City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, at six o'clock, we'll call this meeting of the Mount Vernon City Council to order. We do have a quorum. I appreciate everybody being here. Uh, one of the councilman had a little emergency happened with the storm just now, so we were on one's had an emergency uh grandbaby surgery, so we've got two out emergencies, but thank y'all for being here. Um Kathy's gonna lead us on our invocation. Amen. Please join for our pledge

algiance to the flag of the United States of America to the standy.

All right, the council's had the opportunity to review the special session minutes and there's also included a revenue expense report. We need a motion to approve the I'll make a consent agenda. Motion from Marty. Second. Second from Har. All in favor? I report on items of community interest. Does anybody have anything they like to share? Out there. The two explosions in town were the utility companies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're about I think they got back on. Yeah, they did. Yeah, they put a new one up and shot it, too. Yeah,

they're DEI people.

I don't have anybody signed up for citizen participation on the sheet tonight. So, we'll we'll go right to our public hearing. It's 603. And I'll I'll open the public hearing. The purpose of this hearing is to hear evidence for or against the Economic Development Corporation's recommendation to incentivize a request made by Crystal Copeland, DBA, the Glove Factory to provide assistance with graduated rental assistance for the business located at 2011 East Dallas Street, Mount Vernon, Texas, in the amount of $6,000 to be monthly for 12 months at a rate of $500 per month. Do we have anybody here to speak to that? Okay, so I will steal I'll close the public hearing since we don't have anybody here to speak to that one and we'll jump right into our items to be considered. So item two on the agenda is consider and act upon approval of resolution 25-12 authorizing application for local park grant program with parks and wildlife department. This is follow on from the good news we got before. This this we were encouraged to uh submit again after we'd received notification that we were going to be awarded last year. And so we just this is just authorizing uh that submitt follow up if awarded. Uh we'll be able to do um actually I think this one includes the amphitheater, does it not?

And restrooms. So we're really excited about this. So, uh, and we're almost guaranteed to get this funded. So, crazy, isn't it? A few years ago, we were like begging for stuff. It just shows if you have a plan and you stay on your plan, you know, it's they're they're real happy. The fact that we've added so many more park acres, too. That's a big part of the council agreeing to bring in some projects like Sea Lake. You know, they think they love to hear that we got more park acres dedicated. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So, there's no discussion. We have any questions? Well, it's a simple deal. So, we apply for a grant, but we do need a motion to

let the grant writing start. Motion motion from Harold and second from Marty. All in favor? I did. I hear Did I hear three eyes? Did I hear three eyes? Okay. Thanks. You're good. All right. Item number three. This is uh from our public hearing. We'll consider an act upon approval of resolution 25-13, the EDC incentive for Crystal Copelan DBA, the glove factory in the amount of $6,000 for rental assistance for 12 months and at the rate of $500 per month.

Uh yes, Mayor. The uh economic development corporation met last Thursday night and recommended unanimously to grant rental assistance incentive to the Copelands uh for the loading dock uh just to help keeping the loading dock open and operating. As you know, it's changed hands and um uh Crystal and John were both here that night. They they're actually they're on vacation now in Italy. So otherwise they'd be here tonight. So this comes with a strong EDC recommendation and staff recommendation.

We hope to do more work with the Copins soon. Make a motion. Motion from second. Second from Mary. All in favor? Motion carries. So that's all of our action items. We're going to get into our discussion items now. Jump to item four. Want me to do that first or

let's let's jump to item four real quick. U Kathy Kathy or Angie, you know more about this than I do because this has this is city secretary stuff. Um the house bill that's basically uh that go into effect in September has changed the notification from 72 hours to three business days.

The day you filed as count. So what does this mean? the Tuesday the week before to to continue meeting Monday. That's not that bad, is it? It all laugh. No, that that was that was a laugh you don't want to hear. I know

the It depends on it all depends on whether it's just the agenda

or the 300 pages that come with the agenda and the work that's involved in doing that. Most agenda is just what you see there. How does that change the day of the meeting? I mean, you still have to give three business days. So, if you move the meeting to Tuesday, how does that if it's business days, it gives you the weekend to

So, it gives you the weekend to I'm a little Thursday just now. I mentioned before the meeting just because it's so busy in Mount Vernon on Thursday night. Not drinking came right out.

It is though. It is a busy Is it going out?

Oh, I guess I'll be on time. It'll make the meeting interesting, too. Okay. Can we combine both? Let's have it after Let's have it at 9:30 10. Okay. We don't have to decide this tonight. Yeah.

Will we get any clarification from the association? This is supposed to go into effect in September, September one. So, we can put it off. Um, how would you feel if it was just the agenda on posting the agenda by Tuesday and then having the rest of the details available to council by Friday? We just couldn't we just couldn't alter the packet. You see the dilemma that it creates, you know, because if we alter the packet, it has to be reposted.

Yeah. We need we need to do business right on that. Obviously, it's just night of the week, so only thing Thank you, state legislature. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, they don't have to do that. So, what do they That's exactly right. Okay. Well, um so maybe we jump into We still take care of this at the next workshop or the next meeting.

We can let us let us a little bit figure out which we want to do. And I understand the point it would be very crowded around here on Thursday night. So, let's um and

we would move our workshop to probably before it. You could do a new meeting. the same.

No, I got you. Instead of having it two weeks out like we've been doing, combine it to where you have a workshop prior. I'm not opposed to that part. I think that's not a bad idea. We have it at six o' so people could attend. But it could be different time in the day, right? No, I mean the whole meeting. They have council meetings during the day. Really? Do a day.

Tyler does it at 10 o'clock in the morning. Yeah, we could do a new meeting. We could do Why didn't we ever talk about this? I like that. I'd be I'd be more game for probably Well, we'd miss all this huge crowd that we have at six o'

We'll talk some more on that. At least you got it in everybody's head. opportunity for maybe for scheduling reason posting the agenda we might need to go to a different night something that we try to adjust the time see okay okay well let's uh let's jump in and talk water and sewer do that now

uh yeah and basically all I wanted to do was everybody has a copy Harold can have marks u this was the we're not going to go into detail. I printed that off because I want you all to uh study this. This is what was presented to us last year. Uh recommendation from our water rate study and um we remember we had a whole workshop on that. And last year we uh chose to increase the base rate slightly and then wait and see how things went with the the installation of our new water meters. Everybody remembers that. And uh so we this is going to be the first month since the water meters have been installed.

All of them. All of them. Oh, really? All of them working.

And all of them working. So we really don't have enough data to be able to determine um how much increase we're going to have and how that impact the revenue. Now, why is all this important is that we are looking at uh Texas Water Development Board um loan grant, the 90% forgivable and the uh 70% forgivable wastewater and raw water line, but that's still going to increase our debt by about three or four million dollars combined. Um, so we've been working with the water development board financial analysts right now and uh he uh he seems to think that we're going to have to address rate increases, but we he has not been able to tell us exactly what that rate increase is going to be yet. But according to what Grant provided us last year, he made it very clear that there we would have to have some type of rate increase. So, what I you have a copy of what our current rates are. And what I'd like you all to do between now and the next council meeting or the next workshop is kind of go back through this. And Grant provided us um a phase in approach. And I think that where we're going to land is somewhere between what the phase in approach says and something uh and going ahead and and biting the bullet um to make that big jump um to be able to to to handle that. And hopefully by in within the next couple of weeks, I'll have information back from the water development board as to what he thinks we're going to need. So that's kind of that's kind of where we are with that. But I wanted you all to have that just to study it and hopefully we'll have couple of

months data by the time we get together again. But Kathy, didn't you say that they were trending looking like 20%. I know from a commercial standpoint, I can speak for our locations here, they're up at least 20%. They're up substantially. So that that's going to offset our need.

We're not doing anything different. There's nothing water chang we would like to be able to keep the rates as low as possible at the same time be able to do the improvements that are absolutely necessary to do So y'all look at it, see what you think, and no decisions tonight, and we'll go from there. Anything else you want to cover this evening in the discussion side?

You got anything, Chad? You guys are doing a good job, Chad. Yeah, I hear from people around town, too.

Well, we don't have anything else. This is a live meeting tonight. I don't have a little early trip.

I call for a motion to dismiss. Secondary. All in favor? We're going to go by I' got a friend Google Earth.