City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Time is 6 o'clock. We'll call the City of New Braunfels, Texas City Council meeting to order. Ms. Wilkerson, will you please call roll?

Council Member Carter. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi.

Here.

Council Member Edwards. Here. Council Member Spradley.

Here.

Council Member Lebowski. Here. Council Member Shaw. Here. And Mayor French.

Here. Here.

We'll request that all phones and other devices are turned off except for emergency on-call personnel. Our invocation will be led by Council Member Edwards, followed by the pledges.

Heavenly Father, we come before you with humble hearts and recognize that all wisdom and understanding come through you. Thank you for the privilege of serving this community and the responsibility entrusted to Council. Lord, grant us insight, understanding, diligence, and the courage to make sound decisions. Help us to listen, not simply to respond, but to truly understand one another and the citizens we serve. Guide every decision and every vote. Your word reminds us, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding at all. Your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your path. Like a wise rancher who watches over the whole pasture instead of only the next fence, help us look beyond today's agenda and make decisions that strengthen our community for generations to come. Remind us that every decision affects families, businesses, and neighbors. We pray for all our citizens asking you blessing, protection, and peace over every season of your life. We especially lift up our first responders and police officers, firefighters, EMS personnel, and dispatchers. Protect them, give them wisdom in every moment, and return them safely home. May we always lead with humility, integrity, and a servant's heart, seeking what is right rather than what is easy. May everything accomplished here today bring honor to you and the blessing of the people. And all these things we ask you, Lord. Amen.

Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi, before we get started with citizens communication, I just wanted to let the mayor and council know that item 3A, which is the presentation on the police department headquarters, being pulled from the agenda tonight will not be presented.

Okay? Thank you. We'll now open this to citizens communication, our public comment period where our citizens are heard. In the interest of time and structure, this period is specifically for individuals to address the city council on issues and items of concern that are not listed on this agenda. There will be no city council action taken at this time. Citizens will be provided with the right to speak on posted agenda items which we will recognize later when those specific items are called. Please use hard copies on the overhead projector for the council to view.

That's not the right presentation. Also, please state your name and whether you're a resident or... Well, this is interesting. I sent the wrong presentation. That's why the video didn't work. Well, I'm going to wing this. We had somebody that was very special that passed away about... And you have the video, right? Okay, good. Passed away... about a month ago, his name was Wayne Rudolph. He spent many, many, many, many, many, many hours here. And somebody needs to be remembered. I had a great presentation I've been working on and then sent the wrong one today, but we do have a video of him. I'm gonna do a little thumbnail. He moved here in 2001, retired here. He retired, came here, and then spent 25 years serving the city. He was a CPA, a teacher, very accomplished, very civic-minded. He did a whole lot of things. Probably the keynote thing that he did was the Citizens' Property Cap that dated, I think, 2005. I got to know him in Castell, as the Castell Project came up. And there was a big meeting that took place here July 17th, 2017. About 400 people showed up, and it was really a rallying moment for the citizens. It was a group of us that got together. Carolyn Davis put together a group very quietly. I don't think anybody knew about it. It was Wayne Rudolph, Ken Valentine, Joe Swisters, several others, two PhDs, two CPAs, two chemical engineers,

All civil-minded and all analytical.

Now, I didn't know squat about city council, but I learned about it from Wayne and from the others. And I learned digging the detail. He would spend thousands of hours on research, and you could find something there that was a smoking gun. In this case, there was one little line about it. money that said he had to spend, that he would keep bringing up and bringing up, but never answered.

Now I've got a video of him. Can we pull the video up?

Better to hear him speak than just me. Well, can you lip read? I don't think that's gonna work either. So we'll just let that run in the background while I continue to talk. So he was somebody who really impressed me and introduced me to some other people. I remember a stomp tish that I got together with a group there of these four guys. And in that group, I got to meet Ray Martinez, I know him well, Bob Kruger, Clay McElroy. So he really opened up some great doors for me. He was a wonderful learner and an incredible, incredible activist. I calculated he probably spent between 20 and 25,000 hours in those years here at city council researching stuff, doing stuff. He needs... He needs to be remembered, not forgotten. Castell needs to be remembered, not forgotten. You know, Ken Valentine passed away in 2019. Joss, 2019. Wayne, just this last year. Carol has kind of moved on to different things, just kind of lost interest in it. But we need to remember that, because it was a really interesting project that showed the The acronym, South Castell Avenue Master Plan, was incredibly descriptive, and I spent many a time talking out here about it. So how do we remember? How do we remember? I'm going to do a song, and that's sort of remembered. But then we have a room out there called the Tejas Room. I don't know anybody here named Tejas that was in that room. But I'm thinking if we change the name of that room to the Wayne Rudolph room, would be a way to remember Wayne with the plaque of the accomplishments he made. And there's really no other way he's gonna be remembered. And Ken, when Ken died, He did a tremendous amount of stuff, and some of it was so caustic, the reaction he got, that his widow just didn't want anything remembered of him, so nothing was done. But I think very fitting with Ken would be a plaque down at Land O' Park for all the accomplishments he did. There are two civic-minded people that in their retirement, nobody making a dime off of it, just investing time, made our city better. We needed a member of Wayne. Now, I was going to hand the clicker off to my next person here. Jim Holster is going to come up and give you his.

Well, our video and stuff didn't work, but maybe we'll come back and play it at another council meeting. Wayne Rudolph, I don't know if you maybe recognized him in recent years. He looks a little older because he was 95 when he passed away. Now, Wayne was public, by definition of civic-minded. He was public-spirited, focused on helping others and improving the town and city conditions. Now, He was community-oriented. He valued social responsibility and active participation. He was selfless. He looked out for the collective needs of the community rather than just the individual profit and acting in ways to improve the community. Now, a couple examples of civic-minded actions. Participating in government. He wasn't on any board. Participating in government. such as attending town, city hall meetings, and community meetings. Community meetings, he worked in various districts here. People would invite him, because he was an expert on financial matters. I know the city knows that, too. He looked, and NBU. He would come to even a small community group of 10, like up in my district, 10 or 12 people, and they'd all walk away and say, gosh, We didn't know he knew all of that and that he was so bright and analytic. Now, he also, in addition to attending the city meetings here, and like I said, community meetings, many, he contributed to public education. He was Dr. Wayne Rudolph. Nobody probably knew that, and I didn't even know it until I read his obituary. But I knew he had taught and been a superintendent. I knew that. And he had visited me at my house. I visited at him on some issues. Now, and the final memory I have of Wayne was there was a city council meeting here and a young man who was about 20, 21. He was from District 1. And I think it had to do with the city was going to authorize a overnight rental next to his grandparents' house, and he was living there temporarily. He gave a pretty good presentation that night for a young guy. And after it was all over, and we were outside, and I didn't know Wayne well at that time, Wayne walked up to him and congratulated him and told him it was good to see young people contributing to the community. And that was the kind of guy he was. So, I just think to kind of follow up on what David said, if we could recognize him some way at the Tejas room, you don't have to decide tonight. But over time, think about it. And we'll come back and play the video. That'll kind of help you. Thank you. George?

Well, city council, this is pretty unique. I can't remember we've ever done this before, and that's brought an honor to someone that has done so much for this town, this city. I graduated in 1975. A lot of you were not here then, but we had people that really, really took the word of respect to the high most level. And that's the one thing I remember about Wayne Rudolph is that he was one of the most respectful persons that I have met in a long, long time. And we didn't know this at the time, and I didn't know it at the time, but Wayne Rudolph, he was a PhD. He was actually Dr. Wayne Allen Rudolph. And all the while that I've worked with Wayne and we've talked or I've talked with Wayne, I never once knew he was a PhD. And I called on PhDs practically all my life, DVMs, PhDs, all levels of doctorates, but never knew Wayne to be a doctorate to the very, very end. And he did so much for the city of New Braunfels when it comes to challenging the issues of the utilities here in New Braunfels. I don't know about all of you, but most of you have had an issue with the MBU utilities. And so Wayne took on that challenge, and he did a great, great job. So respect is one word that I remember. Wayne, and the other thing that I'll mention, I often ask Wayne, I say, Wayne, why are you wearing a tie when you go up to speak to city council? And he said, well George, he said one thing about a tie and wearing a tie when you go up and you meet an organization or a person with a high level of self-esteem, a high level of respect, is that you in return show that person or that organization respect by wearing that tie. I don't think Wayne's ever addressed city council without having a tie. And so a lot of you get up nowadays and you're pretty casual, but Wayne never, ever lost that degree of respect for you and who you represent. And when I was asked to mention about Wayne in the Tejas room, you know, Tejas, I was born and raised in Texas, so we know a little Espanol, maybe not a lot, but a little. So Tejas, to me, to us, is Texas. And I full well agreed that If at all possible, we can look at naming that Tejas room after Wayne Rudolph. He gave his heart and soul to New Braunfels. I wear my red tie because Wayne is a native Nebraskan. I don't even say Midwest because it's Minnesota also. But if you're from Nebraska or anywhere, ever been to Nebraska, you know about the big red football team. And Wayne Rudolph loved the big red football teams. I do wear my tie here today in respect for Wayne and that he loved those Nebraska Cornhuskers so much. And it's really sad to see a man like that go. I've known a lot of you, a lot of friends that have done a lot for New Braunfels. Without you, I don't know where we would have been or where we would go, but thank all of you for looking after this town. We didn't have a lot of people here back in 1975, but thank you for coming. We appreciate it. All right.

Former Councilman Green, could you state your name for the record so we have it since we're being recorded in your residence? Absolutely.

George Green here at 238 Loma Vista Street, New Braunfels. Thank you.

I don't know if this will come through. My name is Lori Rowe and I'm a resident of New Braunfels. Good evening, mayor, city council. Thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight. I'd like to comment on four proposed developments. Three are located downtown and one is identified as green. The information I will share comes from researching public sources. On April 27th, in the strategic plan update, the city manager described these developments as catalyst projects. The Economic Development Corporation or EDC often uses vague names for future projects when incentives, public private partnership or real estate donations are involved. I believe these four projects are likely to receive significant taxpayer subsidies and in short, the EDC and by extension taxpayers are deeply involved in real estate development business. First, the development is South Castile Visioning Plan and the co-op marketplace. Following recommendations by the city's consulting firm, this is planned as a high-density, mixed-use development near the farmer's market. It will include restaurants, hotel, retail space, multi-family housing and parking structures, large public gathering spaces, and potentially a new convention center. Infrastructure work to support the future development has already been approved and underway. Yet, as with each project I will talk about, the EDC role and the full cost to taxpayers has not been clearly disclosed. Second, the Mainzer, a planned boutique hotel with restaurant and bar that will occupy the downtown Main Plaza MBU office. On January 13th of 2025, council approved the city's purchase of the property from MBU for just over $4.5 million. Community Impact reported that the EDC's development arm intends to transfer the property to the private developer once MBU vacates the building. During the request to approve the purchase, the deputy city manager stated, this is an incredible opportunity for the EDC to oversee the redevelopment of this project as a major economic development driver in our community. Next is Dittlinger Mill, an approximately 11-acre redevelopment project that includes the former ADM Mill property and city-owned land near this tube chute. The land was rezoned earlier this year from industrial to high-intensity mixed use with special use permits. And what has been shared is that this will include a boutique hotel, retail space, office space, and five-story parking garage. What hasn't been disclosed is that the project could include a pedestrian bridge and multi-story residential towers. Given the scale of the project and the EDC's use of taxpayer money for similar developments in the past, residents can reasonably expect additional subsidies to be on the table in addition to the donation of the land. And finally, Green 16. This is 16 acres near Green and Common Street, the land that the city purchased over a decade ago to incentivize Home Depot's supply expansion project that never materialized. Similar to the mill project, the land was recently rezoned for mixed use development and no renderings of the project scope have yet been shared. According to the law firm representing the developer and architectural concepts, we do know that several possibilities are being explored. Potential features could include boutique hotels, small convention center, combined retail and multifamily housing, office space, large outdoor entertainment venue, and even a film studio. Recently, the EDC approved additional funding to extend the feasibility period for the city-owned parcels, land that will likely be donated to the developer. These are just a few of the planned projects but illustrate the scale of development happening beyond what's being publicly shared. These are indeed catalyst projects. They will increase traffic and congestion and each one depends on additional taxpayer dollars. Development carries risk and if city leaders move forward with these or similar projects before commitments are made, residents deserve transparency and disclosure regarding the full scope of how public property will be used, whether taxpayer subsidies are on the table, including incentives, partnerships, tax or fee waivers, and public-owned real estate transfer. The master plan total cost and not a phased approach to it. Thank you for your time.

Good evening. I definitely feel underdressed after hearing about Wayne's story and needing to wear a tie, so I got to upgrade my wardrobe. But yeah, good evening. I represent the Texas Privacy Coalition.

Sir, could you please state your name?

I would like to abstain from that. under Texas Government Code 551. Yeah, I appreciate it. I respectfully abstain from that. Yeah, I represent the Texas Privacy Coalition, and I'm here to speak about automatic license plate readers and flock safety. Before I begin, let me be clear. I'm not anti-police. I am anti-surveillance state. I believe liberty is not something government gets to erode merely because the technology makes it convenient. I want to make three points regarding the ALPRs. One, there is no evidence. They broadly make us safer. Two, the companies and systems handling the data have serious trust problems. Three, most importantly, this technology raises a serious Fourth Amendment violation, or rather, concern. One, these cameras do not make us safer. My independent study of a five-year study examined official Texas DPS data from 340 police departments and seven major offenses. Cities with confirmed ALPR programs saw reported crime fall 18.6%, while cities where we found no public ALPR saw it fall by 27.5%. Clearance rates improved 2.4 points in the ALPR cities versus 7.4 points in the comparison cities without ALPRs. Our study concluded there's no stable broad public safety advantage associated with the ALPRs. And the accuracy of these systems is not trivial. A recent LAPD audit found that 161 out of 498 stolen vehicle hot list alerts, 32.3%, turned out not to be stolen vehicles. If an officer falsely identified someone as a suspect nearly one third of the time, would we consider that acceptable? Just last week Thursday, a woman in Wisconsin was held at gunpoint due to a false positive. Two, Flock and ALPRs has also eroded our trust in their system and local police departments. Wired reported that the camera imagery was being sent to workers in the Philippines for AI training. In Dunnywood, Georgia, Flock employees were accessing cameras inside a children's gymnasium. and that was multiple times. Almost daily, we hear of a police officer being displaced or charged for abusing ALPR systems for personal purposes. And back in March in this exact same room, Chief Flores promised transparency, yet we still have no public partner list, search audits, alert outcomes, or meaningful disclosures of who can search our data. I had to back engineer through other cities just to discover we're sharing our data with Louisville, Texas, and UT Austin, UT Dallas. My question to that is how is this transparent when I have to back engineer it? Most importantly, this raises a serious Fourth Amendment question. U.S. versus Katz in the 60s told us the Constitution protects people, not places. U.S. versus Jones recognized vehicle tracking as a Fourth Amendment search. U.S. versus Carpenter warned that location data can reveal the whole of a person's physical movements. And this year, Chartier versus U.S. reinforced that historical location data can carry a reasonable expectation of privacy. One officer seeing my car with his own eyes as I cruise down Landust Street is one thing. Creating a searchable database that lets the officer go backwards and reconstruct where I traveled, when I traveled, and who I may have associated with is something fundamentally unconstitutional. We should not have to wait till the Supreme Court literally spells out ALPR before taking the principle seriously. I hope my words tonight give you cause to reconsider whether these tools have any rightful place in a free society. I urge you to remove them from our public domain and preserve the liberties we were entrusted to defend. Thank you.

I apologize, this is my first civic duty, so my notes are on my phone. But Eli Isbill and a resident of New Braunfels, y'all just heard this, but what would you think if we proposed a citywide camera system that used artificial intelligence to scan your vehicle's license plate, track where you are, and when at all times, and when at all times, and create a file on your activities of where you're going every day. Like he just said, that is the automatic license plate readers. Automatic ALPR cameras have been in New Braunfels since May of 2025, but recently in the past months, over tens of cameras have been strategically installed around the city in heavy traffic roads, off of highways, and in other spaces that maximize surveillance. Also, there are a few located in Prince Carl's Psalms Park and Landa Park. These cameras are operated under Flock Safety, a private company which you may have heard in recent news, such as a viral clip of Pensacola man Jacob Rockwell complaining about a ticket for a speeding that Flock gave him when he was currently in Alabama. Now, in other news, just three days ago in Savannah, Georgia, six officers were fired over misuse of the Flock Safety system, using them for, quote, purposes unrelated to legitimate law enforcement activity. Now these cases are serious, and they raise a lot of questions about the safety and privacy of this data. And because of that, over the past month, I've been researching about how our city has been transparent about utilizing FLOC safety cameras. Now, to start from the beginning, in May of 2025, New Braunfels PD began a contract with FLOC and began utilizing these cameras. Now one thing to note is that no public city approval was given and this contract came without public consent. These cameras were quietly rolled out. That's what I'm essentially trying to say. And it wasn't until the Herald-Zeitung covered the story in October 2025, five months after flock cameras were already installed, where we got some sort of transparency. And in that, the article frames the technology positively as enhancing public safety but did not address privacy concerns, constitutional questions, or community consent. Now this June, over a year later, New Braunfels Police Department, they posted an ALPR transparency summary. It's good to note that it's a summary listing how cameras are utilized in the city, our procedures, and then these audits that we do monthly to make sure that these systems are being used. Now, one thing to note is that on the city council page, ALPR, we have a page for that. They say that we conduct these audits quarterly. So that is two bits of information that are already conflicting. So just a thing to look at. Now, a few things are left out of this summary, which include but not aren't the current contract we have with Flock and its costs, the current and past users that are authorized to view these Flock cameras, sharing setting changes to Flock's database in our system, if there have been any exceptions, misuse complaints, or corrective actions taken against these people and who they are. And then lastly, we haven't gotten any sample of these audits that we're claiming to go into and take. And why I stand here today is to show that concerning these cameras, transparency has been something brought after the fact. These cameras were rolled out quietly And it leaves a bunch of unanswered safety questions that citizens should be able to know, but also should be able to access comfortably and right in our face. Not something that we have to go through. Just a lot of loopholes. And I think the city wants that. And just a few days ago, actually, Guadalupe County cut their contract with Flock. They cited this due to the costs were too much to maintain. And here in New Braunfels, we don't even know how much we're using money-wise for flock cameras. So I end by stating that I think many citizens of this city, me included, are apprehensive to these cameras. The lack of proper transparency and the time it took to even get that shows that these cameras are the first priority, not the citizens being recorded by them. And then I ask you consider this contract with flock. if it's worth compromising the city's ethics any more than it already has, and what can you do as a new administration to make sure and tackle the problem of mass surveillance in New Braunfels and how we can prevent it? Thank you. I yield the rest of my time.

I'll take that time. No, I'll go ahead and try that one. Angela Keller, ETJ Zone. And an advocate for citizens of New Braunfels, all citizens. Good evening, city council and mayor. You know, I had this saying that I used to say. I stopped explaining myself to people who are at different levels of perception. Lately, I've pondered on this about a week or so. I've been real quiet. And the opposite I'm seeing and finding is true. I must explain so that more of us can see clearly together. At every council meeting, I sit and I listen. I listen to the staff reports, to the citizens who step up at the podium, to the arguments for and the arguments against. So let's speak about transparency, as I usually do when I come up here. So what does transparency actually look like? And how do we know if we truly have it? So here's a definition of transparency. Transparency means openness, clarity, and honesty. making information, decisions, and processes visible and accessible so that others can see, understand, and hold those in power accountable. In government and public life, transparency specifically means decisions and actions are made in the open rather than behind closed doors. Information is shared fully and truthfully, not selectively or with hidden details. Citizens can examine the whole picture, including both the good and the imperfect parts. Questions are welcomed rather than discouraged. Let me offer this analogy. Imagine two of us on each side, left and right, go to a farm. We go see a farmer to learn how to grow onions. The farmer stands before us and declares, every layer of this onion is white. The first person nods, takes careful notes, and walks away satisfied. After all, the farmer is the expert. But then the second person says, whoa, I'm not so sure about this. Let's look. So we peel the first layer. It's white. The second layer is white. The third and so on is white. Then we reach the fourth layer. It's dark, almost brown on the inside, damaged. We look up and we ask, sir, but you said every layer was white. And the farmer pauses and answers, you're right, I forgot to mention. Sometimes insects get inside the onion and damage the onion from within. That question did not come from distrust, nor should that question be considered bullying. It came from a desire to understand the whole onion. so that when it is our turn to grow one, we would know exactly what we're dealing with. Ladies and gentlemen, this is transparency. Some of us will hear an official statement and accept it at face value. Others of us will keep peeling away. Neither way of seeing this is wrong. They're simply different levels of perception or understanding. But true transparency does not punish the person who asks the next question. It welcomes the question because only then can we see the full picture, the white layers and the damaged ones be known. While we talk about transparency in this chamber, let's remember the onion. Let's refuse to settle for the outer layer alone. Let's keep peeling. Let's keep asking. Let's keep listening until every citizen can see clearly what is inside. Because a community that hides its brown layers cannot grow strong. And a community that dares to look together can. Thank you.

Thanks. Appreciate that. Lee Brown, resident. I came here tonight hoping we'd finally get some clarity about what's happening with the police department building, and instead the presentation was pulled, and I think we all have more questions than ever. We keep hearing about an independent investigation, but what does that actually mean? What exactly did council authorize? What's the role of outside council? What's happening with the work already underway? What's continuing and what's stopping? Because the city has not announced that the investigation is being stopped, but Chase Taylor, whose wife has also now been appointed to the Ethics Committee, has already published that it will be. That's what's on the screen there. I'll read it here from a substack. I have been told that the city manager's office has since been instructed to suspend the separate investigation that it had initiated. This is great news for those seeking true accountability and transparency in regards to this issue. How does he know that? If that was discussed in an executive session and wasn't public information, how did it end up in his newsletter? And that brings me to the next question. Who exactly was in that executive session? Was the city manager there? City attorney? Any city staff? Or was it just the city council members? The mayor outside council? If information came out of that closed meeting before it was made public, we deserve to know who had access to it, how it got out, and whether sharing it outside of executive session was a breach of confidentiality. Because right now, this looks a lot like that brown onion layer that the last speaker just mentioned, only it's right on the outside of the onion and not hidden. We heard a lot about transparency, and transparency means telling the public what's happening, not keeping us in the dark while select people somehow know what's coming next. I don't care about the political posturing or who gets credit. I just want to know what went wrong, who's responsible, what is going to cost a fix, and who's going to pay. I think that's true of most of us here. Right now, we don't even have a clear explanation of the process. And tonight, instead of getting one, the discussion was pulled. Thank you.

Seeing no one else, we'll move on to consent agenda. All items listed below are considered to be routine and non-controversial by the city council and will be approved by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a council member or citizen so requests, in which case the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered as part of the normal order of business. Citizens must be present to pull an item. Items to be considered are A, through F and item G, which is the approval of the second and final reading of an ordinance requested by Pamela Johnson granting the historic rehabilitation tax incentive for a period of 10 years for the property at 941 Lee Street, a locally designated historic landmark. Ms. Wilkinson, have any items been requested to be pulled from this agenda?

Yes, sir. Items A through F. A through F.

Council, is there any additional items that are wished to be pulled?

No, Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi, I object to pulling these items from the consent agenda based off the, in accordance with the city ordinance 2-37, Charlie.

Okay, in this case, is that for each of the items or? All these items. All of them, okay. In this case, we'll need to vote. It probably makes more sense if you guys each, if you vote on each item individually as far as whether to take it off consent. You need a two-thirds majority. to go ahead and override that and take it off consent at this point.

So are you saying start with since?

Yeah, or you guys can handle them all at once, but if there are some items that some people feel like they do want to take off consent and others that they don't, it might make more sense to do them individually to just vote on whether to take them off consent, so. So, okay, at this point, so for item A, the minutes, how many of you want the item removed from consent? If you could just show your hands. Okay.

I'm sorry, I'm not understanding. Can you explain that a little bit?

So right now, under 237C, that's what the city has been using for a while now to remove items from consent. And so part of that is, if none of you guys object to the removal, It's called unanimous consent, and so it proceeds that way. If someone objects, then we need to have a two-thirds vote in favor of removing the item and putting it on individual instead of consent, if that makes sense.

So do it individually or could it be done with a motion and a second on all of them?

You guys can do all of them. I just didn't know if people felt differently on each item. About different ones?

We can go individually down the line if everybody's all right with that. On a up or down on pulling each individual item. Okay. I have no issue with that.

Okay.

Okay, so item A. Could I show of hands, is that acceptable? Or does it have to be a motion and a second on every single one?

And it needs, no, no, just we don't actually need motions on this one.

Okay, so for item A, approval of the city council, July 27th, 2026, regular and executive session meeting minutes. If you do not wish to see this pulled off the agenda, or you, I should say, if you wish to see this pulled off the agenda, show your hands. if you wish to see a pull from the agenda.

Well, somebody from the council did, right? Can you read out aloud the 237? Sure. Because if somebody's objecting, I'm gonna honor their objection. But I wanna know what the charter says on that. I don't have my book with me.

Okay, no problem. It says suspension of rules. The rules of order may be suspended by unanimous consent or by a two-thirds vote if one member objects. to allow agenda items to be taken up out of order, provided the individuals who are scheduled to speak to that specific item are present and prepared to address the council. And so that's what the city has been using to have items pulled from consent.

I would like to ask Ms. Wilkerson, who pulled the items, if we could know that as well?

Yes, sir, the mayor.

All of the items?

Yes, sir, Mayor French.

The mayor requested this item pulled. My question is, does the mayor have a correction to the minutes is what his request for the pull is.

Correction. If you can hear me. Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah. So the only thing I see in the minutes is that we have the mayor pro temp name is completely wrong. And I kind of wanted that corrected. And the same thing with the July 13 minutes for the roll call. That was it on that one. That's all I got.

And so on that item, we can go ahead and just... make that correction on the 27th. Yeah, and we can do it on the 27th, or we can go ahead and vote on that right now if you all were fine with that otherwise.

Can I motion to make a correction?

Yeah.

Okay, I motion to make a correction.

And actually, you know what, sorry. And Mayor, are you fine with this going this way instead of it being pulled?

Oh yeah, that's fine.

Okay.

I'll second the motion for correction.

So we have a motion by Council Member Lebowski and a second by Council Member Carter.

You know what, I'm sorry, you guys. So actually, we'll go ahead and so if that is pulled from consent, we can take that with the rest of the items. So sorry, I take back what I just said. So this one, once we go through the consent agenda item, this one can be subject to that. So when we read that out, we can go ahead and do that.

So item A will remain on consent?

Yeah, and then when we do that, we can do it subject to the corrections. Sorry, because at this point, we would just be taking it out of order anyway. Okay.

So we are going individually down the line for each of these?

Yeah, you know what, I think at this point we might as well, yeah, do it either way, yeah. Yeah, so yeah, let's just take all of them at once, as far as removing them from consent. Now, otherwise, you guys still have the right to speak on each item on consent before it's voted on, as does the public, so.

Well, the only one that wasn't pulled was G. Yeah. Correct, the only one that was not pulled was G. So can we just go ahead and just approve G and then figure out the other A through, huh?

G and A were the ones, oh, remain no consent.

Can we just approve those and then go forward with the other ones? We can. Yeah.

That's the easiest way around this log. Do I have a motion?

And council members, broadly, do you wanna withdraw your objection in that case? Because it seems like we're gonna go through.

for item A, yes. I would draw my objection from item A, but I still keep it in place for B through F.

Okay, but we'll still have to figure out if items B through F get included on the consent agenda item, we'll still have to go through that process when we approve the consent.

So right now I have a motion from Council Member Edwards to approve items A and G on consent agenda.

I second.

Council Member Lebowski seconds. All in favor?

It needs a roll call.

Roll call, I'm sorry.

Yes, sir. Council Member Carter. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi.

Aye.

Council Member Edwards. Aye. Council Member Spradley.

Aye.

Council Member Lebowski. Aye. Council Member Shaw. Aye. And Mayor French.

So moving on to items B through F, we will now take up A MOTION TO PULL OR NOT TO PULL?

YEAH, YEAH. SO IN THIS CASE, MAYOR, YOU STILL... I'M NOT SURE HOW WE PROCEED WITH THIS. OKAY. MAYOR, ARE YOU STILL WANTING TO PULL ITEMS B THROUGH F TO PULL THEM FROM CONSENT?

THIS IS WEIRD BECAUSE WHEN IT COMES TO MONETARY VALUES OF ANYTHING, I LOOK DEEP INTO IT. I SEE A FEW THINGS IN THERE THAT I WANT TO ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT. OKAY. It's just how do you explain that without going through every item?

Okay.

And Council Member Spradley, are you still objecting to B through F?

Okay, so for these items, let's go ahead and let's just vote B through F. How many people are in favor of? Keeping it on consent? Or removing it from consent? Because it would need a two-thirds majority.

Okay, so the question is, how many people are in favor of removing it from consent? Yeah.

Awesome, cool.

B is in Bravo through F, Foxtrot.

Okay, so that's three, so it needs five to prevail, so we'll go ahead and, was there four? Okay, or five, yeah. Okay, so those items will remain on what's left of the consent agenda item. Now, council members still have the right to speak about them, as do the public, before action's taken, so. What does that mean? So items B through F, because there wasn't a two-thirds majority in favor of removing them from consent, they're still on the consent agenda item. Now you guys at this point can discuss the items. You can discuss which items you had concerns with. The whole council can do that. And then if any members of the public want to speak on it, they should just line up. And this would be for any of the items, be through...

This will be done as a group, right? So it'll be a... a group discussion for all the items here at council and then it'll be a group public comment as in the items grouped together and then we will vote up or down on the consent agenda that's correct correct yeah okay so at this point we'll open it up to council discussion for all the items on the consent agenda i would i would like to just keep it in order

That way there's not people talking about item. I have no problem with that. So we can start with item B. Right. Let's start on item B. Yeah. I don't have anything. Maybe the mayor has something to say on item B.

Yes, I do. I don't like seeing big, big dollar values and consent agenda mixed in with a lot of other big dollar items and consent agendas. So we vote on them in one fell swoop. I do have a question though. So there's, I had about seven on these, but I'll bring it down to just a few. So to purchase these, I believe you guys, we're going to put it on the 2027 budget, and we're going to figure that out within this month. And the intent is to purchase, and the contract says signing is binding. That's two different things. I just want to see if we intend to purchase or not. The truck arrives two and a half to three and a half years from now. And I believe there's no way to speed that process up. But the one thing I did notice was the price only locked until October 30. We just want to figure out what does that mean? Does it mean if we get a price right now, the price is locked in all the way to October 30 and then it rises? So do we need to put in some kind of bid for it until October 30? And after that date, the truck may go up in cost. and we have no right to cancel because it went up in cost, there's a few other things. You've got tariffs and stuff. I just wanted it explained rather than just reading it because I do a lot of looking into it. I'm not happy with if we get locked into a price and then a few months later the price goes up because of tariffs. Does the price of the truck that we meant to get it for go up? Like, we don't pay for it in three and a half years, but it may be twice the amount or maybe 20% higher than what we thought we were going to get it for. Does that make sense?

So, Mayor Fritz, can you hear me? Yes. Honorable Mayor and City Council, so I'm Chief Lozano. What we're voting on is giving the city manager authority to sign the proposal that allows us to purchase the apparatus. One is an engine, one is an aerial. Now the lead time is, right now, across the industry is three years for an engine. The latter will take four years. What this contract has, the no cancellation, is actually a no cancellation fee clause. In many municipalities, if you cancel, they make you pay a fee for canceling your order. We negotiated and worked with purchasing to have that language removed. So we do not have a cancellation fee. Second is the date is if we sign by that date, we lock in the price and it will not go up unless there is just outlanding cost escalation in the raw material. And this language is included in all construction that is delayed. And it's in accordance to the GDP. Excuse me, CPI. If the CPI goes up and the raw material goes up, obviously the builder or manufacturer cannot keep the price the same because their cost has escalated. And that's language that's included in pretty much all manufacturing that's going to have extended lead times. But that date that you were talking about, Mayor, that locks us in to that price until delivery unless there is a CPI increase of greater than 3%.

Okay, I would like to make a point of order. This is essentially still debating, so it's not, it shouldn't be a debate back and forth, it's consent, correct?

No, they can still speak. They can still debate it? Yeah, because we're just not used to that for consent agenda items, but on this point, yeah, they can still do that.

They're even going back and forth and asking questions? Okay. Yeah.

But I, you know, I just want to comment on that. I do think that we should all recognize that there is power up on this dais to hush any one of us, right? And we represent the six of us, one sixth of the city. I would hate to see any other council member hushed because the others are voting to hush them. And I feel the same way about the mayor. He was voted on by 67% of the voters, whether you like it or not, he was. And I believe that he has a right to represent the citizens of this city with his questions. I personally thought the questions and the answers were good. I learned something I didn't know. So I don't see them as invalid. And I think it's just important when we cast judgment or vote that we each remember that it could happen to each of us, thereby disenfranchising our one-sixth of this city. And I'm very concerned about that.

That's actually in the ordinance. If someone objects and it saves time. So at the beginning, if he read the consent agenda, it's read every single time, correct? Should be non-controversial items, right? Fire department's non-conversible. I mean, most of all this is that way. That's why that's in the ordinance. Right?

Well, I understand that you deem it not controversial. I might deem it not controversial, but it's educational and I don't think it's harmful. And consent, if we had the agenda in our control that we decide what goes on consent or not consent, then I think it becomes much more plausible that we say, well, we all agreed to that. But in this case, we have city staff that decides for us what is not controversial. So for me, I don't wanna marginalize any of the 1 6th up here. And I wanna also be fair to the mayor. that if he has questions, he can ask them. That's all.

He can, but that's why we have that in the ordinance.

And he should be able to ask those publicly.

Two-thirds vote, and we would get to debate everything, but we didn't have that tonight.

Well, I just ask that you remember that for your district in case you sit in that seat one day. That's all.

Are there any other questions for me? No, sir.

Mayor Potea. I just want to make one thing clear here. None of these consent agenda items tie to each other, but they have a lot to do with a lot of money. And there's one where there's five things tied to one thing, like some kind of pork barrel thing. And another thing was the Humane Society, which is totally different. And from one thing, that Humane Society, we visited that thing. And I am not satisfied with the contract that's laid out right now for it. So all these items are completely different. And they are very controversial to me. And so if you guys think that it's not, then I'm going to vote down on all of this. If you guys just want to, go ahead and vote to the regular agenda. I got nothing more to say.

Item C, approval of contract expenditures for annual routine recurring expenditures for FY 2026 in accordance with city charter section 9.17.

Mayor, city council, I'm Barbara Coleman, your purchasing manager. These items are routine in nature. They are items that we take annually to the city council as a bulk expenditures. They are operational expenditures. Typically, we see these through cooperative agreements. They are not individual city council items. I mean, contract items. We bring these to you in bulk when they're routine in nature like this. Point of order.

I cannot hear the speaker in the back row. Please fix that.

Can you hear me now? That's better, thank you. Okay. This process bringing them to you as routine expenditures.

One minute, please ma'am. Are members of the audience allowed to call point of order?

No, it needs to be a governing body. Thank you.

Can you pull the mic a little bit?

Can you pull that mic a little closer to you, please ma'am?

Is that better? Okay. Do you want me to start over?

Actually, did any of you guys have any questions on item C?

I'm assuming the mayor did.

Okay.

Mayor, did you have questions on this particular item, item C?

I would like to explain a lot of it because there's $400,000. 86% goes to one vendor. We're looking at the city manager is allowed to spend without us approving now over $100,000. But I'm looking at here a lot of things that are way over $100,000. And I just wanted some people to, and I'm not seeing the numbers add up when it comes to the fuel prices and the fuel prices going down since 20, it fell 31% since 2022, but we're still paying more for fuel And I just wanted all of this explained. I don't know if there was a pretty slide show, but I wanted to ask someone because I have at least nine questions. And again, if you guys want to vote up and down on this, I don't even know how to proceed with any of what we're doing. This makes no sense. So what we did was we actually pulled all of these and now we're talking about it. So again, We actually did pull all these items because we are talking about them right now, but we're just not seeing a presentation for them. I see a very, I see a big discrepancy in the numbers that I'm seeing here. You know, we're asking for an extra $652,000 for the budget, but the actual, the budget is less than that. And it's weird. I just don't see the numbers adding up for me, and I just wanted it explained.

Ms. Coleman, go ahead.

The city brings a list of routine expenditures that are bulk expenditures that are support operations. We bring those to city council at the beginning of each year. I'm bringing to you right now three of those items back to you for additional expenditure. When we bring it to you at the first of the year, it's an estimated expenditure. We don't always know exactly what they're gonna need to finish their operations. I'm bringing three of those to you today. One is angel armor. It is for police uniforms and body armor. We're asking for an additional $25,000 to support them through the end of this fiscal year. We're also bringing AvFuel. That's the one the mayor referenced as $400,000. We spend over $2.6 million in aviation fuel that's at the airport. It is offset with aviation sales for that fuel. Fuel has been very volatile this year. So his sales are ahead 16% so he will cover this but because we bring every expenditure to you, we can't continue to buy fuel until we get more authorization to purchase more fuel. And then the other item on here is goals for uniforms and that supports our PD and our fire department. For uniforms and we're asking for an additional $40,000 to carry them through the end of this fiscal year.

Does that answer your questions, Mayor?

It really doesn't. So the city budgeted $2,247,000 to buy fuel for this year. And this item, it lets them spend up to $2,900,000. That's an extra $652,000 more than the budget. And the report states it does not increase the budget allocated for any funds. So the money has to come out of something else, right? And so.

You are correct. We are asking, I'm here to ask for spend. I can't ask for budget approval for these departments. This spend sits on a contract ready to be spent when the departments need it. So as the airport needs to purchase additional fuel, the authorization is sitting there ready for their operation to move quickly. A budget amendment will have to come to you to provide budget money for that expenditure. I'm not asking to necessarily expend it today. I'm asking for authorization for that spend to be available for operational contracts.

And Mayor, this is the city manager. There is an offsetting revenue for this fuel because this is a fuel that we actually sell to customers at the airport, sir.

That is correct.

So this item is due to the airport actually selling so much in fuel cells. The revenue has been higher than expected. So they just need additional budget expenditure to be able to purchase more fuel so they can make more sales.

And so essentially, certain amount of funds are allowed for purchasing fuel, and then when you go beyond that amount, because they've sold more fuel than anticipated, is what I'm hearing, right? Now we have to do a budget amendment, because as everybody knows, we can't spend any extra dollars without approval of council. It's just, it doesn't matter what it is. It could be a dollar, it could be 50 cents. whether the money's there or whether the money's not there, if it exceeds the projection or the anticipated expenditure, then they have to come back and ask council for that money. But we're not dipping in any additional funds for that. Is that correct? It's revenue from the airport that actually be used to purchase the fuel. We just have to tell them, yes, it's okay to do it.

That's correct. And Mayor and Council, I'll extend it. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mayor. Go ahead.

No, I was saying okay. I agree.

Okay. And I'll extend the invitation again. You all get the packet on Tuesdays, and I'm certainly willing to spend any time with any one of you prior to council meetings to really dig into this kind of detail because that would provide us an opportunity to really have a more in-depth conversation about any item that you have any questions about prior to council meetings.

So, and I think this is exactly what you're talking about when you put the agenda packet together, right, where it talks about the fiscal impact. Funding, and I'll read it so everybody can hear it. Funding for all initiatives and expenditures above are incorporated into the appropriate FY2026 department budgets. Here's the key part. However, the amounts above are estimates, actual cost, are dependent upon needs. If the actual cost above exceed what was allocated in the budget for those services, departments are required to make up that difference elsewhere within their operating budget. This action does not increase the budget allocation for any fund. But staff has to request that additional funding, so.

Yes.

Thank you for putting that in there, I appreciate that.

Thank you for reading it.

Okay. Any other questions on item C? All right, moving on to item D. Approval of a budget amendment for the following FY2026. Special Revenue Funds, Cemetery Improvement Fund, Child Safety Fund, Facilities Maintenance Fund, Community Development Block Grant, and Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan Fund. Ms. Wiatrick, take it away.

Hi, good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have on this item.

Yeah, I don't see anybody. I just see a blank screen. So I don't know if anyone's going to talk on this. But I did pull it. And one thing I did not see, and I didn't like the fact that all these were bunched together. And I understand that we're trying to add more money onto what we budgeted for 2026. But I kind of wanted to have a reason. I wanted to see why. Especially for We're looking at something that totals more than $946,000 here that we're trying to add on to the budget. Is there a reason why we are going so high? We didn't plan well in 2026 or 2025, 426. Is this something we have to look forward to in August when we start doing the budgeting? Because it looks like here, these are just like five items that need a lot more money. So My main thing is I just wanted to explain why we needed more for every item. And it's not just me. There's a lot of people that are watching that want to know why we have all this money on consent agenda and nothing's explained. But me personally, I just wanted it explained so everyone can see it. I understand you could pull me into a dark room and explain it to me, But that doesn't help everyone watching. So I don't like consent agenda items with a lot of money on it. I just don't like it because the people don't like it. And that's it. I just wanted to explain. I see what's going on here as far as wanting more money for each one of these items. Me personally, I just wanted to explain so everyone could see why.

Okay, all of these have a different reason that I'm happy to articulate and walk through the items on the agenda. So the Cemetery Improvement Fund, this is for the Field of Graves project that we originally budgeted in the prior fiscal year. The one-time spend for that was not rolled over in the next fiscal year, so we're just asking for that budget amendment or that operating expenditure to be increased to match that. So we had budgeted in the prior fiscal year anticipating to spend it, just need that money rolled. The child safety fund, those expenses, when we budget for that, we have full-time SROs and then we also have rovers. When we estimate those rover salaries, we use an estimate of their salary cost. Depending on the rank and the step of the officer working, that can vary. So that is the reason for the employee expenses here. For the operating, that is for our crossing guard payment to NBISD. that we did not receive the invoices in for fiscal year 25, so we're having to pay fiscal year 25 and 26 this fiscal year. So again, those dollars should have been spent last year, which is a timing issue there. Facilities maintenance fund, that is for 66,000 for the necessary sewer repairs at the PD building. The Community Development Block Grant Fund, that fund, again, we receive funds from HUD for our minor home repair program. We receive about 450K annually. A portion of that is to be spent on our minor home repair program. Last fiscal year, we weren't able to complete all of the projects. So a lot of those projects we are able to complete this fiscal year. So increasing that budget to accommodate for those, again, that's HUD funding. It's a pass-through. It's not dipping into reserves, anything there. And then the last, the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Fund, we received a grant for the biofiltration system after the fiscal year 26 budget was adopted. So we are asking for that expenditure to be increased to match the revenues we received for the grant. Are there any of these funds that I can elaborate any more on to provide clarification?

No. I think when we talked about this in our finance and audit committee meeting also, I think most of these were discussed in there, is that correct?

That is correct, all of them were, sir.

If I remember correctly. Yes. And I think most of that money that's making up the difference is coming from fund balance from each of these funds, is that correct? I believe the two of you.

So actually just the facilities maintenance and repair, that is coming from our reserves, but the others are past or were previously budgeted. Yes, sir.

So for anybody who doesn't understand what that means, I'll just assume that there's some people that don't. Would you explain that please for us, that there's actually money in the funds, right? Go ahead.

Yes, on the last item, or excuse me, on the last page, I kind of have a little chart that shows our ending fund balance for these. Not all of these, again, these are special revenue funds. They are not anticipated to carry a fund balance, but those like the facilities maintenance fund that do, we are able to pull from the reserves or the fund balance, as you said, to utilize those dollars for these projects.

So here again, the money's there. There was projections. Some of these exceeded some of those projections. I'm just coming back to council to ask to go back into those funds, which that money was actually for, just to make up the difference, the delta.

Yes, sir. Can you remind me how much is going towards the maintenance fund for PD?

This is just for 66,500 for that budget amendment for that fund.

And it's just for the month? It's not for the balance of the year, is that correct?

That is for the balance of the year. That is for the current foreseen expenditures that we have right now.

Okay, so you're using the expense funding as well as what, that you're gonna exceed that. Correct, yes ma'am. Based on your current spend. Yes ma'am.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Is there a reason why you put them all together on one agenda item when they're so vastly different?

Just for efficiency purposes, but moving forward, we can absolutely separate them for you. Okay, thank you. Of course.

Thank you, appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I believe we're on item E. Is that right? Moving on to item E, approval of a contract between the City of New Braunfels and the Humane Society of the New Braunfels area for FY2027.

Mayor, council members, happy to answer any question. I think you've got quite a bit of public comment here as well planned for this evening on this item.

If you don't mind just kind of giving a recap of a little bit of what we had discussed earlier about the Humane Society, the funding, the increase over the last three to four years, just kind of to give everybody the 30,000 foot view picture.

Certainly, and the reason this was on consent, we covered this item on July 20th at your presentation meeting and discussed what the recommendation was for the contract that is set to expire on September 30th. So this would be for a contract that would cover us for one more year from October 1 of 2026 through fiscal year 27. At that meeting, you will remember the city council expressed some interest in further evaluating that payment for which, and it states this clearly in the agenda report where we had told The city council at that time is that we would come back in the fall after our contract for services for fiscal year 27 was approved. And the reason why we recommended coming back in the fall is because we would have a draft Humane Society proposed budget for fiscal year 27, but more importantly, we would know what our partner at the county was gonna be approving for contracts. So we'd have a clear identification of what that funding gap is. We felt it may be a little bit easier for city council to evaluate additional funding. Again, Mayor Pro Tem, as you requested, we've been working collaboratively with the Humane Society over the past three or four years, really since fiscal year 23, understanding the need for additional funding When you look at the annual increase from fiscal year 23, it's grown at about a 22% compound annual growth rate from 23 to what we proposed for fiscal year 27. From fiscal year 23 to 27, if approved, it'd be 120% increase during that period of time. The county has approved similar increases. So again, I think we've worked collaboratively, all three agencies, the city and the county, the Humane Society, on trying to close that gap. And so does that provide a decent summary of the work that we've done? Again, I'm happy to go into any further detail of questions of counsel or the public as well. And again, we've got some representation from the Humane Society board and staff here this evening as well that are available to answer questions.

And just to clarify also, before we go any further or deeper into this as well, and again, I think this is all described in the agenda packet that's provided with this too, that all we're talking about tonight is the agreement between, just to recap, between the city and the Humane Society.

That's correct. Right? Just for one year.

Just for one year.

Right, but again, nothing, as we talked about in your July 20th presentation, I mean, nothing precludes this council from coming back in the fall. Yes, that's what I was getting at. And making an amendment. Right.

Right. While we're still going through the budget process. Correct. If... That is something that we so choose to do. The door is not closed after this vote tonight to actually talk about additional funding for the Humane Society. That is something that could still be taken up at a later date if needed to be.

Right. This council has a discretion to take that up at any point.

So the public understands this is a contract between the city and a 501c3 nonprofit that provides the service. It's not a city service. That's correct. They have things that play into it, so it's a contractual agreement. They also contract with the county and Marion and other locations. Is that correct?

Yes, sir.

All right.

Can I have a question now? Yes, sir. So Councilwoman Lebowski, Councilwoman Shaw and I, we went down there this weekend and we looked at that facility. There were so many things that I saw that it kind of breaks your heart. This actually this this place. It provides a big thing for the city. It's a rabies facility, quarantine facility. It's a disease control thing for the city. It takes in pets. It gives them to other families and stuff like that. But we have to look at the conditions of that place. They need not just 13%. They need a lot more than 13%. I understand that you're saying that in 2027 or this budget thing that we're going to go through this month, And we can ask for that money there, I believe, after September. I'm not sure what you're saying. We're going through the budget this month, so aren't we going to talk about it? And I guess during that time, I can bring up the fact that we have the responsibility to up the value of what we're going to give them. If you guys go down there and look at that facility, it really does break your heart. They need help. They don't just need to... go and get the same amount because I know prices rise. You have to ask for more money. I understand that we pay more money every year. But when you look at that facility, it needs more than what we're going to give it, a lot more. So if you're saying what's true, if we pass it now, then in the same month, this month, when we talk about budget, we're going to try to ask for more money for this facility every then that's what I'm going to bring to the table. We need to bring at least not 13%, but if we bring at least 20%, 25% more and then have the county match, then that's what I think we have to do. There was a lot of pictures that I wanted to show people, and there was a big article that I had written about everything that I did see. I can't see in good conscience of proving what I see right now at 13%. And so if you say what's true... that in a few days from now, maybe starting tomorrow, that we talk about upping it from 13% to 20%, 25%, then that's what we're going to talk about. But I cannot in good conscience vote on this jumbled in with a bunch of other consent agenda items. To me, this would be a no, but I would be a yes for the one above this, so I don't even know how to vote on this. I don't like pork barrel stuff. stuffed into Gazette's agenda. That's just me. And so this has to be looked at tomorrow. Tomorrow being we're going to be doing the budget, right? So whatever's on that budget agenda, we need more money for this facility. We do. And I have a big thing I wanted to read to you guys, but we're not going to get into it right now. But this facility is a very, very good facility. Sarah Hammond showed us around for two and a half hours. And they need help. And what we're doing is just not helping them. We're letting them drift by and just hold on to the threads that they're on. They need more help. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Mayor French, I would like to mention something to you, if you don't mind. I appreciate your passion, but in your comments, you're saying you'd rather approve none, zero, than 13, right? And this is a temporary contract until we get the numbers back from the county. I assume you've talked to the county judge.

I don't, wait, hold on. I don't know who's talking.

This is Councilman Spradley.

Okay. You may not understand me and that's fine.

Right, but my question is, you would rather not approve this item for 0% funding, right? than 13% funding until we can come back when we get better numbers from the county, and I have assumed, I assumed you've talked to the county judge about them so that they'll be able to match our funds or whatever, but someone in the city's probably talked to the county, is that true?

Yes, Council Member Spradley, we have worked with the county over the past four years as we've worked on recommending these annual increases. And I don't think I've mentioned this, but I think they're planning on approving the same methodology and population approach that we're recommending in this contract. So they would be slated for another double digit increase from the county as well. Okay.

We don't know exactly what that number is just yet, though. Correct.

No, sir, and I wouldn't want to speak for them. Exactly.

Which is part of the reason why we're holding at the 13 now. We get the numbers back from the county. We see what those are. We identify what that potential perceived delta might be between needed funding and what's actually there. And then we can have a discussion while we're still in budget season. Correct. To determine if we want to... to provide additional monies to the Humane Society, which incidentally I wanna add also, I would be remiss if I did not point out that as with any budget, whether it's your budget at home, work, council, state, whatever the case might be, when you pull money from, Give money to one place, you have to take it from another place. So just wanna make sure everybody's aware of that and thinks about that at the same time. It's not like we just have a bucket of money sitting somewhere that we can just reach into and go grab money for. So it's a discussion that we have to have. But I also wanna remind everybody and point out too that that is not on the agenda tonight. What is on the agenda tonight is the agreement which has the 13% increase which was asked for by this council Last time we were here, I believe it was originally at six, right? Seven, eight, whatever it was.

It was less than 13. No, 13% was our recommendation. Was it, okay. Yes, sir, 13% was our recommendation. And as Mayor French suggested, the timing is ideal. We go through our budget, we start our budget process tomorrow, and it's your prerogative as city council to if you want to request additional funding for the Humane Society or any other initiative or program. And it's our responsibility, staff, as you said, Mayor Pro Tem, to come back and let you know what the fiscal impact of that is, meaning where would we need to remove it from.

So I think we would be crazy not to at least approve the agreement and the 13% tonight and then go back through the proper channels and investigate coming up with some additional funding when we're supposed to.

Mayor Pro Tem, if I may, just to add on to some of the comments that have been made, there are needs across this organization internally, obviously externally as well. And I think that we have certainly tried to be good partners of the Humane Society and have left the door open for, after we understand what the county is going to amend their contract with, that we've left the door open for further conversation with the city council. With the understanding, though, that I think going through this budget process will provide you a basis of knowledge for what we are proposing in this budget and where we might, and I'll just say it, if there is, if the council does wanna increase either this contract or some other initiative, it may take us having to cut some other department's proposed budget to be able to accommodate it. I just wanna make sure that that's understood.

Thank you. And that is certainly a conversation that we can have. Any other questions from anybody on the council or?

I just wanna make sure I have an understanding. If we delay our decision. and wait until the county to see that we may be changing our methodology of support. That number could be greater or lesser than what we're trying to commit at this time.

That's correct. That would not be my primary concern. My primary concern would be that if we delay this come September 30th, we would not have a contract. We would not have a valid contract for services.

Currently, if we approve this, this is a short gap.

Again, it's a single-year contract.

It's a gap funding until we get a methodology and permanent solution of which we can provide a more steadier source of revenue or fees to get there.

That's correct. But however, though, yeah, Council Member Edwards, this has been our approach the past several years. Again, we've come back to the drawing table almost every year with the Humane Society trying to figure out how we can get closer and closer, as City Manager Camerino said, while balancing the needs of the overall organization at the same time.

But I do appreciate how you did have that included in the agenda packet as well. Thank you.

I've got a question there, Mayor Pro Tem.

Yes, sir.

So even though we didn't pull it, are we allowed to have citizens comment on this item here? There was a ton of people out there that want to comment on this particular one.

Yes, sir. We're going to actually go through the last two, and then we'll let citizens comment come up or public comment come up, and they can speak to any one of these as they wish. Am I correct, Mr. Brown? Correct. Moving on to item F. Approval of a resolution of the City Council of the City of New Braunfels approving the submission of a grant application to the Texas Department of Transportation and authorizing the city manager to act on behalf of the City of New Braunfels and the New Braunfels National Airport in all matters related to application for funding through the Airport Infrastructure Grant Program for the New Braunfels National Airport Pavement Rehabilitation Construction Project and pledging that the City of New Braunfels will comply with the grant requirements of the Texas Department of Transportation. Mr. Greenwell. Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Capizzi. Christopher Greenwell, City of New Braunfels, happy to take any questions at this time.

Mayor French, did you have some specific questions regarding this?

So this is another one that has big, big value dollar to it. And I know that the agenda does not show any dollar value, uh, but the project is about 2.7, 2.6 and on federal and about 138,000 from the airport fund. Um, this is federal money and it's not the state's money, but the Texas dot report shows project state total of zero. Um, I'm trying to understand all of that. It should not say state, right? It should say project total. Does that make sense? Are we not getting money from the state, right? Yes, sir.

No, great question, Mayor French. So TxDOT is acting as a pass-through for these funds from the Federal Aviation Authority. And so the FAA has the Airport Improvement Grant Program that they then delegate out to the states. Now the states then... pass that funds down to the airports like the New Braunfels National Airport. And so while we are making this application to TxDOT, they're then taking that to their commission for approval of these federal funds. And one thing I'd like to add too with this agenda item, there's no expenditures that are being taken at this time. This is just a resolution by the New Braunfels City Council for approval to apply for this grant through TxDOT.

Yes, thank you for clarifying that. Yes, sir.

Thank you. Thank you.

If we were to apply for that grant, when would that come to fruition, and when would we be able to use that money?

So we'd be able to use this, we have it budgeted for FY27, and so starting October 1, those funds would be available if this project is approved.

And so this is just authorizing the city manager to operate on our behalf in the application for this grant for these funds.

That's correct, Mayor Proton.

Is that a normal thing for this amount of this much money?

Yes, sir. And so on February. 9th, the council took an approval for a resolution for the engineering and design portion of this project, and so during that time, we made an application for the design, and so that identified the overall budget for this project. And so typically with all agencies, especially with your state agencies, they require a resolution by the city council to just be able to support this project. And so this is a common practice.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Greenwald. Any other questions from the rest of the council? All right, thank you. We'll move on to our final item. Oh, that was, I'm sorry, that was it. So open this up to public comment for any of the items that we just discussed on the consent agenda.

Don't forget to state your name and residency.

Please.

Thank you. My name is Stephanie Maddox and I'm a citizen of New Braunfels. and i am coming up to speak regarding the animal shelter so after hearing some of the comments that i've heard i wanted to focus on a few things i've been an animal rights advocate for over 10 years involved in animal rescue for over a decade and i have been involved in going to the shelter listening to the director, the volunteers, and the staff that is at the shelter. And where this may be a line item on your budget, and we understand that, there are some things that are of quite urgency. We have done a great job, and we wanna partner with the city working hand-in-hand, and I know Jared has done great work with Sarah, working on the budget and the contract. But there has been a recent state of emergency, kind of. So when you're going in to look at this shelter, we do service 4,700 animals. That is 4,700 lives that are coming through those doors on an annual basis. Now what we have seen recently is that in July, and I'm pulling this off the director's website, Sarah Hammond is an absolute wonder to work with and she is the best thing that the city has ever gotten, all of y'all. In July, HSNBA has taken in over 450 animals. That's not the norm. We saved 83% of them. 78 of these animals were euthanized in the shelter this month. 17 had passed away despite heroic efforts by staff, volunteers, foster providers, and veterinary partners. Sometimes these animals just got to us too late. or in the case of kittens being taken away from their mothers too soon. Each one of these losses is heartbreaking, especially to the staff that works there on a daily basis. Recently, I asked the mayor, Michael French, and Ms. Lebowski, and Nikki Shaw, Councilwoman, to meet us out there for a tour of this facility. And it would have been great if you can have everybody, but y'all know quorum and all that stuff. So walking into the shelter, there had been several concerns. And where these may be light items on your budget and things that you have to get deadlines done on, this can all be evaluated, reconsidered, and put on the agenda in two weeks to do these changes. They do not have to skip over. And lives are at risk the further, every single minute, every single day when we postpone this. And unless you want those lives on our hands, we need to step up to the plate and help this shelter. So in walking through this shelter, I will let you know that there were several tears shed. There were a lot of concerns. So they got to see up front, and I really appreciate both of y'all showing up on a Saturday. to support this. There's a lot of concerns. Outside in our dog kennels, we have zero air conditioning, zero. You think about you being a staff member going out there and cleaning kennels in 107 degree heat. For example, the staff members, the volunteers are out there and these animals and pets are exposed to that. The main thing that we saw in those kennels are the metal beams in all the corners are disintegrating. from dog urine, from cleaning supplies, because they have to be cleaned on such a regular basis. The bottoms of these beams are disintegrating in the building. So we need to get those things looked at, those items. The other thing is the roof. That is in desperate need of repair. There are big fans that circulate out there for temperature to lower the temperature. Sitting there not working. A heater sitting there not working, when it works it works, when it doesn't it doesn't. But mainly they are not working and it's a $9,500 item. So where we are and we do understand where we sit as far as this is a 501c. Yes, this is a 501c, and we are completely aware of that, but they are also doing the life-saving services for this county, essential services that are provided that nobody is able to do also. So in looking at the revenue and all of the budget and what we're doing, I think they've done a great job so far, but this is just a step in the right direction in working with the council and working with Jared, he's done a great job, to make sure that we have adequate. What we have right now, we're either going to be sustaining the line item of basic essential services, or we're going to turn the corner in this county and start looking at the animal welfare as a significant issue. Who else is stepping up to the plate to do this? Sarah Hammond, her staff, the wonderful volunteers that are down there. And I will say when I was leaving, one of the volunteers looked at me and said, please help us. with tears in his eyes and we need to start standing up as a city and we need to do better and put this on the agenda in two weeks. That's my time.

Hi, my name is Nicole Baudelaire. I am a resident of New Braunfels. Thank you for letting me speak today. I am here because I want to speak on behalf of the Humane Society of New Braunfels. I believe the city of New Braunfels is receiving far more value from the Humane Society than it is paying for. Animal sheltering is essential public infrastructure. If the Humane Society did not provide this service, the city would still be responsible for finding somewhere to house, feed, treat, and care the animals picked up within New Braunfels. The city would have to build, purchase a facility, hire employees, provide benefits, maintain kennels, pay utilities and insurance, arrange veterinary care, manage adoptions and rescues, and deal directly with overcrowding and euthanasia decisions. Instead, the Humane Society carries most of that responsibility and risk. While it is important to recognize that the Humane Society is shared with the county and the city of Marion, the New Braunfels Humane Society still has its own direct responsibility for animals within city limits. The city is not simply a pass-through for county services. It maintains its own animal control functions, responds to calls, enforces ordinances, and makes intake decisions that directly impact the shelter every day. In other words, the city is an active partner in creating the demand that the Humane Society must absorb and manage. The city's payment is primarily based on population, but the Humane Society's expenses are driven by the actual number of animals received, their medical care and behavioral needs, and how long they remain in care. Those two things are vastly different when speaking of funding. A healthy animal held for five days does not cost the same as an injured animal requiring surgery and months of care. A major cruelty seizure or disease outbreak cannot be adequately addressed by a population formula alone. Other cities structure these agreements differently. They pay through a hybrid agreement that considers animal intake along with the actual cost of operating the shelter, including facility expenses, capital expenditures, debt service, and population size. The issue is not that New Braunfels contributes nothing. The question is whether the city is paying its fair share of its true cost. When a nonprofit must regularly rely on private donations, volunteers, and employees that earn approximately $13 an hour to perform a service the city would otherwise have to provide itself, charitable giving is effectively subsidizing a municipal responsibility. Nobody expects the fire department to hold a car wash to cover its operating budget or purchase its fire engines. Fire protection is a public safety responsibility and we fund it because the alternative is unacceptable. The same goes for our police officers and we never think twice and we shouldn't. Animal shelters handle rabies exposures, bite quarantines, and take stray and injured animals from our streets and neighborhood because they need somewhere to go. When this service fails, citizens can get hurt. This is not simply an animal welfare discussion. It is a public safety discussion. Any donations received should go to improve animal welfare. They should fund life-saving medical care, foster programs, shelter improvements, and education programs in schools on responsible pet ownership. Donations should not be required to close a gap created by inadequate government contracts. Before approving another agreement, I asked council to require transparent, independent cost of service analysis that identifies how many animals originate within the city of New Braunfels versus the county. how long those animals remain in the shelter on average, what those animals' housing, staffing hours, and medical care actually cost the shelter, how much the city pays the shelter now compared to that cost, and how much of the city's obligation is ultimately being covered by donors and volunteer hours. I also asked the city to consider a hybrid funding model, a guaranteed population-based payment for stability plus reimbursement based on actual intake, list of stay, medical care, and extraordinary hoarding cases and capital needs. The Humane Society is not simply another charity asking for the city money because they want to start a program. It is performing an essential public service for the city and saving New Braunfels from an enormous expense of operating their own shelter. The city should treat it and fund it accordingly. Thank you.

Good evening, I am Jody Kane. I live in, I'm a resident in District 2. It's real short. I'm gonna ask you guys to please vote the 13% as a volunteer, as an adoptive mom of as many fur babies as I could adopt. Syringe feeding kittens and bottle feeding them. My son volunteers there. They need the help. They need the help now. And if they need more later, we can discuss that later. But this has been pushed off for far too long, respectfully. And they need some help. I don't know if you've ever looked at how much kit and formula cost, but it's very expensive. And I want you guys to vote please, respectfully. Thank you.

Any others?

Go ahead. I wanted to introduce myself and let me know if you can't hear me because I tend to speak softly. I'm Trudy Striegel. I'm the president of the board for the Humane Society. And I wanted to come for several reasons and speak to all of you. Again, thank you for those of you who toured on Saturday and for those of you who toured before, because you have to know what you're looking at and voting on. It's really important. And I want to emphasize the partnership we have with Jared and his team and the city. They're an integral partner to helping us realize our long-term vision. in addition to what we need short term. You've heard a lot of really good descriptions here, and I appreciate it, I really do. What'll happen if we can't do our jobs and the city has to take it over? Also, what we need right now, the critical, essential needs that we have. Jared and his team have provided us ongoing support and understanding of these issues. So that was one of the things I wanted to clarify real quickly. With that said, we are continuing to try to find solutions. for the challenges we face, and they are critical. The animal intake continues to increase, as you just heard. The kennel capacity is maxed out. You've seen the cages in the hallways. Fosters, as we just heard, taking more on, volunteers taking more on. The current facility has critical maintenance repair needed from a safety standpoint as well as actually being able to do a critical job. And ultimately, it needs expansion. And that's something I haven't heard mentioned tonight. So I wanna mention that and I'll mention it several times again. We also need additional staff, better compensation for them. You heard 13 an hour for doing what they do. That's been benchmarked, it's below benchmark. And we'll be further analyzing that. for our follow-on immediate solutions that Jared has proposed for us, and I'll go over those in a minute. I do want to let you know though that we understand and support the request to approve this proposed increase of 13% because we do need to plan and get our budget drafted so that we know what our year holds for sure. Obviously we welcome anything additional and I don't want to shut that down but I do want to make it clear that we do support approval so that our contract does not expire. We also know that without more significant changes in the next year or two, three max, the overcrowding, maintenance, and staffing issues will get worse. And they'll require difficult choices and tough decisions that are made that could change the shelter operations with regard to euthanasia, with regard to live outcome status, with regard to changing how the animals are intake, the numbers that we can intake. All of those things that we're able to do now that are in a critical state may have to change if we don't get this help. The partnership with the city, we have made progress. We mentioned in the fall coming back, I look at it as a two-step path to resolving our immediately critical situations. In the fall, we're going to apply for a supplemental in addition to anything extra that you all can find to fund these repairs that we need. And we have the whole list, and you heard a really good list here of them. And there are pictures and all kinds of things that we have of those problems. We had a recent inspection done on the facility, so we've got it documented where those problem areas are. And then in the early spring when we negotiate the new contract, we will bring the staffing benchmarking data and the needs that they have in order to do their jobs. And that will be addressed at that time. That's the solution we've been able to come up with knowing that we had only a 13% increase to work with. We also know that continued focus and action is necessary to achieve our shared vision, and we all share this vision, and I'm going over time. But we want to renovate the existing facility and expand it with a new adoption center, and the city and the county will work with us to come forward with that in the next two or three years.

Ma'am, your time is up. Thank you for your comments.

Thank you for listening. I appreciate it.

Just a quick thank you to our mayor. In turning business as usual to really oversight, it's a pleasant thing to see somebody really look into the detail.

Thank you. Sir, I'm sorry, can I have your name for the record?

David Wormke, District 5. Thank you.

All right, seeing no one else, we'll close citizens' communication.

Motion to approve. I second. I second.

I'd like to see all the people that are here supporting the Humane Society please stand up.

Thank you.

Mayor Brotham, may we do a quick recess of just a couple minutes? Certainly. Okay.

Recess. Come back at 7.50 now. We'll come back at 8 o'clock.

I've got a question. Did we vote on something?

We did not.

Okay.

Thank you. We're taking a 10-minute recess, Mayor. All right, we'll bring the city council meeting back in session. And we'll ask for, on each of the consent agenda items, B through F, we'll go item by item and ask for a motion and an up and down vote.

Item B. Do we need to read it, Nathan?

Did you guys read it, you already read it?

We already read it, yes. So item B, I'll entertain a motion. Motion to approve.

I second.

All in favor, raise your right hand. Motion carries.

Item C. I motion for approval.

I'll second.

All in favor, raise your right hand. Motion carries.

Item D. Motion for approval.

I'll second the motion.

All in favor, raise your right hand. And item E. Motion to approve. I second.

Excuse me, Mayor. I'm sorry, can you do the vote on the last one again?

I'm sorry, on item D?

Yes, please.

Can you guys see me?

Yes.

D as in Delta, yes, sir.

I saw you, sir.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

And then item E. All in favor, raise your right hand. And item F. I motion for approval.

We've already approved. No, you're right. I motion.

Item F, Council Member Lebowski, motion for approval.

Edward seconds.

Edward seconds. All in favor, raise your right hand. Motion carries. All right, so that concludes consent agenda. We'll move on to individual items for consideration.

I'd like to move item E up to the first position, please.

Any objection by the council to moving item 2E to the front of the agenda for individual consideration? All right, no objection. Let's see, let me read this here. Item 2E is a public hearing and first reading of an ordinance to amend section 126-346 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of New Braunfels to prohibit parking on both sides of Divine Way from the intersection with Fayette Drive southwesterly for approximately 165 feet.

Mayor Pro Tem, staff's making their way here.

I kind of caught them off guard a little bit, didn't I?

Yeah, just give me a couple of minutes.

We'll wait just a couple of minutes. I just, yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, because Ida Mae is going to take a few minutes.

Okay, good evening, Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi, Council, Gary Ford, Director of Transportation, Construction Services, and also City Engineer. So I do wanna provide a little bit of background on traffic control in the process. So first of all, New Braunfels Code Chapter 126 covers traffic and vehicles. And what it specifies is that all devices shall conform to the manual and specification approved by the State Department of Transportation. And this manual is Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which is the MUTCD. And it states that all signs and signals shall be uniform as to the type and location throughout the city. So the MUTCD, this establishes a criteria for signs, markings, and traffic signals. It's available online. And really the underlying condition of that states that decisions shall be made by an engineer and those decisions shall be made using engineering judgment or engineering study as required by the MUTCD provision. The authority for traffic control devices is in Chapter 126, our traffic and vehicles, and our Public Works Department shall place and maintain traffic control signs, markings, and signals. And I do wanna note that the city maintains, operates, and evaluates traffic signals on state highways with the exception of IH-35 interchanges. The chief of police authority authorization, the chief of police enforces the traffic provisions of chapter 126 and the chief of police also makes and enforce temporary or experimental regulations to cover emergencies or special conditions and that remains in effect for no more than 90 days. And then the chief of police also may test traffic control devices under actual conditions of traffic And typically what happens is when this is in place, city staff comes back, goes through the regular process, and gets an ordinance to back a temporary measure up. And you'll likely be seeing one of those come here soon. The city engineer has authority to authorize stop, yield, and all-way stop signs and signals, prohibited turns and lane uses, school speed zone schedules, crosswalks, traffic lanes, and other pavement markings, loading and bus stop zones, truck routes and restrictions, and warning and guide signs. Again, if these are in accordance with the MUTCD, city staff is able to authorize this. City Council has the authority and authorizes traffic signals, one-way streets, speed limits, school speed zone locations, parking restrictions, and other regulatory signs. And parking restrictions is what is on the agenda for tonight. So a typical process, again, it's submitted for a traffic request, either for a stop sign and no parking zone, or any other traffic request is submitted to the Engineering Division. It's evaluated in accordance with the Texas MUTCD and other established engineering standards. The type of study is dependent on the type of request. It could be an extensive study that we go through a data collection process, crash history review or maybe a simple field observation and we can decide on what is needed and then we come up with an engineering recommendation. So if a traffic control is recommended, yes, then it's authorized by the city engineer. A work order is issued to the Public Works Department, it's installed. If it's authorized by the city council, it is typically provided by a recommendation by our Transportation and Traffic Advisory Board, which you appoint members to. and then once it's authorized, it's sent over to the Public Works team for installation. If the traffic control is not recommended, we discuss the results with the requester, and then they do have the option to discuss with T&T and City Council, and it may be authorized by City Council. So for example, if a stop sign's not warranted, however they feel strongly about it, then that is submitted through the process on that end, and then we take action accordingly. So for parking restrictions, it requires a written request. The MUTCD provides general guidance and more focused on the design and placement of signs, not necessarily the use of the signs. They leave that up to the local agency. And the engineering review is based on street characteristics, activity, and crash history. It is presented to our Transportation and Traffic Advisory Board for recommendation to the City Council. And then prior to the city council meetings, impacted property owners are notified. And really what that is, is that if it's a street adjacent to a property, we notify that property owner. Again, it's not a requirement of code, but as a courtesy and a practice, we've been doing that for quite some time. So a little bit of background on this specific request. The request came from the Dove Crossing Homeowners Association to prohibit parking on both sides of Divine Way southwest of the intersection with Fayette Drive. There's a site distance concern due to parked vehicles on the east side of Divine Way southwest of Fayette Drive and I'll have a photo of that and a graph of that shortly. So again, overall this is on the east side of 35, you see Walnut, you see Dove Crossing, so this is Divine Way. And then you see the intersection with Fayette as well. So this is kind of the larger view. And then here's a detailed view. So this is the street here. What you see is Divine Way, the intersection of Fayette Drive. You have stop signs on Fayette. The proposed no parking request is highlighted there in red. And the concern, and you see in this aerial, are the two vehicles that are parked right adjacent to the intersection. And I do wanna note that there's an all-way stop there at the adjacent intersection at North Ranch Estates. So Divine Way, it's a two-lane residential collector. It connects to Dove Crossing and North Ranch Estates subdivision. It also connects Walnut to Dove Crossing via Eagle Pass Drive. So again, it's a thoroughfare that goes through and connects those two streets, and it has a 30-mile-an-hour posted speed limit. The site conditions, again, staff went out, observed the site conditions. The pavement width is 36 feet, has existing sidewalks and curbs, stop control on Fayette Drive, and then that always stop at North Ranch Estates. And it was observed that vehicles, and you see in this photo, vehicles are parked on the east side of Divine Way, southwest of Fayette Drive, and then no other parked vehicles were observed during that time period on the other intersection approaches. Again, that was based on our field observations. Recently, as part of the 2023 Bond Citywide Street Capital Improvements Project, we did an extensive mill and overlay, and we also corrected and made sure all the curb ramps are compliant in accordance with state and federal regulations. And then with that, local and state law prohibits any parking with 20 feet of a crosswalk. And that's either marked or unmarked, and really that's designated by the curb ramps and the extension of the sidewalk into the street. So you see that. They're highlighted in red. That's approximately 20 feet from the theoretical crosswalk there at Fayette Drive. And then you see the new curb ramps that were placed, and those are directional curb ramps that are ADA compliant versus the previous ones that we had to reconstruct. Part of the evaluation, there were one reported crash at the intersection in a three-year period, and the report indicates that the pedestrian failed to yield a right-of-way for a vehicle traveling on the southwest, or traveling southwest on Divide Way. Regarding intersection site distance evaluation, there's two primary measures that the engineering staff looks at. Number one is the city ordinance, what's typical for neighborhood streets and new subdivisions, and then AASHTO, or American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and that's the design engineering standards. And I'll kind of get into a little bit of detail what that means. And then other factors, really street area and context, is it an urban setting, suburban setting, more of a high-speed rural setting, and then the activity of on-street parking. So those are the factors that we look at to evaluate the request. On the city ordinance side, this is in the zoning code. So we have specified that within the site triangle, there should be no landscaping material, wall, or other obstructions permitted for a certain height, and it's measured on a control street with a driveway, or on a control street, driveway, or alley, which one stops versus which one is not controlled. So you see the little graphic now, and this is a graphic right out of our code. We did overlay that on the street, so you see that area there. So 15 feet, 25 feet, it's relatively minimal when it comes to your streets. But again, that is the standard that is processed or zoning code in most subdivisions. AASHTO intersection site design, again, this is the designed engineering site distance, it's based on the type of roadway intersection, the intersection control, is it stop control, is it not stop control, is it uncontrolled, the turning maneuvers, is somebody making a left or right, there's different distances that are needed, and speed. So right now we have posted speed for this specific case. Do you wanna note that applying these engineering standards in urban and residential areas is challenging. Typically the guidance is more for rural high speed facility and there's I would say somewhat limited guidance on applying these standards to the urban context. But that's something that we do and evaluate and take the approach of looking at land use, driveway access, on street parking, and overall street design. So those are a number of factors that we look at when we make a recommendation. Again, the standards are intended to maximize visibility. regarding seeing a vehicle before you make a maneuver coming out from a stop. But it may unintentionally encourage higher speeds. So again, if you don't have that activity parking, those speeds may actually increase. So it may undermine the safety benefit and limit on-street parking. Those are the two factors that when you kind of balance improving sight distance, typically your speeds are gonna increase, but you'll be eliminating on-street parking. So for AASHTO standards, what that means is it's measured 14 1⁄2 feet, approximately 14 1⁄2 feet from the edge of the curb line, not necessarily the travel way. And I'll have a little graphic of this. It assumes a 30 mile an hour free flow speed. However, we do know that from North Ranch Estates coming to the intersection, they're starting at a stop. So not necessarily meeting that 30 mile an hour, but we assume the 30 mile an hour free flow speed. So looking left is 290 feet, and then looking right, 335 feet. So those distances are very substantial in the urban context. So again, we observe parked vehicles on the east side of Divine Way, like I showed that graphic south of the intersection that are within the site distance. So you see here in blue, it's looking left where that vision triangle is, and then looking right, you see in red where that clear vision triangle is. So you see kind of that sight distance. Again, obviously there's parked vehicles, so you can see gaps and you can see movement between that, but again, it's a balance between the first graphic on the zoning one and within what you see here regarding the engineering, I would say, the intersection sight distance Ashton. Related requests, so we've also received requests from the Dove Crossing HOA for traffic calming on Divine Way and Dove Crossing due to speeding and cut-through traffic concerns. So Dove Crossing will be addressed in the upcoming citywide street project like Divine Way as part of our 2023 bond program. We have a mill and overlay project, but as part of that mill and overlay project, we'll be looking at traffic calming, and then we are coordinating with the HOA on submitting the application and petition for Divine Way. So again, making sure that the petition is meeting our policy, that way we're moving forward. One thing that we do wanna note that implementing a traffic calming option as part of this request and evaluation of the request can address speed and designate travel lanes and on-street parking to improve visibility? In other words, can we do a traffic calming option that instead of measuring the site distance at the curb line, we can actually get them closer to the travel lane and designate a travel lane to see vehicles better and maintain some level of on-street parking? So for our recommendation, staff does not recommend approval of the request. So again, there's a couple of factors on our recommendation. That prohibited parking may encourage higher speeds on that one side coming in. There's no parked vehicles or sight distance concerns observed on the west side of Divine Way. And I'll show you the graphic back just to reference. The parking restriction may shift parking to the northwest area of the intersection. So in other words, if this is a parking issue and they can't park, the vehicles may park on the other side of the roadway and then we're kind of going through the same process regarding no parking zones, intersection site distance. And that goes with the last bullet of we want to provide a consistent approach to future no parking requests. So again, it's a balance that we have to make in our urban areas. So we are recommending installing no parking signs 20 feet from the crosswalk as designated by state and local law for the current compliance issues to make sure we have improved site distance, not necessarily the full intersection site distance, the improved site distance on the east side of Divine Way. And then revisit the request after the traffic calming investigation. So again, we want to continue to work with the HOA in application. Divine Way, like I said, is a thoroughfare route connecting Walnut to Dove Crossing, so there are a number of traffic calming strategies to improve the site distance versus restricting parking on a residential street. And in parking removal, why does the street increase the speeds? And that's typically what we find. You remove that parking, it's a wider roadway on that one. So again, this is our recommendation. And again, with parking regulations, we leave this up really to council to consider our recommendation. TNT, our Transportation Traffic Board, agreed with the community of the HOA request for the no parking as designated. And then the community, again, HOA has some concerns about maintaining or restricting parking here. So again, our point is that City Council should consider our recommendation to these other factors on making the decision. I'll go back to the graphic and I'll be able to answer any questions.

I just want to clarify, on your next to last slide, you said northwest, but I think you meant to say northeast, if you can.

Yeah, northeast, yeah. Northeast is going to the right on this picture, and then north, yeah. We're getting goofy because it's kind of skewed. You mean going east and west side were on that one, but right, you're correct. Thank you. Thank you. So again, any questions?

What are traffic calming measures?

So there's various traffic calming options. Number one, really the slow speeds. The first one that comes out typically is speed humps. So speed humps are an option. We do look at designating what we call curb extensions to like around crosswalks, intersections, what you see on Howard Street right across the street. very successful where you designate a space around the intersection to prohibit parking. A crosswalk marking may be considered. So we would have to go through the process of, or even designating the travel lanes. So hey, here's your new travel lane. You're not gonna be running up against the curb, but you'll actually be in a designated space. So we haven't kind of got through that part yet, but we would go through really the Divine Way segment to evaluate what are the traffic calming options, and then we have a process to work with the community, show them, get some feedback, our Transportation Traffic Advisory Board, get some feedback, make any adjustments before we go back.

And why is there not a four-way stop at the Fayetteville and Divine?

Well, typically your four-way stop is where the traffic is approximately equal, right? And then that's another criteria. We would go through the process of collecting traffic data, crash history, to see if an all-way stop is warranted. We do really want to minimize all-way stops because what happens, you may have an intent to slow people or stop people, but typically what happens is you don't achieve that, but you have people running the stop sign, and you actually increased the likelihood of crashes with installing an all-way stop that's not warranted. And there's very high compliance issues. So a lot of times you'll hear people, they have a stop sign, but no one obeys the stop sign. So we have to be very careful, because there's an expectation for the side road user to say, hey, this person's gonna stop, and no one, then the driver going on, for this example, divine ways, that stop is unexpected, so. Right.

Question. Okay, so we only have one house that exits onto Devine, and so has parking been an issue? I see there's several on this side, so it, I mean, usually you see the parking direct in front of the house where their main entry is. This was indicated that Maybe there's excess number of cars or in the family, that kind of thing. So on Wood and Howard, we put in speed bumps because we had kind of a long lace track that's probably similar to Divine going past Fayette. And you have a line of sight issue with the curve in there at the same time. Right.

Right.

If we put parking to one side on that, I mean, do we increase the possibility of a problem if people are parking from the other side? In other words, people getting out of their cars, now they've got to go to the crosswalk or whatever, or they'll jaywalk across to the other side instead of parking on the side where they walk to. Is that part of the thought pattern, why not to approve the parking and use alternate methods?

Right, because right now, like you see, this is an older aerial where you see the vehicles, the concern, right? It's very clear on where the concern. They're parked right up against Fayette Drive. So right there, they're blocked, and you'll see even in the photo here where they're at. But even with the crosswalk markings, you see how that now kind of shifted them further back to improve the sight distance. So again, I'll go back to the original 2006 photo. They're right up on the curb, right? Versus back, they're further back. While it's not fully providing the full sight distance, it's doing an improved sight distance. And I think what we're saying is that if we can come up with a traffic calming option that would say, bold this out, where the driver has the opportunity to get closer to the travel lane, then that way they have a better sight distance angle. Does that make sense? So that's kind of where we want to get to versus, and we may be able to, as part of that process, say push these vehicles back over here. What we're concerned as staff, I'll go back to the original photo request, is now these vehicles are moved over here and they park right here. Then we're having to deal with the same thing. And then we're having to deal with the same thing. So we're kind of chasing this down. Or do we be consistent and just restrict parking on the segment of Divine Way altogether? Just move it downstream. Or do we want to restrict parking on Divine Way altogether, which typically you restrict parking, it's a wide open pavement, your speeds are gonna be higher. So that's why I say it's a challenge in the urban setting to kind of work through the no parking and maintaining some level of parking. Or is it a matter of this resident can kind of, hey, we know this is an issue, we're gonna park back here and make sure that we don't park in that sight distance area to maximize that without necessarily going through ordinance or is it city council's desire to say hey maybe we don't want to maybe we can push them back a little bit further so again there's a number of options but the hoa specifically requested to restrict these parkings for this distance and that's why we're bringing it up forward sooner than later so i i like what y'all did like on on uh

Academy in San Antonio Street where y'all painted and it's restricted people from parking there. Is that what you're planning on doing there?

We plan to go through the process. So again, we're waiting and again, it's a little bit tricky with Divine Way and I know Carly Farmers here has been working through the petition and the HOA. It's a little bit tricky with the homes and their policy of getting kind of the petition necessary to get that in place and get going. But if that's something city council wants to direct us to go ahead and move forward with, we can do that as part of the recommendation or you can approve the request as is. But yeah, the intent is to do those type of bulb outs. That's one of the options to improve visibility but maintain some level of parking. Because we do see the benefit of the residential area of maintaining on street parking. And doing that within this context will likely keep some of the speeds lower versus opening it wide up. And we feel that the speeds are going to get a little bit higher. And then it may improve visibility for people to make left or right, but it may contradict kind of some pedestrian safety and neighborhood safety of people just crossing the street.

Mayor Francis, do you have something you want to say?

Yeah, I just had a few questions. So the staff actually says they don't, They don't recommend this ordinance, right? But the, I had written down the transportation and traffic advisory board recommended the approval, but the staff recommends something entirely different. I know parking zone on the east side only about 50 feet and the postponing the ordinance until and postponing the ordinance until traffic calming request is investigated. So staff notes that their version does not require an ordinance and may be authorized by the city engineer. So the fixed step once needs no vote from us at all, right? If the engineer can fix it, am I right?

That's correct, so for example, yes. So if you go with staff recommendation, again, parking the distance from the crosswalk, we can authorize that, get that sign posted with that in ordinance, and then we would be looking for really city council to direct us to move forward with the traffic calming option to address that. And we wouldn't necessarily need any formal action by the city council. But if you want to authorize the no parking zone, as presented here in red as requested by the HOA, you would have to adopt that and pass that ordinance. And this would be the first reading of the ordinance.

Are people's vehicles going to start being towed? This looks like a normal neighborhood to me. And you were saying that you can't have all four stops because I guess there's not much traffic on this road. And then you're saying if we do have A RESTRICTION OF PARKING HERE, THE SPEED IS GOING TO GET MUCH HIGHER. SO I'M JUST WONDERING, THERE'S A LOT OF CONTRADICTIONS HERE OF WHY WE'RE EVEN DOING THIS. SO THERE'S ANOTHER QUESTION I HAD FOR THE OWNERS OF THE 2512 AND THE 2450 BAYETTE DRIVE. WERE THEY NOTIFIED THAT A TOWAWAY ZONE ACROSS THEIR FURNISH ROAD WAS COMING TO COUNCIL?

Yes, they were in one of the residences as opposed to the parking restriction.

So is this actually up to the residents?

This, remember, this is our recommendation, and City Council considers staff's recommendation in addition to the Transportation and Traffic Advisory Board's recommendation, and including the community's comments as well. So again, that's something for City Council to consider.

We can essentially decide between staff recommendation or Traffic Advisory Board's recommendation.

Right, or the community comments as well, which follow the community comments recommendation.

Once community comments come, then we can make a decision.

And again, that's why written in the ordinance when it comes to parking restrictions, these are a little bit challenging. Again, it's a lot of that input that city council needs to take into account before making that decision. So again, we're making our decision based on, you know, kind of what we evaluated during our site observation. From an engineering standpoint. From an engineering standpoint. But again. Understood.

Right. Understood. Council Member Carter.

One thing that I have consistently observed about these requests is that it's always after. It's always after these facilities are built and developers are gone. The city is bearing the expense to correct the problem that was created. So I say what I have said before, please ensure that it is installed in the process of setting up a community that the best solution for parking and streets is baked into the community so that the developer pays, not the city. Cuz all these traffic calming measures and all this stuff after the fact comes on to the taxpayer. So it's a reverse, here's the bill. which is what I don't like at all. And I would prefer to see best practices installed all over the city that what we conclude, because this is the entryway to this community is what I'm seeing. And in all likelihood, they don't want people screaming through the gate and they can't see these folks parked. I get it. On the other request, we usually get it for school children getting out. That's very common. So it's going to be one or the other is what I'm seeing, but it's consistent. So... I think that we really need to push this back in the pipeline in the development phase. And I see this is probably somewhat of a developed neighborhood, or it's been there for a minute, but it still needs to be lessons learned by us so that this council doesn't have to sit here and decide on every street in New Braunfels. Because I guarantee you, whatever decision we come out of here with, the next HOA is coming in here hot with their request and the request after. no matter what that is, no matter if it's traffic calming, because I know in my own neighborhood, they've got huge issues with what they consider too fast of traffic down the main thoroughfares of those communities, and I get it. I don't have little kids anymore, but I do understand the point. So I do ask that we mightily try to install those in the development of communities, and we go back holistically

assign somebody to go study these neighborhoods and let's just get them all on the platform to do what we need to do to make it safe i totally agree with you and this is one of our older neighborhoods and since that time we have a robust traffic impact analysis requirement that we require developers to do that include a traffic neighborhood traffic management plan that really outlines, okay, where's the always stops, where are the parking areas, where are the access points, and that is part of what we changed over the last few years because of this issue. I totally agree, we are chasing a lot of these resident, you know, relatively new subdivisions and having to spend a lot of time and effort to put in traffic calming where that should have been built in to the neighborhood. You know, we receive block waivers by planning commission all the time, and that's one of the major factors of that and we are processing a number of changes to our land development ordinance to address this. Number one, limiting the amount of vehicles on a certain lane, not having homes front a certain roadway. So we are actively working that as far as best practices and street safety, we get it. We work with that, we feel for the community, but we are addressing too many of those on that end. But we are, we've been making progress over the last few years, so you'll see the newer subdivisions come in that have those extensive requirements, and it's taken time and a lot of effort to get those requirements in place. but unfortunately, we are dealing with a lot of issues. We've addressed, you know, there's a neighborhood park down here. We addressed some signing and got that in place, but again, we want to take really a comprehensive look, and that's why on Divine Way, we understand that this is one of the major roadways, and we're open to coming in and doing a more extensive traffic calming effort on Divine Way, but we have to balance that out with, you know, the typical residential parking zone.

Council Member Carter, if I could just add to Mr. Ford's statements. He mentioned the waiver process that had previously gone to council. In the last several years, we've also tightened our process around waivers as well. So those waivers, if they don't receive staff recommendation and the Planning Commission approves them, then they have to come to City Council. So there's sort of an elevated decision-making authority there as well so that we can continue to tackle these issues with future developments.

Well, and that way, you know, and I'm not being critical of staff at all here. I want you to kind of be relieved of the burden, so to speak, by, you know, perhaps gaining a resource. I don't even care if it's a contract resource to go out and look at established neighborhoods. Let's get a best practice and recommended on a slate that we can approve versus have to, you know, go through each community's plea. Because it's very burdensome, I know, for you all as well.

This is the, you know, speeding, sight distance is the number one, you know, our staff and police department have to address through some of these neighborhoods, and we get it, so.

Thank you.

We're spending thousands over a personal problem of independent people ignoring the speed limit, and we're legislating or building to offset that. And some of the things that go on that we've seen tonight, all are human behaviors that we're trying to correct with design, structure, and other things. instead of enforcement of what we do. But we've decided that enforcement is less useful and consuming of our public safety officials. So now we're trying to control it with redesign. And that's what the whole crux of it is. We don't take responsibility for ourselves. And we put that burden on the rest of the people and then design and more legislation and more and more. So I'm sorry.

Appreciate your breakdown of everything for us. You went through it really well.

I had to run in and out of breath.

And he came in on the spur of the moment too. I actually used to live on Divine Way. Spent several years living there right at the corner of Ranch Estates and Divine Way. And I know how people travel through that area right there. I mean, I was there before Divine Divine Way opened up on the Walnut. And after it did, it became like a racetrack out there. And my council person at the time was Asia Edwards. And I walked that whole neighborhood with my 10-year-old little girl selling Girl Scout cookies, getting petitions signed for speed bumps that she helped us get put through. And I say all that to say that I understand exactly where the folks in this area are coming from and the need for, desire for immediate relief on this and how perilous it can be trying to pull out when you have vehicles parked right there with the speed that people can come through there. I see some vans on the other side, it looks like, parked off to the left too. And I understand what you're saying, that if you put the no parking there, it might push possibly to the other side, And I suppose that is a possibility. I tend to think that those are probably vehicles that are owned by the person that lives in this particular home right here. And I also notice that there are no, it doesn't look like there's any other driveways in that particular area that front that spot on the road also, so. I personally, I'm interested to hear from the folks from Dove Crossing, but I lean heavily towards going with the traffic and transportation recommendation. Does anybody else have any other comment?

No, but I have a question. Were the police ever notified of this, trying to slow people down? I see a whole bunch of.

I can tell you right now, when I lived there, I can't tell you how many times I called, and they would come out, they were very responsive, you know how it is, you come out there, you sit, they slow down for a little bit, you write three or four tickets, soon as he's gone, and everybody knows, they must call each other, I don't know what they do, but he's gone, mash the gas, you know what I'm saying?

It's on Facebook. They're using Waze, police located here, not there no more. Right. Yeah, okay.

So, if that's all we have, we'll open it up to public comment.

Good evening. Lindsay Lancaster, resident of Dove Crossing. Thank you for the time. Thank you for allowing me to come up here and speak on behalf of Dove Crossing. I think that there's a little bit more insight I'd like to provide you. So Mrs. Carter, you had mentioned that this looked like the beginning of an entrance. It's actually not. It actually extends all the way to Walnut now. And then I also want to add that with Fayette and Divine Way, it actually keeps going and it loops around to Eagle Pass. And so there is more to just this portion right here as far as traffic concerns. Speeding is the number one concern along Divine Way. And like he described, there is a petition for traffic calming measures that is live and we are getting very close. I think we need 10 more signatures for Divine Way to Eagle Pass. But the thought was when this little girl got hit on, which was also left out, it was a little girl who came out on Fayette and Divine, she got hit and she was taken to Children's. There is a very significant blind spot right there at that curve. Granted, the vehicles that are parked there on a daily basis don't help. And from the pictures that were shown previously, yes, you know, they were in compliance that one day whenever they were parked, but that doesn't account for the other days. So on a regular basis, there are multiple vehicles on both sides of the street. That day, it just happened to be in compliance. So I don't know if, you know, if maybe there is an option tonight to why not just advance to traffic calming measures for the entire street of Divine Way to Eagle Pass. That way we, like you said, Mrs. Carter, encompass it all and we don't have to go back and forth. But the thought was because of that little girl being hit, school starting next week, it is a huge traffic concern. There is an influx. of just students that fly down Divine Way from Walnut all the way to Eagle Pass. And then cars are actually speeding from Eagle Pass that way as well. So it is a significant influx. Something needs to happen sooner than later. And so when this was presented to the traffic board, it was just, you know, in hopes and thought that we would at least get something started because school starts next week and we don't want another little girl hit. So that's kind of, I just wanted to provide you any insight and see if you had any other questions.

Can I ask you a quick question? Do you mind expanding about the little girl getting hit? Because I don't think anyone mentioned that at all, right? Yeah.

um the gentleman you know said that there was a pedestrian they they failed to yield um at the stop sign but she was just a little girl under the age of 13 that was writing like her little like manual scooter not a electric scooter at all and she was hit by a car that was coming on divine way And so she did survive, but however, she was taken straight to Children's in San Antonio and sustained injuries. So again, school starts next week. There's so many kids. There's so much traffic. Parents just come down Divine Way and park. and they just kind of line up and then they park there so that when their kids get out of the schools, they pick them up there as like their pickup location. And so it's just an influx and it's like a cluster of just trafficking kids. Thank you. Is this adjacent to a bus stop? There is not a bus stop there.

Oh, okay, I thought maybe that's why the kids were.

No, the influx comes from really, there's New Braunfels Middle School, there's Klein Elementary. And so when those two schools get out at the same time, they all cross. right there across Walnut and come right to Divine Way and that's where then all the children come and all the parents park. And so it's just a line of parents and then the traffic just, it's just like a cluster that builds up. And it's a good 30, 45 minutes there. Any other questions? Okay, thank y'all for your time.

Thank you for letting me come up and say my piece. My name is Sammy Hale and I live on Fayette Drive on the far end down by Gaines. There's no way to tell if those cars parked on the side of that road belong to the person that lives in the house on the corner. We can make assumptions that they own those cars What I know for a fact is there's always four to five vehicles of some kind. For a couple of weeks, there was a boat added to the four or five vehicles parked along Divine Way. I go up and down that street all the time. I'm retired. I don't have to punch a clock. So if I want to go to town, I have to get out on Walnut, so I have to make that corner. So does my wife. It's dangerous. I've nearly gotten hit. She's nearly gotten hit. And we're old and slow. So people just darting out into traffic, let's hope it doesn't happen. What I've noticed is is that the guy that, or the folks that live in that house on the corner, there's never, and I mean never, any cars parked in their driveway. So if those are their cars, why aren't they parking in the driveway? I can't control what people do. I can't control all these young kids that now have these electric scooters and electric bicycles that have increasingly, in the last 12 months, they've just come out of nowhere. And they're all up and down the streets, and they're not obeying any traffic laws. They don't stop at any of the stop signs. I'm not a parent of younger children. All my kids are grown and I'm a grandfather of 13. I don't know why parents don't parent their kids and tell them not to do that stuff. I don't know what the rules are for electric bikes and electric scooters. Something needs to be done before somebody is killed at that corner. That's my concern and thanks for letting me say my piece.

Good evening City Council, my name is Lisa Best. I too am an owner on Fayette Drive and I would like to show pictures taken almost the same day as some of the ones that were shown. So if you look at my picture, that is what it looks like every single day. There is not 20 feet from that crosswalk to that truck. Not, it happened to be in the one photo they showed. And then the other problem is when you turn that corner, you turn into the owner's Jeep and there is not room for two cars to be one turning in behind that Jeep and one coming out. I've almost been hit head on. I've almost been T-bone turning the corner. Those vehicles do belong to the same house because I've asked him, To consider parking elsewhere. He said they're my vehicles. It's it's public street. I can park wherever I want It's very unsafe. I don't even let my seventh grade daughter Walk to school to New Braunfels middle school because it is so unsafe I take an extra long time to turn left past those vehicles because there are kids riding the scooters and the regular bikes and all of the things and they're not paying attention to traffic. Half the time I almost see them hit the rear view mirrors of those parked vehicles and so it's the vehicles but it's also the kids. And I don't think it necessarily needs to go all the way past if you can see the drainage ditch there, because that's gonna take away from some of their parking, and their vehicles don't block. But it most definitely needs to be the 20 feet, I don't know if there needs to be a crosswalk there, that then it's known that it's 20 feet back from that. We've called police. They were marking the vehicles last year to be moved because they never moved. He would move them for a day, they'd come back, and I saw him ripping the stickers off the car. He does not care. He runs a business out of his home, and that's all that's important to him. I just really hope that something can be done, whether it be red lines, no parking signs, a crosswalk, something so that people know that it should be 20 feet

from both of those crosswalks.

The one here in front of the truck, but also this one, because that Jeep is not parked 20 feet from that crosswalk. So thank you for your time and we did go through the traffic advisory meeting. The board was very helpful. The engineer wanted to take almost a year to get the process that they want done for their traffic calming study and someone's gonna get hurt in that time. I'm not asking for $15,000 speed bumps. We're asking for a couple no parking signs. Thank you all.

Hi, I'm Riley Baker. I also live on Fayette. I'm born and raised here. I know some of y'all. But I just wanted to point out, which hasn't been mentioned, I know we talk about coming from Walnut down here through Divine Way and that issue. And they speak of that site triangle. And so I understand what they're saying. What they're not taking into consideration is if Even if you just use this picture, if there's one additional vehicle parked there, which there typically is, when you're coming off North Range Estates and turning a left on Divine Way, there is no ability to see that stop sign.

This was taken, I don't know if it's the same day as her, but if you could, I don't know how to do this.

In the white. Set it inside that white square.

To your right.

Oh, box. Okay. So this is from my personal vehicle. And you can see all these parked here. That crossing coming off of North Range Estates is not visible at all. The only time you're able to see that is by the time you're pulled out into the middle of the road. This is now where you can see North Range Estates. and i don't think any of us want a kid on our hands so i understand that it's we want to do this full expansion and i totally support that but in the interim with this being the issue as it is and we unfortunately don't have the cooperation of the person who's causing this issue that would be ideal to be able to resolve it in between all of us, but if we're not able to do that, that's why we have to rely on you guys to support us and support keeping our kids safe. That's what I got.

Thank you, guys. Hi.

My name is Charlotte Mitchell. Guess what? I live on the west side. Okay, I live at 2450 Fayette. We've been there for the past 11 years. I feel that my property is being targeted when there's no reason concerning my property. Every picture that's shown has been shown that there is never a vehicle on our side, okay? The issue resides somewhere else, and we've been thrown into the mix for no reason. This is wrong. 165 feet is being targeted when there are thousands and thousands and thousands of feet in Dove Crossing. And if you'll look at the picture that she just showed you, it showed you all the cars that are parked down to Vine Way, all the way to Walnut, not just in our area. And so I'm only addressing my piece of property, which is 2450 Fayette on the west side. No one has ever contacted us with an issue, not a neighbor, not a concerned citizen, not any person from the homeowners association or anyone who's been on Facebook all night tonight. We only know about this meeting because thank goodness we have rules and we received a certified letter from the city. No one wants anyone to get hurt. I'm a public school teacher for 45 years, recently retired. I do not want a child hurt. And I've seen on that corner where the kids are, where they walk, and where they go. We can't control that, okay? But I feel like we're being targeted because some people are upset with the guy that could cross the street. They have hundreds of, Dove Crossing has hundreds of cars parked on every single street and at every single intersection. So targeting 165 feet for me is wrong. So I ask that you deny this 165 foot restriction on my side of the street. I'm not gonna address anybody else. And finally, I'd like to say in the future,

If anyone has a concern, you know where I live, 2450 Favorites. Come knock on my door, and I'll be happy to have a conversation with you.

I really appreciate it. If you all have any questions for me, let me know. I am very concerned about children. I think my past has told you that. But I just think that it's wrong to target me, 165 feet, when there's thousands of feet in the subdivision, and also that it doesn't concern me. But I'm going to be – not benefits, but I'm gonna be targeted because of somebody else's, what they're doing wrong. Thank you.

I'm her husband.

My name's Ken Mitchell. I live at 2450 Fayette. We're the one that don't have any cars. and I'm not gonna defend the guy across the street, but when they did put those things in, he moved his cars back, and I don't go on that side of Fayette, and I don't really make that turn, but I do come down Divine Way, and you can see Fayette. I don't want any little girls hit, but honestly, I'm surprised there hadn't been more accidents because those kids are nuts. They ride those electric bikes, they're going 25 miles an hour on a sidewalk, and they zip in and out, they don't look for anything. This guy's wrong, but he's not that wrong. And I agree with her, we're being penalized for and I just don't think it's right. So anyway, I'd request that you not do this. Thank you.

Hi, Elizabeth Hurlitz-Gortez. I actually live at 2477 Divine Way that way. So when you come this way every single day at around 8 o'clock, so between 7.30 and 8.30, and at around 3 o'clock until 5.30, that street is constant traffic. It is horrible. And when I'm coming this way from my house, I always have to go around these cars. And in the meantime, you have all of these other cars that are flying through this way. I don't know if this is the answer, I don't know, the only thing that I do know is that something needs to be done before school starts. Whether it is this, whether it is a traffic study, I don't know, but Divine Way is a major, major thoroughfare, especially during school. School starts next week. Whatever you can do, we just need help, okay? Thank you.

Seeing no one else, we'll open it up to debate here. I have one question I want to ask Gary, though. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mayor. Go ahead. I forgot about you over there.

So the west side on that image, I don't see any vehicles. And so I'm guessing the other side is the east side, right? No. Me personally, I'm for having a stop sign there, but ultimately having those cars pushed back about 20, 50 feet because that is some kind of concern. So something definitely has to be done on the east side where those cars are. And I'm not really seeing anyone talking about the west side having any problems, but I think my opinion would be Something has to be done with those cars because there's concern. I see myself now. But, yeah, my opinion is, is there anything we could do about the language if we come to a conclusion right now of just moving those cars back about 50 feet and having a stop sign on all corners? That's all for me.

Go ahead, if you wanna answer that, Gary.

Right, regarding the stop sign, we would be required to do a traffic engineering study, provide a stop sign. That's not on the agenda tonight. The parking item is on the agenda. So you can modify the parking as such, but then we can go back in and do an evaluation of an all-way stop at this location. but I can tell you it's unlikely given the amount of vehicles and homes that we'd be coming on Fayette Drive that it would warrant on that end. But regarding the mayor's request, he can come in and city council can decide on the limits of the parking. For example, y'all can come in and say, hey, instead of the full extent, we can extend it back a certain point only on this side, and that's something that we can move forward with, or you can move forward as requested for the full extent on both sides of the roadway. But regarding an all-way stop, we would go through the process, evaluating it, provide a recommendation in accordance with the MUTCD. There's criteria for that, and then council can decide on whether to do that or not.

Is it, on a, what is it, a minor collector?

Right.

Is it common to have street parking on minor collectors like this?

Yes, it is. So for a minor collector, you have different roadway sections, for example. It depends on the area, the context. You may have a turn lane in the middle, travel lanes on the outside. You may have something like this where you have two-way traffic with parking. So it really varies on the subdivision, but do you have some flexibility on minor collectors like this?

And if we were, I mean, in the event that we did go with this no parking tonight, and then we moved forward with a study on traffic calming for the entirety of Divine Way, as we were talking about, how would that play into that? Is that something that maybe at some point the no parking could then go away when the traffic calming took place? Obviously something needs to be done now. Like I said, I'm intimately familiar with this area myself and hearing about it and hearing about this little girl who got run over. I also know somebody who rendered aid to that little girl when she got hit. Something needs to be done now about it, especially the timing that it would take for an engineering study to take place and then to get the traffic calming in place. I wouldn't want my child at risk for that long. So if you could kind of talk, I mean, how would that play into the traffic calming measure with the no parking? Is that something you would just eventually eliminate at some point?

Yeah, we would, again, that would be part of the consideration of if council decides on the parking restriction, whatever that might be, one side, both sides, the full extent, then y'all can authorize it. This would be the first reading. And then the next council meeting would be the second reading. because it requires two readings for an ordinance to pass, and then we would have our public works team lined up to get the sign installed right after that second reading. Then regarding that, again, like the representative mentioned, there's still a few signatures short. However, if this being a minor collector, city council can direct us to move forward with that traffic calming study. We can move forward collecting data, coming up with some options, but that does take time. And then depending upon where we're at with funding, again, that may take additional time to do striping and things like that. So that's just the way, again, these traffic calming measures, because fundamentally the street design is really the ultimate way to fix some of this and address some of these issues. But again, we would consider that no matter what parking restriction, we can consider that as part of it, or we may come back in with a revision to revise that parking restriction if we have a traffic calming plan.

Part of the whole traffic calming plan. Exactly, right. So this doesn't necessarily have to be a permanent solution, but a solution nonetheless at this point.

That's correct.

Is there a law that says you don't park closer than 20 feet from a crosswalk anyway? Yes, yeah. So if we're gonna put no parking signs on one corner, would it be indicative to put them on all four corners so that then that same gentleman doesn't go across the street and up the street and have the same problem on the other side?

If it's a known issue, what we've done, we work with the police department, because they'll identify street areas where it's a known issue, where, yeah, it's a state law. You don't park so many feet from a hydrant, from a crosswalk, or so many feet from the stop sign. So what we do is no parking from here to corner. And we post that, and that's something that we can authorize and would authorize if this isn't moving forward. Or there may be something where council designates, okay, well, instead of 20 feet, y'all wanna do 50 feet or 100 feet, a little bit more than what's in state law, and that could be an ordinance and we can post that as well. And they can be on one side of the roadway or both sides of the roadway. Again, based on what you hear tonight, you see the area that's focused here, you see the concerns with the resident there, So it may be somewhat limiting, that may be an option for council to somewhat limit that parking zone, not necessarily the full extent, but where it would improve the site distance considerably, but also maintain some level of parking for these two residents here. So it may be a balance that council considers, and then we can move forward with the traffic calming off.

Right, I don't think restricting no parking on both sides is the way to go just because you're just gonna push the problem somewhere else. So how do we move forward from here then?

I think it's the only proposal that we have right now. So it's either give some relief or no relief is the objective tonight.

Is it only that one part of the street or can it be all four of the corners can have no parking signs from here to the corner or is it just

I think we can do what we feel is needed to be done. Can we amend it? I'm not familiar with the area enough to make a call. Can we amend it?

Yes, you can amend it. Right now it says 165, but again, since the parking is the item, you can amend that to a certain level of distance from the intersection, and then that would be the ordinance, and we can come in.

I think at the very least, from my standpoint... At the very least, it needs no parking on all four corners with at least double the 20 feet. It needs to be at least 40 feet. I mean, like I said, I'm very familiar with that location myself. There's no great answers. Either somebody's gonna be upset because they can't park there at all, somebody's gonna be upset because somebody's still parking there. It's gonna be 20 feet's not enough, 40 feet's not enough. So, I mean, no matter what we do, But there's not gonna be a perfect solution.

The issue is how much line of sight do you need? The safety factor is the line of sight. So 20, 30 feet, whatever it takes to have a clear line of sight to the best capability. But one of those pictures, you had a van that was double stacked. Exactly. And the thing about it is, even if you take all of the parking away, you didn't solve the problem. No. It's been over and over and over. which is speed. And so this is one of those situations that governments identified the wrong problem with the wrong solution.

To a certain extent, you're right.

But I mean, still, if you can't see and somebody's coming 30 mile an hour, they're still going to knock the crap out of you. Or if you're on a scooter or a bicycle, it's going to hurt.

Well, yeah, so if you go to 30 feet or 40 foot setbacks in the two corners, then get the traffic study done for what you need. You've improved the line of sight. You now go back to look at speed bumps or striping or narrowing or any of the other solutions to that. And I mean, y'all been pretty expedient about those when it's a high rate of concern.

So based on the discussion, I think if city council will consider, a vehicle's typically 20 feet in length. So if you consider three vehicles here, that's, Right, so instead of the full 160 feet, we go with 60 feet. That way you provide some level of parking on that end, and then we can evaluate the intersection. So that may be an option for city councils, not do the full extent, but do a good extent to improve site distance considerably, and then we can move forward with the request.

So no parking within 60 feet of either of the four corners.

Right, or do you want to consider these four corners as well, both sides? Absolutely. Okay.

I think that would be.

Yes, absolutely.

With the understanding we're still gonna carry forward with the traffic calming, is that something we can talk about here tonight?

Do we gotta make a motion for that, for traffic calming? So I have a quick question, and I agree. If you only do no parking on one side, that's just gonna force someone to park on the other side, correct? So we're spinning our wheels on that one.

No, because we're doing no parking within 60 feet of either.

I know, but if you only do it on one side and not the other side, we're just gonna come back to this. And so I agree with that. And they mentioned they need something done by the time school starts. That's not even possible.

That's correct. You would get the first reading tonight, and then two weeks later, again, we can work with our public works team to when is it past two weeks from today, then we'd have that installed.

Okay. And then my only concern is with their concerns and schools starting up, and there will be nothing done before school starts, is there a way we could work with the police chief to at least get an officer out there to try to monitor children going back and forth to school for... the first couple days.

Yes, sir, I can visit with the police chief about having our traffic unit patrol that area. At least until we got this solved. Yes, sir.

And so just to clarify, in this, can we still stipulate the start of the traffic study for the traffic calming?

Yes. Okay. We gotta make a motion, he said.

Yes, so I'll entertain a motion. If there's no more discussion.

Well, I think I can make the motion. Like to make a motion to do what you have on the drawing board. I don't know what you would describe that as.

To install no parking signs within 60 feet of either corner.

That.

Of Fayette.

Of Fayette.

I'll second it. And then also, hold on, and then also with the follow-on traffic study for traffic calming measures in the future, as expedient as possible, I guess.

Along with the officer of the week.

the corner for both stop signs. Is that what we agreed on? So both stop signs. So people will only be able to park in the middle. That is correct. So what is the, how far was it, 60 feet from the stop sign you said?

Yes, the motion is for no parking signs within 60 feet of either corner. All four stop signs. All four corners at Fayette.

That's correct. And Devine.

Fayette and Devine.

And I second.

I hope the city secretary got that. Did you get that, Ms. Wilkinson?

Okay, so we have a motion by Council Member Spradley, second by Council Member Lebowski.

And that's with direction of a traffic study, immediate.

All those in favor, raise your right hand. Motion carries. Item 2A, discuss and consider the first reading amending chapter 130, article four, divisions three, five, six, and of the city's code of ordinances to adjust residential and landscape irrigation drought surcharges, revised drought stage destinations and triggers, clarify definitions and related provisions, repeal conflicting ordinance, provide a savings clause, and establish an effective date. Mr. Kelso.

All right, thank you, sir. Good evening, Mayor French, Mayor Pro Tem, Capizzi, and council. First off, thank you for your tireless service to the whole community. I really appreciate what y'all do. As volunteers, got a lot of respect for y'all, so thank you. Same to city staff. Been some long meetings lately, so. Appreciate y'all having us out tonight. Last time I was before y'all, I had 44 slides. And maybe to your delight, I now only have 14 slides. So we're gonna get through this. Here's the overview. We're talking about the Drought Contingency Plan. And just a refresher, this plan was cultivated, the amendments were cultivated by staff. They've been through our community advisory panel, which are citizens of the community appointed by both the board and city council. It's also been considered by our board of trustees and each of those bodies gave it the thumbs up to then come to y'all. So last month, July 20th, y'all heard the 44 slide version of this and I'm gonna give y'all just the cliff notes, the high level key points of it today for your consideration here in first reading. So I'm gonna talk about the current drought conditions. I'll give you a recap on the amendments that we're proposing and then I'll talk about next steps. So since we last met, we transitioned from stage two to stage one because the aquifer rose above 650 feet above mean sea level. Yeah, let's give that a hand. Since then, 14 days later, we transitioned back to stage two because the aquifer declined back below 650 feet. And so for both of those decisions, in ordinance it specifies that I myself are to consult with Mayor French on those decisions, and he and I talked and emailed back and forth for both of those. So anyway, I just wanna make sure y'all know I'm following the code of ordinance when we're making these decisions and we're following what's codified there in ordinance. All right, so tonight I'm gonna show you proposals to amend three things. Number one, the trigger levels and the events that can trigger various stages. Number two is an update to the drought surcharge, which is currently in ordinance for stages three and four. And then I will also present changes to customer responses during specific drought stages. So this table shows our current stages, one through three, and then proposed new stages, stages four and five. And so the Edwards Aquifer Authority has a monitoring well, it's called the J17 well, it's in San Antonio, and it is the monitoring well for the San Antonio pool, which influences our water rights. MBU owns 9,269 acre feet of water permitted from the Edwards Aquifer Authority, And based on the level of that monitoring well, we have a responsibility to curtail the amount of water that we pull from the aquifer based on conditions. So they're called critical period management rules. In stage two, which we're in right now, there is a 30% reduction in what we're authorized to pull. So one-third of the water that we have permitted is off the table. And so in stages three, four, and five, those restrictions increase to 44% in stage number five. And so our whole drought ordinance is written around... encouragement to conserve whenever the aquifer gets to a critical level or lower so that we can meet those critical period management reduction requirements within our permit. Now, New Braunfels has diversified our water portfolio and we rely not only on the Edwards but on seven different contracts for water. It's not absolutely critical that we meet these target reductions today because we can meet the Edwards reductions while staying in stage two, and we've proven that for the last three years. We have not advanced stages. But as we look and plan for the future, in the next 50 years, it's gonna be important for us to meet these reduction targets so that that water supply lasts us for 50 years or potentially in perpetuity. And so you see here in green, these are the proposed stage triggers that we're proposing. Stages four and five would be triggered at 630 and 625 feet of that monitoring well, respectively. And you can see also the corresponding Comal River flows that would potentially trigger stages four and five. Now we're also considering adding additional operational flexibility trigger events that the mayor and myself could consider in calling stages. And you see in this table here the various triggers. I'll point out maybe one of them, infrastructure issues. Say we have a catastrophic main break. that depletes pressure in our system and we need to go to a more restrictive stage so that we can then recover the system more rapidly. That is something, that is a tool literally in the toolbox that we're proposing to allow us more flexibility if we get into a situation where we need to advance to a more restrictive stage and send that conservation signal to our customers. Now onto the drought surcharge. Now we've had a surcharge in place for many years now, and we're proposing to increase that surcharge. And drought surcharges are in place to promote conservation. It is a pricing signal. And so these surcharges, as it's written in ordinance today, they only kick in in stage three and beyond. Right now there's no ordinance language around what stage four or five is, but we're proposing to clear that up. And so these surcharges are a mechanism, like I said, to promote conservation. saw San Antonio Water System just down the road, they enacted changes to their drought ordinance and revised their surcharges and increased their drought surcharge to $10.37 per 1,000 gallons. That kicks in in stage three. And so they've taken a pretty drastic approach to this. We're proposing surcharges to the tune of $4 and change. increasing from $1 and $2 respectively. So I'll get to that here in a second. But the key takeaway here is that these proposed surcharges will not impact 73% of our customers. They remain unaffected. It will impact high water users, and that makes up about 27% of our residential water users. And I'll highlight that bottom square down there. The surcharge is designed for revenue neutrality. And so during periods of drought, we tend to see usage decline. And we're a nonprofit utility. We operate based on, our rates are built around cost-to-service principles, meaning we seek to recover the costs of provisioning the service, taking care of the water mains, fixing the main breaks when they happen, and paying our staff. And during times of drought, water use goes down because people give up on their landscapes and they're just not watering as much. But we still have to maintain the same infrastructure, buy the same water, pay our employees. And so a surcharge is meant to supplement that revenue and ensure revenue neutrality, even through the deepest drought that we could experience as a utility. But we're committing that any excess revenues that are generated beyond our budget would go into the utility bill assistance program. So it's not a tactic for us to just go out and generate a lot of revenue. We don't expect that to happen if these surcharges are adopted. But if they are generated above our budget, they will be moved into our utility bill assistance program to help those folks that are in need of assistance. This is a chart that is not meant to be presented after 9 p.m. I'll just say that right now. There's a lot going on here. It basically reinforces the data here. I know there's some data folks up on the dais, and I wanted to bring y'all some good data, but it got late tonight, so we're gonna move quickly through this chart, but it basically reinforces and gives you more detailed data of our customer usage breakout in that 73% and 27%. So 73% are never affected. for residential non-irrigation meters. So these people are just using essential water to prepare meals, bathe, and wash their hands, do that sort of thing. So you can see up to 6,000 gallons, they're never impacted. And then whenever you get to the six to 12,000 gallon bucket, those folks are only impacted in the worst case in stage five only. And then there's this category of folks that make up 7.5% of our population that will experience a surcharge in stages three and four. Those are folks that use over 12,000 gallons per month. And so here's the table that wraps all of that up. So this is for residential non-irrigation folks that just have a single meter in our system. And you see in the dark shaded area, those are the proposed columns. And so you start with stages, zero through two, three, four, five, work your way down the chart. You can see current state in the light colored region, and then the proposed state. So we're proposing a couple things here. Number one, you can see the usage thresholds are changing from 15,000 to 12,000. So they're going down. Why are they going down? Because that aligns with our usage thresholds with our rate structure. Our rate structures are, the breaks are at 3,000, 6,000, and 12,000. Previously they were at 7,500 and 15,000. And so that change was made years ago, we just, we failed to update our surcharge thresholds concurrently. But here we are now, we're gonna get that cleaned up. And you can see the proposed surcharge goes from $1.00 and $2.00 to $4.18 and $4.89. Where do those wacky numbers come from? We had Raptilis, a professional firm, do a cost of service study for us that essentially analyzed what revenue recovery is necessary based on historical data and information of droughts. How much revenue is necessary to make us whole? And that's where that $4.18 and $4.89 number comes from, didn't just pull it out of thin air. All right, now shifting to the irrigation customers. And so different story here. And so if you work left to right, again, it's a chart not meant for after 9 p.m., but bear with me. Stage five, all irrigation water experiences a surcharge. But in stages three and four, only 20% of our irrigation customers are impacted. So in worst case scenario, everybody that has an irrigation meter will pay a surcharge. But in the more realistic scenarios, oscillating between stages three and four and extreme drought, only about 20% of our customers are impacted. And here's this, sir.

When you say everybody that has an irrigation meter, whether you're using irrigation water or not?

This is if you use, so in stage five, use one gallon of water, you're gonna pay approximately, it works out to be about a half a penny per gallon extra for that water during stage five in the worst case scenario. half a penny per gallon. That's quite a deal, isn't it? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, no.

I just wanted to catch you before you moved too far past it.

All right, and so to wrap this up on the irrigation front, again, 80% of our customers are not impacted until or unless we got into a stage five condition, again, which is worst case scenario. The springs are going dry at that point, and we haven't seen that since the 1950s. But you can see here the same table as you saw for the residential class non-irrigation. We're changing the thresholds from 7,500 to 6,000, and then we're also increasing the surcharge to the same numbers, $4.18 and $4.89. All right, responses. I think this is my favorite slide. This is the change that I'm most excited about. And so for the last three and a half years, we've, or really for the last three years, we stayed in stage two. even though the aquifer conditions dictated a more restrictive stage. And we also eliminated our enforcement tactics. We stopped being the drought police. You probably remember MBU trucks rolling around back in the day in the early morning hours taking pictures. We don't do that anymore. To be a good community partner, I feel like we need to come alongside our customers provide education, and help them instead of just sending fines. And so we're gonna do that for as long as we can prove that it's efficient and effective. And so far, we've seen great response to those educational materials that we send out instead of fines. And water demands have trended pretty flat. People aren't using more water these days as they did years ago. And what we're proposing here is instead of, when we get into stage three, instead of going to once every other week watering, we're proposing to stay in once a week watering all the way through stage five. So eliminating the restriction of once every other week watering. for a few reasons. Number one, it's not a good conservation policy. Whenever you create that type of restriction, it creates scarcity. Just like the toilet paper crisis during COVID, people tend to hoard whenever you create scarcity. And it's just more efficient to water your yard if you choose to water your yard once a week to keep it alive through an extended drought. Same with trees, same with your foundation. And so we want to give that flexibility to our customers, but paired with this progressive drought surcharge to encourage conservation in those deeper drought stages. And the second piece here is on the new development side. We're proposing during stages three through five that we limit residential turf installations to just 50% of the landscaped area, and for commercial, only 25% of the landscaped area. while also requiring approved ground cover for those unlandscaped areas because we don't want that dirt just sloughing off into the streets, into the drainage systems. It needs to be stabilized in some sort of way. So we're working with the city on that and more to come on the landscape conservation front when we bring forward the land development ordinance, because we really want to get this right on the front end, y'all. We have all these rebates on the utility side, post-mortem, after the house has already been sold and folks move in and then all of a sudden they have a high water bill. What can I do? Well, then we connect them with the rebates. We need to get ahead of that and just write good ordinance that, to y'all's point about the city streets and the safety, let's get it right on the front end so that we don't have to correct things later. All right, last slide, next steps. This is the first reading here, August 10th. I'll be back, so long as tonight goes well, I'll be back for a second reading on August 24th, and then we're proposing an implementation date of October 1st, 2026. You got all the old dates from the cap and the board up there as well. Happy to answer any questions you've got.

Any questions?

Go ahead. Council Member Carter, go ahead.

Well, I'm gonna be the bad news seat. All right. Sorry. Ryan, you have sold ketchup to a nurse in white type of display tonight. Her uniform, I mean. And that's not an easy thing for you to do, right? I will not vote in favor of this unless there is a full moratorium on building in this city. The reason I say that is because New Braunfels likely didn't have to manage its water so carefully that when you have, a 30% reduction of available water to you by your surrounding operations and where you're purchasing from, that's a very serious problem. And it's only gonna get worse the more water that's used. And I appreciate what you're attempting to do by water conservation because you're looking at growth. But I'm saying We've got the lid open far enough, and there should be absolutely no data centers that approach this city to use any additional water. So I'm a firm no as it relates to that. It has nothing to do with your attempt here, nothing to do with your presentation, but the state of Texas must wake up. to what's going on with water and we must wake up as a community as far as how far are we willing to ask people to sacrifice and pay. Folks just realized an increase in their rates for their utilities and I'm hearing about it and I don't blame folks. I mean, their checks are not going up. Some people have more disposable income, it doesn't bother them. but to put any kind of additional burden on folks to now not use your water so much when we get to four and five. And I understand that that's extreme. It hadn't happened since 1950, but about the time we put this in, it's going to happen. It's the way that it is. And I'd ask you a question about how many times we had really throttled and tried to stay away from going to stage four and five, because that's a decision between you all. You know, there was some hesitation there, and I understand that as well. But the fact of the matter is, is depending on your leadership, depending on the severity of the problem, depending on the availability of water of the surrounding operations, you know, that four and five could get easier in the future. So those are my comments on that. But I do appreciate your presentation.

Understood, so if I understand correctly, you're opposed to the surcharge component, the change to the surcharge, all right. But I'm sorry, but as far as like the once a week watering proposal, you'd be in favor of that?

Yeah, I have no, I mean, there's portions of what you have in here that I would be able to support, but in general to, you know, take a large swath of folks. And I had some questions, Clarity, because your numbers only added up to around 35,000. Is that households?

That is... When you say customers. So we have, so it's a bit confusing. We have some customers that just have a...

I'm your data person.

Yeah, some customers that just have a single meter before the ordinance changes that required two meters. And so we bifurcated that in this analysis that showed just residential use and then also the irrigation meter use so the number of water customers that we actually have is close to 60 000 in total 58 000 i think is our current total customer count but yeah i i picked that off too when i started looking at slides and those numbers don't add up yeah that doesn't quite make sense but we we separated the two okay thanks for your comments um

We'll talk about data for just a second. You and I and your board, I know I've been having discussions about it. And I think one of the things that everybody's moving toward is that if a data center was, for God's sake, to get approved, that they'd have to bring everything with them. I'd have to bring the water rights, the utility, everything to be able to do it where it wouldn't impact our current population and the growth, even in a minimalistic way. But as I've asked, weeks ago that we need policies inside the city to be directed on that in addition to MBU and to any water service that comes forward. So that's on a side note. Okay, so let's talk about the first part. In the calculations on usage, We've been in restrictions off and on for the last six years. And so that usage, is that an artificial number at 6,000 because we've been in restrictions? Or is it the natural behavior? is what I'm trying to understand. Because I've had calls that have said, well, you're cutting me back from 7,500, you know. Right.

The data, the 6,000 average is an average over the last three years. But as you heard, we've been in stage two, which is once a week watering. And even, you know, if we were to get into stage zero, that's still once or twice a week watering is what it's limited to. But I think 6,000 gallons is a fair average for our system. Now there's folks on the very tail end of that now. There's people that use quite a bit more water than that. But average is 6,000. And we've seen that decline over time. And I attribute part of that to the conservation and education that we push as a utility. Because we live in central Texas. We're right on the edge of the very semi-arid region of Texas. It's getting hotter, it's getting drier. And I think it's just the right thing to do to adapt your landscape to match the character of the whole country. And I think that's the trend that we're seeing. And that's why we're seeing a decline in demand in general, which I think is a positive for the region and a positive for this community and its resiliency of its water supplies long term.

Were the equations looked at prior to 2016, 2017, the bulk of the lots that were designed in the Braunfels were at least 60 by 120, generally 7,200 square. I know 12 years ago, that's what was approved. And then as we proceeded closer to 2017, 2018, we started to see 50s and 45s shrinking the size of the lawn, which technically should reduce the irrigation. Correct. So when we looked at this adjustment, did we look at the old part of the city, my district, which is primarily 60s or bigger, if there's some differential factor there, or is this area using 6002?

Right, our analysis was not a discrete neighborhood by neighborhood or based on plat date or building date. So it was the whole system. So your point is valid that part of the decline in usage is likely driven by lot size or irrigatable landscape area, so. That's pretty intuitive. If you're shrinking your average lot sizes, they're gonna be using less water on that lawn.

Okay. The implementation, you're wanting to implement this and implement the rate structure apparently October of 26?

Yes, this year.

My concern with that for members of council is we're going to have an increase in solid waste for the first time in a while, so the citizens are going to take a hit there. And then we may have other things that are adjusting in their total bill. And my concern... Put in the drought plan, but the rate adjustment maybe should wade into 27 so that we can have a tolerance of what we're going to get hit with waste, that solid waste, and then this comes in in case we go. Now, hopefully we don't go into level four and five and this is a moot subject, but there are concerns of just how much can the population take a hit, even though it may only be 25%. that really is gonna be affected on a regular basis. There is some concern of just how much can we escalate things in the current economy and the inflation rate that we've had.

Understood. So I'm hearing some of the same concerns that Councilwoman Carter voiced. So maybe everything but the surcharges or changes to the surcharges is palatable?

What would be your thoughts on pushing it back to like January?

I'd be perfectly fine with that. We can bring it maybe as part of our budget next year with the data to show if we do get into a deeper stage. is there a revenue deficit and how could we propose that? Because if there is a revenue deficit and we're not collecting these surcharges, that revenue would then roll into everybody's rate picture, right? And so the surcharges are meant to place the cost where it's being driven, right? And so if we continue to, or if we go into a deep stage of drought and we're not collecting adequate revenue to fund our operations, that rate request is gonna come to y'all in the form of rates instead of the surcharge. And so it's a zero sum game, I guess is what I'm getting to. I can't just lay people off when we're in drought and revenues are down. And then we need those staff again whenever, I mean, we need them already. But you get where I'm going with that.

Plus, do you mind, you didn't cover it in your 14 slides, but I think you probably should, the rate advisory committee or the committee that helped design this. Maybe it's worth going into that to let people know this just didn't, Yeah, the community advisory panel workshops.

Yeah, you can see we had four meetings in the fall of last year, and we took it to our board in January and February, and then it came to y'all. But yeah, we did engage those folks, the 13 folks that sit on the cap, and they provided their recommendations to the board, which is what you saw today. The board did not make any modifications as it came to council.

Mayor French.

You had a question there, Ryan. I was thinking about kind of like large businesses that use a lot of water, maybe 100,000 gallons or more a month. So when I am going through some of my, I guess my calculations, They pay a flat rate of $4.53 per 1,000 gallons, and they have no piers and no drought surcharge. And with a household in stage four, they pay about $19.69 for, I guess, the top gallon. So I'm looking at, for conservation, why are we looking at big businesses also? I don't see that mentioned in the slides. So it looks like we're going after houses, and I actually don't see apartment complexes. Maybe houses are the same as apartment complexes as far as each unit, but I'm looking at no large businesses being affected.

That's a great point, and these surcharges would impact commercial as well. It wouldn't just be specific to residential. We show the residential impacts because we know the lion's share of the folks that showed up tonight. are impacted by this are residential customers. But no, the surcharge applies to irrigation for commercial classes as well. And as far as apartment complexes go, those folks in the apartment units, I can't speak for every apartment unit, some of them are metered slightly differently, their build is residential customers. And so they would have the same tiered thresholds as somebody that has a single meter out in front of their home. But yes, it does apply to commercial accounts. And those high water users on the commercial side certainly pay their fair share or would under this proposal.

So I think the public would like to see what businesses would be paying for And how many gallons a month they would use, you know what I mean? And as far as if you're in stage one or two, you won't see any of the surge charges, right? But everyone is going to see the rates go up because that's already been voted on a year ago. So the rates are going to go up no matter what, right?

Correct. That two-year rate plan was approved by council in 2025. And so it was for fiscal years 26 and 27. And so the new rate schedule went into place August 1st of this year.

Yeah, and I just think that the surcharge stuff, I would like to see, and it would be the public to see what businesses will be getting because they want to see the ones that are using the most water If we're trying to conserve water, how are we going to get the businesses to do their part? You know what I mean? Yes, sir. Yeah, we'll bring that information. It's just so everyone can stop asking me. Everyone's asking me, and it's hard for me to talk. But everyone's asking me, what are the big businesses doing? They're using hundreds of thousands of gallons a month. Are they –

How are they going to be impacted? That's about it. Yes, sir. We'll bring that data for the second reading if that's okay. Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Schell.

in line with what Council Member Edwards said and what you just stated, the rates increased to effect one August. And if we're gonna see a solid waste increase this year as well, that is gonna be kind of a glaring hit to the citizens. So what you kind of already suggested, pushing that to next year and the next year's budget, just to kind of spread out the pain that we're all gonna kind of feel here.

Yeah, absolutely. And if we do get into a stage four and five and we see that revenue is not impacted as we expected and we don't need those increased surcharges, then it may be mooted at that point. But we'll bring it along with more data next spring if that's the pleasure of the council.

In that regard, if you take a look at it, if we're dropping the number from 75 to six, there's an increase almost immediately in some ways for those that averages are averages. So there's going to be some people that take a hit with the implementation. But if we don't hit that heavy drought number until the following year, we've got fewer that are going to be affected by that double dip, so to say. And that's my concern. We've got a lot of people. You've got a lot of people. I mean, if you take a look at it, your numbers showed we had a number of people at 3,000 and under, right? Apartment livers, that kind of thing. And then you've got this 6,000 average, which probably has some 7,500 and 7,400 users. And so when you put the number together, you come out with 6,000. So some of the people would take a hit in this very early on, and I just think we need to moderate it a little bit.

Okay. I don't think so. The rate is already adjusted for 6,000, right? The current rates are already adjusted for 6,000 gallons. So the only thing that's changing here is the drought restrictions going from 75 to 6,000. So they're not taking a hit. They already took the hit. when we change that.

Yeah, it only happens when the drought stage changes.

Yes.

Yeah. Right. Which has to be pretty severe. Should be.

But the gallons have already been changed for usage and what you're being billed for. This didn't go along with it, so they're making it to where it's the same. Yeah, right.

And we did some analysis. Councilwoman Carter asked the question last time I was here. We followed up with that data. The change from 7,500 to 6,000 impacted 2.6% of folks. And then the 15,000 to 12,000 impacted, I believe, 4.6, 4.5, 4.6. So there is a certain group of folks that are caught in that. that little jump. But yeah, I appreciate all the feedback and this is the first reading and I believe it's well within council's purview if y'all wish to approve some or give staff direction to amend the ordinance to fit y'all's desire, which I'm hearing everything is okay except for the surcharge increase. Is that understanding correct?

That's what it sounds like. I'll let you take it from here. I do want to say that I appreciate the detail and the answers and going through all this. Because it can get kind of complicated and convoluted as you go through it. And I do want to say that.

After 9 p.m., yeah.

Conservation is synonymous with stewardship in my mind as well too. So I think conservation is something that's always important whether you have Canyon Lake full pool and they're dumping water or whether it's a critical stage because of the nature of where we live and it's just, it's never wise to just waste the resources that we're given here on this earth because everything is finite in some way, shape or form. And then I also understand, too, that the math has to math, right, when you're in a drought for having you to continue to be able to give us a service. I agree with everything you just said. Appreciate it.

Okay.

So.

Yeah. I just want to see numbers for businesses. I actually want to, you know, if we ever were to go on stage three, I want to make sure that everyone does their part. If businesses continue to use a certain amount or a lot of water, I want to make sure their rates go up too. You know, that's one big thing. And the citizens surcharges going up or, of course, rates are going to go up. It looks like we're piling a lot on them. And the businesses have to pick up some of that slack. That's about it.

But Ryan, you're gonna bring those numbers at the next council meeting? Yes.

Okay. Yeah, we'll put that together and I'll send it out to y'all beforehand and we'll have it on a slide for y'all.

Okay, appreciate it.

We'll go ahead and open this up to public comment.

Hello, Lee Brown, resident. I want to respond to the idea that this plan's asking residents to make a really huge sacrifice while we continue allowing growth. Because when you look at the numbers that we just saw, the overwhelming majority of residents aren't being asked to pay anything extra at all. And as a reminder, stage three didn't kick in last year. We saw the lake at really low levels, right? We were all panicked about that. We were in a big drought. NBU was able to keep us at stage two thanks to diversified water supplies and whatever else. So we're not even talking about something that would have happened last year when we were in an extreme drought, right? We're looking at stage four restrictions, okay? So that surcharge is only going to affect our largest residential water users in extreme droughts. They said that 6,000 gallons a month was the average. In stage three, that surcharge doesn't kick in until you get over 12,000 gallons. That's twice the average amount of water before you pay even a dollar of drought surcharge. And if we look at the actual dollar amounts, at 14,000 gallons, you'd be paying another $8.36. At 15,000 gallons, it's $12.54. even at 20,000 gallons, three times the normal amount or the average amount, you're looking at 33 bucks. So I think we really need to be clear about what a sacrifice really means. It's not a significant new cost being imposed on the average resident, right? It's a relatively small additional surcharge on the highest water users and only during extreme drought, right? And that's for the water that they're using above a certain threshold. So that doesn't kick in until they get over that threshold. And that's really where I think the cost should fall. If water's scarce and I choose to use substantially more of it than most people, I should expect to pay more for that additional water. And I don't think it's fair to spread the financial consequences across everyone else who's already conserving and using less. We talk constantly about growth needing to pay for additional demands, it puts on our infrastructure and water supply, and I totally agree. But the same principle applies here too, that people creating the additional demand should bear more of the cost of that demand. Growth absolutely adds water demand, and we need to plan and pay for that appropriately, but requiring a total moratorium on building before we're willing to ask our very highest water users to pay a few dollars more during periods of severe drought is really just enormously out of proportion. We can make growth pay for its share, we can plan for future water supply, and we can ask the people using the most water to pay more when that water is scarce. So I support the drought plan.

Thank you.

Maybe to Warnky District 5, just two quick questions. At the very beginning, you talked about percentage reduction. In the base, before there's any stage one, what percentage of water?

Mr. Warnky, if you'll just direct the questions to council. Okay. And then when you're done, I'll give this. Okay, well, y'all won't probably know. I'll give Mr. Kelso an opportunity. He can answer. I'll give Mr. Kelso an opportunity to answer all the questions.

So this is who can answer the question up there. When we're in stage zero, what is the percentage of water usage that is household and what is the percent that is outside? Anybody have that answer?

Well, did it have anything to do with the presentation?

The percentage that's inside use versus outside use. Say if I use 500 gallons inside and 1,000 gallons outside, what's the percentage that basically we're looking at?

When you're finished with your questions, then I'll go ahead and let Mr. Kelso answer.

So I'm sorry, I didn't get the answer. Oh, I'll get up there. Oh, okay, okay.

Yes, exactly, Mr. Kelso will then get up and answer.

Okay, okay, cool. And while we're, let me do a second question and then I'm done. Thank you. A slide, I think between seven and 10, there were about three big barcodes there, I think somewhere between seven and 10. Could you pull that up, I had a question on it. Go back, yeah. Yeah, go back one, forward that way, okay. No, that's not the slide, a different slide. There was one that just had three, that has four. There we go. Yeah, that is a slide, I was trying to understand the percentages. The percentages on top of the bars Like the 16.89 and the 2.97, is that the percentage of water usage or what is that?

No, sir, that's the percentage of customers that fall into that usage bracket. So the black number is zero to 6,000 gallons, six to 20,000 gallons and 20,000 plus. And then the count of customers, 12,000, 2,500, that correlates with the percentage of customers that fall into those usage brackets.

So 3% of the people, or about 450% of the people used for all that.

450 people, about 3%. Thank you. I know, it's after nine o'clock. Can't have charts this complicated. To answer Mr. Warmke's first question, being advised by staff, about 50% of water on average in stage zero, or really any stage, is used for irrigation in our system. And that number can increase seasonally depending on how wet or dry it is. So a significant amount of water is used for landscape irrigation in town. And we can bring that number next time we come too. It's a fun fact. Thank you. Just don't have it in my pocket. Appreciate it. Yep.

I just wanted to, and last year we reached stage.

We stayed in stage two, but the Edwards would have taken us into stage four. But we stayed in stage two. We did. Conscious decision by the mayor. Because of our diversified water portfolio, he felt, that he wanted to remain in stage two because he did not want to put the burden of once every other week watering on our customers. And so with this proposal, we would delete once every other week watering. We would stick to once a week watering all the way through stage five. but allow this conservation signaling to occur with the surcharges in those later stages.

I think Ms. Brown made a great point earlier with us being only in stage two last year, and that was one of the greatest droughts we've seen in quite some time.

Yes, with this proposal, of course, it's still within the discretion of the mayor, if we were to have followed critical period management rules to the T and followed the aquifer, we would have been in stage four last year. At some point. Right, but again, it's at the discretion of the mayor. I give the mayor advice based on our water portfolio and the health of regional lakes, aquifer, provide that advice, and again, When it was once every other week watering, I personally am strongly against that as a conservation measure. I know it doesn't work. It puts more strain on our system. You have to pump harder every other week to supply higher demands on your system as a utility and creates more water loss. It just doesn't make sense. So.

And in this case, the surcharge is only going into effect if we get to stage three or four or five, correct? Correct, as it has historically. So it's not gonna hit anybody's budget come October 1st.

And then it's only the folks who are excessive water users. Right. So people who choose not to be good stewards.

These guys in red and orange, right?

Correct. Okay.

I make a motion to approve the ordinance, or your presentation of the ordinance as written. I second.

Ms. Wilkes?

No, it's not a roll call.

Okay, all those in favor? All those in favor, raise your right hand.

It's a first reading. It requires an action. Ms. Wilkins.

I'm sorry, I was listening to Nathan.

That's all right. Is it roll call or show of hands?

We can do a roll call. It's not required, but we can do it.

Can I amend our motion? We can make a motion to amend.

We already have a motion on the table.

We already have a motion on the table. We do. But you can make a motion to amend a motion.

Only the person making the motion can amend it.

And I want to amend the motion to delay the billing until 27. What's convenient in that? But approve the plan now so that you can structure it and get it in place.

Point of order. I've already made the motion. She seconded it as it was proposed. I've asked to amend the motion. But there's already a motion on the table.

You can amend the motion upon a majority vote. So if a majority of you guys agree to amend it.

You can amend. You can make a motion to amend. Nathan is correct. I looked it up last week. You make a motion to amend. Then we have to vote on the amendment.

Right.

If it passes or fails, then we move on to the motion.

Right. That's correct. Okay.

So we have a motion to amend. We'll state your amendment.

To move the billing date until...

Mr. Edwards, please turn your mic on so we can all hear you.

To 2027. Approve the motion, but my amendment is that the billing structure would start in 2027.

So your amendment is to, that's the amendment? Yeah. To add the billing structure in 2027? Right. Do we have a second?

And you guys at this point would, you don't need a second to amend, right? You're just gonna vote on the modification. On the amendment itself. Sorry, yeah.

The amendment itself. Yeah.

It's a show of hands.

Let's go ahead and do a roll call. A roll call on the amendment only. Just to be clear, yes sir.

Okay, so the amendment is to delay the billing cycle to October of 27. Ms. Wilkins, will you please call roll?

Yes, Council Member Carter? Nay. Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi?

No.

Council Member Edwards?

Aye.

Council Member Spradley?

Nay.

Council Member Lebowski? Nay. And Council Member Shaw?

Nay.

And Mayor French?

I'm sorry, Mayor French. Back to the original motion.