City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'm going to call this meeting of the Mount Vernon City Council to order. It it is six o'clock and we do have a quorum present. I appreciate everybody being here tonight. It's great to see Mount Vernon come out to council meeting. A lot of times we don't have many folks. So, thanks for being here and thanks for the council. I appreciate your service. Uh Mary is going to lead us in a an invocation.

Father God, we just thank you for this day. We thank you for the sunshine and the rain. We thank you for each person here. We ask that you just um watch over them, that they have safe travel home and be with us as we make decisions and that we just be good stewards of what you have entrusted in us to do. In the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

Amen. Please join for our pledge to the standy for the consent agenda. We'll have a financial update later in the meeting during the open session. We'll introduce Andrew Puddle, our new finance manager later, too. So, we'll save that part for then, but we will need a motion to approve the consent agenda. Motion by Mary, second from Rebecca. All in favor?

I. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay. Report on items of community interest. I'll kick this one off. If you didn't make Spring Fest this weekend, you missed out. It was a really a great event down at the park and uh I probably spent about four hours I guess. Several council members were down there and um it just impressive. 70 vendors, four bands playing. Yeah, it was a real fun event. People just kept coming and going and joining. They was pretty and the weather worked out. So, um Cassidy Wesson, our main street manager, headed that up and you'll get a chance to pat her on the back. She spent countless hours, her and her husband too, dusting out chalk lining tables and things like that. But it was it was really a good really nice event.

I don't know because they're coming and going, you know. I don't know. Guess

I really don't know. One of those things hard to quantify, but it was hard to park. So people were parking at the plaza. Yeah, people just kept coming for, you know, coming and going, enjoying it. So, does anybody else have anything on this community interesting share? If not, we'll uh we'll move right along for to our citizen participation. And we do have a couple that are signed up to speak. Um Peggy, I've got two. Thank you. Cynthia, did you want to go first?

Yeah. Just please give them your name and

Yeah. My name is Cynthia and I live here to address animal Specifically, the city's not putting people at the shelter at risk. I don't think the city is adequately caring for the animal that respect the shelter although the The shelter is funded by the city. The operations of the shelter activities that are going on at the shelter and Thank you.

Can you hear me? Yes. Yes.

Okay. I'm also here to talk about uh the shelter. Um, we have been very involved with the Mount Vernon animal shelter. A lot of us, uh, volunte volunteering, donating, and pause and things like that. um she addressed it as like shenanigans, but I'm thinking Jennifer uh to us I we don't know what happened, but we didn't even know we had a animal shelter until Jennifer started her employment, which I think is around 22 or 23 and we started seeing like what what is this stuff that's coming from our animal shelter. we started seeing all these posts and uh so we got really involved and really excited because it's like oh we got somebody here we uh with her help we set up things to fix cats and do all this kind of stuff and then you know also we have paws on the side which a lot of us that live out in the county um we were like so excited okay we got paws now coming in here we're going to do the county animals and now they're like merging and and So part of that excitement was because Jennifer was also going there. We just knew uh we had just so much content. She was just so helpful and so good with the animals. I mean you could just see it when you went up there. They uh they listen to her. So you could just tell she spent a lot of time. So then they merged with uh Paws. And I actually thought um we've done a lot with uh pause, but as um as the lady mentioned before, there are a lot of things and I I think Jennifer mentioned a lot of those things too. Uh like for example, I think we're not euthanizing dogs, which is good, or we're not euthanizing as many. So therefore, you're getting a lot of aggressive dogs and stuff in there with the friendly ones. and we don't have

adequate fencing to keep them apart in there. So, there's been lots of dog fights and animals getting hurt and things like that. Um the there's gravel in there and not concrete. So, there's been, you know, parvo when it gets into gravel, you can't get it out. There's no way to sanitize it out or anything like that. So, we have those kind of concerns that are in there. Um, and just and now I mean I I want the shelter and I want pause to be successful. I think everybody that speaks in here does. We all love animals and we all want these animals to be taken care of. But there's no transparency. You know, when you comment, they just shut down the comments. Nobody will answer an email. Nobody will answer comments. And then you wonder why this the the little the animal society or whatever the people that care, they get upset because it's kind of like we're left in the dark. You want us to help, you want our money, you want our time, you want us to donate, but we can't be um we can't be heard for any of the things that uh need to be addressed u there. So, I mean, that's like mainly the thing that I wanted to talk about. And just I mean, I'm so up I mean, I'm just so I cannot even believe that Jennifer is not there. And I'm guessing that uh we're going to have to hire a lot of people to take her place. I mean, the the ladies that were there, Tina and some of the other ladies, they're great there. It's not like there's something wrong with the people that are out there. I'm not saying that. But Jennifer was like, "Dirty. Get your boots on. Shovel dog poop.

Getting out there with the animals." And I just That is going to be hard. Big shoes to fill. And probably going to take I I'm guessing you're going to have to hire more than one person. You're going to find that out here in a little bit. But anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Um and thank you. And hopefully we can communicate better with whomever we need. and have more of an open communication so we don't just have to do these things and uh kind of address and help fix some of the problems that are out there. Thank you. Thank you, M.

And Erica Wilson.

Hello, I'm Erica. I'm from Mount Vernon. Um I'm here to talk about the same thing. I just wanted to follow up on a couple things. Um kind of stole some of them, but things that we need addressed that I know Jennifer was aware of and just how we just to know they're on record that everybody knows they need addressed. One of which there is parvo in the gravel. It can't be disinfected once Parvo's in there. So, if there's puppies that come in there and they go out there, they can get parvo. I have heard that they have got parvo and they will die if they go out there. It's so um It's so bad for the puppies. They can't and there's absolutely no way to resolve it with the gravel. The second of which is the fencing. I know Jennifer was looking was actively trying to make a solution for this. I love that we are trying to be no kill. Some dogs just don't do well in a shelter environment. But if we are going to be that way, I went to do a St. Patty's day photo shoot with the dogs and one of the dogs had a hole in their side about this big because one of the other dogs got through the fence and ripped them open and I the the to follow along with the fencing is what is the if any the protocol of vet care because I know vet care is expensive and you obviously have to prioritize what requires immediate vet care what can be put on the back burner if there is protocol who the vets that are used. Um, and us as the public, there's a way for us to know that because sometimes people don't want to donate to the shelter if they don't know where it's going. But if I can call a vet and give $20 to a vet that I know is going to stitches to little Bronson or whatever, people are willing to do that. So, a lot of it is just issues that we knew were coming up and now that there has been this overturn in management and things like that, we don't really know where any of that stands and we also

don't know who we reach out to in that if it is I forget her name. I think Sarah the new or if it's above her, if it's her boss or something like who really had can take action on those things. So that's kind of why I'm here. We like Maggie said, we all love Jennifer. Absolutely nothing against the new person that was hired. Nothing against anybody else that worked there. We just really know that she loved those dogs and we love those dogs and that's why we're here. And we just want to see that some actions are taken and that there's transparency like we can voice our opinions and our concerns and actually get something back versus crickets in a respectful dialogue. So that's all I have to say.

Thank you. Do we have anybody else that wants to speak?

I do want to do doing this. Hi, my name is Amy Summerland. Um, I'm the founder and director of Seven Pots Pines. We are the only dog rescue in Franklin County. We routinely partner with the shelter. Um, I volunteer there just as a citizen. I have a good working relationship with Jennifer. I've been there a lot and I've seen a lot of things and there are a a lot of issues like they were talking about the gravel paro playyard the fencing the puppy with the hole he actually died of parvo but first there was a fencing failure and he was attacked had a softball sized hole in his stomach and was denied vet care that's not okay no pill doesn't mean suffering uffing to death so that it doesn't count against your numbers. There are fates worse than death and suffering to death because you weren't allowed to go to the vet. That's unacceptable. Like, it's unacceptable. She drove all the way to Gilmer to a vet because that was the only place she was told she could go. There was a $500 credit at this vet. She gets there, they said, "No, it's only for cats." She drives the puppy home. The puppy ended up dying of parvo, not that injury. A lot of puppies have died of paro from the pee gravel. It's not up to standard. It's It's not It's not safe. Like, it's dangerous. And keeping aggressive dogs in there

is not doing them any favors. It's not doing the the big picture. Every single dog that stays in there that's aggressive is not only a risk to the staff and the volunteers and the other animals and they're probably miserable themselves. They're taking up a kennel space for a dog who doesn't have those issues. And it's heartbreaking that an aggressive dog does have those issues, but others don't. They actually have a shot at finding a home and being adopted. And when you don't space because you're keeping it at that because you're no kill. Even though things are dying, they're dying out on the streets, too. And we're usually the ones that come behind and have to clean that up. Everything that the shelter rejects, it still suffers. It still needs a place to go. So, I just I don't know. That bothers me. The the no kill, the fact that the ventilation in the building in the main kennel room, it's not safe. Like that air quality is not good. And I think the fence, the parvo pee gravel, and the ventilation would be the top three along with if an animal needs vet care, they should be able to get it. And that doesn't just mean spay and neuter. That doesn't just mean vaccinations. Like you treat injuries and illnesses, too. So,

yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. I will add people that know me knows I'm a softy for our animals and I've adopted from the kennel myself every we have rescue so I'm there several way and um the u the gravel area I think we need can it be concrete we need to find out so we we'll see if we can get a quote on some estimates on making That sounds like we got to correct that.

And um I hate putting the pet down, but I've been out there too many times where you see aggressive animals and I'm like, why the devil here? We can't be a zero kill, no kill shelter. I've learned that that sounds good in theory, but it's impossible. So, I think we do need to actually have a protocol for aggressive dogs and we decide, hey, this dog needs to go see Jesus. I'm sorry, but that just is just is what it is. and make room for safe pets that are need to be brought to town and they'll get adopted. But if you go in there look at pets and you got dogs going just bouncing off the wall aggressive I don't even want to be there look at them sometimes if you're from the public right so it makes for a bad atmosphere not only unsafe um with the the pravel deal the utilization deal and the ventilation is horrible there needs to be that thing it's not that expensive to put exhaust fans that can can change the air out that If they'll do that regularly, it won't be that bad either. So, we do that's a we had a kid that was going to do a college project and little fundraiser for that and that fell apart, but the money to do it is not that much. But I we'll we'll take these and maybe we grab a few guys and say, "Hey, let's let's go to those priorities." Again, I don't know that media communication that wasn't being responded to because that messages not being responded to. I don't see those or where they went, but either way, um, we do have a new animal control. She's first line of communication office. And I think we do want to make sure that communication is going through her. She can grab or council member, whatever, and say, "Hey, I need we do need help, you know, and let's get it sorted out. That way, she's not just calling, you know, throughout city hall. Let's make sure Was she

unfortunate even at the shelter city for her.

We hear you. We hear you. And I appreciate the the passion support. I care about it though. I do. I mean, we're out there because of my suggestion to go by that clinic. That's why we ended up out there. We were going to end up out in the out in the county in the little building. I was like, this just nobody's going to be able to see it. You're not going to get volunteers. It's hard to go check it out. That's that was my suggestion to go by that clinic. I want to see it be successful out there.

Personnel decisions are tough and and I just have to say let's let's help Sierra be successful. And but I but we're taking this serious tonight and I appreciate it. We will we will follow right back up on this. It's not a lot of money to fix. Can do that. was online.

If you're okay, I got some folks that have traveled in pretty good distance. I got But you're okay. But you're you're you're okay. I appreciate it. I just wanted to I do want to move us along, but I promise you we will follow back up on this. Yeah. Yeah. Thank y'all.

All right. Um so it is uh 6:20. I want to open our public hearing. Uh our item number four. The purpose of this hearing is to hear evidence for or against requests made by Caribbean Basin Brokers LLC for a request to provide assistance with existing business structure assistance business recruitment incentives, job creation, retention incentive, business retention assistance for the property located at 257 Texas Highway 67 Mount Vernon, Texas 75457, where I used to run around it when I was a little kid with my dad grabbing hammers and nails. So the old lumber yard You're here, right? Did you Did you Did you want to speak? You don't have to. Or Mark from the EDC stand. Did you want to

It's coming with a recommendation from EDC. It's coming from with a recommendation from EDC for approval. Unless there's a question. It's renovation money for the building up to $50,000. I have to say this that the application that you submitted was the best application, most thorough 200 pages. I would say application I've ever seen. I wish all of them look like that. I'd second that.

Yeah, I would. So, it's coming with recommendation from EDC and from staff. This will also provide a path for that property to be annexed into the city of Mountard on that left. Correct. Okay. So, if there's if there's no further discussion on that, we'll go to item number five. And the purpose of this hearing is to hear Let me give you a time for that, Angie, for the second.

Obviously, it's How about this? 622 and I'll open the next hearing. It's uh the purpose of this hearing is to hear evidence for or against a request made by Robert Rosales and Daniel Joith, owners of DNR Investments LLC, DBA, Lucky 7, Tyron Auto, to provide assistance with existing business structure assistance for the business located at 1320 Hullbrook Street, Mount Vernon, Texas. So, this is the old uh tire shop out by Lo that became a bad eyesore for a long time and they've already a ton of work hauling trash and old tires and everything else off the go, but they want to they want to continue to freshen that building up and make it something we all be proud of to see out there. So they've already done a ton of work on that spot just cleaning it up and this recommendation from the EC No, it's a grant from the EDC economic wouldn't come from the city's budget. It come from the Mount EDC's budget. And for those that know where that money comes from, it's half a cent of our sales tax collection. Any sales tax dollars that comes into the city of Mount Vernon, there's a half that goes into a fund and that is there to help incentivize business, this type of thing. So, Right. Specifically, what it's for is to help maybe an old building that's that, you know, could be generating sales tax needs, you know, too much work for somebody to afford to do it all on their own and we can get it up to code and put it back into service and it pays it way again. So, so that's where the funds would come from is from that fund. If if there's no further discussion, it's uh I'll close the public hearing. Is that okay? 6:24. U we'll reconvene the regular session

and uh we have our items to be considered where we're going to have Mike come up and I don't know how many years now I've got to enjoy you doing our audit for us but thank you always do a great job and thanks for being here with us and sure I think I can get through it two hours so

mayor and city council and staff I want to say thank you very much for the opportunity to perform your audit this year I really want to say thank you to your team that that played a big role in getting me all the information and getting everything all ready to go. So, thank you very much. Um, probably the most important section within the auditor's report is on page two and page three. This is the actual independent auditor's report. Uh, if you'll read through this, uh, it has a lot of verbiage that basically states that the financial statements presented within this report are presented fairly in material specs as of September 30, 2025. It's a clean unmodified opinion. So, congratulations. a lot of paragraphs to explain it. That's basically what it means. Um, probably the next section I'd have you go to is on page seven and page eight. The reason that I have you go to these pages is because um, it provides a nice summarized balance sheet starting on page seven and a nice summarized income statement on page eight. But more importantly is it compares it to the previous year. So analytically you can use it as a tool to kind of see what's changed between uh, the two years. Um, in summary, you ended the year with about um 10,33 uh,000 for the year. That's your total net position. This is these are presented as the governmentwide financial statements. And what I mean by that is it's taking your cash flow type statements and convert them over to a business. So, it has your has your debt recorded as a liability. It has your fixed assets that are being depreciated. So, it's a little differently, but it's a nice way to look at your financial statements. Um you ended the year with um again with about $10.3 million in total net position of which about $9,169,000 is the portion of that fund balance or that position that's related to your capital assets minus your debt. Uh you had about $95,000

worth of restricted leaving you with an unrestricted portion of about 229,553. Overall that represents about 11.5% reduction over the previous year. Um overall as far as your assets, you ended the year with about 15,463. Uh that's cash. That's your that's your capital assets minus depreciation. And that represent represents about a 9.6% reduction. And then uh the same thing with your total liabilities, which again reports your debt that you have as well. Um about 5.2 million representing about an 8.75% reduction. Now Page eight. Um, this is the changes in net position, which more or less is an income statement. And you'll see this year you had about $4,957,000 of total revenue. It's a little less than the previous year because last year you had some grant revenue that rolled into this as well, mostly the the final expending of the CO money. and you had about $6,34,000 worth of expenditures, leaving you with um a net loss or a change in that position of 1,347,000. And that added to last year's fund balance gets you to the total net position of 10,33,960. Now, page 10. This is the same format of financial statement, but it basically presents a summarized version of your capital assets. So, you can kind of see what's changed. Uh, but overall, you ended the year with about 12.8 million in total assets. That's your the your land, your buildings, your infrastructure. Uh, both the the utility side and the the city side. Um, and then more importantly down below you can see where you ended the year with about $4,927,000

in debt representing about a 3% uh decrease over the previous year. And when I when I mentioned um the governmentwide financial statements looking like a business, they've taken your financial statements and convert them into a business. The general fund um is presented on page 18. These are the governmental financial statements 18 through page um 24 starting on page 18. Um these are the the governmental financial statements. And what I mean by governmental it's it's basically the cash flow. It's the modified acral basis. It basically means that uh it's like a flow of resources. It's similar to looking at your checkbook. It shows you what went in and what went out. It doesn't have capitalized assets. It doesn't have capitalized liability. If you bought something, you expensed it. If you uh paid for your debt, you expensed it. So, if you brought on debt, it's income. So, it's a flow of resources. It's like your checkbook. So, it's a little bit different than what you're used to seeing on the governmentwide financial statements. Uh but overall mainly uh within the general fund you ended the year with uh about 1,815,886 in fund balance of which about $1,628,000 represented uh the unassigned portion. It's a positive number and u that's within the general fund. If you ever wanted to compare both what I mentioned, the governmentwide and the governmental, there's a reconciliation on page 19 and page 21 that kind of gives a breakdown of the difference between the two. But again, it's mainly the difference in capitalized assets and depreciation and debt. And then as far as uh net income on on page 20 uh within the general fund, you had about um $2.9 million worth of total revenue, about

3,324 of expenditures, leaving you with um a reduction of about $350,000 um deficiency, but there was a transfer from the water and sewer fund of about $867,000, which brought you back up to about 516,976. Now the portion uh starting on page 25, these are the notes from the financial statements. This gives you a lot of important information that basically tells you u the different accounting methodologies. It tells you what's restricted, what's unrestricted. It gives you a lot of important information that that helps you understand what goes on within these financial statements. They're they're written in a real small type font, so it kind of if you read them late at night, it kind of helps keep you up. So, makes you makes you try to be able to read them. But if you weren't going to read through all this information, 36 and page 37, these are the most important sections to go to. If you were to do some sort of grant funding or or want to borrow money, these are the pages that they would go to to look at. Um, it starts out with a more detailed version of your capital assets on page 35 and 36. shows you what it began with, what was added, and what was removed, as well as what was depreciated. But more importantly, on page 37, it gives you a a detail of the debt, every debt obligation that took place, uh, leaving you with a beginning balance of 5,100,000 and getting to the balance this year of 4,927. Um, you can tell with that 4,927, the details on how it's going to take that off down below too because it gives you the next five years of your principal and interest payments as well as tranches of five years uh for the remainder. So it kind of gives the person that's reading your financial statements an understanding of of your

your cash flow with debt. And then finally um the section that is on page uh 5 starting on page 54 and goes to the end of the book. These these are the the financial statements for the uh component unit which is mainly the the economic development corporation. There's not a whole lot of activity. Uh but you ended the year with about $793,000 of total assets of which about $714,000 as cash and um there's a receivable for the sales taxes that were collected the next 60 days that are brought on to your books of about 78,000. And then uh finally on page 56 um you brought in about 443,487 of of revenue of which about 421 of sales tax. There was also about $22,000 of investment earnings and about $68,000 worth of expenditures. And that's really pretty much it. You have any questions?

It's always such a clean, concise look the way you do it. How many times have you watch your dad do this? She makes fun of me when I go home. She copies me when I Thank you, mayor, city council. Does anybody have any further? I know we've all been through it. And as usual, if you have any questions after I leave, feel free to call me anytime. Seven days a week.

Very helpful to us outside. Thank you. You're welcome. Anytime. Okay. So, we uh we need a approval of the audit report. This is an action item for us. Motion for Carol. Marty. All in favor? I carries.

Okay. In item seven, uh, consider resolution number 26-07 authorizing approval of EDC agreement with Caribbean Basin Brokers LLC for the property located at 257, Highway 67, Mount Vernon, Texas 75457. We need a motion to approve the EDC grant. I'll do a motion to approve. It's all in their application. It's right in there in the agenda. It's in the agenda. So, if you look at it online,

that's okay. Good question. I'll do a motion to approve. A motion from Rebecca and a second from Marty. All in favor? I. Motion carries. Um, item number eight, consider resolution 26-08 authorizing the approval of the EDC agreement with Robert Rosales and Daniel Jaw, owners of DNA Investments LLC DBA Lucky 7 Tyrron with the business located at 1320 Brook Street to consider. I'll do a motion to consider. Motion from Rebecca and a second to peril. All in favor? I carries.

All right. Um, item number nine, consider request for appointments for the housing authority for the city of Mount Vernon. Open that one. So, this is Oh, great. Mr. Thank you for being here.

Thanks for all the volunteer work you do. For the first time in like 20 years, HUD has to get copies of the appointment certificates for board members. The lady that was my predecessor, she's scrambling in her own house and so I just need to do my due diligence. My understanding from my training was I had to come up and do the office. I have those appointmentil And so I've got five members and so my board members are AJ on the board since October has been there since December 13. Larry Scott came on the board in May of 22 when his previous board member resided. So that would be interest.

So you just do it individually. They need to each individual have their own certificate.

I think I'm certainly comfortable with everybody on that list. I tell you,

thank you. Thanks for being here. All right. Motion to approve. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll do a second motion. Rebecca. All in favor? I.

Motion carries. Thank you, Susan. All right. Item number 10, consider water leak adjustment request for the property located at 11:09 Old Street. Yes, this was a water leak uh on Brook Street uh believe it was 138,000 gallons

that was left undetected for a while. It didn't go into the sewer. Um the staff would recommend that you would authorize uh two things. Number one, that you would authorize the staff to remove the sewer charge off of that. They've already paid this uh that you would authorize staff to remove the sewer charge, which is approximately 800 bucks and then work with them on payment plan for the remaining, I think it's $1,800, but

a credit for some of the, you know, for what they have paid and just that future future you know billing we don't have a policy on this and that's why it's come before council because I do not have the authority to do this without council authority will our our consultant on water utilities working on a policy that'll be presented council on this in May or June but it would be our recommendation at this time you just allow us to work to remove the charge and you know credit that back to them. It was a broken It was a broken off the creek. That's a lot of waterless.

So Craig is asking us for to give him the authority to kind of negotiate some help. Okay. So motion from Mary and a second from Marty. All in favor? I Item 11. Ironically, we got two water leak issues. So, consider water leak adjustment request for the property located at Thank you'all again, by the way. located at 9:30 Texas Highway 37 South and this is a business case.

Yeah, this this was again a leak just not bad, right? And uh On this one, I would just ask that you uh authorize me to negotiate some payment plan or something with her to, you know, ease the blow for this for this business. And we'll probably reduce it back to what the regular monthly charge would be.

This one was not bad. I think this one was not a significant I'll get a second. So motion from Mary to allow Craig to work with the property owner here and a second from Rebecca. So all in favor

I motion carries. Item 12 is consider resolution number 26-09 updating authorized user to all accounts held at alliance bank. This is just housekeeping add on manager. So anybody has any questions we need a motion to update the signature card. Motion from Rebecca. All in favor? I.

Motion carries. And this is a same thing for the Lonear Investment Fund. Consider resolution number 26-10 updating authorized users for accounts held at Lonear Investments as well. Adding Andrew to the to the signatory there from Harold. All in favor? I. Thank you. Motion carries. And our final action item tonight is consider change in IT services for the city. We as we've talked numerous times in recent history, we're having to move a different direction

and it's our recommendation that we go with Bryant techn is it Bryant Technologies or Bryant IT?

Brian, the county's with them. Uh the uh water district has gone to them and uh and right now a different one with the exception of our PD because our PD is housed with the county. So the emails aren't even talking to each other. And the reason for this shift is that we're just not we're not getting the response when we have a tech issue. Uh we're not getting a very rapid response and we're having a lot of just a lot of programmatic difficulties um that we shouldn't be having. um with our with our network. So, it's going to be our recommendation that we go with Pride IT and we just wanted to bring this to council for their approval to go ahead and make the switch.

Approval for the switch. Okay. So, we have a motion forcald. All in favor? I Okay, so that's all of our action items. Now we'll move to our discussion items and we've got Andrew to introduce himself first. I think so. Andrew.

Hello. I'm Andrew Bedell, the new director of finance for the city of Mount Vernon. Um, I want to thank everyone uh for giving me this opportunity to serve the people of the city of Mount Vernon. I feel blessed to be here.

Glad to have you and the first couple of weeks since Andrew's been here. I mean, he has dug in and hit the ground running and course is great. So, I mean, you definitely fit our culture and we knew you would the minute we sat down to interview with you, you know, but we're excited to have you here at Mount Vernon. The last three weeks just flown flown by. Um, I've started I'm trying to learn as much as possible of course and um to have many myself and I've taken on the council payable responsibilities. Um, one thing that is very important to me is making sure that all of our vendors are paid timely and uh and accurately that we have a the city has a good reputation with all of our vendors. Um, and also I've worked to uh provide some reporting that is needed internally to our department managers and to external users as well. Um, prepared two very high level uh snapshots of the current uh finances. Um again, this is a very short period of time that I've been here. Um so it's very very simplified information. Uh it's the the current balance for uh bank accounts as of 331.

Do you have that? Um, so we have over $1.3 million in the operating account and then all the combined accounts we have over 2.5 million in cash as of 331. And then um again another high level overview of the revenues and expenditures for the city. This is as of uh it's year to date from fiscal year start of October 1st through February 28 of 2026. So it's just the year to date amounts. Um and I have the current budget in there. Um and where we're where we're at. So, we budgeted 9,669,438 uh in total revenues for the year. And as of 228, we're at 4,64,58148. Um, which is about 45% of our budget for the year. Uh, to give that to put that in perspective, uh, about 42% of the year has passed at this point being five months in. And then uh as for the expenditures, um we budgeted a total of 7,71,51 and as of 228 we have incurred 2 million $177,54 worth of expenditures which is only 31% of our budgeted amount for the year. How nice.

That's pretty good. How nice to have just a nice clean concise look. And that's

already improvement. But I appreciate that. We we sat and talked a number of times. I said just just give us a high level look. But you on the revenue side, our bigger revenue much are yet to come. So that's we have our we sell more water in the summer go up sales tax go. all the department head because we did ask everybody to really focus on the necessities this year. We spent a whole lot of money last year and I remind people on this 2024 when the power went out that five days was one of the hardest five days of my life and uh and just seeing um we nearly lost water supply on that day. You know to go out to the to the water intake out there and see no generator, you know, there's no backup and electrical out there neglected for years and years and years. I'm going to be sharing some pictures here. The improvement are really impressive, but the need that the council decided to answer in the 25 budget was we can't have that happen again. And there was multiple things that led to that along that same line. You know, the sewer plant, we didn't have a generator that probably been cranked in who knows how long, 10 years. It just hadn't ran ever. We had to get generators from Missouri Springs over there and the city manager over there loan me a generator up the big one. We're talking big stuff to help us keep running and but the council on the hills of that said we're not going to go through that risk. We're going to get things taken care of. We were carrying way too much money in the bank. We all talked about this council money sitting in CD and Mary really identified that why are we doing this and why are we not fixing stuff? So last year we spent a whole lot of money the hills of 2024 and thank God we did and we're in a great cast position still. So appreciate the nice clean look Andrew and the contribution you're gonna make for the

city. Really appreciate your work. So yeah, thank you for the introduction. Tell you got a lovely wife yesterday Saturday. And she sent some chocolate chip salted caramel cookies. So no matter what happens to Andrew appreciate the opportunity.

I'm sorry. Come on up here. Both. We got both here.

That's okay. You're fine. You're fine. kind of want to give an update on the fire department. So, I hadn't spoke to y'all a while. We're about halfway through. We start our interop with the county October 1st. Just kind of give youall some numbers for that today. So, basically, we have 25 people on our roster there at the Mount Fire Department. We have 15 of those are volunteers. The other 10 are part time people. Uh since the interlocal start October 1st of 2025 until today or until uh end this last month we had 824 calls in the city and county. So the number that I want you to focus on is before I remember I had talked to you all about calls that went unanswered. So as of now um as of today we have zero calls that are unanswered in the county. So I think that huge uh for for you for you all making that decision to do the inter local and also the county. Uh so in 2025 uh we received three grants in 2025 and the last score 2025 first 2026. Grant one was a was a 100% grant from the Texas Forest Service for $10,000. Uh it's 100% grant and so it's for training. We'll easily spend that. Grant two is a $45,000 grant from the Texas Forest Service and it's a 955 grant and we're working on ways to utilize that to get the best bang for our buck. Those the grant the training grant was submitted in 2023. The skid grant was subended in 2020. So that's how long it takes when you do something tech. The third grant was a $300,000 grant that was a tanker grant. It's a 955 grant. That grant was submitted in 2013. So, it's taken quite some time for it to get there. Also, of the addition, uh, Sheriff Jones decided he went out, he

wanted to replace our hydraulic rescue tools. So, Sheriff Jones, it went to the commissioner's court and they got approval and replaced. So, we now have a set of HR rescue tools and those were valued around $46,000. Those those tools, we've already got them in those those tools are sitting in Mansfield having new for the new truck. So, they're having their own holding so they don't slide around the truck. So, they're building their own little special holdings. Uh the city finally received our ISO rating. The last time the city received ISO rating was in 2014. So, now we're looking at almost 12 years later. They try to do them every 10 years. Anyway, our our ISO rating, we're able to maintain a four, which is really good because some cities I know around us had actually had gone up. When I say go up, they actually went down to like a five or six or seven. A four is a very average It's a good rating for a city this size. I have talked with Amy from Vera Risk. Verisk is the company the state of Texas has used for to help to do the ISO. And I talked with her. We're supposed to get together later on this this summer and she's got some things that we can do uh and tweak and possibly push that down to excuse push that up to a three. So to go from a four to three. So as a business owner in the city to going from a four to three that will help lower your your insurance for your businesses. Um, we loaded up and traveled to Mansfield with myself and a group of the guys and we went over to look at the new fire truck. It's unreal. Uh, it's really nice and we'll we'll probably will see that in about two maybe three months. And so I was going to show some pictures, but I kind of want to hold that out. Um, engine one, I talked about this to the industrial foundation. So in engine one, I talked to the city manager. When I got here, I felt that truck was very unsafe. And so I had so we finally were able to send this truck to Wilmer, Texas to an actual fire truck facility to get it fixed. It had numerous issues. They found more over there. I was telling I was telling

city manager and then this I tried to save the city uh some money by they were going to come pick the truck up. Well, this truck, you've ever driven this truck, you would know, but they were going to come pick the truck up for $350. I said, "Oh, you know what? I'll drive it over there." So, I don't know if you've ever driven a fire truck on 635 or on I 20 in South Dallas during rush hour. I wish I would have just paid for it out of my pocket. so have them pick it up. Uh, so we got it over there. They found more issues once they got it over there, but they're getting those fixed as we speak. Hopefully, we'll have that engine back within the next probably within the next week or so. That that engine is 16 years old. It's a good looking It's the wide engine, I guess. Uh, it's it's a good looking engine. With these repairs, this is going to buy us more time with that engine. Had it been at 16, we can push the push the lifespan on that truck a little bit longer. Uh, it will be our reserve truck. So, Yeah, I think on the new engine too. I don't know if you mentioned it. So, we got it's a $300,000 grant that we got towards that engine and then the county came in and helped put the $700,000 payment. Right.

Right. So, the so we got the grant the grant was, you know, like I say, was put in in 2013. We received the grant. Well, the problem is the tanker back in 2013 was a great thing to have. We have multiple tankers outside in the county. Plus, we had nowhere to put a tanker. We had three we had three bays and another fire truck where we're going to put it. So, we were able to work a deal with the county and giving them the $300,000 grant as a kind of a down payment and they were taking the rest of the rest of the money uh for the engine. This engine is about $1.1 million. So, the county will take on the rest of that debt by by us. So, it worked a deal. So, it's a benefit for not only obviously the citizens of Mount Vernon, but the citizens of Frank County. So, we're utilizing that for for the city and in the county. So that was that was a big deal because uh that's a huge that's obvious a huge cost. Fire trucks have gone up 62% in the last five years.

So the truck just an idea the truck that we have the 2000 uh the 2004 red truck we have that you'll see up running up down the road. That truck is a 2004. That truck was $211,000. The truck we purchased is almost is very close to that truck is now that kind of gives you idea how much averaging they're averaging 10% almost 10 15% going your plan for the two old trucks we got you got another grant process we're working on right

so we got the so we've got the two trucks we'll have to get rid of one of the trucks so engine two is our older truck it's a 2004 uh we don't have room for them so when the new truck comes in so the idea is to sell that truck kind of I was going to work with Andrew Andrew is my new hero He's been awesome. Um, going to work with Andrew on on some numbers and what I'm trying to do is work a deal with the forestry service on a grant. Take the money from the sale of engine 2 with the forestry service grant. Merge those two together to buy a smaller truck to run a lot around the county. What the small truck will do will allow us to run a lot of medical calls. We run a lot of medical calls with Hopkins County, not only in the city, but out in the county. And so we want to get try to get that bigger truck to sit more. You know, utilize it on certain calls on these medical calls. Try not to utilize the big truck. Now, this is very this is very common. If you'll notice, if you people on Facebook, if you look, the city of Grapevine just did this. They took an engine out of service and replace it with an attack. Now, that's not what I'm asking to do. I'm just saying the smaller truck is more feasible over there. It's totally different the way they do things over there compared to what we're doing. But it is a common city of Dallas for what they've done is buying these small trucks and utilizing the cost of fuel. So this is just an idea something. Yes, sir.

They look pretty impressive. And every well everybody you see on that truck and I'm glad you said that add to that everybody on that truck is certified. They're certified not only medically but they're also certified through fire but also uh him bringing that up. So the response time and so in your volunteer departments like I say the volunteers in the city and the county have been great for years but you have a they're volunteers you know what I mean? So they have to leave their house they're sitting there eating supper with their the tones go off, they get so you're looking at five, seven, 10 minutes from the time they can get to to call. So they're averaging, you know, five, five, seven, 10 minute response time. Now with two guys with two guys that are 24 hours a day, seven days a week, those guys are averaging less than one minute. So in less than a minute, they're in that truck and in route to wherever they're needing to go. That's people don't realize.

Thank you so much. Refreshing every time you give an update.

So Bla. Yes. So give us an update here. We have people asking about the big grant and when the money will be allocated and what the time frame looks like.

I think last I heard last update we have picture. Um so the money closed March 12th I believe something like that. It takes around 6 months for water development board to get it in the bank account before we can really go to construction move it. Um, in the process, we're going to be submitting all the plans. Everything's ready, ready to go. Basically, just waiting out a six month time period right now. But we got a 90 to

we got a 9010 grant. Um, last, like I said, I heard September earliest schedule that they would agree to us going to construction is around December. We're going to try to push them for sooner, but we go back and forth and they want so many months to review everything, plans, bidding. So between September and December, we should be going to bid with both the distribution and the water line talking. Y'all believe that there's contractors ready to do that project?

We do have I mean we have contractors in the area. We're steadily bidding projects for line work. Uh we've got some in Marshall right now. We've got some finishing up in Mount Pleasant and we've kind of engaged in some of them if we can time it right. I mean there'll be plenty of interest with the size of the property anyways. We do have some that we like working with the job and can get it done pretty quick in the area right now. All right. get after it.

I think we all just get the work started. Absolutely. Thanks,

I guess kind of the first quarter in review. got a new hire. Um Braden had left us here I guess the end of last year. So he's off to do some other things not in the same field. So it's not like we're losing him to another facilities changing life and then also Mike is so take care of that. I've got something.

Yeah, we have a new hire. His name's Abby Rodriguez graduates. Lived here since he's four. He just uh completed all his classes and passed his class water license. So, he's been here two months pretty much almost three months. He's got his license. continue his training and hopefully we can get some work experience by taking some extra classes and the operator next year this time. So that's my plan and that's what we're working on with him. Um the end of last year we had two inspections with TCQ. One was for the plant and one was for the city dam. So in February I responded to the plant inspection and we had So we addressed three of the deficiencies. If anybody intake, we have a giant sign now that we're in compiance. That was something that was on a previous audit that I guess I missed when I was reviewing those. We got that taken care of this year. So that's done. The other two items had to do with the elevated towers. We got that all done. All the work for the towers were done in March. And then we had They started in 2018 and it was never reupdated to the state. So I took what we had and adopted updated for today's stuff and submitted that actually this last week. So that I believe will be put to bed and we won't have any issues. So the city dam inspection I didn't even know we had a plan that we had to do in all kinds of things with that I came from well so no idea surface

water I worked at a big plant in WY so that was a whole another department so learning a lot this last year working all these different things We have to update that emergency action plan and we have to develop an end plan. So maintain that's clearing brush making sure we don't have things buring in the dam or it's leaking. So we did have that cleared this spring that was taken care of. We just sprayed it some of the weeds coming through. We'll try to get it so a nice grassy out there. They did some maintenance of some grass seeding on top of there came in and shredded the sides and things that was one of their concerns was the top was kind of they wanted more grassy. So KSA had developed a response to that letter without any like major concerns at this point. Maybe more of a concern on their At least it seemed in that letter from the state. We're working on looking at a seage issue for there's kind of a for what we've looked at just putting eyeballs on it is there's kind of a spot where the water kind of pools out by the old plant comes down the hill and there's kind of a the water goss. So, we're feeling like that's not a leak necessarily. It's just amount of water that sits there and can't get away because it's packed clay. It's holding that water there. So, we're

going to try to get some grading in there to get that naturally drain better and hopefully some better inspections. Right now, there's no water flowing. don't feel like we have a leak in that dam at least where they're talking. There is an old pipe in that dam that may need to be addressed in the future as we feel like that's not a concern. So there's some follow up on that under their direction. They wanted an engineer involved. So we just say it's fine. They obviously said it wasn't inspection. They have more training than we do. But as far as that goes, I feel like we will be pretty well. Appreciate it. Thanks for the

I said department supervisor for maintenance and utilities you know we've had a pretty busy year even though we've been short staff we've been trying to keep up six months it was just three guys you know normally five but we have hired a new guy he's working out but he's picking up We've installed several new taps for new businesses and homes. At least four meter taps in last month along the I37 road. I believe one of those taps were as well just right off of Jackson Street. We got it done. We've also over the course of last year's 125 installed various new lines and water. We tied in a dead end street that we actually ties back. Also the water pressure better quality of for the entire street. Also, you know, we installed Scott Street.

Uh, recently we went through and checked all the meters that were installed in town. They go to the correct reading right now located in picnic table where we And recently, this would have been two weeks ago, installed a new storm draining system off system. out installed systems to various lines. We haven't had too many loops this year on top of it. We had three inch on wood knocked out two on the raw water line, but hopefully that had a break on AC. We also went through and added flushes to several of

them being street. We have a few future projects that are going to be coming up in the near future and one of them will be installing more valves for subdivision. Currently there's one valve that kills both nice try to keep also we have several new RV parks that we have installed out there previous 2025. We actually all these projects like I said we've been trying to of all the city hall

pretty busy. So it's definitely Thanks for keeping things going like the update.

Well, I think that's it.

I just want to say I appreciate what I think city Don't be distracted by anyway. You really And we can't trees enough money app knows. sad truth.

I can't tell you how much. So, Harold, we asked unexpired termired

like is one of those obviously one of those nonsense guys that absolutely know alongside which I think is very important that you do enjoy the team that you're working with and that's how I always relate this is a team of excited to have Miss Sally coming in here. Thanks for a lot of gratitude just to serve. Well, Harold, thank you very much for your services and it has been a pleasure.

Yes. Make a motion to what? The motion to adjourn from

second from Marty the favor. Thank y'all. Thank y'all everybody that came out tonight. Appreciate y'all. How you doing? family.