sold the property that was over on Cle uh got the sale of the building on. So there there's been some money that's that's that's been sitting there and generated that's that's that's uh that's f possibly right now around about 2 million or so. So when you're talking about that money and then along with this one yes.

Okay. So the I know there's a building on Prairie Street is that going to be it's about to sell I think right? Yes. So that those funds will go towards the 3 million. Yes ma'am. Okay.

And if you if you want to look at it just I'll try to make it just simple. I know it gets complicated, but let's just say we issue a certificate of obligation. That's how we get debt. Let's just say we made it for $10 million. The percentage that we're going to calculate is how much the general fund owes and how much he's going to pay because the police department can pay out of the CCPD. And if you calculate calculate that at $3 million, we more than likely have half of that already from selling some of these other properties. And right now, if it's like the water sewer debt that we got, you know, it's close to 3%, a little over 3%. So, it's pretty low interest. So, that would just be the general way we look at it. None of this is real yet because very soon we're going to hire a construction manager. We'll actually get a a real numbers on this project. We'll look at it completely. Council will have the opportunity to review these numbers. We'll look at the way we can we can finance these, how much of it's going to be the CCPD, how much the the general fund will have to come up with and they'll make the decision based on, you know, all of that data. Right now, we're just in the planning,

but also if they come to the meetings, they'll be able to hear exactly what we hear. Exactly. And if you think back, I think it was in 2029, we bought the the property off of Clipper, those have been here for a while at 4 and a half acres. That's we were going to do a new city hall there. We bought that for 750,000. We sold it back to MISD for a million last year. Um, so we did make a profit on that, but this has been needing to get out of this building was has been on our mind. And now we are really there where we're at in a pinch. You go to anybody's office and here it's there's boxes everywhere. Well, our our uh compliance officer is in the closet. Yes. Literally, her office is a closet. Yes.

Yeah. Um, first of all, probably a couple comments. I'm not sure I have a question, but uh chief I I do appreciate the innovation and the creativity to try to generate more revenue streams. So I I think that's kind of the you know the thinking that we need in order to u you know close the gaps on how to pay for this. I I guess one concern I have is I hear a lot about future sales taxes and the growth. Uh, if I take a step back, we're we're we're kind of locking in on the expense side by spending this money up front and we're still at risk for the sales tax revenue to come and there could be an economic downturn. HB comes in, pushes Kroger and Busher Brothers out of business. Maybe McCoy's doesn't want to fight uh uh Home Depot anymore. So that I think there's still some some risk on the revenue side, but we're but we're locking into the expenses up front.

Well, we're not exactly locked into those expenses up front. I get exactly what you're saying because businesses close uh especially when you take a poor uh that's here now and it was it was the number one tax uh place at one point. Uh and what we're what we're not doing is we're not counting future money. We we're we're talking about the money that's that's going to be generated just for this year. And we understand how we need to budget that money to pay not just for this building, but also for the police department. Last year, uh in the police department, we had some large we had some large uh items that we had to get. One was about 131,000 were some new radios. Uh and the other was about 125,000. Those are not things that we're going to need this year, next year. So we can take and use that money somewhere else. Also we uh we we had uh some reoccurring costs that we that we were that we had when we when we buy technology. We've gotten rid of some of our reoccurring costs as well. And also this year uh we've gotten into a lease still with Enterprise on our cars. Our cars were costing us about they were costing us anywhere to 90 to $100,000 each. We've gotten that down to where we're taking and we're putting about 190 maybe maybe $180,000 in an account and that pays for those lease cars. After 5 years or a little bit more than 50,000 miles, those cars go back to Enterprise. They get us new cars. This year we won't we'll only be purchasing one car. We purchased we purchased a car where every officer here can have their own car. That means uh during the course of during the course of a shift uh last year we had cars where we had people driving those cars, three people driving cars, we were putting over 50 something,000 miles on the car a year. This year we just calculated we're putting 10,000 miles on the car. So all these things we're doing to bring these

things to bring these things down and it not a better thing to get in with the lease with with with the enterprise people. So, no, we're not we're not exactly with the whole time that we're looking and we're looking at the funds that are being generated, we're also looking at things that we can do to make those things possible. Yeah. And I guess if the project goes forward, it's expenses over the next, you know, 26 to 27, right? So, that if it ends up being 10 million or whatever the number is and then, you know, uh how do we how do we minimize the risk on the on the sales side, I guess, is kind of the the the what I'm what I'm thinking about. that and if you take if you finance this if it's a bond is that something has to go to the taxpayers or is that something the city just

certificate of obligation which doesn't go to the taxpayers but it'll be in public the whole time when we sell same as the water and sewer but depending on we do have some reserves he has some reserves so it it's not a full number but we've been working by the full number let's just say it is 10 million because that's the number we've been using that's going to cost us at the current rate about 800,000 a year. His fund already creates more than that as it is. So we don't see that we're we're trying to project we're going to make you know this much more in sales tax. But if you do look at the sales tax in the last two years it's gone up by a million dollars each year and that's just growth.

Yeah. And so like I said ear expense side has gone up as well which is I guess which is driving a lot of the question. So um Speaking of speaking of cars, where's the proposed entrance and exit going to be for the police cars to go and leave the building considering, you know, we've got Liberty in a 35 mph road and then we've got coming into the main town where all the businesses are and you don't want police cars flying at 50 m hour there on a Saturday afternoon when people are trying to cross the street and whatnot. And would there be a light proposed there if you need to stop to get going that fast, but they're going to be coming out? They do. Oh, on Clipper. So, Cleer is going to be the main It's going to remain somewhat gated just like it is. Two gates.

So, it'll be secure for them. This is secure for the police. And then newly some of this back here will be gated for as well. So, there'll be an entrance in the back that's secure. And then this area here will be secure. So, the public entrances are still here. But where are they going to go? If they get a call, they get right if they got leave. Emergency.

It's the same thing that they do now. They're not sitting at city hall. Yeah, most most of our police officers are not leaving here to go to a call. We're not firemen. Got firemen kind of leave the station. You got to hang out. We got to hang out on the street. So, we get those calls. If anybody leaves the station, it's probably the lieutenant or either it's uh it's one of the in it's the investigator. But we we we don't we normally get our calls and those guys are normally on the street. They get the calls.

Yeah. Same way is question. I'm all about, you know, on board and public safety and I get it. You know what you mentioned the closest incinerator is the Baytown. I mean, is that a necessity or is that a luxury? Is that something you're going to be using every week? No. No. In addition to the accelerator, the architect is talking about drill. Yeah.

And I'm just thinking logic. I'm sitting on so small right now. I could run around. So like why would you need to grow and all that stuff? No. See, so you're talking you're talking luxury, but you're not talking you're not talking technology. You're not talking about you're not talking about how we best serve the city of McGomery. We've had people that uh that's walked away from from the senior living homes here and that's how we located those people or their homes with drones people walk

and uh and and that's how we located the guy in the forest and when when you're talking about the incinerator. No, we won't you we use that incinerator once or twice a year. We take our we take our drugs and we burn them. But there are other cities that we can generate funds from that's going to use that center rate three to four times and some five. And when you when you're talking about going to Bmont, we talked to the city of Tumbal's Bay is charging them almost $1,000 to to to bring their to bring their drugs out to to to burn. So no, we're not we're not we're not saying, "Okay, we put this incinerator here and it's only for us and we're the only ones who's going to be using it." No, we're going to generate some revenue with that incinerator.

When are you going to burn this stuff on the roof today? I'm not 6:00 in the morning. I'm not sure. I got my address on doing all the all the things all the things that we need. Believe me, we we would have never set out to look at this. We will look at all the precautions uh on how these things burn. Is there smoke? Is there emissions? I I can get I can answer that. City where I just came from, we have it. The filtration system is incredible inside and there's really almost zero admittance out of the top of the stack and it it's so regulated that it goes through all of these different filtrations. So, so where is it? I don't see it.

You won't see it because it's not for this building. It's not this building. Where is it? We haven't We haven't purchased this. That was just one of the That's just one of the things. Well, it be placed not in this building but somewhere else. No, no, it's going to be on this but it's not you you don't see it here on the draw. It's not that that was a that was a recent ad like as far as like the weekend. So that has not been

a question. Um, thinking about the community center area, the EDC is really focused on connecting downtown the community center. Has there been any coordination with getting that to push through to this and like a crosswalk? And aesthetically, how's that flow? Has that been considered, talked about?

Uh, yes, we've had conversations and that's that's a goal of ours is to create through this general area. You can see uh that was a recent conversation as well as uh we just we're starting to look at studies and Brent and I have had conversations about the the beautifification of this area looking at brick work in the in the road things like that how we can kind of pull that uh the design through you know the community center through into this space. So yes we do want the connection between these properties and bringing Clipper sidewalk down too. I think we talked about that as well. It's great connectivity in that whole area. Yeah, we're working on that through WGA is a a different little part of that project. But yes, community center project.

Yes. Okay. Yeah, we connected those sidewalks because there there's a sidewalk that we put, you know, internal around there and depending on how that plan goes, we were going to connect it and then connect it with gyms because most likely most of the parking is going to be over there to come to events that are in that. Yeah. Excuse me. I'm in the snowball stand in front of gyms. You talk about brick work. Are you planning on brick working like in front of the business? No, more in this area than this here. But yes, we're planning on keeping Okay. the stumbles.

Um one one thing about the um brick in the front uh I mean the red brick and what is that other stuff? Is it going to be limestone or It'll be Yeah. stone. I mean, how porous is it going to be? I mean, it's going to be like the community center. I mean, community building that we have. No, it'll be fine. Yeah. I was just wondering. Don't be damn right.

We We have not gotten to picking exact finishes. This is a representation of kind of what we're looking for. I guess this this is kind of a limestone finish that we were looking for. Limestone down at the bottom. This is not a real cedar. This is more of a metal. U for durability, less maintenance. Um and then obviously the red brick. Thank you. That's kind of the material pallet aesthetically separates the police from the city hall. It gives the effect that people know where the police department is and they know where city hall is because

I know you said the ice cream stand would be uh there. Is it will it be open during construction? Yes. There she is. Going to be open for during construction. Okay. Now, y'all should come see us. There you go. Last summer when Jim's closed, so we're looking forward to this. Did you ask about the sidewalk cuz you want a sidewalk? No. I just didn't want brick blocking the actual Oh, no. No. We We've looked at connectivity. Depending on what we end up doing at the far end, you know where the grass patch is. We may extend the parking lot, but we would like to create a walkway all the way back over to the community.

Yeah. Another group parking lot. Actually like the police vehicles there right now has kept all the teenagers. We had an issue last year, but we should probably a little bit in very preliminary stages. this we went out to the architecture people and stuff just to get us a rough figure of if we decide to do something what kind of a ballpark number are we looking at so we could figure out if we could pay for it so that's what we did first right can we pay for this yes we can pay for it and this is the first time we've seen this just like y'all I mean there's not been

but you know I don't know how many people are sitting here but this building you sat in right now there's more discussion about this building when it was built because we were a very very small town back then. We had no Kroger. We had no Home Depot. We did not even have groceries. We had nothing basically. So most people don't realize that there was a lot of discussion about this building also because it was so astronomically expensive. So we haven't raised taxes in 8 years. Eight years. We don't plan on raising taxes anytime soon. We want the people driving through here buying gas and groceries and food to help us pay for our police and in this building.

And another thing too, everybody says here on council, we all pay property taxes. So, we're all aware of what's going on because we do pay property taxes. No. And it will be a rainy day before I'm ready for tax. Is there any other questions for chief or for council or for Mr. Walker? Did we get through questions?

All right. Next item on your agenda is council inquiry. Then we'll move along to the closing agenda. Item number six on your agenda is items to consider for placement on future agendas. Okay. Uh it is uh number seven is I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. Make a motion we adjourn. Motion by Miss Fox that we adjourn. Second by Mr. Glazier. All those in favor of adjourning say I. Those say nay. The eyes have the motion carries at 7:12. We will

Hi. How are you? Yeah, it's in my car.

Well, you can request