City Council - Regular Meeting

Baby. Everything coming up. Hey, hey, hey.

Beauty. Yeah. 5:30. I'm going to open up the public hearing um in regards to the uh CDBG downtown revitalization program grant. Uh if anybody has any questions, I think Kay's with us tonight. You can shoot those to her and we'll leave it open for a few minutes and we'll go straight into our meeting.

Is there any comments? Kay, any comments you would like to make? No, I did go ahead and drive the final project and everything. It sure looks nice. Barbecue place looks really nice. They're out there working on it, but y'all had a pretty good size project and everything. And so I knew it was a major emphasis that we had looked at when we did your planning grant several years ago and one that we do with that. But I think it's been a wise use of the money. You got a lot done for for the amount of money and everything. And uh I u appreciate the fact of your match and and working through all the issues DRP or downtown revitalization is not easy because there's so many different parties interfering and not interfering with that interacting that's the word I needed with you all. But it's done a great job. So I'm really happy to hear unless there's any other questions that you might have specifically try to answer.

You guys have any questions? All right, I think we will uh close the public hearing if there's no other questions. You only misspoke hearing what the public hearing,

but we're all done now. Can I go ahead and roll right into the uh council meeting? Okay. Did you want to give our invocation? Sure. Everybody would please stand. Jackson's going to give our invocation. Dear Lord, thank you for this day and uh thank you for all your many blessings. Uh Lord, I just want to lift up this community to you and this board of directors as we uh make decisions and uh we ask that you forgive us when we failed you. We love you. Amen.

Amen. like to establish the name of a quorum and call our meeting to order. We're going to start with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Now the Texas flag. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God. One and indivisible. Everybody can be seated. Gil, I appreciate you being here with us tonight. May Crystal Wan, thank you guys for being here as well as UK, K and Brett. Thanks for joining us. Uh Blaine Shimon's with us tonight and he's brought Commissioner Kley uh that's running for Congress for District 19.

District 19. All right. And so if you want to stand or you can be seated, whatever you want to do. uh to do it. You can tell us a little bit about yourself. As I said, my name is Jason Kley. Uh county commissioner from in love county for precinct 2. That's kind of slain area south uh southeast corner. U I've been a county commissioner for 7 years now and uh learned an awful lot about local government. Thought I knew what I was getting into and you know found out otherwise along the way. But uh I run for Congress for District 19 and uh one of the things I can tell you I understand uh I understand small government. Now, I understand local and how important it is because this is where the run needs to live. You know, at the end of the day, when you're city councilman, when you're county commissioner, you know, you're the person that deals with the constituent every single day and you know, uh, you know, that that pothole that keeps coming back in the middle of the road, you know, I mean, we all understand how nature works, but somehow it's still our fault. Uh, you know, when I, uh, when I first got in office, I my little precinct was in rough shape, so I got more to answer the phone. And I said, "Jason, county commissioner, I don't know what your problem is, but it's probably my fault." And it was just easy, right? One old gentleman said, "Well, at least you admit it." And it kind of argued. But uh you know, learned a valuable lesson. Just cuz it's not my problem doesn't mean it won't be uh yeah, my fault. So um but you know what? It was a great experience. Learned how to get the state to fix the one pothole in front of the site that everybody called me about. But uh you know uh local government matters and uh I want to make sure that we've got somebody in Washington DC that understands that uh you know what we do at this level is what makes the biggest difference. You know, there's a lot of things that we see in Washington go on, a lot of things we see in Austin go on the average person in our community does that. Okay, you know, that's not that big deal. But we hear those things and we see budget numbers, you know, we hear those things and see that's where a program might get, you know, we see those things and hear, oh, wait a minute, if they change that, how are we going to fund this or how are we going to continue to fund this is often often the case. But, uh, you know, that's that's my background, you know, serving in government right

now. I'm the only person in the race that uh that has uh has any experience. Uh so I had to say tough folks and uh you know I know it's like to stand in there, you know, stand in the gap, take a vote and then uh you know it's called the grocery store index. Nobody you know you walk through the grocery store and nobody throws fruit at you on the produce aisle and you're doing all right so you're doing pretty good. But you know that's that's how we do things in small towns. You know what we do is make it on Fox News every day. you know, you're not going to see uh national news covering, you know, what what we do here at the local level. But uh you know, one of the things that I dealt with a lot with Jody Harrington's office was uh just different different constituents calling about different things that really wasn't what I did. So I wound up passing them on over to that office and I had pretty good rapport. U you deal with a lot of good people over there. But I kind of noticed there was a lot of young uh kids who graduated. They worked for the congressman for a year and then they were gone and then we start over. And uh one thing I wanted to change in that office was to get uh you know personnel that's got a u more of a uh grant writer background because we have all demographics for all cities, for all counties, for all school districts and the federal government puts out millions of dollars of grants every year that a lot of those never, you know, they never get used, they never get picked up. And a lot of times you may have run into this. The match, you know, the 20% match is more than what you can afford. or sometimes some of our small towns, small counties, it's more than what you can do with a bond, but if it's something you need, you know, it's still still outreach. But if we got somebody that's looking at it from that angle, saying, "Okay, you know, we apply for this and we couldn't get what do we need to do?" Then we're going back to whichever agency was writing the grant, say, "Hey, y'all need to we need to change this a little bit." I know you're trying to help a smaller town, but you know, that that match is more than what we can actually do. So, you know, that's something we can change in that office to start to work those grants to see more of that revenue coming back to back to West Texas. Texas, uh, you know, we're unique. We're we're one of those

few states that puts more money into the federal government than we ever get back. So, you know, the federal government's going to spend what it spends. We all know we need to tighten that budget up. But, you know, the more that money we can call back to West Texas and Texas in general, I think it's good for all of us. But, uh, yeah, I always give everybody my cell phone number. Uh so uh I'll uh let you get a couple flyers in here. I'll share that with you guys as well too. So uh I guess it's you guys live stream. Uh my cell phone number is 806 uh 5779778. And you know I always get the number out commissioner. I represent I represent 75,000 people right now and ask oh my god they're all going to call you like nah about 75 will call you but it'll be the same 75 every week. So you know what you got to get used to. Uh I'm sure you guys y'all deal with that as well, but uh there's there's a lot of things we can that we can do right now at the you know that at that level if we get in there, get somebody in there who's willing to make some changes. Thank you all for letting me come and speak today.

Absolutely. Thank you guys. You guys are welcome if you if you guys need to make your next connection. We appreciate you. Appreciate your time. Thank you for coming. All right, we'll move into our first agenda item, which is approval of the minutes from December the 8th of 2025.

Does anybody have any questions? Second. Motion to second. All those in favor say I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is to consider the interlocal contract with SPAG for grant administration services for TDHCA home grant contract number one3732.

Mayor, the city solicited proposals for grant administrators uh for the 2024 0056 home program uh contract 100 3732. uh soft plans committee act soft association of government submitted the loan proposal and after reviewing the proposal staff recommends the council enter into a interlocal agreement contract with South Plains Association of Governments to administer the home grant contract 3732. Uh our plan is to possibly build from four to five more reconstruct four or five more homes in the next year, year and a half.

When we first started that program, we were doing like two to three a year, weren't we? Very kind. Kind of depending on the funding. Uh during there's been years we done two, there's been years we done four and five. The last one we did was five. Correct. Five. Correct. Uh so far we reconstructed 21 homes in the last several years.

That's great. Yeah. I'll make a motion that uh we approve that contract. Second. A motion second. All those in favor say I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is uh to order the city general election to be held May the 2nd, 2026 for district 3 and district 4 of the city council. Mayor, the this item will order the city's general election to be held on May the 2nd, 2026. It be district 3 and 4 election. This three is currently Austin Ashley in district 4. Councilman Gary Parker. Uh what it does, it orders the actual election.

I'll make a motion that we order the election. Second. Motion second. All those in favor say I. I. All opposed? Motion carries. Next item is to receive the financial statement for the month ending December the 31st, 2025. Does anybody have any questions in regards to that?

I'll make a motion that we uh receive that financial statement. Second. We have a motion second. All those in favor say I. I. All opposed. Motion carries. Item five is administrative reports. Mayor, along with the election, May election, January the 14th is the first day to follow for a place on the city ministry ballot for the May 2nd, 22 uh 26th general election. So, it's the 14th uh CDL's annual Christmas lunchon on December the 10th at the training facility. Munchu City Munchu employees donated 20 $2,521 to the Bailey County Food Pantry. Uh that is a voluntary donation. That is uh payroll deduction and those employees that would like to uh donate. So this year we donated 2521. Uh again, thank you to the Bailey County Electric, Excel Energy, and Public Works Department for their help in taking down the the holiday uh lights. And that's all I have. Council, have any remarks?

Just a big boy to the employees. Thank everybody who participated in that. That's awesome. It is awesome. Yeah. All right. And if you'll let us know next year by hand.

Sure. Okay. Still here. January the 14th is back. I'll take it. I made a note. Gary will next year.