City Council - Special Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here this evening. I call this special meeting of the New Braunfels City Council to order. Today's date is August 19, 2026, and the time is 5 o'clock. We requested all cell phones and other devices be on silent except emergency on-call personnel.

Madam Secretary Gale, can you please call roll?

Yes, sir. Councilmember Carter is not present at this time. Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi?

Here.

Council Member Edwards. Here. Council Member Spradley.

Here.

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

I am here. A quorum is present. We will proceed. Please join me in invocation by Council Member Shaw and followed by the pledges of allegiance.

Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for this opportunity to be here together as we continue our review of this budget. Please give us open minds and open hearts as we discuss this process, Lord. Let us remember that it's the city and the people of the city that we are representing and make our decisions made from sound minds and hearts and made with discernment. Please be with our police and fire as they are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and our military at home and abroad. I ask you these things in your name, I pray. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

All right, everyone, we're going to start with the workshop. We're going to go to item A, presentation and discussion regarding the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget and plan of municipal services and the 2026 no new revenue and voter approval tax rates. Robert Camerino, city manager.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. So this is the third and final budget workshop of the week. Tonight, we are going to go through the enterprise funds with you. So that would be the airport, the golf course, the civic and convention center, and the solid waste department as well, or fund. Also, based on the feedback that we got yesterday, we have some additional scenarios to provide to you this evening. But before we do that, we also want to sort of recap some prior slides that we had shown you about the impact to the median taxable homestead property and the average taxable homestead property based upon the various rates, right? The current rate, the no new revenue rate, the one cent. and then the voter approval rate. We wanna make sure that we go through that yet one more time with you so that not one, it helps to put that information in front of you one more time in front and center, but then also we put it on the record that we then went through that one more time before we get into the scenarios. And ultimately then we will be asking you to vote on a proposed tax rate. Again, the proposed tax rate that you vote on tonight will be the ceiling, the maximum rate, that can ultimately be adopted. You can always adopt a rate lower than that. With that, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Jordan, who's gonna cover some of the enterprise funds.

Good evening. We spent quite a bit of time last night on the enterprise funds, so we're gonna move through this quickly this evening. For the New Braunfels National Airport, as Robert mentioned last night, all of their funding requests were approved this year, or in the recommended budget. The 10% match for the pavement rehabilitation construction. We also are recommending funding for two electro, tow vehicles. The initial request was for one new and then refurb of the existing, but we thought it was a better investment to purchase two new tow vehicles. And then the striping project and one maintenance worker. There was also a request for a line service tech, but as you recall, when we moved forward with the loan forgiveness, we funded two positions through that. One of those was a customer service representative and one of those was a line tech position. So all of those requests were fulfilled this year. As we mentioned last night, the Landa Park Golf Course continues to be extremely successful. We are looking at potentially over 62,000 rounds this year, which every year we're setting a record. to continues to be tremendously successful. So we are going to complete the bunker renovation this next fiscal year. And that is moving forward with the capillary concrete bunkers, which drain much better than the existing bunkers. And the New Braunfels Civic and Convention Center, we're going to replace the automatic door openers on the restrooms. We're also funding shift differential. This is a retention strategy and aligns with the rest of the organization. So we have individuals who work overnight at the Civic Center and alternate schedules. And so we are recommending a shift differential for those employees.

Ending with solid waste, again, you can see some of the initiatives that are funded for this fiscal year is full replacement of all vehicles that are up for replacement. As we talked about at your retreat, solid waste vehicles are very expensive and have gone up in price over the past several years. So the budget includes roughly $2.7 million to replace the vehicles that are scheduled for replacement. Some additional initiatives, a trailer with a pressure washer when we have hydraulic leaks that occur while providing service, and then increased capacity for commercial dumpster repair. One other takeaway from the graph that you see there, again, expenditures are higher than revenues. That's relying on set-aside reserves specifically for one-time costs, primarily the replacement vehicles, as I just referenced. So at the end of our very long budget workshop last night, we said we'd pick up and get right into tax rate scenarios. So that's what we're going to do. So to recap the work from yesterday, again, both on the 11th, the 17th, and last night, City Council provided direction to staff to develop scenarios for additional investment based on your priorities. Again, as a reminder for the City Council, but also those that are in attendance and watching online. The initiatives that you wanted to support, whether specifically mentioned or broader in nature, was to fund additional initiatives in police, fire, streets, and employee compensation. we were directed to provide scenarios at the no new revenue rate, a one cent increase and a voter approval rate. And so based on that discussion last night, city council consensus was to move forward with a scenario focused on the no new revenue rate and to continue discussion and refinement today of exactly which initiatives move forward within that scenario. Again, I know we've got some new folks here with us today, so I think it's worth kind of revisiting again what the no new revenue rate is. And I've got some slides that we presented in previous presentations to go over as well. But again, the no new revenue rate is a calculation done by our tax office here that determines what rate would be necessary to generate the same level of taxes on the same properties that were on the rolls this upcoming year and last year, okay? IN ADDITION, LAST NIGHT THERE WAS SOME ADDITIONAL INTEREST TO POTENTIALLY COME UP WITH AN ALTERNATIVE NO NEW REVENUE RATE SCENARIO THAT INCREASED THAT COLA FROM THE 3% TO 3.5%. SO OUR TEAM HAS PREPARED THAT, AND SO WE'LL PRESENT THAT THIS EVENING AGAIN TO PROVIDE TWO SCENARIOS TO HOPEFULLY AGAIN ESTABLISH SOME CONSENSUS ON WHICH DIRECTION YOU'D LIKE TO GO AT THE NO NEW REVENUE RATE. So again, I wanted to cover some of these slides again. I think it's important to mention again that the city portion of the overall tax bill equates to approximately 27%. If you're looking specifically at a Comal County and a New Braunfels Independent School District example, those numbers can shift slightly if it's Comal ISD or Guadalupe County because those entities have slightly different homestead exemption approved. So I guess I think it's worth mentioning that. Again, of the overall tax bill, 27% is what gets paid to the City of New Braunfels. As we've talked about in previous workshops, again, what you're considering this evening and where we got direction from you on last night is to move forward on the no new revenue rate. But as the graphs will show and as we've talked about before, we wanna be transparent. That does not mean that every single property owner will pay the same or less or more in property taxes. every single individual property owner, whether it be residential, commercial, industrial, raw land, could be different. The no new revenue rate looks at the collective properties, all properties. with exemptions, without exemptions, commercial, residential, again, to calculate what that rate needs to be to generate the same taxes next year. And so, as Robert was mentioning, what we've tried to do to illustrate some different scenarios is show what the impacts are in both Comal and Guadalupe County separately, because as we discussed, it paints a little bit of a different picture for median homestead values and average homestead values. And I wanted to go over those again, And so again, you can see here, and I've zeroed in on the no new revenue rate based on our discussion last week, right? So again, median taxable value in Comal County, if the no new revenue rate was adopted, they would pay roughly $5 more, I'm sorry, $5 less annually in Comal County at a median taxable value property. And in Comal County, In Guadalupe County, you can see a median taxable homestead property at the no new revenue rate would pay roughly $23 less. Again, as we discussed last week, when you look at the average, it paints a little bit of a different picture. The average homestead property in Comal is still going up slightly, while the median is going down. Again, telling us that home prices, home values on the upper end of the spectrum are affecting that average. So you can see, even at the no new revenue rate, In Comal County, an average taxable homestead would pay roughly $40 more in taxes. In Guadalupe County, it still would be less. That's because the average homestead taxable value in Guadalupe County is still going down, but it's not going down as much as the median. Again, that's telling you that home prices on the upper end of the spectrum are affecting the average in Guadalupe County as well. Just not as much as it is in Comal County.

Mr. Warner, so it's $40 annually. Annually, $40 annually.

So if you divide it by 12 months, it's $3.33. Roughly. Okay. Again, for an average homestead property, residential property in Comal County. So again, familiar screen from last night. Again, this is the same scenario. I did want to count one adjustment, or I did want to point out one adjustment. As I said yesterday, we were working on these scenarios all the way up just about until our meeting. When reevaluating the scenario today, we realized that THE SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICER RECURRING COST WAS SLIGHTLY OVERSTATED SO WE'VE ADJUSTED THAT SO THAT CREATED A LITTLE BIT MORE CAPACITY SO THAT'S REFLECTED HERE ON THE SCREEN BUT I'LL GO THROUGH THIS SCENARIO ONE MORE TIME. AGAIN AT THE NO NEW REVENUE RATE AS WELL AS THAT ADDITIONAL JUNE SALES TAX ADJUSTMENT AGAIN THOSE TWO THINGS ARE COMPLETELY UNRELATED RIGHT as we talked about yesterday in previous years, when city council has had an interest in adding additional initiatives to the proposed budget, those June sales tax collections, if warranted, have given us additional capacity. That's because the June sales taxes are made available after the budget's been delivered to you all, right? So we talked about that yesterday. That created some additional recurring and one-time capacity. And then again, we factored in those additional property taxes that would be generated Again, at the no new revenue rate, the one cent increase in the voter approval rate. As I said earlier, these two scenarios are focused entirely on the no new revenue rate. Again, we added some positions based on the direction you gave us, which are funded for nine months. The one-time funding includes any of the fund balance requirements so that we ensure that if we do add these initiatives to the budget, we're meeting our fund balance policy and the city council's fund balance target of 30% of recurring expenditures. And then as I said yesterday, As a budget balancing strategy to fund these initiatives, we are reducing funding for one of the initiatives that was included in the budget. That is the one-time transfer to the facilities maintenance fund from the general fund to provide, to continue to set aside some funding for the FM 306 facility once we ultimately move over there after MBU moves to their headquarters facility. So again, I'm happy to go through this scenario again, line by line if needed, but what I wanted to focus on next was again, that alternative scenario based on some of the feedback we got from city council is wanting to explore, is it possible to increase the cost of living adjustment more so by going to 3.5%. And so I wanted to put this scenario in front of the city council. And so walking through what that does to the scenario, you can see that it eliminates the crack sealer it reduces that additional funding for citywide concrete and street work to meet ADA requirements from $300,000 in recurring down to $200,000 in recurring. And then it also requires us to add an additional budget balancing strategy. So you can see down there in the second to the bottom line, it takes all of the transfer from the general fund to the facilities maintenance fund, which is budgeted at $500,000. And then it also reduces part of the one-time contingency that's budgeted in the general fund. It takes $25,000 of that.

Mr. Warner, can I ask you about the crack sealer?

Yes.

So currently we have one?

We do have one, it's a 2010 model. This would have replaced that unit. Oh, okay. So I'll pause here for questions and discussion.

Anybody, go ahead.

So the school resource officer, can you explain to me again the one-time fee? Our reoccurring is 39,728. How do we get the 223,992 as the one-time?

So similar to the recurring costs where MBISD pay 75% of that cost, it is the same thing with the one-time expenditures as well. However, What we have traditionally done with NBISD is we've bought those costs, we've paid for those costs, the vehicle and the equipment up front. We've then allowed NBISD to pay their 75% over a six to seven year period to smooth that cost out for them.

So they do pay it back? They do pay it back.

They pay it back over a seven year period. But we have to have the allocation and the funding to make that purchase outright in year one.

And go ahead, Lee Edwards.

I know we represent MBISD in our calculations. Looking at the tax rate proposed for 27 for MBISD versus CISD, that's two cents higher in Comel. So I just want everybody to be cognizant if you live on the other side of the river, your tax rate is two cents higher over there. Now, same time, those that live in Guadalupe County that are In our service, their county tax is slightly lower, so there's an offset if there's CISD on that side, whereas in the MBISD side, they're not. So how does that impact our budget? I mean, from the public standpoint, it's a choice to live in a district, and I understand, and so there's certain things that go with that. But when we talk about the numbers up here, it has an impact on our citizens.

Sure, and just to give a little bit more information about Comal ISD, MBISD, Guadalupe County, and Comal County. Comal County, I'll start with Comal County. Comal County has the same homestead exemption for residential properties as we do, 20%. NBISD, like all school districts in Texas, has the homestead exemption. That's been increased quite significantly over the past couple of years through constitutional amendments. Comal ISD, which I don't have the information in front of me, but if their tax rate is higher, that could be true. But it's worth mentioning that Comal ISD is one of the only school districts in Texas that also includes a 20% homestead exemption on top of that, on top of the $140,000 homestead exemption that's authorized by the state. Guadalupe County, their homestead exemption actually is 1% and a minimum of $5,000. So that's the point that I was saying earlier, right? is that, again, there's varying homestead exemptions that will affect at least residential property owners in both Comal ISD, MBISD, Comal County, and Guadalupe County.

One other question. Do we have somebody that can speak on the crack sealer with, what is it, 981 miles of lane, highway we're covering, right? Yeah. Our demand for crack seal, and especially some of the older districts or so on, are we getting information back that that's a high necessity to keep us from having to go in for full maintenance within two to three years?

Well, again, just to reiterate, it's a replacement. So we have an existing unit. It's just beyond its useful life. And it was your request number 14 from the Public Works Department.

Thank you. Council Member Bradley.

Unless I'm missing it, I've looked through the budget book and I've looked through these scenarios and I don't see how we're gonna pay for the services of Ryan Henry for the investigation. Does anybody know where that falls?

No, Robert, you wanna jump in there? We've actually asked for at least some estimates of the cost. We've not yet received those from Mr. Henry so that we can incorporate those into the budget. I know that we did include, we did increase the cost for outside counsel in the city attorney's budget as well. but that may need to be funded out of contingency at this point, but right now we don't have those cost estimates, sir.

Well, I think that needs to be taken into consideration before we decide which one of these scenarios to leap forward with.

Councilwoman Carter?

Yeah. Perhaps it was late. I don't remember. When were these scenarios asked for? Were they in session during recording?

Yes, ma'am. They were on Monday.

Okay. Well, we asked for scenarios on Monday and you delivered them.

Yesterday. Yesterday, yes, ma'am.

So what's this for? I mean, these muddy the water to me. I come in and I see these. Where did these arrive from?

We had a request from the mayor to look at the possibility of going from 3% to 3.5% or 2.5% to 3.5% on the COLA. And so that's the scenario that you see here. was at the request of the mayor to at least present a scenario that could accomplish that.

Wasn't that in yesterday's numbers? I could have swore I saw three and a half at the top of those columns.

That was with a higher tax rate.

I think that might have been the... That was scenario two yesterday.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Or scenario three.

Or two or three, right.

Correct.

So why are we focusing on just no new revenue rate?

That felt like that was the consensus at the end of the workshop last night.

Interesting. I hadn't made any consensus, but.

It was certainly informal, but one of the things that we were trying to get to at the end of last night, and I know it was certainly late into the evening, was what direction we wanted to go, where we wanted to land on the tax rate, and that we committed that we would continue to refine the list at that tax rate scenario from today through when we ultimately adopt the tax rate and budget on September 14th.

Okay, I'm just trying to go between lists and make a determination of best options. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Looking at the scenarios that were presented last night, one more time, the three and a half percent, Mayor, you're correct, was under scenario two and scenario three, ma'am. Okay.

Mayor Bertin. Yes, sir. So looking at this one right here with the 3.5%, obviously anytime we can give more in cost of living adjustments, it's always a good thing and something that we'd love to see be able to happen. I do have some concern with... the reduction on the funding for citywide concrete and street work. I think everybody knows that that's something that's pretty significantly needed throughout our city, so it does concern me a little bit. I mean, there's obviously some different ways that we can move some things around. One thing that comes to mind possibly to discuss, and I know this was, Mayor, get you to weigh in on this after I bring this up, but I think on, On the Humane Society one, we had talked about previously that there might be an opportunity later on after Comal County came back with their numbers to see what that would look like as far as closing the gap. Does that mean that after this, if this was adopted, that there would still be an opportunity to secure potentially some additional funding? If so, that brings me to the part where I'm wondering if possibly the mayor would be amicable to maybe reducing that sum, putting some of that money into the city-wide concrete and streets, maintaining the 3.5% for the COLA, and then chasing those additional funds at a little bit later date once we see where Comal County comes in. Just a thought, if you can speak to that part of it.

Yes, the Humane Society strategy is one and the same. intended to provide that capacity in a one-time fashion once we come back and we understand how much the county is going to be contributing, what the Humane Society's 27 calendar year budget is. And again, I think I may have mentioned yesterday, I know that their board is interested in actually just coming back for a one-time supplemental payment. to address some of the facility issues that they're currently having. All of those are on the table. And we would have the capacity, I guess, to? This would be the capacity. Okay. You know, if the council chose to not do a one-time supplemental, but they wanted to use that to pay for an increased recurring contribution to the contract, like a higher percentage, you could do that, it would just commit us then to that cost in fiscal year 28 and future as well. So it's worth mentioning.

I'm gonna repeat that back to make sure I understand you guys. You're saying in lieu of... the one-time 100K just increase, I think we're at 13% right now.

We would use the same funding either way. Okay. It would either support a one-time supplemental if that is what the board requested and that's what the city council chose to do. If the city council would prefer to increase the recurring contractual commitment, you could still use those funds for fiscal year 27. It would just put us on the hook to... to increase those funds in fiscal year 28. Okay.

So I don't know if you, Mayor, would be open to that possibility or not.

So when you say if you take the 100,000 off of this one, at some point in 2027, we'll have a chance to meet with Comel County to see what they're gonna put in?

They're scheduled to take action on their contract sometime early this fall. and then the Humane Society will have their draft 2027 calendar year budget around the same time. Once we have those two factors, we could come back and again, city council could have a discussion about whether or not you wanna pledge any additional funding to the Humane Society. And again, it would come from these funds.

When you say these funds, you mean what we're looking at right now?

Yes, sir.

And so, If this is going to go into the concrete, I'm trying to understand there will be no funds.

What I was saying, I think, is maybe just reducing that some, not using all of it.

So how much of the concrete, so this is increased funding, right? a number for the concrete already somewhere? Maybe I missed it in the paperwork here.

The Streets Department currently absorbs that cost within their budget. You may remember that when we were talking through the unfunded resource request list, they requested $2 million in recurring funding. I mean, I think they kind of have an unlimited demand, if you will, for meeting the concrete-related requirements for street maintenance that continue to increase. especially as we're addressing the ADA requirements associated with those street improvements. And so really this is just trying to start to make progress, add additional funding year over year. that those street dollars go further. Again, that was one of the priorities of council, was trying to find ways to add additional funding for street maintenance and repair.

Rather than kinda just maintaining where we're at, trying to get out in front of it a little bit. So I don't know, maybe if you'd be interested in doing 50-50 on that, that way we could kinda get that backwards. If you wanna think about it, that's fine. We can.

I wanna think about this one, Are you telling me that all the money we're giving right now to concrete, it's not enough for this year?

Yes, sir. There's additional demands, absolutely.

And the additional demand is more than 260? Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. And what we're trying to do, what this scenario does is just incrementally increase that line item budget. Jared had mentioned $2 million. This would be a 10% increase to that line item so that we could continue to do more in that area. And I would agree. I wouldn't eliminate that $100,000 from the Humane Society. No, not at all. I wouldn't do that because then we're having to find it later.

Correct.

But if there's an openness to maybe reducing it, then that's fine. We still leave some funding in there for the Humane Society. Right.

I see what you guys are saying. Yeah. Let me think about that one.

Sure. Just an idea to throw out there.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Understanding though that even the 200,000 is still a 10% increase to what we're currently doing. Certainly. So I just want to make sure that that's not lost on anyone.

Go ahead. And I think we said it last night, but this is just an example of what we can do. Tonight, we're mostly focusing on the rate. Like this is just an example of if we do the no new revenue, these are the things we could do. So we're not like voting on this is the locked in guaranteed scenario. This is just an example.

That's correct. Thank you, Council Member Shaw again. The reason we're taking action on the proposed rate this evening is because we need to provide notice in the paper to meet the statutory requirements. You are not scheduled to finally adopt the rate until September 14th. So you can work on this scenario all the way up until then. But I think you asked the question last night too, and it was a good one. When do we need to have the decision made by? I do think we should have that decision made by September 14th. Because even though it's a no new revenue rate, It is a tax rate increase of 0.67 cents. And so I think the constituents are going to want to know what is that going towards, even though it's at the no new revenue rate.

Councilman Lebowski.

I just wanted to ask again, going off of Councilmember Spradley, can you explain to me again where the fees for the Henry Law will come out of?

Well, again, as city manager Camerino said, we've requested what cost estimate is for that effort. Haven't received that information yet. We did increase funding in the city attorney's office for outside legal services, budget to budget by $100,000. And we've talked about citywide contingencies. We do have some one-time contingencies in our non-departmental fund. It would be $300,000 after this scenario that could be used for any unbudgeted initiative that comes up. you know it's the the general fund budget as we've gone through is roughly 118 million dollars and we do our best to try and plan for anything and everything but that's very difficult to do things come up during the year that we have to respond to that's why we have budget amendments that's in in having some funds set aside for contingencies gives us a little bit more flexibility in how to address those things that come up so those are just two examples of how we would look to to cover that cost

Mr. Warner, would those funds not be available from the bond money for that project?

Potentially. I don't think we've got a legal opinion on whether or not those funds can be used for that just yet.

Yeah, I haven't looked into that, but we can look into that. One way or another, it'll get paid.

Well, I know one way or another, but where is it coming from is my question.

I think we should probably get an opinion from our bond council as to whether or not those would be eligible expenses for bond funds, and we can certainly find that out.

But we still- I think we can maybe do that before the September 14th?

Yes, sir, we can do that. All right, thanks.

Yes, before September 14th would be perfect.

And even if they are not eligible, As Mr. Warner has mentioned, we still have increased the city attorney's budget by at least $100,000. We still have some contingencies that could be used for it, understanding that if we're having to dip into those contingencies and that will come to you as a budget amendment, okay? So we can still adopt the budget and move forward and still cover those costs one way or another.

I have a question.

Go ahead.

With regard to the accounting on that, I expect for these funds to be recovered. So are those set up as a receivable in the accounting world? So do those reflect in the budget? Because they're going to be recovered one way or another through our legal counsel.

The budget is prepared on a modified accrual basis, right? So we need to account for the expenditure one way or the other. Mm-hmm.

but it shows as a receivable. So do you have to have it available in the budget?

Yes.

Okay. Very good. Thank you. Yes.

Anyone else? Go ahead.

When an organization dynamically changes, whether city manager or city attorney, things are going on. The HR number that was presented yesterday was maybe conservative. And in the event where we have higher turnover and training rates, what do we do in some of these areas to cover those costs of replacement? And it steps outside the budget we looked at. We can't not hire them, though I know we do delay tactics. Okay, we can stagger them out. We can do some things. But my concern is with several of these items we're looking at, if we go all the way to the three and a half, we may be losing some gas in here that we're going to need just because the normal attrition, increased attrition because of turnover management, turnover styles, all the things that go into it. Plus, we have some rising costs and demands. We have the reserves for a reason, but generally, you don't wanna go into those. I mean, those are to hold your bond rating in place. I mean, in a catastrophe, that's what they're for. They're for a catastrophic event, not a miss in the budget, so to say. Correct.

So how would we address that? What we've done in years past, I mean, is after we close out the fiscal year, we've run into situations where our revenues came in slightly lower, our expenditures came in slightly higher, and we kind of start the year in a minor fund balance deficit. And so what we do immediately is we work with our departments, we look for ways to cut back costs to ensure that we are projected to, in the fiscal year, structurally balanced. And so it's a fluid situation that we evaluate as we close out the fiscal year and as we begin the new year. Similarly, after the first quarter of the fiscal year, if we're starting to see things where costs are exceeding budget, where we believe costs are going to exceed budget or revenues are predicted to come in lower, then we take a similar strategy and look at ways where we either, we've done some hiring freezes in the past, we've cut back travel, we've done all the traditional things that you hear cities do when they run into budget crunches to manage that.

Any further questions from up here? So this is the end of item A, and then we're gonna move to item B, is that what it is? This presentation was it for tonight?

What we're really looking for is at least for some direction on any potential changes that you all may have to any of these scenarios. But really, really the focus is on the property tax rate itself. That's what needs to be adopted tonight. We can still continue to work on, we can continue to work on these scenarios, as Mr. Werner mentioned, all the way up through September the 14th. But really it's that property tax rate that's important this evening and the recorded vote on that.

And Mr. Camerino, both number one and two are the same no new revenue rate? Correct. So either one. Pardon me? Either one, the same rate. Yes, sir.

Mayor Potem, go ahead.

I just wanted to say in response to what Mr. Camerino just said and from my point of view, from the direction you're looking for, I personally think the... No new revenue rate is the wise and fiscally responsible way to go. I think it's a good middle ground between the current rate and then going all the way to the extreme of the voter approval rate in light of the waning property values and the considerably slowed growth that we've seen. And in light of the fact also that None of us know what the market is gonna do next year if property values do turn around. We don't wanna be sitting at the extreme high end of things. And then the taxpayer is sitting out there with increased home values that are driving up property taxes in and of themselves. And then they also have this extreme high end of the property tax increase coupling that. So I think this is the wise, smart first step to take. And then as we talked about, as we move into the first part of next year, in the spring, I think we start getting toward the end of Q1, start looking at where we're at, what sales tax revenues look like, what property values look like, and what the future kind of holds. and then start having those conversations with the taxpayer and what our expenses are gonna look like and what our revenues look like. And if we have to make some further adjustments going forward, then we can start having those conversations. But I'm landing on the revenue rate for the record.

Thank you. I got one question. You guys use the word average. For everyone out there, what is average? Is that 200 for a house? I believe that was on today's at slide 13.

I'm sorry, Mayor, were you asking what the average city tax bill is or what the average taxable value is of the property?

Yeah, if someone owed a house worth $200,000, how much would that go up for them if we did this no new rate?

So let me go back to those slides. Right, so if.

I don't know what average is. What do you guys deem as average?

So we actually take the numbers directly from the certified values delivered by Guadalupe County and Comal County and that's what we use for these scenarios. Your question, Mayor, specifically was if a house was $200,000 last year and it's $200,000 this year, you would apply the tax rate of .4089 last year and .4156 this year.

So just like Council Member Spradley was saying, is that about $1.30 more a month?

I'm sorry, Mayor, for which scenario?

So if we were to go to the middle one, the middle box here, for 1295 at an average, I'm looking at $1.30 a month extra. I'm trying to do my own little math here.

It would be $3.41 per month.

That's for Connell County. Yeah, so, okay. Now, the rest of the presentation, this is it, because I was going through for the past two days this big book here, and I don't know if there's some corrections that need to be made. For this book, I have a few questions on it.

You're welcome to ask them.

But does anyone else have anything for this presentation here?

Can I just go off your coattails? Yeah, go ahead. He was asking the average cost of a home. how much is the average home here in the city? And I think that's important because then we could take that average cost of a home and then try to get that out to the public to say.

That's what those graphs demonstrated. That was the average? This is median. Okay. This is median, which is smack dab in the middle of all residential homestead properties. 281. This is the average. Okay.

So it's the mathematical average. Ultimately, if we did go with the no new rate, everyone would be looking at 341 extra a month.

No, sir, only the average homestead in Comal County. If you're in Guadalupe County, it'd be less than that.

Less than that.

Because see on this graph, Mayor, how the average in Guadalupe County goes from 252 down to 244, whereas in Comal, the average goes from 306 to 311.

Yeah, I'm just trying to make it very, very simple to look at. This is how much you're going to pay extra every month. Because anyone can take this apart and still be confused. Me, like me. Okay? I'm looking at something. How much am I going to pay extra a month if I own a house that's $300,000? how much would my mortgage go up?

Right. If someone's property tracked exactly with Comal County's metrics, meaning their taxable value went from $306,672 to $311,516, they'd pay a little over $3 more per month.

Okay.

At the no new revenue rate. If they were in Guadalupe County, they'd pay slightly less per month.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Yes, sir. And this is the same information, just for the folks in the crowd, this is the same information we went through on Monday.

Yeah, maybe I'm just a little tired. I'm just trying to make it extremely simple. This is how much more you will pay. That's all.

And each home is different, right? Because some values have actually gone up on a home where some have gone down. This is really just the average. So it really does depend on what the taxable value of a specific home is will determine how much either more or less you may pay, sir.

Would it be okay to ask for a couple of different price points for homes, 300,000, 400,000, maybe 500,000, this is what you would pay, would that help?

Certainly, and I'll go back to this table again, Mayor and Council, you may remember this from Monday's presentation, right? So this showed you several different scenarios, right? It was showing you the increase or decrease for median homestead properties, right? Again, median is right smack dab in the middle of all residential homestead properties. So it was showing us in Comel and Guadalupe at the current rate, the no new revenue rate, a one cent increase in the voter approval rate, how much less, that's in the parentheses, or how much more positive they pay. So that this, Council Member Spradley, this is what we were trying to do. We were trying to illustrate the median versus the average to try and demonstrate that. Because again, we're trying our best to keep it simple as well, right? And if we keep putting more and more scenarios out there, I want to be mindful of that as well. So we tried to keep it to median and average. And the reason why we showed Comel and Guadalupe is because it's showing different scenarios. All right.

Council Member Carter.

Okay. As I've indicated throughout this week and really throughout the strategic planning as well, I see the city as financially in the hole while we're still balanced. And I say that because we're short of where we need to be for essential operations and for forecasting. That translates to shortage. whether you like it or not. You can be balanced and still be short. When you have holes, potholes in your streets, when you have officers that you need and you can't hire, when you have firemen that you need and you can't get them, attorneys that you can't get, you're short. What I forecast is a mandatory expenditure when I look at this book. I see 3.37 in mandatory expenditures for just police and fire. that we're short. None of these scenarios get us 3.37 million, let alone what everybody else needs, right? So what that translates into from a cold, hard executive doing numbers and doing budgets are cuts. So if we, I'm going to propose that if we stay at where we're at and there's no new revenue and one cent or whatever, We're approved to go to a level that was approved by the taxpayers. That means they know that this is what they have agreed to. So for 12 years, how long has it been since there hasn't been an increase?

Since fiscal year 2014. 2014, so 12 years.

what will be 13 years. It was a political decision to not take an increase. I am not a politician. I might sit in a politician's role, but I'm telling you facts about numbers. I'm talking to the public as much as everybody in this room. People might not like it, but we have to start getting out of these holes. If folks want their roads straightened out, if we wanna take care of all the dogs and cats in New Braunfels, if we want citations issued and we wanna be safe, we want our fires put out, we want our buildings inspected, we're up here to make tough decisions. They're not always comfortable, but they're tough. Right now we've got mandatory expenditures unfunded of 3.37 just in this list. That's of a total unfunded list of 22.63 million. So the entirety of what we're not funding due to a shortfall requested by the city staff. And I look at that list and there's not anything flimsy on there. It's not like everybody's going on a vacation. That is a, 14.89% number that we're not getting to. We've got funded requests of 9.842 million that are presumably new expenditures infused. That's 30.3% as compared to the unfunded. So there's an overall need that was 32.47 million. So they're making magic happen over here. And we're not helping them out, is how I see it. Because we're over here talking pennies. When you have those kind of numbers, we have to make a move. The alternative is that we go to non-discretionary items, because there's discretionary non-discretionary, non-discretionary is more of what you would consider fixed. It's your police, it's your fire, it's your IT, it's your things that you must have to keep the city stable, your financial people. So we've got to address what becomes about a 2.2 percentage of the entire, budget that we're short, which means we gotta go find 2%. And you go to the discretionary line items. So to me, this is very simple, it's math. If we choose to sit still, then we gotta cut. 2% to 5% to keep safe harbor. So those are just tough items. And I'm sure people will scream and holler, but I'm also sure that there are people that tell me, well, that was actually correct. So that's what we're here to do. So I want to express that that's what's really on the plate. I appreciate all your scenarios. I think these last ones were a little bit less straightforward, but still good, still informative, right? So well done. You've got a tough job. That's all I have on that.

Mr. Mayor. Go ahead, sir. I'm going to differ in perspective. No new revenue. It's just saying we're not taking up the property tax, but our tax on the people is a trident. Sales tax, property tax, and fees and interaction with the city. They've already taken a tax increase this year with what we're doing in waste. We're taking up The cost of living in general is up. Inflation's been eating them. That means every time they go to the grocery store, every time they go to the gas station, every time they go anywhere, they're paying a higher tax because the sales tax is off the gross price. So our citizens are already taking a hit, and we have to determine in our shopping list, I mean, I would love to give every department everything they want. But we have leaders that have said, I can deliver what I need to for the city within this guidance. This would make it better. We've added new positions. We've put it in place. And I tell you, from the people that I deal with, I'm seeing their debt to net ratio go up. We are getting close to putting these people in the middle class in a hole they can't dig out of. I mean, I'm working with people where 10 years ago, We were looking at a debt to net ratio for them to buy a house at around 30 to 32%, 38 on a push. We're seeing more people pushed into the 50%. 50% of their income is debt. And of that, the biggest portion is their house and the property tax. And the state of Texas in the last two weeks has come out and said there needs to be property leave. Kerry Isaac today put out a post that had chastised two other cities for raising their rate and putting it on the people. We have to be cognizant of the whole picture, not the narrow picture.

Council Member Capuzzi?

Yes, sir. I just want to reiterate what I said earlier, too. And I do appreciate and agree with what Council Member Edwards just said. And let's be clear, like you talked about just a minute ago, let's be transparent about this. This is an increase. I think it's .67 cents, right? per $100, right, of valuation. So just to be clear how everybody understands that, that's exactly what this is. And like I say all the time too, I mean, we can't eat the pie all at once. We understand that there are some things that we need to do, some moves that we need to make, but you gotta eat the pie a piece at a time. And I think we're eating a pretty good size piece of it this time, and we've laid out steps to get to where we need to get moving into next year. I think it's a fantastic budget. It's structurally sound, it's built well. I think you all, every one of you sitting in over here have done a fantastic job moving things around, crunching numbers and getting things put together. You and I have chatted several times. I know all of you have been working tirelessly since what, June or before to try to get this thing where it's at. while we have to consider all these operations, things that we have to consider within the organization, we also have to consider, as Council Member Edwards said, the taxpayer. And I don't know if you mentioned this a minute ago or not, but Comal County just raised their taxes as well, too. So you combine the Comal County tax increase, I'm not sure what Guadalupe's done or if they've done anything yet, Comel County tax increase with whatever we do here. And like I said, we have no idea what the real estate market is going to actually do next year. If any of us could predict that, we probably wouldn't be sitting in here right now. I got a daughter who's a hairdresser and a son-in-law who's a pipe fitter. They wanna buy a home in New Braunfels too. And I've talked about all the time, if we're not careful, we're gonna price our own kids right out of this city. So, and I say that to everybody sitting up here on this dais, let's be careful and let's be wise and let's be smart. To your point, could there be some things that could be cut? Maybe, I don't know. But I think we're pretty much where we need to be at from what I've looked at and from all my conversations that we've had. But, and going forward, do we need to look at maybe raising taxes more going into the next year? That's very possible. And that's a tough and painful conversation that we will have to have with the voters. But spring, the entire dump on everybody, four weeks after we started talking about it, is not the way to go. Especially considering the fact, like I said, that Comel County just raised theirs. We got the solid waste increase that we've got coming up. We got fees that we gotta look at coming up in the spring as well, too. So I mean, this, in my mind, is fiscally responsible. It lands in the middle. It starts to bring in some additional revenue. It touches on a ton of initiatives already. And I would argue that fires are being put out. Citations are being written. And we address the fire inspectors and we addressed some SROs and we did things, we've addressed a lot of stuff here. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. I've never seen a corporate budget that ever was perfect or every single department director or department got everything that they wanted. And we're giving pay increases too, so there's that.

Councilwoman Carter?

Sure. And to the public, to council, each time I voted no to a rate increase on electric and water and everything that was impactful, all these TERS that were put in, I started questioning, and I did question openly right here, the tax load that was going on the citizen. Nobody really cared. There was a one vote at this end of the dais to say no. When it comes to your city that's taking care of you, I say, we've got to do what we have to do to keep you safe, keep your roads the way that you want them, the things that you've really wanted taken care of. So here we have an upside down spectrum. I ask for all of council to remember when they're considering taxation that comes in the form of utilities, TERS and all of those things, all of those things amount to much more per month impact on a homeowner, on a citizen than this very rate that we're talking about here. None of these totals would have been as much as those totals. That's all.

Mr. Jarrett, can you explain the TERS? I don't think it puts a burden on others.

the tax increment reinvestment zones that the city has uh we've we have five uh two of which were just established last year so they're very much in its infancy uh the lar largest one which represents the majority of roughly $630 million of increment, meaning it's the growth in taxable value in those five districts from the point at which the TURS was adopted. Those funds, the property tax revenues from that growth is directed towards investment within those geographical areas. So the TURS values do not impact our tax rate calculations.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. And also, I would like to thank my two city council members over here also. I agree on... The no new revenue rate, I believe in a smaller government, as small as we can possibly have it and able to maintain what we have. In my time in the military, not once did I get everything I asked for when I was writing the budget for our units and our battalion. And so this is exactly the same thing. And when all the directors came up here, they're able, no one said that they needed more. I think The way the budget works is that they submit the request to y'all, they balance their budget with what their contingency, what they can do, what they can't do, what they must have, what they can live without, and then that unfunded request goes to the city manager's office. Y'all make a decision with them, I'm assuming, right? And then that comes forward to city council for us to approve. So it's already been vetted by everyone that has their fingers in it, right? And so anyway, I'm for scenario number one. I think it's a good balance. We're moving it up just a teeny bit to do a little bit more for the things that I believe the council agreed on that is the most important things. And so that's where I'm at. Thank you.

Member Dempsey, no. Yeah, the one thing I was thinking about, especially when I was running, the safety and security of the city, the health and welfare, that's extremely important. And I know we're asking for more fire inspectors, school resource officers, and criminal investigators. That'll cost money. And right now, the way I see it, if we don't go to the no new revenue, that won't come. I talked to one of the investigators today at the police station and he really wants one, he needs one, he's overworked, there's too much going on. But I'm looking at the 2.5% to 3% and I guess right now it's at 2.5, right?

Yes, sir, the budget is built on 2.5% COLA plus step increases for eligible.

And the step is also with it. Yes, sir. So the scenario one is kinda like I can give, in my mind, the increased funding for citywide concrete. I'll be okay with the 390 and keeping it at 3% for the COLA. Because you're saying that less than that just won't cut for repairing roads and stuff like that for this year. And, The ASNBA, I'm not really comfortable with saying no to that, me, myself, and, because I don't think we might ever get that. And if, I think they are in dire straits up there, and especially when Guadalupe County is failing by taking care of their end of the bargain as far as pets that go off the streets. We have to do something about that. I think that's extremely important. If no one else has any more questions on this, I'll just have a few things. I looked at the book for the past two days. I won't take too long. I had to write it up. But on page 54, I did have... So this is the five-year forecast. And it does say, by the time we reach the last year, well, actually 2031, we're gonna be in a big deficit of $28 million, right? Is that what I'm seeing?

Yes, sir, that is where we've layered in all of the outstanding requests and known commitments. And again, this is the five-year forecast directly from what we presented to you back in July.

And again, just to reiterate what Mr. Warner said, that deficit is only if the council approves all items requested by all departments, right? And that's why we go through this balancing strategy every year so that we don't get into that deficit.

So if we, okay, if we don't approve, if we approve everything you guys are asking for, is what you're saying, and there's a lot that's not being approved, right? Correct, yes, sir.

Okay. As Mr. Warner said, it layers all that into that five-year forecast just to reflect that we don't have capacity to do all that's necessary or needed or requested.

Okay, I see what you're saying. On page 38, page 38, I wrote down, it does say that We may require adjusting both the operations and maintenance and the INS tax rate. So I'm just, what is the plan for that and when are we gonna see that?

That's looking at fiscal year 28, sir. 28, okay. Yes, and that's in reference to a couple of the slides we presented on Monday and Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi referred to this about really starting our budget process much earlier next fiscal year and reevaluating our capacity for a 27 bond, reevaluating our capacity for the remaining 2023 bonds that have yet to be issued. So that's what that statement's referring to, sir.

Okay, all right. I didn't put the page number to here, it's in here. But I was looking at the economic development area and I put the EDC draws in a balance of 52% from 31.9 million to 15.4 million. and more than doubles business incentives to about 3.4 million with no projected list. So I just wanted to see if we can see the incentive agreements.

Kind of like... We have an itemized list of projects for fiscal year 27. We can provide that to you. based on those projections. You're talking about for the New Braunfels Economic Development Corporation? That's right. Yes, sir, we had that information itemized by project based on projected outlay for fiscal year 27. We can provide that to you.

Okay, so that's something that you guys already created. I can see it? Yes, sir. Okay. There might be a correction on page 275. There's something that I'm seeing here. I should have marked my pages. On 275, there is the 2.9 million for the solid waste. The request totals that the fund is 167.5. I'm looking at a total at the end here. The total at the end doesn't add up to me. Let's see, 275. Okay. Oh, for the solid waste fund? The solid waste fund, you have at 2.7 million, and then... The recurring. The recurring. In the one time. It's 167,000.

Let us look into that. And yeah, that may be a typo. In a 300 plus page document that we're working on towards the end of the week. I just did something that... Yeah, thank you for pointing that out.

I don't know if all the numbers you see here is exactly what's going to happen, but at some point... If this is concrete, if we vote on whatever we're doing for this whole thing, I just see a discrepancy right there. I have a bunch of questions here, I'll just go through a few of them. I know we have a, it's six o'clock, but this is the only presentation we have today, right?

Yes, sir. We do have one more, sir, and that's on the charter review process. Charter review? To provide an update to the council and get some direction on composition of the committee. It's not very many slides, so we're hoping to get you out of here sooner tonight than last night.

Oh, for tonight, yes. On page 76, I guess it's on 76 or 80. I take notes and I just freaking highlight everything. Sir, did you say page 76? I believe it's 76. It's two different numbers. When I was looking on the website, then when I look on here, it's on page 80. So I guess it says, the city is required to adopt a balanced budget, meaning that the total budget expenditures do not exceed total available funds. A contribution of funds balance carried forward in revenues. So my main question that I wanted to ask was, can staff confirm that under the city's definition, a budget can be called balanced while spending more than it takes in? Because... How can that be balanced? We're taking in less than what we are spending.

So that could be a combination of things. The budget is structurally balanced. In other words, recurring revenue are covering recurrent expenditures. We also have capital expenditures that are included in the budget. For example, we have bond projects that we may have received those revenues in the previous fiscal year, but the expenditure may not be in the following fiscal year because that may be when the project needs it, and so therefore the revenue may be reflected in one fiscal year, the expenditure in another fiscal year, but it's coming forward as fund balance, in other words, reserve, because it wasn't expended in the previous fiscal year. That's just one example.

Okay.

Mayor, if I could refer you to page 20 of the budget document. It's in the budget message. Yeah. There's that graph on the upper left, citywide revenues and expenditures. It illustrates very simply exactly what City Manager Camerino just demonstrated, right? That it's balanced between the funds that we're expecting to roll over from one year to the next, the revenues collected, as well as expenditures that are projected or at least allocated, and then ending reserves.

your ending fund balance? Is that what you're talking about?

Yes, and that is cumulative of all funds, sir. General fund, enterprise funds, special revenue funds, capital funds.

And this is rolling over into 2027? That's correct.

The funds that are predicted to roll over are on the left-hand side. That's total available funds and beginning capital reserves.

Oh, okay.

So yeah, your column on the left is either funds predicted to roll over from fiscal year 26 to fiscal year 27, as well as projected revenues for fiscal year 27. And then the right-hand column is the amount authorized to spend or allocated, and then the ending reserve. that is projected. All right. Does that help?

I have to go over and over it again just to get it simple in my head. No problem, sir. Because I'm not used to looking at charts like that. I need explanation.

That's what we're here for. And we're happy to spend time with you outside of meetings to go through it with you, sir. Spend as much time with you as needed.

Yeah. One big question I had was of, I believe, the 786, the 7... 78 million, so I put down 7.6 million reduction in reserves. How much voter approved bond spending and how much is everything else? You?

You clarified what you mean by? Yeah, I wrote a page down.

I thought I did. So I was going over page 276. And you're looking at spending exceeds revenue by 78 million. and the reserves fall 160 million to 82 million?

Yes, as you suggested, the lion's share of that should be within those capital funds, the majority of which are either 2019 or 2023 bond funds. And the next couple of pages, this is what we call the all fund summary. The next couple of pages, all of those funds roll up into that total. So you've got the general fund, the enterprise funds, all the special revenue funds, and then our capital funds, our internal service funds, our debt service fund.

Yeah, I was trying to calculate that our spending is gonna exceed our revenue by 78 million.

But again, though, I mean, those capital funds, again, you want to see those capital funds being spent down. That means the projects are moving forward.

Right, and those are the funds that in the previous graph that Mr. Warder mentioned to you would be funds available, right, or capital reserves because then those are going to be expended possibly then in the next fiscal year for projects that are ongoing.

All right, let me get the red one. I understand what you're saying there. Man, I wrote down a lot of stuff. I think I'm just going to pause right here. Is there anyone else that have any questions on the, okay. I'm gonna see which one that I really wanted to look at here. The solid waste was a big thing. Okay, I wrote something down for the airport. So the airport, I said, is funded from four directions. Is that right? And no one single page adds them all up. So I got on page 149, the spending is about 4.9 million all the way down to 8.1 million. And that's up by 62% in just two years. and I calculated the fund balance is 1.8 million to 600,000. That's about 31 days of operational cost. The grant revenue nearly doubles 2.4 million, that's on page 152, and shows the local share of 10% match for pavement rehab construction of 300,000. I know I'm spending a lot of numbers here, I had a question here I gotta highlight it is, can we get one consolidated statement of every dollar going into the airport from every source, including the EDC contributions? How much in total is the airport getting?

Okay, so can I ask a clarifying question? What is it that you feel like is missing from page 149?

So I'm looking at four different areas where the airport is getting their funding from. I just wanted to know, in total how much the airport is getting, especially from the EDC. And is that actually good enough? And are we paying too much? Especially from the EDC, are we paying too much from them?

I don't believe there's anything slated for fiscal year 27 from the EDC to the airport fund.

Okay.

We could probably provide you a little bit more description on each one of these revenue categories so that you understand exactly what's in that category. What are charge for services? Charge for services are fuel, it's leases, it's those kind of things. That might be able to help you if we provide you a little bit more description for what's exactly in that category.

Okay?

Okay.

So the TERS, TERS is a big thing. I kind of don't understand, and maybe I just don't understand why we have TERS. But our increment zones, they get about 7.1 million out of the tax revenue altogether. And so what is the total revenue diverted to all TERS this year, and when does each zone expire?

As mentioned earlier, Creekside is reinvesting. Zone number one was established in 2007. It's set to expire in fiscal year 2032. 2032?

Yes, sir. You brought up Creekside. How much has been reimbursed to Creekside developer today, to date?

I don't have that information in front of me right now, but again, I'd be happy to prepare a financial report that shows the summary of reinvestment zone one and what projects it supported in the amounts.

And we'll include in the projects that it supported also the projects that it has supported for the city. For example, Fire Station 7, the TUR supported the design, construction, and equipping of Fire Station 7. So we'll include that as well.

So what I'll do is because we have up till September 14, right? to figure out what to do with our vote today of what to spend the money on on this page here, switch it around.

Yes, sir.

I'm gonna email you guys my questions. That'd be great. Because I got about 30 questions here. Okay, that'd be great. I kind of tore this thing apart, and it's really a lot to look at. But that's kind of like all I got here. I'm gonna email you guys this, and... Yeah, that's all I got.

That would be helpful if you email us that list of questions and we can work on those and maybe then, maybe it'd be better to just kind of sit and go through it with you because we might want to point you to certain pages or other documents that would be helpful to better understand.

Yeah, so if, when I get my answers back, can I still manipulate what we got to do to work with the budget we're gonna vote on? Yes, sir.

Okay. It can, depending on the funding source that you're talking about.

Yeah, I may not be explaining it as I'm reading my own questions here, but I just had a lot of stuff that I saw here that didn't make sense to me.

Robert brings up a good point, Mayor, that I do just want to make sure and clarify that the scenario we're focused on here is entirely focused on the general fund and the general fund alone.

Okay. Yeah.

And the details within it we can work around. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay.

if I may, the original TERS, which was a creek-sized TERS. A tax reinvestment zone, basically, the developer puts in the infrastructure and things where the city, in many cases, can't afford to, and then there's a reimbursement to it. If we don't generate enough tax revenue to repay it, the developer's on the hook for the money. Is that correct? And so it's a way to leverage. So in the particular case of Creekside, the first thing that was there, we had a serious drainage problem of water trying to come over from the HEB side, which didn't exist at the time. TxDOT had put in a number of pipes, wasn't enough to take the water out of Alligator Creek to come across. So that development paid in advance for the road widening to put in the additional drainage to take the water from the HEB and Wasser Ranch and Alligator Creek, flow it through the development to exit out the other side. It paid for the widening, the realignment, the lights, All of that plus fire and safety issues is good. Now that TERS has been very successful. It has spent millions of dollars on infrastructure, so it's very valuable.

That's when you design a TERS. Council, we're getting off topic, sorry. Okay.

Okay.

Any further comments from up here? I'm going to open it up to the floor for the public. Please come behind the podium, state your name. If you live in the city, not live in the city, or the ETJ. Thank you.

I wasn't sure if we were going to have public comment. You made me get my exercise. Thank you all for all the effort you all put in. Very insightful questions. Oh, David Warmke, District 5, sorry. I forgot that. Very insightful and very complex question. And the interesting thing is we're down to a million five, sort of tossing it around. And that's kind of small change in the big picture of things. The meeting Monday, I asked about the TERS and the split in what was certified versus the actual value. It was about $2 billion, and Jared gave me the split on that. About 600 million is the TERS. all the TERS together, that translates to about 2.6 million of income that we're not getting because it's going to the TERS. Now, it's not just one TERS. It's five TERS. Now one hopefully goes away, it's mainly the main generator, it's 90%. But you have four other TERS that I doubt they will kick in as much. So you can see that 2.5 million go higher, maybe seven million, maybe eight million. Maybe nine million. We don't know I doubt I doubt it's gonna get get as big as first one the other thing is sales tax and we divert 25% of our sales tax to for me and If you look at that diverted amount For the projected budget, it's about thirteen and a half million dollars So between the two We've got somewhere between about $16 and maybe $20-some million in the future that is not going in the general fund. Now, both of those things were there to develop, and to develop growth and build revenue and tax base and all those. And we've been doing that too well. It's just been kind of a crazy growing. I'm kind of liking it to a fire that's got a little out of control. And so we're spraying water on it. But the same time we're spraying water, we've got somebody on the backside spraying gasoline with a sprayer. So we're kind of defeating ourselves. And it's a very complex issue. There are no simple answers on the TERS. There's really no way you can come up with a simple answer. But it's something we really need to seriously look at. 4B, there's a little simpler answer. But thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you for all your work.

Anyone out there wanna step up to the microphone? All right, seeing nobody, I'm gonna close public comment at this time. So is this the end of item A? If there are no more questions, yes, sir.

No, item B is the action.

So item B is gonna, we're still gonna discuss it. Okay, we're gonna move on to item B. Discuss and consider approval of the proposed 2026 tax rate. Jared Warner.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, I know I tend to be redundant on these topics, but I think that it's important. Just as a reminder, the reason why we are voting on the proposed tax rate is so that we can move forward with putting notice in the paper, updating our website. As a reminder, the proposed rate that you vote on today is the maximum tax rate that can ultimately be adopted. There will be public hearings on the tax rate and the budget on Thursday, September 10th, as well as first reading of the budget and tax rate ordinance, and then second and final reading on Monday, September 14th, right? And so that is when it is ultimately adopted. Again, so tonight is just the recorded vote so we can continue to move forward with our statutory process. As we discussed multiple times, the budget was prepared at the current rate. which is currently below the no new revenue rate. And we've talked about that and the reasons for that. Existing values going down due to market considerations, as well as the new state law that exempted approximately $180 billion of business personal property from one year to the next. Those are the two primary factors. And so again, at this time, happy to take any additional questions. Once ready, we've got some specific motion language. The motion language is gonna call out exactly what the tax rate is. So I would suggest maybe the council has some conversation about what tax rate you want to vote on.

Go ahead, Mayor. So the scenarios that were presented today, both scenario one, right?

That's a no new revenue rate? Correct, and so if somebody wants to make a motion for the no new revenue rate, then if you'll allow one of our team members to come up and give you that specific motion language so that it can be read appropriately. for the public to hear. I'm in favor of that one.

I don't know if I'd have to read the language.

I'll second that. And before we do the motions, you do need to open this item up to the public as well. So you guys just did one for A, you need one for B, since we opened this up after that ended.

Yeah, no problem. Let's see, who do I got here? Councilwoman Lebowski, you have something?

Now I was just gonna say that I am for the no new revenue rate also. I have two daughters that have moved into New Braunfels and they're both wanting to buy and I just don't feel that that would help them either. And I have family and friends and constituents that have asked me not to raise the property. to property tax, so I go with scenario one.

Anyone else? At this time, I'm gonna open it up to the public. If anyone wants to talk on this subject, please stand up, go to the microphone, state your name, where you live. Not where you live, I'm sorry, that's wrong. Whether you live in the city, outside the city, or in the ETJ, no one? Okay, I'm gonna close public comment at this time. We're just gonna read the different proposals right now, right? I wanna see exactly what I'm gonna look at before I make a decision.

This is actually just for the tax rate though right now.

Yeah, and if I make a motion, that's exactly what we're voting on, right?

But not the way the funds are distributed.

That's right, distribution could go any other way.

As you'll see here, the motion language just calls out specifically what the no new revenue rate is, and it breaks down the two components between the debt service portion and the general fund portion.

And again, what I'm reading here, this is the maximum if we don't wanna hold a vote, right?

If you move forward proposing this rate, it's the highest rate that you can ultimately adopt for next fiscal year by September 14th. You will not be able to go higher than that. You can only go lower or adopt the rate.

You guys have the same paper I have? I do, I'll make the motion. Hold on, I'm trying to understand what I'm looking at here, guys, sorry. I'm looking at .415613. That's correct.

That's the no new revenue rate. Okay.

Okay. Mayor, I move that the property tax rate be set at 0.415613 per $100 of assessed valuation with 0.193921 allocated to debt service and 0.221692 designated for operations and maintenance.

And I second that.

Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi motions and Councilwoman Lebowski seconds the motion. Are we gonna do roll call or are we gonna do what?

You can be a show of hands, sir.

On the show of hands for this motion, in favor raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five, six. For all those not in favor, raise your hand. Okay, it looks like it's six, zero. Is that how you do it?

I believe it was unanimous. It was unanimous.

Unanimous, and so the motion is adopted.

Mayor, before we move on, I just wanna say that I appreciate all the hard work and effort that went into getting to this point right here from all of city staff, from all of city manager's office, and not only you all, but I know a lot of thought and effort and studying went into this from every single person sitting on this dais. There was some robust conversation, some debating back and forth, and some compromising. Nobody got exactly or expects to get everything that they want, and we were also able to get some COLA raises for staff here in the audience too. So kudos to everybody here. I appreciate it. Good effort. Council Member Schell.

I just wanna echo that and also add, I really appreciate your patience as we go through this whole process. Me being brand new on this, I'm new to all this and so I've sat down with Mr. Warner and had in-depth conversations with Ms. Matney and I appreciate it. I really appreciate the time you put into it and the patience you have and I asked the same question four or five times. So, and all the staff and everybody who's come and sit in these meetings and are part of the process is really important and I just appreciate everybody that's here, thank you.

Councilwoman Lebowski?

Yes. I just want to say yes. I agree with both Capizzi and Shaw that thank you very much. Kudos to every one of y'all. Couldn't do it without y'all, especially answering all the questions that we all asked. There was, I think, a few nights that we stayed quite a bit on the lengthy time, but... We appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Mayor, at this time, you need to read the provided language for me. Okay.

So I'm gonna announce the dates and the times and the location in which the budget tax rate are scheduled to be adopted. The public hearing for the tax rate and proposed budget will be held at a meeting beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday, September 10, 2026 at 550 Landis Street, that's here in the chambers. The FY 2027 proposed budget, along with the 2026 tax rate, will be adopted on Monday, September 14, 2026, a meeting beginning at 6 p.m. here, 550 Landis Street, City Council Chambers. So I guess that's it, we're gonna move on to presentations. So item A, presentation update and possible direction on the application composition and selection process of a charter review committee. Mr. Camerino.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. Council Member Carter reached out and was requesting an update on this item, so thank you very much for that, because it really is time for us to come back to you and provide you an update as to where we are at in the process. kind of finalize some direction from you all as to the composition and the selection process for the Charter Review Committee and then present to you then sort of a draft timeline. So again, sort of the goals of this presentation is to update you on the selection process to identify an outside legal firm who has expertise in charter reviews and working with charter review committees. So I'll provide you with an update there. discuss and seek some final direction from the council on the composition and the selection process for a charter review committee. And then I'll present a draft timeline that would include not only the appointment of the members of that committee, but then the timeline for the review and the development of any proposed amendments that come out of that review, as well as then the timeline for the election, which if, and the timeline that I'm gonna present to you would be a May 27 election for any proposed charter amendments. So a quick update on where we are at. We actually issued a request for qualifications on June, I'm sorry, July the 10th. We typically include a timeline for questions from anyone that may be interested in asking questions before submitting their responses. That deadline was July the 29th. The responses are due by the end of this month. Those responses that we receive then will be evaluated, will be reviewed and evaluated by an evaluation team that will include the city attorney's office, I would imagine. Nathan, just one more thing for you to do. will be a part of that evaluation team. We will actually evaluate and rank those based upon the criteria that we laid out in the RFQ. And just kind of an understanding of what this outside legal firm would do would actually be to support the charter review and then the process for any amendments that the charter review committee may want to make to the city council, okay? So they would support that they would help to educate the Charter Review Commission on home rule authority, the purpose of the charter, any election laws, and then also assist them with the legal review of the existing charter and then proposed amendments, work with the Charter Committee on those proposed amendments that would ultimately come back to you all for recommendations. once then you all then select the recommendations that you wish to move forward to our voters, then that firm would also then help to develop the proposition language to ensure that it is in compliance with state law. So the Charter Review Commission, last we discussed, we talked about a scenario of the City Council appointing a member, one member to this Charter Review Committee from your district. The mayor would appoint a member at large, so that would be a seven-member Charter Review Commission. There are some cities, though, that do appoint more than just the number of council members that they may have. Those over and above seven would be at-large members if you wanted to include more than seven. When we made the initial presentation, we recommended an application process, because that's a really open and transparent process, because then folks from within your district that are interested in serving could apply. And then I'll go through what that process looks like then for the application and then your review process as well. Staff would really just serve as ex officios and advisors to the commission and help then that outside legal counsel to schedule meetings and those kind of things. With regards to the application process, the application would be submitted, like all boards and commissions, the application would be submitted to the city secretary's office on our website. and actually went through it today, just kind of go through that process my own. I didn't actually hit Submit, Gail, so I'm not applying for Board of Commission. But I went through it long enough before I had to hit Submit, just to get a feel for that. Once the application is complete and submitted, then the city secretary's office would then go through and validate and ensure and confirm that the folks that have applied are actually eligible to be considered by the city council. Because we may have someone that actually lives in the ETJ but submitted an application, they would not be eligible because it would need to be a resident within the city limits of New Braunfels, right? Once then all those applications are verified and confirmed, then Gail and her team would then provide to each one of you the applications from your district. And then Mary, you'd actually get them all. So we'd give you a much bigger stack, okay? Because then you would be appointing an at-large member. You would then review those and then ultimately, and I'll show you the timeline then, would then make the appointments after your review of those applications. So what does that application look like? It's pretty standard, but we would customize a little bit just for this commission as well. So it would include ask questions, obviously name and address, contact information. They could submit a resume if they choose to. It's optional. They could submit a cover letter if they choose to. That's optional as well. It's asking questions about their education. And then some short questions, and I've just included two of them, but some short questions like, why are you interested in serving on the Charter Review Commission? And have you served on a Charter Review Commission in the past? Because that kind of experience could be beneficial to this effort, right? Now, of course, you can modify that application, but I think the application is actually really good. And again, once the applications are completed, that individual would receive an email confirming their submission. And if the applications are not validated, like let's say it was a member of the ETJ, then they would also be notified that they were not eligible to be considered by the city council. So the timeline. We actually are ready to launch the application on Monday if you are ready for us to do that. We could actually have, the deadline for those applications then be either September the 11th, which would give folks three weeks to apply, or September the 18th, which would be four weeks to apply, okay? You could then appoint those committee members either on September the 28th, because that would give you time to then review. So you could either do it on September the 28th or October the 12th. And then, of course, then we would then put that committee to work, right? Because we would already have had, we would have already selected and contracted with that outside legal support. So they would be ready to go to then start meeting with the Charter Review Committee. They could obviously have meetings in October, November, December, and January. And the reason I say that is because then in mid-February is when the council would ultimately need to call the election At the same time that you would call the election for city council election as well, you'd call it at the same time. So that would be about mid-February for that May 2027 election. So at this point, really just happy to answer any questions or get your direction on ready to launch. You're okay with the composition that's sort of been outlined with seven members. If you want to add more, they would be at large. And if so, how many more? Go ahead, Mayor Putnam, could be easy.

You said the application's already constructed and put together? Yes, sir, they are. Is that gonna be emailed to, or did I miss the email, maybe?

Are we able to email an application? It's quite possible.

We can.

Just so I could just see what it looks like.

Yes, sir.

There's a link up, though, I think. I can go to the link and look at it, maybe.

You can't look at it right now because it's not turned on. It's not live.

But once it is. You can do that.

Yeah.

Email it to you. Okay, thank you.

Councilwoman Carter.

Yeah, I want to see a draft of it before it goes live.

Sure.

Yeah.

Will you be sending it to all of us?

I'll just send it to all of you.

Thank you.

And then what we'll do is send it to all of you and then say if you can please respond by this date so that we can get it finalized and get it launched.

I was just going to say, yeah, if we could maybe set a suspense date on that, that way we'd keep it moving. Happy to do that.

If you don't mind, can you rewind some of these slides here? You bet.

Which one, sir?

Actually, the one where it showed how many are on the actual committee.

And again, this is an option for you all, okay? You can certainly be more than seven if you choose to do that. If it's more than that, then the seven would be six appointed by district, you appointed at-large, and then let's say you wanted to go nine, then the other two would be at-large members.

Me personally, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I think that seven may be half the amount that we need. I think two from each district would be nice. And maybe that's too many eyeballs, too many cooks in the kitchen. That's my number, and I would like to see more than seven. That's all I'm saying.

Something to consider there, and I certainly understand that. In fact, I worked on a charter when I was at the City of Buda, and they had 15 members. But the challenge of that was scheduling meetings and finding availability for all 15 to actually meet. That extended the timeline a little bit, and so that's the only challenge associated with that, sir.

I certainly understand your- Would 10 be? All right, and who would?

It would have to be an odd number.

It would have to be an odd number, okay.

Yes, sir, so you could go nine.

That's odd. Nine, what about nine? I think seven is not, one from each district. Nine would be fine, yes, sir. We need smart people looking at this. This thing's about 31 years old, you know?

Yeah.

And I completely want to tear it apart.

Sure, nine would be fine. You would just add two additional at-large members. So that would be essentially six from each, six, one from each district, and three at large.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. So three from you.

Three from me?

Yes.

Yeah, I'm just, I just kinda want, a lot of smart people on here. I wanna go up at least above seven. If nine, nine would be good. That's two more eyeballs. I just, to me, I wasn't comfortable with seven, one from each district. I just was not, in my personal.

The other two, let's say you wanna go nine. The other two then could be voted on by the entire council, but that would mean you would have to look at all of them, right? or you could just authorize the mayor then three appointees. We can certainly work through that. You don't necessarily have to decide that tonight. It really is kind of a, sort of a maximum number would be good.

So the thing here tonight is we're proposing, right? This is just a presentation. We are not really voting on anything here tonight.

Just looking for some consensus, sir. And if you all, once you look at the draft application and we make final edits and then we will launch and then we'll put it, we'll then put a schedule together to bring those back to you after you've had some time, after the deadline, have had some time to review and then come back with appointments.

Okay. Yes, sir. We've got Councilwoman Shah.

I was just gonna reiterate, I think nine is probably the good number. Too many cooks in the kitchen and it just gets really confusing and muddled down and then it doesn't move forward because the infighting begins.

I was actually thinking of 21.

Gun salute.

I wouldn't go more than seven.

I was gonna say nine, but do we wanna consider having a couple of alternates if somebody gets sick, is unable to continue? That's a good point. So you might wanna do 11 or 12, but the other three would be alternates.

Can't do 12. No, they're not, I'm not saying 12 isn't in there, I'm saying nine active members.

but you've got to have some alternates because if somebody can't continue to get sick, whatever the case may be, then you have an incomplete commission at that point.

Right, so that's actually a good point. We actually, when I worked on it in Buda, we actually did have alternates. It was, again, a 15-member committee, and I think we had two alternates, but all 15 made it all the way through, so we didn't need them, but still the two alternates had to attend every meeting so that they could... They knew sort of, they knew what those guys had been. So they could pick up right where, yeah. They're able to just jump right in and take over.

But I just wanna say too, I agree with Council Member Shaw. You get any more than that, it's paralysis by analysis.

So what we could do is just, we can continue this conversation, but it sounds like maybe nine and possibly some alternates, but we can, certainly we're at a point where we will send you the draft application so that you can see it, get that finalized, get it launched.

Yeah, there's a lot of parts to it. Maybe if we stick a few people on one big section instead of them looking at the whole thing, And you know what I mean? You split up the job work between one or two people, and they only see that part.

It really will be up to them, that outside legal support as to how they actually structure that review. They'll utilize their experience working with other charter review commissions as to what worked best.

All right. Councilwoman?

I like the seven plus the two alternates, which would make nine. But I think one from each district along with at large from there.

When do we have to have a final number?

Mayor, it sounds like 21's not gonna be the number.

Yeah. Do we have to figure out a number right now? No, sir, you don't.

No, sir, you don't. Look, I've got sort of a consensus of where you all may go, and we can finalize that number. It could be seven with two alternates. It could be nine with one or two alternates. But I think I know where you all are going with it. We can certainly come back and finalize that later. But I think getting the application launched is probably.

I would just like to mention that because of what happened during your election, right, this is kind of, I ain't gonna say an emergency, but it is definitely critical, right? If it wasn't critical and this was being done as a rotational basis every five or six years, 2021 might be a good number. But because we're having to do this in a rapid fashion, never, well, maybe, I don't know. It's just kind of unusual. And it's the first time it's been done.

Correct? Well, since I've been here. So this is the first time it's been done in a really long time.

Okay. Any further discussion on this one? I just want to make a statement of what we voted on today. To me, it was kind of hard, because I personally don't want to raise rates on anybody. But I'm looking at how we're in a deficit of essential items that we need for the city, and we haven't been able to raise anything for 14 years. But I'm looking at a fire truck that needs, we need a fire truck, we need an ambulance or an EMS truck, we need inspectors, we need more new concrete, and all of this stuff that's on the list for this no new rate we just voted on, we would not get, right? And this is actually stuff that actually we truly do need. And it's kind of hard for me to say that we have to do that for one point something million dollars, right? And that kind of hurts me. And that's about $3.14 a month for an average homestead, right?

Mayor, if I may, we closed that item, so we needed to reopen it to get back. I see what you're saying.

I just made a statement that this was kind of a hard thing for me to do. And we're not gonna go to executive session, are we? No, we're not. Public comment, though. Oh, public comment for this one?

Actually, this one doesn't have an action, so you don't have to have public comment, but you can if you want to.

I would like to do that. We're kind of early. Anyone up there? I'm gonna open into public comment. Come behind the podium. State your name if you live in ETJ or in the city or non-resident. I don't see anybody. I'm going to close public comment. So there be no further business to come before the New Braunfels City Council. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much, everyone.