Charter Review Committee - Regular Meeting

following is a regular meeting of the charter review committee meeting monday june 8th 2026. those present are aaron smith city manager hecky james ronnie phillips dallas kennedy james parker city attorney meryl willis craig stoker chris haney district five and norma aguilar

I do have a just a quick question of course on one do we need to include and Midland County in the first line

All inhabitants of the city of, in Ector County. No, because they're considered in the city limits of Odessa.

Yep.

All inhabitants of the city of Odessa, in Ector County, Texas, has the boundaries.

I think you could take out in Ector County.

Yeah, now that you say that.

Because it's all inhabitants of the city, which includes Ector and Midland.

Right. All inhabitants, right. All inhabitants of the city of Odessa.

And just take out in Ector County.

So... Every one of these changes has to be elected or voted on, right? Yes. So that goes back to the original point of...

I mean, is that worth? Well, I think maybe what you do, you're right. So what do you just go through a red line everything and then as a committee, we decide, does that is that one we're putting in front of voters?

That one seems pretty easy. How would you argue?

That one seems semi-serious. Let me bring you a lawyer point though, just not being a lawyer. Our city of Odessa, what, Odessa, Florida?

Oh, it says Odessa, Texas. All inhabitants of the city of Odessa, Texas have the boundaries and limits of said city.

Okay. That's why I was going to get that.

Because I could see somebody that lives in Midland County suing and saying, I'm not under this because it says in Hector County. Yeah.

somebody's gonna say I shouldn't have to pay property taxes if we have other So what are we going to do?

Take out Hector County.

Hector County. And this will all just basically create a clean, probably red line version that everybody can take a look at.

Does this first need to pass the city council or does this just need to pass this group?

This group first and then this group decides how it should be. Then it takes it to the council for their consideration to then put before the voters. Okay.

I had in paragraph three a couple of observations.

I had a few as well.

I did too. Okay. Section two or three? Section three. Section two stays the same. Oh, section two, boundaries. Extension of boundaries. And then platting the property.

I don't know enough to know anything.

I think two is the same. My issue on Section 3, just because I know we dealt with this when I was on council, is what's a reasonable time after annexation to furnish sewer and water lines?

I would agree. That's a big... My thought is it just needs to be consistent with state law.

Here's a... I actually... This is some of these... I kind of went through some of these... One of these, some of these, some of the charters that I've worked on, and I kind of reviewed some, that had some sections that I noticed this section three is the only section that kind of seems to approach or address annexation. Usually we'll have a, we'll see a charter provision that directly addresses annexation as opposed to just saying extension of boundaries. It just says something to the nature of this is annexation and it's done in accordance with it's done in accordance with law there's a couple options here I kind of put it out some of these sections will grab a whole lot or address a lot of the sections in article 3 but normally we see Normally, we see the extension of boundaries. We'll see that. We'll see a section that just says annexation and disannotation. It'll just be a section about the 40 to annex. A bunch of time. I mean, it'll get rid of a lot of the language in here about the notice and the publication of newspapers. It'll just say in accordance with state law. and I had two examples and there's more sections in there that I saw that I didn't see in article 3 some of what I see in article 3 I see in general provisions section of the Charter but it seems to be kind of front-loaded towards the front towards a section 2 and section 3 article 2 and article 3 so I guess my point is section two and three is the only thing I saw in our charter that talked about our boundaries and even hinted towards annexation many charters you'll see express sections on annexation disannotation it'll just revert back to state law a lot of times and it'll just stay kind of general and there's two sections I pulled two similar cities that I've worked with or had some experience with that their their charter language and it's sort of one said Hey, whatever happens, we've got to give you a public hearing in no less than 10 or more than 40 days. It's just a statutory notice of a public hearing. One just says it's in accordance with the Constitution and the state law. And instead of having all that language about extension boundaries, it just, here's the annotation. And it also addresses disannotations. A lot of charters will address disannotations.

This does.

used the word annexation though like five times in here so it seems to me that it's clearer the annexation's in here yeah but that's the only thing it goes for it goes into adds a lot of the requirements on the newspaper publication has to have at least 30 days elapsed a lot of charters just resort back to state law they just don't go into that level of detail so that's something if we want to I just provided some example sections from some other cities as to what they've dealt with. Our comparable section is the boundaries and the extension of boundaries section, and also disannotation. I know we've had some disannotation questions here and there. Most charters address it, and it kind of does the same thing and resorts back to state law. So there's things that we could do, and it's exemplary. We're not bound by it, but it's just an example that some other cities have done with their charters when they deal with annotations

Well, who is this charter for? I mean, are we trying to make this simple and people just can zip right through it? Are we trying to make it where we have a whole lot of loopholes, if you will, in it? I mean, if everything here says we'll do it according to state law, all you need is one document that says we'll act under state law. But that means that anybody that has a question is going to have to research further. I'm asking, is that the option?

Sometimes you're right, but are there things that you want to do that state law is silent on and roll those into the charter? In this particular case, annexation was a little bit complicated because the state law completely threw out forced annexation yeah so and so that's one reason really to kind of tackle this annexation question is because they said no more forced annexation so we could look at that completely different now but i mean and and so for instance i mean do you want oh i do and it's great you know because you know do you want it in the daily paper published in the in the in the city of odessa at least one time you know do you want all that

uh is that is that is that is that slow down the process or so you know what we're just going to follow state law in this situation so my question wasn't following state law but we've got so many as he had said the last meeting so many forms of communication and the newspaper is pretty much not one of them at this point because you just don't get it like you used to back back then right so should we have we have our city web page so i

Shouldn't everything be posted on that web page instead of in the newspaper?

I think it's both.

We don't even have a newspaper anymore that runs. We don't have a daily newspaper.

They do have the legal page, and that's about the biggest income stream for the newspaper now.

But it's not published daily, but it is published daily.

Available daily.

It's available daily. So they're... whatever the electronic version is available daily, right?

Still, I think our electronic page two is available every day too. So what difference does it make? Whether it's that or I don't know that.

Are we covered under that? Or does it have to be all a third party as well?

What I just gave is just some alternate language. So you guys can see what other cities do a lot. For example, when you're looking for something about and that scene, you go to the charter to look for the word and that's And there's no, if you look in there, there's no section of annexation, dis-annexation. You gotta look at extension of boundaries, which is just another word for it. It's just instead of, they probably didn't want, they probably didn't like the word annex, so they just did extension of boundaries. But we all know what it is. I think at the bare minimum, you know, you can look and say, all right, do we need, what out of this section three do we need? Do we need to do the newspaper in 30 days notice? Do we want to do that? Do we just want to resort back to state law? State law already has newspapers

I don't want to wait 30 days, especially if it's a development agreement and somebody's wanting to come into the city. I've got a developer who's wanting to move on an economic development project and bring land into the city. I don't want to be able to annex it like that. I don't want to wait 30 days. I just want to do what the bare minimum is under the state law because before county changes their mind or whatever, somebody else swoops in in another city and says, hey, we can do this a lot quicker and easier and You know, project dies and goes somewhere else.

Well, wouldn't that be posting it downstairs on the public notice board? Would that be adequate?

That's our legal minimum. Legal minimum is you pay, you know, depending on the type of annexation, but in general, we already have to publish notice of the public hearings that we have to have. So the only really thing you have to do for a voluntary petition, let's say if it's a developer doing the voluntary petition for annexation, There's only one public hearing required, and we have the published notice. State law dictates the amount of notice and the type of notice and how it's given. Newspaper notice, no less than 10, no more than 20 days. It can't be too far out, it can't be too close. There's a statutory time period within which we must publish, and we do that already. We have to do that regardless. So by doing that, you already get public notice of a public hearing. The public hearing must take place. And then we all, then of course when the ordinance comes back right now under our current charter, we have to have two readings of the ordinance and those ordinances are posted on the agenda and there's notice there. And there's always an opportunity for anyone to show up and address council on any item on the agenda. So it's already happening. The bare minimum to answer your question is already what the state law requires. The information around that, about five lines worth of information around the middle section about published in the daily newspaper at least 30 days between first and second reading. That's all extra. That's not required in our state law.

So we could strike the, so the publishing in the newspaper is not required anymore?

No.

Isn't that what your question was?

Basically. Well, let me ask you, are there more protections for like neighborhoods? Because if we wanted to take plan for development, that's one thing. But if we wanted to take over the neighborhood behind the golf course, that requires more of the annex, right? Well, yeah.

They would all have to vote. That goes on the ballot. That's what I'm saying.

They all don't have to vote, but there will be a petition pushed around And if enough of them turn it down, then nobody's going to ask. Right, that's what I'm saying.

So there's protections in state law for neighborhoods versus empty land for development.

Involuntary annexation. The involuntary has essentially been mostly eliminated. You can't do it unless you, it has to go to the ballot. Right. The voters vote.

And that is what is in here that does need to be changed because it does say with or without the consent. Yeah. So, I mean, automatically that right there is more important than whether or not it's in the paper.

that's not even legal with or without the consent yeah I do have questions like on the boundaries this says when they were established in April 30th 1927 we've added a bunch of land to this but here's the problem and recorded in the commissioners court minutes we don't have commissioners courts yeah we do the county commissioners so the county commissioners get this when we annex a property in It all goes through that.

So we would... I presume we give this to the county clerk, isn't that right? Anytime we annex something, it goes to the county clerk for their record. So that they can basically pull them out, if you will, of the...

I just saw that commissioner's in there, and I'm like, why do they need to vote on what the city's doing?

I think it was just recorded in their... Because when I bought a house, the plot had to be done with county.

It was just a court. I see something that's dated in 1977. I can't immediately go, well, is this still another city?

I would think that would stand. My curiosity would be, is it still... This may be where you had Midland, because... If we're recording it in the Ector County Commissioner's Court, the land we're bringing in in Midland County would also be recorded in the Midland County Court.

Or was that just the initial?

I think it's just the initial, but I'd also be curious what they changed or adopted in 97.

Well, that's what I was looking at was when we need to amend this. That's almost 30 years ago now. So do we need to have a replat for everything that we consider the city of Odessa now and date it for this year?

No, but I think that this would be the opportunity to either nix the specifics of Volume 2, Page 206 and 207, other than my guess is that's the original setup.

You could do, you could keep sending out language because what they're really doing, they're resorting back to when the city was originally developed or the boundaries were originally set almost 100 years ago. But what you may want to do is just to avoid that.

What's the ordinance of?

yeah that ordinance is probably annexation ordinances and has further extended by annexation proceedings and those are probably ordinance there's probably some annexation proceedings they wanted to get in when they brought this up probably that's what it says it continues on the further annexed what you could do is just put some language in there and just change it's just a just a it's a cleanup provisions nothing more than it just says as As lawfully annexed from here until into the future, something that just references our boundaries are what they were established and as subsequently annexed property. All you're really saying is as property is annexed, they become property. part of the city. And that's really all it is. And it'll just be a clean-up version. That way there's no past tense.

It's changing the wording of and as further extended by annexation proceedings. I mean, is it a simple and future annexations?

Yeah, and I think you may be able to get by. We do annexations all the time. But they're included. It's going to constantly change. Well, the parenthetical stuff is not part of the agenda. I mean, the charter language, that's just a reference. So they just put that in there. That's not part of the charter language. It's just a citation. So you probably could leave it that way. The only question is, I mean, they did, I think the intent was they were obviously limiting it to Edgar County because they're going to the original the original city limits when it was established in 1927. And I think that's what they were probably trying to do. And as further extended by annexation proceedings, I think that phrase of intent was so they don't have to come back in. They don't want it always in past tense. It's always anticipating. It's a living document. As we annex, it may become part of the boundaries per our charter as well.

Does that... When we take in Midland over there, does that now become Hector County? No, it doesn't, but still the city limits of Odessa. I would be curious because there's lots of split cities where this county owns this. There's two cities and one side's in here and another side's in this county. How do they handle that?

Yeah, I mean, very similar to how we handle it. The county, I mean, the county jurisdiction on county jurisdictional issues, they have their jurisdiction. On city jurisdiction, we have municipal jurisdiction. I mean, for example, one way when I was revising all the municipal court complaints, I took all the counties out because when they're doing complaints for speeding... They had Ector County, but really, are you checking? Because there's a lot of speeding on Fondry Road. So if you're not paying attention, you're going to generate all these complaints with Ector County. We don't need to prove Ector County or Midland County. We just need to prove that they're in the city. So I took all the county roads out because you don't know. And they're not thinking in the sense of, oh, let me check what this area is in each county. So, really, as long as we stick to city jurisdictional issues, we just stick to city of Odessa jurisdiction. The counties, of course, will have to, they have more of the bigger problem. They've got to sit there and pay attention. This is the park that's in Odessa, and it's a park within Midland County. Ector County has to do the same thing. They have the more larger issue. We don't have to worry about what's in our corporate limits.

Okay. So, is it fair to say, then, that after Ector County, Texas, we say and? future annexations I mean to just simply to make it verbage that people use I mean you can but to be honest my opinion I think it stays I don't know why it needs to change I think it's fine it's further extended by annexation proceedings I think that's okay I think that's what they were trying to do I was thinking we were trying to simplify this okay so is that parenthetical thing gonna stay

That's a parenthetical, that's only a citation, and it's not part of the charter. So that's just a reference and a citation. It can be on there, it can possibly, sometimes we put it in smaller print or skip a space or something, but those parentheticals are not part of the charter language, it's just a reference. So does it need to stay? It tends to stay in charter because it tells the reader when the last time that was amended. So we can look at that and say, okay, they did something back in 97 to amend this. That's what it tells us.

And it's easier for the research purposes as well. So when citizens call us, we can go straight to that reference.

And go to ordinance 97-19.

Okay. Does subsection 3 need to be retitled annexations? Mm-hmm. I mean, you say we don't talk, we don't have a group, but it clearly talks about it.

Except the council, whether the council wants, I mean, not council, except for the committee, whether you guys want to, but you can. I mean, I'm just, my point was, I pulled out some other sections, and many other charters are just causing annexation and disannoxation. They address it. Here we just call it extension of boundaries. We know what it means. If we want to leave it the same, it becomes how important do we want to include this in there. My thinking is we want to probably already amend this one to remove some of that other language and possibly just rename the section while you're at it.

I think it would be easier reference. I'm sorry. We know, but somebody's just looking, where's annexation? It's not there since we can do it, since we can change it.

Or you can abbreviate it. Just put an abbreviation annexation. I'm assuming there's no other way to extend it. That's what I was going to ask. Is there another way to extend it?

Other than annexation?

That's what I said. You can just put it in parentheses that way. It's got a name.

I just wasn't sure. If I gave one to the city, it had to be...

You could call it something different. Just to add that verbiage in there, right?

It's one of those things where we're going to be running into that the determination to make stylistic changes may be dictated whether we're changing something in the language already. If everybody's happy with the language, we may not want to take those just to change the title for some clarity but if we're already changing a lot of stuff in that particular section we might as well make the title change that's that's kind of it may be a lot of that when we're just going to say it just seemed you seem like you were thinking it was strange that we didn't have a section called annexation it's not so much strange i know what it means but a lot of folks will they just look at it they annexation And so, I mean, in a lot of charters you will see a section that's annotation and disannotation. That's sort of what I, I cut a couple of options from two other similar size home rule cities that they just call it annotation. And they'll look at disannotation, they'll address the disannotation process as well.

So are you proposing that we replace this whole section with one of these two?

It's just a guide. It's for reference to see if there's something. It could be something as simple as just striking out that, you know, starting it upon the introduction of any such ordinance and ending with the 30 days of the lapse at the first publication of their, you know, if If we want to just do a strikethrough through all that language in there that talks about publishing in the newspaper, we can make it simple as just the new, it's just a red line. In other words, it's just a strikethrough.

So if we take that out, then what guidelines do they have as to where they can see it? I mean, do we just assume they know to go to Staples? So state law would supersede that? There is a state law. Right, right, there is.

Well, can't we just cut out that, say that it'll be published in the form of which it may be finally passed in a newspaper published in the city of Odessa at least one time and leave out that 30 days thing or make it 10? You said most of them are 10 to 20 days.

No, that's the time for notice of a public hearing.

Okay. So what is, is the 30 day necessary?

I would take that out anyway because what if next year the Odessa American closes and there is no newspaper and we can't publish it in the newspaper? Well, you could say a newspaper. I thought it had to be published.

The notice of public hearing does. It just has to be a newspaper in general circulation in the city. So if it's a newspaper that's generally published or circulated in the city, that'll be sufficient. And so... Does published mean printing a newsprint?

Yes.

I think it used to mean that, but I think it's changed.

It's changed because we asked Pat Canty that. You know, when we were...

When we were talking about how many days we needed I think from a practical point of view practical matter, it's changed I don't think you're gonna get I don't think you're gonna get hung up in court right because we did it this way because the reasonable Standard will come out and be like If we didn't have a paper would we do most of them going to be simultaneous that we publish it It's going to go on their online version if they got a hard paper that they're putting out if they're going there, too

Published I mean is that what it hinges on and published to me would be I'm publishing it online. Yeah I have produced it to I caused it to exist and If it's considered published in a newspaper, in my opinion, it will be sufficient because that's all the statute requires. So if it's classified as, if we give it to Odessa American and it's 100% online and it's published in their newspaper, then we're done. We've complied with the law, but we can't. The statute doesn't get into whether it's, it doesn't define or distinguish between electronic publication and hard paper publication.

So you're suggesting that we just start with upon the introduction and delete the rest of that? I was thinking we just deleted the word daily and then stopped in at least one time and get rid of all the rest of it.

That would be simpler.

I mean all the rest of that just kind of goes around. Do we need the rest of that, Aaron?

I go back with consistent with state law. That's what I do. I tend to... I mean, if there's something that you specifically want, that you don't want a council to change in two readings, that's the thing that is really important for a city charter, in my opinion. So, you know, in this particular case, I think you're fine to say, we're going to follow state law. We want... And in reality, I mean, I don't even know now that even, would you even need annexation in state law? I mean, you would always, I mean, because annexation is so specific, specifically lined out, and do you even need this at all in the charter?

Yeah, I think one of my, one of the example sections I gave was just a short little section, basically making the charter, spelling out that the city has the authority to annex and disannex. And one of those sections was, A little bit longer, but one of them was a slightly small section. There's just not a lot to it.

Yeah. I mean, like, I don't mind sharing. You can have a copy of what I did over there if you're really interested so far. But I wrote, the city council shall have power by ordinance to fix the boundary limits of the city of Odessa and to provide for the alteration and extension of said boundary limits and the annexation of additional territory lying adjacent to the city consistent with state law, period.

That's probably all you need nowadays.

And then that was it. And then I don't even know that you even need the rest of it, but... Now, do you want it to be – do we have to do an ordinance? Yeah, so, I mean, upon the – I mean, because you could say upon the annexation of additional territory, the city of Odessa must – provide city services consistent with state law. But then again, we have to do that anyway. So we're just saying something that you have to do anyway. By state law, right?

Yeah. I just had a problem with the verbiage of reasonable time. Because I know when I was on council, there were some places that had been annexed a long time.

There's stuff that was annexed in 18 that we still haven't provided. So I think you could easily argue that They have a right to probably dis-annex because that's not reasonable. We don't even have a plan.

And we talked about those when I was on council.

That's right. Then I think you could keep the last couple sentences. The boundary limits of the city shall thereafter be fixed in such ordinance and when any additional territory has been so annexed, same shall be part of the city of Odessa. I mean, it's basically just keeping that language, but... Anyway, I think it's fine to just say that, comma, consistent with state law. And then I think that's something we need to work on. One of us here has got to have the official red line version. And I don't

That's your job. Why don't you redline me? Where's your red pen? Blue don't work.

Although one thing in there is, you know, how do we want to handle disannexation?

Have you ever had a DN annexation?

I think there was some good language in here from whatever city this was from. All the disannexation where basically it says, you know, basically it said what I said. The state law says if you can't If you don't provide it within a certain amount of time, then they get to roll out anyway, basically.

And a lot of those disannotation provisions are put in a charter that you're paying if that particular area incurred debt, that the city still retains the right to recover that debt through taxation, for example. You can come in with a sense of. incurring any kind of debt for streets and roads.

So we keep them from joining the city for a year, we put water out there and they'll call just kidding and jumped out. We would be just a year.

I actually have never seen that apply. I understand the theory, but I've actually never seen an area. Putting this before voters before you can be the annex. You have to put it before the voters. That's one option, and a lot of times we do disannotation by petition, but a city could decide to put it in their charter that, no, we want it to go to the voters. We don't want to make the decision on disannotation. That way, that's a pure question call of a particular council.

It keeps anybody on city council from...

taking something out that they just don't like yeah but no with that group of people that just don't like it's just one of those things where instead of it being put on a council to make the determination on this annexation let the voters make the decision if the voters say no then it says no and it's just one of those things i think some you're going to see different approaches on certain things like that it's just a it's just a strategic approach as to whether At that point in time, they adopted that amendment. The current council just put it in front of the voters. Obviously, if it's in their charter, the voters voted for this annexation to be only approved by the vote. But under the statute, it's really, really general. It just gets triggered by a petition, and it comes back to council. But because a home rule city has that authority to have a charter that imposes additional requirements that are not contrary to state law, you know, Anything, you're going to be safe anytime you want to put something in front of the voters. There's never going to be a time where you're going to put something in front of the voters and the court's going to say, you can't do that because that's just the way our system is. It's very few exceptions, but in general, that's a safety valve. You don't see it a lot because it's cumbersome. I mean, it's a very, it's a powerful tool. to use in the most appropriate circumstances when a council or a city is like maybe a council doesn't we never want our council to be put in that position for some reason or another you know or Or it's also a protection from future councils from going road or haywire or something. It's just a, it's just, that's all it is. It's a balancing act. That's what the charter is.

I'm just trying to figure out if this is supposed to be a helpful document to people or is it just something we've got to do because me personally, I feel like everything that we say consistent with state law, in order to say that, we should all know what the state law is. I mean, I'm not comfortable because I might think that's not fair. I mean, do you know what I'm saying?

Well, the problem is it doesn't matter because we have to do it anyway.

Yeah, but if somebody is looking, if they're coming to this for guidance, that's why I say I'm just trying to figure out what this charter is for.

What do you want? Well, I mean, you could reference... But it's today, the statute. The problem is that changes. That will change too over time.

But I think that would be okay because if somebody came to the city saying we want... to be annexed, the city attorney could say, this is what the current state law is, and here's where you find it, because we don't need to put that in the charter. We would know where to find that state law, but the state law changes every two years. We can't just keep putting it in the, you know what I mean?

How this came up was we were about to vote on something in there, and we were talking, and it was against the charter, but it was something that we were all like, wait, how much in this charter is outdated? Exactly. Yeah. So we're looking for outdated stuff that does not need to be in this charter. Moving it out of here completely out. Because it's going to hinder something that we want to not something we want to do something that needs to get right. Exactly. Cause back way where whenever somebody had something against it.

But at times of chance, Aaron's proposed language works. as those two examples so you can see how other cities have just addressed the annexation and you'll notice there's not they this is one of those areas where they will fall back on state law just because just like you said it doesn't matter what the city wants to do because annexation is heavily regulated by state law but if you look at the sections that the two options I gave and what I passed out there's one section that says pretty much Pretty much what state law says, at the bare minimum, we've got to give you the notice of public hearings, and then they give you a time period. That's how the state law works.

So really our charter just needs to say something like we have the right to annex. Just so we have the right to do it.

Basically.

Yeah, in accordance. We just need to have it in there so somebody can come back and say you can't annex this on your charter. So we just need a statement.

I guess conversely what it says is so there's stuff in this charter that we got. What that provision would do would prevent, if you were silent and you said nothing, Then, James, correct me if I'm wrong here, if it was silent and we said nothing on annexation, the council could come in here and say, pass an ordinance that says we shall not annex. Right. Our boundaries are fixed and they shall not be moved. So that's the importance of putting it in the charter. Because if you don't, then again, anybody come in here with a wild hair and say, oh, you know what? We're good. We don't need to grow.

So this is really to... quantify the powers of the council rather than to citizens to try to figure out what they need to do.

That's what I was going to say. I think at the point which a citizen comes in here and is curious about it, I know in my times I've gone to this, it's like, okay, well, I do need to go further to even understand what this is. And I have.

And I'm going to bring up the one thing You pay me $10 to handle $240 million of the city's money. $309. $309 million. Now, you pay me $10 a million. Do you think I'm paying attention? You're paying me $10. You better be paying attention.

But you hear what I'm saying?

Back in 1950s, they paid $10. That was good money to have a meeting. It's not. What I'm saying is some of this stuff is very outdated.

I agree. I'm just trying to figure out.

You got your $10 in your time.

I got my $10.

You made it up to retire. What's your problem? I'm going to put it to you this way.

It cost me more money to run for Disney than I'll ever pay.

The way you have been on council, I agree with you.

That's what I'm saying. I'm not after that. That's not what I'm in here to do. That's one of the examples. At least pay me enough money to buy gas.

And we'll get to that. I just need to be clear what the purpose of the charter is.

I like that example. This is kind of our guardrails.

And that makes sense to me rather than a tool for the city.

Can you imagine a situation where you get just the wrong city council member in there that says, you know what, we're done growing. What do you mean we're done growing?

You know, that could happen. That's what I was saying earlier, is you could get a group in here that could just stop all growth, period.

Okay, so that being said, it looks like if after lying adjacent to the city, we could... consistent with state law, then you're saying all the rest of this down to when any additional territory has been annexed, that last three lines should be there and all the rest can come out.

In my opinion, like I said, I'll be happy to. I really want to read what I wrote.

There's some versions in there. It basically says we can do this according to state law, which is what it needs to say. I like that. Okay.

Between now and next time, though, I may look at some just disannexation language, too. I think that probably. Yeah. That might help to add that.

What we will probably do is our next meeting, whatever we discuss here, we can bring back.

The red line version and then dive into the next section.

Just as we go. That way we can all kind of do a review and we can see it. And then we can say, that's not what I meant. This is probably like. yeah doing small bite-sized pieces that way we're not trying to do two or three articles at once some of these sections are going to generate a lot of a lot of I mean they need to be changed and some of these generate a lot of conversation some are going to be easy that one was kind of easy but it was kind of hard yeah well it's not hard now that I understand why we're even doing this

I was trying to think how often I referred to the charter. Because I read everything and I don't remember this ever being open.

It's like city managers refer to charters often.

And I can see where you would.

and i think that was what it was we were probably arguing with aaron and he said it's according to the city charter and we were like that doesn't make any sense in these days this time and aaron says yeah well we got to change it we're going to change it so it makes sense okay let's make a run at this shall i get victory section four any changes there

I don't think so. I think that's still pretty consistent. Section 5?

This is where I kind of saw some...

I mean, I've seen some variability. This has gotten really super general. Under five, it even calls it general. I kind of felt like that could be better. You'll see where other examples I gave you, I had a general power section and a particular power section. We call it whatever. That's just an example. But that's where we kind of get, and it's still general, but it's, Also, you know, it's sort of, I like the phrase, may exercise the full power of local self-government and shall have all powers possible and lawful for a home or city. That's actually what, that's the definition. It's the statutory definition of a home or city is that Language that may exercise the full power of local self-government and shall have all powers possible and lawful for Home Rule City. And that is literally what we are. That's very important. It's a very important distinction between a Home Rule City and what we call a General Law City. General Law City looks to the legislature for all of its powers and its authority. we are local self we have all the full power of local self-government that's the whole reason why a city will endeavor to become a humble city because it does increase the authority of the city to self-govern much more thoroughly versus having to look at state law and says what can we do no we look at state law for limitations on our power and so that that to me it's it's What we have is the City of the District will have all powers possible for a city to have under the Constitution. It's just, I like that language.

Do we need to put home rural city in there before city? Yeah, something like that. I mean, we don't have to.

They still have the power of city.

Well, I like your form of government. You see that oftentimes in your charters as a form of government. Out of curiosity, James, Article 1175, Texas Revised Civil Statutes, is that still the same or has that changed? It's in our charter. Right there.

Is that actually still... even the law?

Yeah, that's, I think most of that's been replaced and much of it, when it basically, when they did a lot of the recodification, a lot of that's been split up into various sections of the local government code. But suffice it to say, the local government code got real general in the sense of really not touching the home rule cities too much. And so it's really, really generalized language in the statute because the Constitution is is really steps in and actually has more specific. This is one of those things where actually our state constitution has more specific language. It just says she'll have the power of local. Basically, that's where this language comes from. She'll have full power of local self-government. That comes out of our state constitution. I've got to look at 1175, but I think most of that's all been replaced. Is there another one where we need to just put all powers enumerated? I wouldn't have that in there anymore. I would just say include all powers enumerated and basically just resort back to our state constitution because that's where we go. The power of home rule cities actually originates from a specific section in our state constitution. That's where it all comes from. And when you resort back to the state constitution, I mean, it's going to state constitution, Trump state law. Sure.

So generally, are generally, you put in, you found two examples, general powers and particular powers?

Yeah, I have one city I've worked with, they actually had a general powers section, and then right after they had particular powers. We don't have to do that, but it was just an example. In addition to the foregoing general powers, the city may use a corporate seal, own, acquire. That's where we get into purchase, lease, hold, manage, control, convey, and sell real estate. it got kind of specific i just that's kind of interesting because then it could you know make number eight for instance boot right i mean like you can start combining real estate owned by the city that's that's real narrow whereas typically we'll just say we can do all these things because that's kind of the way the law looks at us anyway real estate owned by the city almost seems to almost be a limitation like oh only it only applies to real estate owned by the city And so instead of that kind of section where we're talking about real estate, we have a section that just says your general powers and more specific powers. And that's the reason, that's what I normally see. And if you read these sections, it's just general and broad reservation of powers to the city utilizing the state constitution as the authority. And that's essentially what it's doing. So sometimes it just gives a little more variability and flexibility on the statute in the actual charter itself.

So do they have those pocket constitutions for the state of Texas that we can have?

You'd have to have a very large... Like, yeah. I mean, it's more like an encyclopedia.

Or you're going to need a magnifying glass. That's unfortunate. Number two font.

Texas State Constitution is like, it's a feast.

Every other election or so, we get a handful more amendments. They get changed about ten more times this time. Yeah. I just thought I would ask. Yeah. I don't know. That's just kind of an example of whether we want to see that. Five and six and eight is just kind of like really could be addressed with, for example, general powers and particular powers. That's pretty much powers by ordinance and generally.

That could take care of five, six, and eight.

Yeah, I think so.

Probably. I mean, there's a lot of these things over here.

Yeah.

Regulation of vehicles relevant to public utilities.

I mean, we'll get to that too, but like, you know, regulation of vehicles probably just needs to come out completely. I guess we'll get there as we go.

Yeah, later on I think you brought up regulation on barbers. That's coming up.

Because, again, the state has preempted all of that.

But I think in here is where I wanted to add, and I don't know if this thing, I've made copies that we can't that we can't join any groups that would take away our autonomy. And I don't know if that's something you should pass these around.

Well, it's just, in other words, prohibits the city from ceding or releasing any of its jurisdiction.

This is something that I had written up on ChatGPT, so obviously it's too long and doesn't need to go all in there. But I just wanted something in there that also says that we can't join a group that takes away part of our autonomy. We can't give our autonomy away. If that makes sense.

In other words, any ordinance that comes in that could be construed to grant any of our powers, even if it's... See, that's actually helpful because it could be done inadvertently and it could get missed. It says, oh, wait, we waived it. We released our charter. A charter provision like that would say, you know what? Ordinance never complied with the charter. It's an invalid ordinance. So that's not a bad idea. I mean, essentially, that could be crafted into something that is just a... we're reserving all of our jerks because i got another section there because one of the things i didn't see in there is and it's later on but it's very close When we get into claims against the city, because, yeah, when we get into some of that stuff, but one of the things I noticed is, you know, reservation of defenses. I didn't see, I got an example provision there. And also, you know, this reservation of our sovereign immunity, and that's very closely related.

Where was that at, sir? Which? He gave it to us, Notice of Claims is one of them, and Notice of Claims Against the City. It's on page 101 and page 101.

The reason I brought that up is normally these types of sections, when you're talking about annexation and claims against the city and powers... we normally see those towards the end of the charter under a general provisions but we in our in our chart we seem to kind of go into that general power area early on and so we've got we we got into all that early and so most of that type of stuff we normally see like at the last you know basically like a general provision section or article at the end of a charter and that's that's and we can move it around if you want but that's very it's all very closely related you know reservation um of they you know we're not just there's no grant uh may be laid except by city council in other words you can't imply or you can't imply any kind of waiver of immunity unless city council takes affirmative action to do so by city ordinance or some affirmative action liability of negligence though even in the next page yeah that's the reason I kind of went in this direction with the claims because it's kind of strange that we have liability for negligence that section at this point in the Charter typically you would have something like that and an end like under a general provisions because liability for negligence is really a claims against the city type division and Some of that language has to go.

I agree. Unless the same shall have been remained for 10 days after special notice of writing is given to the mayor and council.

There's two weeks between the council meeting. That time frame wouldn't even be possible.

I don't know if you put the city shouldn't be liable for negligence. If you took that off the charter, the public would actually...

vote for it so i think probably your best bet is to ride it in a way that in the plane this is how you start claims against the city because here's my problem and i don't think it could but it's something you could read this in a way it's like well is there potential and i haven't gone through the whole charter they reserve it somewhere but Is there a potential waiver here? Unless the same shall be remained for 10 days. It says the city shall not be liable to any person, but they have a condition here. Unless the same shall remain for 10 days after special notice. notice, so someone gives notice and it's remained in 10 days, the city by charter is liable?

And what's the special notice? The city council meetings are two weeks apart.

If you don't remove it within that 10 days, if it's a problem, you don't remove it in that 10 days, now you are liable.

But that's a great example of, again, we should just have to be complying with state law. So in my mind, you do the same thing. You said the city of Odessa shall not be liable. comma inconsistent of or inconsistent of state law comma to any person for damages caused yeah from those things period and then unless the same shell that goes away and i can and it'd be too unless the same that goes away and again you're just consistent with state law i gave a couple different charter provisions on notice of claim and we can call it instead of calling it liability notice of claim that's how you started playing against the city

And I've used those before when people come in and write a demand letter and say, you have to follow our charter, otherwise we don't process the claim. And that's what that's used for. But many of those, by charter, cut off. and limit. This right here, this section is, I would say the liability for negligence and the use of the word liability just kind of gives me the chills because of just the way it, because it makes, it forces foredrawn conclusions. But I would say that the reason that we're protected by the Tort Claims Act. The Tort Claims Act comes in and says, well, we don't really care what the charge is. Nobody's ever attempted, but probably because they know they can't get around the Texas Tort Claims Act because of this. But like I said, I wouldn't be like, all right, if I do these things and you don't do it. I guess you are liable for negligence now, which is totally contrary. We don't want to waive our immunity, because immunity can be waived, but it has to be expressly waived, and I don't think it's expressly waived. But I like to just say, all right, this is the claims process, and I just gave two example sections. I think that's a section that just needs to... just change titles.

Maybe do notice of claims and then insert similar language.

Yeah, yeah. And if people see it's just updated and they can still see that, hey, if we've got a problem with the city, we still can pursue the city and pursue a claim and all that kind of good stuff. So you're taking unless the same shall have remained out. Again, the word negligence and the word liability. Right.

Well, that 10-day time period is horrible because council doesn't even meet except every two weeks. So it would be possible that you could get the notice the day after the council meeting and 10 days would be gone before you ever had another one.

It could be for the city's liability though. It could be saying traffic lights out or stop signs have been removed. And so they go down and tell who's ever say the stop signs tore down and then the next day or week within that 10 days, someone has an accident because the stop sign has not been repaired. And then he would say but yeah, yeah, you're liable. I told you guys addicted to get down here writing handed it to you. You were notified and it was fixed.

My only concern is from a citizen's standpoint, would this make it where the city didn't have to fix anything? That's what I think.

So it's still there's still a claims process. Okay, still do a claims process and go through.

So they just couldn't leave a hole in the middle of the road for three years and like, Yeah, well, we're not like, I think it's a way to do is keep from negligence, give you time to go fix it.

Yeah, back then when it was written, it was probably was 10 days of reasonable time to fix all in the road.

The city was a much smaller city because this is going back to they made some changes in 97. But I don't know what they are. But

So if it doesn't quantify or qualify, I mean, could the 10 days be business days? Because then you are two weeks between meetings.

Our charter only requires one meeting a month.

Right. Well, I still don't know what special notice is. Do you know what that is? Yeah, that's another thing.

I mean, they used the term special notice, but they didn't tell us what counts as special notice.

I mean, yeah, me saying it in person, me putting it in an email, me adding it. I was just curious what special notice was.

Maybe notice of claims and utilize this language right there.

Do what now? Notice of claim?

Yes.

Yeah, I like that. So, for example, that second one I did, that second section, it's a one single paragraph. To your point, no act of any officer or employee of the city shall waive compliance or stop the city from requiring compliance. And so it's still putting the burden back on the city that no officer or city employee can waive anything. The city still has to take some action there. No.

Y'all are all over the place. I know. Your eyes are going bigger and bigger.

Yes. My understanding is to change Section 12 to Notice of Claims and use this paragraph before the city with a blank.

Small paragraph.

That's what I understand. That's my understanding. No, this one.

We can start with that notice that has the blank in it. We can start with that, and when we bring a draft back, we can at least tweak it from there. That way we at least make, we've got some changes that we've got hard copy changes we can say, okay, this, we may look at it once it's all written out. Okay, I'll do that. Great. And I think 10 and 11, I didn't think anybody, we didn't have an issue.

If we can go back to...

Does that mean we just can't have an execution? We're not going to hang somebody on city halls? I don't know why. Why can't we do that? It's right here in the charter.

If we can go back, please, to section 7. We don't do that, James. We do not do that.

Yeah, we do not do that. That's what I was wondering.

Is that what it means? No. It's not there.

That be it ordained? I thought that was in there.

style of ordinance the style of all ordinances shall be be it ordained by the city no you can't this is your city probably sees like in a judgment or anything

Why don't we say that instead of... No public property or any other character of property owned or held by the city shall be subject to an execution by any nature.

Hang them or shoot them or electrocute them.

Yeah, that's... That's what that means. No court at all.

And a constitution.

You know, I didn't take execution. Then I went back and read it again and I went, execution?

I thought that was in our...

it's not in our caption but it's in the first paragraph no it goes right into whatever I pulled one up from the that we did and of course the caption says an ordinance of the city council that's standard which is good but the first whereas it goes right into all legal requirements blah blah blah you know whatever the ordinance is about did ordain I did not

Yeah, it says that.

I can't see that.

You caught it.

It says it. I've read it.

Down at the bottom? Down at the bottom, yeah. At the very bottom. It's in the middle. But where is it? Yeah. It's in the middle. I thought I'd see it.

I just have a question on 11. Oh, my gosh.

the city shall not be subject to garnishment let me understand if they lose a lawsuit they can't

Yeah, 10 and 11 are really, it's public property provision. The concept is the property of the city belongs to the taxpayers. So if someone gets a judgment from the city, they can't show up and start taking our vehicles. They can't start seizing any of our property. That's what 10 says. 11 says they can't go into our bank accounts to garnish. You can garnish. That's an extraordinary remedy under Texas law. I get a judgment against them. I can't garnish wages in Texas no matter what. So wages are off. But you can, let's say, for example, if I sue company X, I get a judgment against them. I have to go and find out they have no assets to pay the judgment. I can go back to the court and say, I want to garnish their bank account. I can go garnish their bank accounts, a separate court order. It's called an extraordinary remedy. And what this says is city funds not subject to garnishment. They can't get to any city-owned bank accounts because the idea behind that is no matter what, city-owned bank accounts are still considered public taxpayer-owned property. So that's the whole general. It's the same thing that you can't lien property. We don't pay a contractor. The general rule is the contractor can't, you know, we build a police station and we have a dispute over payment. He can't come in and lien that property and have a lien against public property. Okay. That's the idea. Okay. That's why we have bonds. You can go after the bond and get paid. But the property is free and clear. And they can fight out over the bond all they want, but you can't have a lien against public property. And so that's 10 and 11's dealing with those types of things. Execution is nothing more than a seizure of property to satisfy judgments.

I can just see us getting that taken out. We're going to pull public executions off of it.

Off the charter. Off the charter. They'll probably go for that.

I don't really see anything wrong. 10-11 seems to be, I mean, there's always been some tweaks, but it's pretty general. 13 is very simple, very common. It is not necessarily any superseding, which is to see if this is a party for any bond undertaken or else it could be commended or executed. This is where if we have to file suit to stop somebody from doing something and we try to go through a temporary injunction, state law and the rules require it. Most applications for an injunction be supported by a bond. We don't have to do that as long as our charter says so. So governmental entities can be exempt from having to front $10,000, $15,000, $100,000 to obtain a bond to get an injunction granted upon someone. That's what that means. So that's very typical language there.

It would make sense, though, if you've got something with a business, but that business needs to operate to bond that to keep their business open. That makes sense. But in today's business world, that makes sense. Say they're supposed to fix something, but...

there's extenuating circumstances and so we want them to be open and running how does that work if you can't you can't do a bond to keep them up and running see what the bond is to protect so when you get let's say for example we go out and we're going to stop somebody from doing something that we're having an argument with and we obtain a permanent a temporary injunction and so the bond is required to protect the defendant to make certain that we're going to pursue the case. We're just not doing it to interfere and cause some trouble. So the bond is there to protect the defendant. The idea is the city already has public assets to sort of secure that. In other words, the government is, trust the government. That's essentially the thing. Yeah, that's what it means.

You see how far you can throw them?

Right, right. Maybe another... concept of the idea is taxpayers should not have to front a bond that's really the rule because it's when you require a bond you're actually going into taxpayer revenue to actually pay a bond and the taxpayers are treated differently as the taxpayers we're pursuing a claim on behalf of taxpayers when we pursue a lawsuit on behalf of pursuing somebody we're suing on behalf of the taxpayers taxpayers should not be required to obtain a bond to pursue their suit that's the general idea That's very common language in most charters.

I like 14. We're getting rid of it. Intimate domain.

I had to look up what an abattoir was.

I did too.

A slaughterhouse. Yeah, this guy at work, one of our aides, I was like, what's an abattoir? And he said, it's an abattoir. That's a slaughterhouse. How do you know this? Well, he has autism, so maybe that's why. And are they even called sanitarium?

Is anything called a sanitarium again? No. I mean, that's right out of one from over the cuckoo's nest.

I mean, we can leave that alone, but what I've seen is it gets a lot shorter. I didn't print out any examples, but a lot of times they'll just say for Chapter 251 of the Local Government Code grants us our in-the-domain authority. And so much of the time it'll just write it in the domain to condemn property for any public purpose that's decided by counsel. Because what we do when we go and decide to condemn, or I guess not use the word to do it, exercise in the domain. If we're going to exercise that in a domain, we go and get an ordinance from the council where the council makes a binding that the property is needed for a public purpose. So instead of, I mean, they listed like a laundry list of things.

So you're just like for public purpose, not inconsistent with state law. Yeah. And then kill the rest of the law.

I'll bring 251 down. I've seen it. Section 251, it's about that long. Because all the...

case law requires is the ordinance to basically make a very clear finding and it's a public need and public purpose several of these that are just like you said a laundry list yeah i don't know why to me i think those are limiting yeah exactly because like peggy said sanitorium the next one requires us or lets us regulate the telegraph lines okay great yeah so when you when

If you do a whole laundry list, you run the risk of what if it's not your real detailed laundry list? Right. Did you exclude it?

Because it doesn't have anything for internet lines, so fiber. No, there's nothing fiber optic, so we can't take, you know.

That makes sense.

Yeah, it should be.

Well, we can because that, we can, but I'm just saying go back in.

They can.

And also, based on the little parenthetical, I don't see any change. It hasn't been changed. Yeah. So this is old language. Maybe we just update it more in line with the statute. Maybe even borrow the language from the statute. That way it's in there and people can read it and they don't have to go, but it's a state law. So it's going to be good. It's going to be public purpose language, so I think that helps. What is a welfare building?

I've used my telegraph for years and years. I don't want to get rid of my telegraph. A welfare building.

Is that like charitable? I mean, like the public housing or something along those lines? Yeah. I mean, that could be a lot of things.

But that's kind of the danger of this is you leave a lot of interpretation.

Right.

Yeah. For the general welfare, look how many times that's changed our country. Mm-hmm.

15 the thing that popped out to me. I wrote a sentence what I'm normally see a section like this start out with is it's it kind of Does it but I like that most cities will just come around at most provisions on street powers It'll say something to the effect of city shall have exclusive Dominion control and jurisdiction in upon over and under all city streets and then It talks about she'll have the power to lay out, establish, open, alter, widen, lower, extend. One of the things is because transportation code, there's two sections of the transportation, two chapters of the transportation code that deal with general law and home rule. And so it's one of those things where I like just to make the declarative, have a nice good declarative sentence that says city has exclusive dominion and control over all city streets. The reason that comes in and makes it very clear That's how we have authority over all of our franchisors. In other words, you're going to run wire, you're going to run lines, you're going to run plumbing. We have full exclusive amendment control. Now, do we have that? Is it okay as it is? It says the city shall have the power to lay out established open ultraviolet, but that to me is more of like the natural second sentence. The natural first sentence is... we have full control of the minute and jurisdiction over all cities it just feels like it's missing that one starter sentence then the rest of it I think is fine and we and we specifically say city roads because we have text on well the next one says the city has the power to improve any street or highway within within its limits yeah I've got that question

Because we don't really have the power to do that. I thought we did.

I mean, we could go fix it. We just have to pay for it.

Yeah, like when we were looking at that turnaround or whatever you call it there on the Kermit Highway.

The roundabout?

Roundabout, yeah.

They wouldn't let us. Don't do that.

Well, we were just seeing if we could, and we couldn't.

Okay. But I think what I've read is, like, the city could contract with the state to take care of Andrews Highway and fix potholes on Andrews Highway if they chose to. I mean, I don't know which one, but you could, according to this.

So we do have certain powers. I mean, because we're over 50,000, like, we control the lights. We control the signalization. We do the boxes and all that kind of stuff. That's about it, though. Now, it doesn't mean we don't throw some... rock asphalt down in a pothole and then maybe ask for forgiveness later which we kind of do that but that's okay and every every city in every city and every district does that well sure and every every district engineer has a different opinion on those things right district engineers say do you do not touch my road no matter what and others are like Great. Thanks for helping out with that pothole. We appreciate it. I mean, it's that different.

Yeah. I don't know. It just seems like street powers could probably be reduced to about two sentences, three sentences.

Street powers and street improvements? Yeah.

It's almost combining. Yeah, you can almost combine them. I mean, I think we can just hit it and say city has exclusive dominion and control and jurisdiction head over under all city streets within its city limits. I mean, you pretty much establish what section 15 says i don't know that it's necessary to go into alley sidewalk squares because that charter language would authorize the city council to come in and adopt any ordinance that wants to establish loading zones and squares and parks and all the things that's in here this is almost a good example of that temptation of getting a little too detailed, that some of this could have been all in an ordinance. And then you have a section that says the city, in accordance with state law, or not contrary to state law, or just establish it. The city has full, complete control and dominion jurisdiction over all city streets. Then you can adopt any ordinances you want. That ordinance derives its power and authority from that charter. And it's also backed up by the transportation code.

Your language on that, if you don't mind, just shoot that out to the green.

Yeah, I'll shoot that out to Norma. Okay. That was my knee jerks. I wrote it down here.

Regulation of vehicles, is that completely inconsistent with state law now? Which one?

Yeah. Yeah, that's speed limits and 17.

The only thing I see in there that's important is the routing of the same of because you want to be able to route this trucks out of the city.

But regulation of vehicles Yeah, but the speed limit the lighting all the rest of it. Speed. Yeah, I hear you speed and all that kind of stuff.

I think you can you can strike that I mean, I think the operation, yeah, definitely, but when you start getting into the licensing and... Gotcha.

And then, like you're right, maybe add truck route language in there.

Add truck route language. Well, if the routing are the same, so I'm assuming that would include trucking.

Which, of course, that means we have control over the streets also, which, anyway. And I think 18... They tell us what to do.

We ask, please, and then they tell us to pound sand. We can't do the qualifications for the operators.

Which number are you on, sir? 17.

It's right there. It says the vehicle's the same. The qualifications of their operators are the same.

We can't do anything related to the

I think you could, if you really want to, you can turn that in regulation of traffic. I mean, I think that kind of, it's a little bit repetitive of street jurisdiction. I think that's implied in streets, you know, the jurisdiction of streets. But I actually think that's kind of maybe one of the intent behind 17 is regulation of traffic. It's the operation. I don't know that they were, I'm not so sure that they were really trying to regulate driver's license when they did this. They were trying to regulate speed zones, and I think routing and the lighting, I think that's kind of where they were trying to go with that. Ultimately, that to me sounds a lot more like an effort to regulate traffic regulation, which is what we have that right already under street powers.

But we can license some vehicles like taxis and stuff. So there are some instances where we license things. It's not a license. You can't give them a license. Like I said, yeah. That's true.

Do the railroads, do we put up those crossbars? Are the railroads doing it?

Railroads do. Now, we may have paid for some stuff. Usually when you go in and you do silent zones or whatever, which we have. They don't do that. UP says, that's fine. but you're going to pay for all of the stuff to make it a silent crossing. Does that make sense? So we may have paid for all of that, I don't know, 20 years ago or more.

But that's been my experiences.

Again, you have to pay for the engineering. You have to pay for all the crossing upgrade. You've got to pay for all the signs. You've got to pay for all that stuff. And then they accept it, and then you pay for it, and then that's it.

So right now, we're having this problem right now with imperative. The exact same thing with us. The only people they're making put up lights is imperative. There's six other crossings that the railroad's not making put up because it's inside the city limits. Are they punishing us for this being inside the city limits? That's my argument, and I'm trying to get a meeting set up with the railroads. because that is my territory, my area over there. And they're interfering with these people trying to do business.

That may be. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, UP is probably more powerful than the federal government.

It's one of the ones that will tell us though, this is kind of like this reminds me dealing with the railroad when I used to work for clean, we had to deal with Fort Hood. It was for her that time, you know, at that time, the real Fort Hood, you know, original for that. We can say that portion of Fort Hood is within city limits, blah, blah, blah, all day. All the meetings, we always had to make certain to approach the meetings, not so much from a demand position, but this is what we'd like to have a very good, positive, continuing relationship with Fort Hood. That is the way you've dealt with Fort Hood, because we'd have three-star generals come in and sit in the meetings, and they don't, they're always very polite, very professional, but you also know that They can get up and walk out any time. They don't care. They don't have to care.

They don't even have to be there.

The railroad's the same way. I've found when you deal with the railroad, you approach them the right way, you can get a lot of what you want.

Let me say this to you. As city council, we can limit that speed limit through this town to 10 miles an hour or two. You mean the railroads? Right now, they run 65 miles an hour through this town. There's nothing in this town, nobody else is running that fast, but they're able to move. But if they don't want to agree to something, like I said, as a city council, we have an ordinance to drop that speed limit down on trains to 10 miles an hour.

Yeah.

And they will have to run 10. That's going to throw their whole schedule off.

Now, I have to go back in and check the law. I remember I had to do the research in this area where we were trying to get them to clear all the weeds and grass on the railroads. And there was case law that says we don't have any authority to do any of that. They did. The railroad did because they just wanted a good relationship with the city. But we didn't have any authority to enforce it. I recall a lot of the case law I found out that push comes to shove. We didn't have a whole lot of authority to enforce the speed limits either.

Well, we did because the speed limit through town was 40 miles an hour. And then they upped it to 60. We upped it to 65. So there is some kind of authority here to do that with the railroad.

Yeah, and I'll research it. It's just been a few years since I've had to fight with the railroad. I don't want to fight with them.

I want to do this the right way. But what I'm saying is whenever they start impeding progress, then there's a problem. And this is what they're doing. Nobody else has to put up a stop bar out there. or even lights on their railroad crossings at this one company. And I have a real big problem because it's the only one. Now, I don't mind dropping the speed limit down through there to 45 because there's a bunch of businesses now that are picking up in that area and it really needs to be considered from 55 down to 45. Just to control speed through there. So,

Yeah, I'll research that. It's just one of those things that we didn't really have a direct issue with. We had some other issues with the railroad, and we always, I will say we usually got everything we saw on the railroad. Railroads usually, if you have a sit-down with them, most of the times, most railroads really do want to get along with the city. They know that we can be an absolute pain if we want to be. So they do try. So there's always a lot of room to work with the same thing. The railroad considers themselves beds. They're federal.

This, this agrees that the feds set the speed limit, not the city.

Yeah, that's the way my interpretations I think I've seen those get struck down.

Well, the last the last thing anything like that happened was in Midland several years ago, they wanted to know horn whistle up and down Front Street, and they got it. But they had to do what you were talking about. They come in and put barriers where you couldn't drive around the gates, new gates, all that was funded by whoever. But when that happened, not long after that's when they ran over all those guys from the military in the truck. Right? Well, I had no whistle there.

Few years ago, I had a municipal court had a chief just lose it against the BNSF and he wrote what happened is they were stopping the train and they're blocking a crossing and he sat there and watched a guy walk out the engineer got out and went to the convenience store and bought himself a fountain drink well you're thirsty you gotta have some he got back in and all the traffic was backing up so the police chief he had done it several times and he wrote a citation to him for blocking the roadway so he blocked the roadway Texas law says we do have jurisdiction on blocking a crossing

And we did.

And we wrote that citation. BNSF lawyer called and says, hey, man, can you dismiss that ticket? We promise he'll never do that again. And he never did. It never happened. It happened a lot. And the chiefs had enough. But they called one time, and they took care of it. You give the railroads a little bit of chance, a lot of times they will fix the issue.

At the end of the day, they actually did. Oh, the government affairs? Yes.

Yeah, we have the content.

Everyone else already hates the program. We have enough hate from everybody else.

Just to let y'all know, it's 431. Does the committee wish to continue, or do y'all want to conclude and wait for whatever y'all wish to do?

I'm ready to push on for 30 more minutes.

Yeah, I've got a 5 o'clock, which I can be a little bit late too.

We've got to, we've only got to make it to, to get to this objective, we've just got to get to 32. And so some of these are probably not going to leave on us.

Let's push through till 5. Yeah.

Public Utilities, number 19. Are we at 19? No, I'm good. I don't think 19 is any question. I'll get that to me.

I didn't have any yellow or dots or anything like that. Same thing with 20.

Yeah, I didn't have anything on that.

So the only thing on 19 is when you get into what is a public utility, and that goes back to internet. Is that what it's talking about, that we? Okay, I'm on the next one. Where are we giving ourselves? Is that back to the streets? Because that first one sounded like everything above the streets. and then didn't sound like there was anything below the streets well but in 1957 there wasn't buried cables under as well right and so that would cover the things because i've had it all lumped into utilities but now that i'm looking at this this is for the city to provide the utilities right yeah

20 looks more like in the area of franchise, or franchising.

22 franchising?

There's a section on franchise.

Yeah, there is. Okay, that, I like this.

Although I do like the idea of, you know, franchises, do we need to expand that? For instance, franchises, does that give us the right to do a franchise agreement for solid waste removal? Why wouldn't it? I'm just making sure that it does. Is that a public utility? Some see it as a public utility.

Well, I would say on 19 they may have sort of a definition. So, and it's light and power system, water system, sewer, sanitary, natural gas, parks, swimming pools, all these things. Okay. And then that's public utility. Then regulation of public utilities. If we want to possibly be more clear and toying to find what public utilities are, because 19 almost really does it. You could argue that 19 does that, you know, because it utilizes the same phrase in the laundry lists. You know, what those public utilities are. 19 seems like a definition of public utilities. They really like those abattoirs. They really like putting that in there. Yeah. It's like they figured out, that was a new word. It's got those abattoirs, though. Seems like we just need to possibly have some language that just broadens the definition of public utilities. That's what I was curious about. To everything. Because we got one thing that's exploded. It's not only just internet, but just telecommunications. Right. We need to look and see. I can look and see in the Texas Administrative Code. we'll have a definition for public utilities and retail public utilities and possibly resort back to just being a lot more broad, but it just covers every type of utility service there is. Or we can just say not limited to telecommunications. I just would rather be extremely broad. That way this charter can basically, at the time, as needed, we can always come back and we'll have some language on the charter authorizing the limits.

Because it does say sanitary disposal.

But it also says fertilizer plants.

And abattoirs. Got to have them abattoirs, man.

All right. 22, 23, 24. Nothing in there. World War 24.

Where are y'all at? We're on 19th.

When you get to fires, I've got a question to fires.

How about the power to buy and sell gas?

I don't think that hurts anything.

I mean, it's just, I don't think we really do that anymore, but something happens. If you have an emergency or something like that, that needs to stay. No, no, no. No pandemic.

We're not covering a pandemic and selling gas. Well, you know, the state emergency, they planned for the pandemic the year before it happened. So it was their fault. Yeah, 22 is pretty good.

I question whether we still need that last sentence. There's an express requirement for a second reading. And he said franchise orders shall not be finally adopted at the same meeting at which it passes on first. I agree.

Strike that.

Because didn't we agree if it required two readings, you could really read it back-to-back?

I see. Well, here's the one thing. You could bring it up in work session and then turn around and pass it down.

the way that our city has an approach that we bring everything through work sessions and council it's getting it's council seeing it twice already not all cities do it that way so the way the process is it's already been seen twice i've seen that before and i've never really understood a good explanation where they will specifically call out in the franchise section of the charter a second reading and i never did understand it i think it's some leftover from I think it's just something left over from just 1969. Older, yeah. I just don't see the point to it anymore. But again, we put it all on work session. So essentially, a reading is not a formal reading. In a sense, we almost really, we don't take action on work sessions, but we're really, really, really close to having a reading when we have a discussion over an ordinance when it comes to work session. Right. We probably could consider the reading, because the reading is only just to review it. Right. airports. We have Slaymire. Slaymire? Slaymire's Cafe.

But we could buy from them under this charter. I wouldn't take anything out. I don't want a hole in my head. I do not want an airport.

The school bus barn was an airport at one time. Oh, really? Okay. What's that school right over there next to it? The airport's underneath it. Elementary school over there. Cameron. Cameron, yeah. The old airport's underneath there. It's underneath there?

You don't see the word conflagrations very much anymore. We don't use that word enough, and I've got to use that word a few times this week.

That's under fires, right? So my thought on that is I think that this is kind of a good example of what a charter should be for. Does the committee, do the people believe that there should be, without question, a fire department? Yes. Then I think that it needs to be rewritten. Because right now it doesn't say there has to be. You have the power by ordinance to provide for the mean. In my mind, fire should read fire department. and it should read, the city of Odessa shall create and maintain a fire, a municipal fire department to provide means for protecting against conflagrations, which is just out of control fires. And other disaster services that the city shall provide for the maintenance support and regulation. I think you're right.

Clearly, this section was anticipated to use a volunteer fire department.

That's exactly right.

And so I think establish a fire department.

Yeah, so I think it should say shall create and maintain a fire department. and the head of the fire department shall be designated as the fire chief and other members therefore shall be known as firefighters and then the rest of it goes away that's my opinion yeah well and then the thing can we back up to playgrounds just a second sure it's telling me you have to put fireproof material Well, in my mind, we are going to pass by ordinance the International Residential Code and the building codes, and that's going to take care of itself.

Much of this has been eclipsed by building code. That's a great example of also getting a little bit too much into ordinance territory because this is all building code stuff.

For sure.

We're going to go to 24. This was in one of our readings on a trailer fire. How much should they have to rebuild? It's got 50% in here. If 50% of it was wood, you can't rebuild. Once it's 51%, you can't rebuild it. So at 50%, you can, but at 51%, you can't. Yeah. That needs to be removed.

Well, I'll just say you remove all of it because we shall maintain a fire department.

And just say that we're going to have it. Yeah, on 24th.

I don't like that without the city limits.

Well, that's what I got highlighted here. How do we have control?

We just bought a new playground for one. I'm sorry, go ahead.

City-owned property.

Yeah, so a lot of, like for instance, I've lived in several cities where outside the city limits, we owned a city lake, right? And there was a park. It was a city park, city lake, not in the city limits.

Mm-hmm.

So that would be an example.

I guess I would think a park outside of the city limits would be controlled by the county.

And it could be, but in some cases it's owned by the city. Here's the thing.

In our chapter 30 of the government code, that's our court of record statute. It specifically permits the city to, the municipal court has jurisdiction of all areas within the city limits and on areas that's owned by the city outside the city limits. So that's how you can be required to go to a city municipal court outside the city limits if it's in a city park. So we still have jurisdiction out there for our municipal court. So if we have like a city lake, no camping after 10, no glass containers, whatever, officers go out there and issue citations. State law expressly provides for jurisdiction at that park even though it's outside the city limits because it's city-owned property. That's an example of when you see that at work. When you actually, because you say, well, what circumstances can someone end up in municipal court where they got the citation outside city limits? That's the number one example. Because a lot of parks are located outside a lot of city limits.

So do we need to take out without city limits or say, or without city limits on city-owned property? I mean, I don't know. That just seems so strange.

Or without the city limits. Yeah, I just think it's old language. Yeah. It's just, that's the way they talk, I guess. It's going to come down to whether we want to. 1927 language.

It's a minor, it'll be minor changes that we want to.

In fact, you might be able to change that without going to voters.

Yeah.

Because it's non-substantive.

Yeah.

I mean, it's grammatical. It's a word that probably was common in use of language in 1927, but it's not today.

We can put it on there and just say, I mean, put it on there just because a lot of times we'll see ballots, they'll say, the only changes are clarifying the language, nothing substantive. I mean, it's just, I'm sad to see it run us.

I thought it sounded strange to say that we had exclusive control.

of all parks and playgrounds whether within or without the city limits and i don't want to go back but that's also another thing but under 12 we're talking about the liability for negligence yeah b talks about what shall not be liable for anybody getting hurt in a playground or park or public building and then they've got the unless the same so they got that same 10-day language These kind of go together when we change that, because we're not liable for people getting hurt in a park. We have a recreational use statute that protects us, so if people get hurt in our park, we're not liable. We don't have the same level of negligence. We don't have the same level of liability.

There's also an ordinance written on this, too, on 25. May the 6th, 1997, amended the charter by repealing section 25.

I don't know what 25 was.

Yeah, we'll pull it in. That may have gotten into voters. So the voters may have dropped that whatever 25 was. Right, it doesn't refer to anything.

Probably Water Wonderland.

Huh? Huh? That was a park owned by the city.

It didn't start out being owned by the city, but then the city bought it.

It was heroes when the city owned that thing.

um okay i'm sorry i just didn't understand that so i know i might skip health just for a minute but for the same reason i would suggest under police department you do the same thing i think you know the way it reads right now is you could absolutely you could disband the police department by ordinance okay and you could just contract with the sheriff department You could do that right now. Some towns do that, but those are tiny towns. But those are tiny towns that do that. So in my mind, I think the committee needs to just, if you believe that there should be a police department. Strike that half power by ordinance two. I think it should read, there shall be established and maintained a department of police. to preserve order within the city and to secure the residents of said city from violence and property damage.

This is a great example of the use of charter to protect against future councils. Someone says, we're just going to get rid of the police. I've seen that actually happen. I've seen it too. I had a city, they tried to get me to come in there they had this really they what they were trying to do is fire the police chief so in there the fact that we just want to get rid of the police chief. We'll get rid of the entire department and of course the chief has got to go. But they eliminated their entire police force. That's crazy. That's what the council culture did. So this is a test that could change.

Go back to health then. We skipped over health.

I think health, a lot of the health, I think you can probably maybe keep some of that first paragraph of the A and B and C. I think that's all ordinance stuff.

Yeah, I would agree. I agree. It says establish all necessary rules and regulations. Indeed. Protecting the health of the city, comma, not inconsistent with state law. And then, you know, delete a lot of that stuff. Yeah, you can just.

Because this is one where we don't.

Well, and then we talk about penalties. Does there need to be a provision in this charter that basically as a catch-all it says penalties unless otherwise authorized by ordinance? may be the maximum allowed by state law.

You can. I mean, if you want to.

That way you give your court a lot more latitude.

You can do that. That way, you know, that way if anyone wants to come and eliminate all penalties for any violation, they have to make a charter change. And so we want to be able to keep the penalties in the law. And that way you can't, you know, you can't just eliminate. I've had cities that wanted to. Oh, no, we don't want to have penalties for code enforcement. We just want to give them warnings. We don't want to charge people. Well, something like this one, you would have to. Exactly. And some people push back because nobody moves. You couldn't regulate. So that would not be allowed. You'd have to go back to the truck. Inside and outside.

So, Aaron, on that nuisance, though, that language 5,000 feet into the UTJ, it sounds like, is that? governed by state law you know we've talked about yes sir there's state law that says that a home rural city a home rural city can extend into the etj and the 5 000 feet yeah there's a name kind of health and safety health and safety because that's what this is talking about now we want to get rid of that because we and it's already but it's in state law right right right so just making sure that it's covered

Yeah, we had another section in here about nuisance.

But for the state law, would we have to establish that right to do it?

No, we could just pass an ordinance that allows us to do that. Okay, that's what I'm saying, yeah. Now we could do, or we could say, now you could put in here 2,500 feet. You know, that kind of thing. I don't think you should do that. So I think that's why it's fine to just strike it. Okay.

I think that's fine

See, under power, under six, if we're going to get rid of that, but powered by ordinance, they address the nuisance there as well. Seems like we'll address that.

So if you try to mark out nuisance on here, you're going to lose one of your biggest deals. Which one? Right at the bottom of it, it says.

I'm sorry, which section? In the 27th. 27th.

It says a public could take the lien against property owners who failed or refused to make sanitary sewer connections. and to charge the cost against that owner and make it a personal liability. Whenever we put a sewer in, they're required to hook up to it. But if you pull this out... No, I don't think you would pull out that part.

I think you want to be able to have them... You don't want people into your city.

Although you can't do that by state law either. No, that's regulated by the DCEQ.

No, as far as putting a lien on those properties.

No, no, no, not the lien. I knew they had to take that out of there. Yeah. But raw sewage on the ground, whether it's a city or not, is covered by DCEQ.

They seem to require property owners to make connections to the city sewer system. You can have that in there for public health.

Or technically, if you've got a big enough lot, you could put a septic system in there. Yeah. you need to regulate that out because if you do it, then everybody's going to do it.

We want everybody to be on the system.

I think what you would do, I think under health, I think in general what you want is you want to have some general language that basically just protect the general health and welfare of the city. We could adopt whatever health regulations to the extent allowed by state law. That way the business is going to be your authority to adopt whatever ordinances we need in our utility section. So we're going to be able to address that, but it'll just grant the power. And the penalties can be

Yeah, and you can't put a septic in without a state permit either.

I got an example section in 29. One of the things I noticed, because this is what jumped out for me, and I checked about three other home rule cities. We have it, it says, a city council for the city of Edessa shall have the power and authority to compromise and settle any and all claims and lawsuits of every kind and character in favor or against the said city, including suits by said city to recover delinquent taxes. What you normally see... is excluding suits by said city to recover delinquent taxes that's what you normally I had to go back and check because I can't remember seeing including a lot of cities exclude I think the reason is the state constitution limits the ability of the city to waive city taxes unless there are certain number of years have gone by. And I think that's what it is. I just made notice that we have including, whereas a lot of charters will say excluding. And so I think that's a constitutional requirement that basically we can't waive city taxes. I think that's the idea. It makes certain that council doesn't waive delinquent taxes for someone unless we do it in accordance with the state constitution. Right. Yeah, because I had a city attorney friend of mine run into that, Marcus Norris. He used to be city attorney for Amarillo. And he, they got him parked. They got to park somebody dedicated. And he's like, all right. And he found out it had taxes on it. And he goes, I ain't worried about that. We're not subject to taxes. And Amarillo took the property. And then Amarillo said, Potter County says, you still got to pay the taxes. He goes, well, we're going to request that you waive them. He goes, well, first, they said, you're not accruing taxes now, but all the past taxes you got to pay. And he's like, no, that don't sound right. Yeah, they were right. And they couldn't waive them. They couldn't waive them. I believe the Constitution says you can't. I think they have to be more than 10 years old before you can compromise or waive. So there's a time limit. So the Constitution steps in to prevent. That's why a county can't ever waive our taxes. That's why they can't ever let. That's why if we take a piece of property. And it's got a lot of delinquent taxes. We've got to double check and make certain that we don't take property. We don't accept property that has a lot of taxes on it. Delinquent taxes, we may have to pay more than the property.

After seven years, it waives taxes. Yeah. So I'm wondering if that, if federal trumps state law. Say that again? After seven years... They can't come after you for any federal taxes after seven years. Federal taxes. And I'm wondering if that fits in with the state.

I've got to go back and look because I don't remember if it's – there is a year – there is a temporal requirement in the Constitution because I've had this before. This comes up more often than you want when the cities get strike-off properties. You know, we get strike-off property that don't get picked up at auction. and sometimes we want to use those for economic development so we try to do counties and other districts to waive taxes and sometimes they're they're able to for public purposes so there's some other limitations in there but it's not just a they can't just do a magical waiver and I gotta look because there's a constitutional prohibition that's it's not that they don't want to but there's a constitutional prohibition on it and I think that's why I just I just bring that up because I mean, we can leave it the same if nobody wants to, but I did have some foreign language that I saw, and most of those, it does use the word excluding instead of including. But it's just interesting why whenever they wrote this, they made certain to say including. So I think they knew what they were doing when they wrote this. I don't think it was an accident. I think they have taken the approach that we'll do what we want to do on our taxes. So I don't know. We can leave it the same whether it comes up or not. That may not be. Contracts, that may be something council really wants to think about. Already though, I think there's only

This is the second place that the designated city official is mentioned.

I think the most important is that last paragraph. The city council may by ordinance resolution designate the officer officers who are authorized to sign contracts, but we have this one provision that the mayor shall sign all authorized conveyances and bonds and contracts for which signing authority has not otherwise been delegated or authorized. That seems to read... It's a little contradictory or superfluous in the sense that it seems to start out by saying if it's a conveyance or a bond, well, the mayor shall sign all authorized conveyances and bonds and contracts which the signing authority has not otherwise been delegated or authorized. The question is, do we want to keep it so that the mayor must sign all deeds? I mean, if it's a conveyance, technically a lease is a conveyance.

But I think what they're doing is, because like a lot of times, they authorize the city manager to sign stuff. And so this just says if you don't authorize the city manager. So if you don't say the city manager is authorizing, then the mayor has to do it.

But I think that is that second phrase. It says the mayor shall sign all authorized conveyances and bonds and contracts for which signing authority has been delegated or authorized. I think that... Signing authority, you know, contracts where signing authority has not otherwise been delegated or authorized is only referencing contracts only. We may want to clarify that. It reads like the mayor shall sign all conveyances and bonds. then only contracts would sign for is not otherwise delegated or authorized we're taking care of that all of our form resolutions or ordinances and especially our resolutions we have city managers authorized to execute all documents we take care of that first part it's that mayor shall sign all authorized conveyances and bonds do we still need that language with a when we got a city manager form of government versus maybe they didn't have that so much back when they amended and then we also have to look they did amend this a good bit let's say this was the most most controversial section yeah they've amended this in 69 93 85 they came back in 97 that's a lot of amendments so they we may want to pull the ordinances to see what all the changes they were major and see what they were really equivalent over but I'll be willing to wager their quote there's all the changes with that last paragraph deciding how they wanted they probably I bet some of those ordinances added that section in there about we can delegate that authority, the council can delegate that authority to the city manager and the balancing act was keeping the mayor to sign all the conveyances and bonds. I don't know, I don't know if that's, that's something that we, do we keep it, do we make it across the board?

We've been voting that way. Well all year, since I've been here, we've been voting that way. We're going to give him authority to sign something that comes before the council.

What about deeds and anything that's considered a command? Under the charter, the mayor would have to sign a command.

I don't know if the mayor's ever had to sign one. What about you, Aaron? Have you signed deeds? I haven't, but, you know...

I personally think if council wants to authorize, say if we're going to execute and deliver a deed, the resolution, I think council should have the authority to say they're going to authorize the city manager. The city council has already authorized the execution of the deed. That's the real act. Under this charter revision, the mayor has to sign it. But here, if you... modify that, then you can actually have the city manager.

In my opinion, it's always better to at least have the option for the council to authorize the city manager to do anything to carry out the day-to-day operation. Because again, that document may not be ready. that night they'd be ready the next day and you've got a mayor who's got to have a real life and a real job because he only gets paid 10 bucks to be here he is 25 you know 25 bucks to be here you know so i mean he's he's out of town or he goes somewhere and you know the authorization is there from the council heck the mayor might not even be there at that meeting you still have a meeting yeah or whatever it might be so you may want to

slight revision to basically extend the conveyances and bonds to that first sentence made by ordinance or resolution, designate the officer or officers who are authorized to sign, not just contracts, but contracts, conveyances, and bonds. And contracts for, you know, and just make that slight revision. Because council's always gonna have the authority to review and approve all those documents. And then our resolutions right now for overwhelming majority documents, we have it in there where the resolution authorizes the city manager. That way we don't.

That way we just.

The city manager.

Either one could sign it, but we prefer that it stays with the mayor. But if he's not available, the city manager should have that authority.

I'm just curious about this entire section because it does seem like there are lots of state regulation over purchasing and the way that a lot of this has to be done. So whether it's an open bid or not, whether it's... what channels it goes through or not. So what is this is actually our call.

It's not unusual to see that second to last paragraph. The city council by ordinance shall establish whether bids shall be opened by the government at a public meeting. Because we have the procurement, but whether open bids bids, it's not always across the board that it be at a public meeting. So council, what they're doing is they want that to be done at a public meeting or by an officer employee of the city at a place open to the public.

And that's pretty standard. Yeah, no matter the city. Very rarely, I don't think I've ever seen a bid opened at a public meeting of the council. They've always been opened by, typically, the city secretary. Out of place.

The council chamber, you know, after notices, you know, during the work. I need you to go back to the very beginning. I don't think I've seen one.

Because this says, you know what I have, I have seen one or two. Caused by natural disaster, all of this takes effect past this line right here. Do you see that? So I want you guys to go back and read this. You get down to the end of this very first page. There's a whole brand new paragraph that starts. It says, in cases of emergency caused by natural disaster or public calamity where it becomes necessary at once, does this... What's in there that says all of this is by emergency is all of the next three paragraphs.

I just want to make sure. That's already there in state law. I was going to say, that's very state law. I think it's state. It's just a reaffirmation in the charter that we could have.

I just didn't want it to be a natural emergency. We couldn't change anything. It's not a natural emergency. Okay, thank you. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt. Now we can finish.

So it's just whether you want to make some slight revisions to that last paragraph to make it more streamlined, you know, or whether, I think it could be, just give the council authority to decide. Because council can always decide, no, we want the mayor to execute a document. You can always decide that in a resolution that council wishes. And right here, you don't... Why don't you do it in the ordinance? You can do it like that. The mayor has to sign this. You can do it that way, too. So you...

question is do we want to keep that in the charter or just take it out and just what do you think i don't know what difference it makes like why not he still has to come before that's what he says that's what i'm saying too so why not put the language in there that council can give their designee the authority to sign it.

Like Mr. Parker said, streamline it.

We can pull those other ordinances and we can just get them and see what they were doing. They probably were going back and forth on that. That's my guess.

Zoning, I don't think anything needs to be changed in 31. Oh, yeah. Zoning? Yeah, because it's just a general grant of power.

That's not the 27 different... You're waiting on this. Yeah, I'm waiting. This was really what the problem was, guys, in our city council. We have so many zoning...

everything we want to eliminate it down before them well we can do that under this when we change the law through the United Unified Development Council that's exactly why students go to the UDC for the very reason we don't have to change it in this journal you can stay general and council can come back in this gives you the authority to implement a UDC law ordinance other enumerated powers

this is a weird group of stuff I think it's just the kitchen sink we didn't talk about this so let's throw it in there But I do think it's kind of like some of the others where now you've got a laundry list that might just need to be whatever is authorized by state law.

You need to have that.

Right here, they're to provide for the regulation and control of electricians, plumbers, and gas dealers. That's all regulated.

It's like a hodgepodge. But this may not have been in effect in 1927. They may have had to write all of this. They had a lot more power in 1927 than they do now. And they probably made more than $10 a meeting. A movie in a coat was a nickel. Oh, that's right.

You could have left your... You can't even hardly buy a coat for $10 a minute.

It seems like 32 needs to be generalized.

I mean, just eliminate the stuff that just doesn't make sense anymore. I mean, I think some of it we already know, like right here in this room.

I don't even know what provide for the inspection of weights and meters means.

I mean, like your water meter, gas meter. I mean, that's a great question. I mean, if I question that it's wrong, if my water meter's wrong, the city can come out and prove that it's right. Back then?

You had feed lots here, I mean feed stores that you got waived. You had to waive that and you had to have legal weights in there. In other words, they got inspected. So you didn't put your finger on there while you were weighing that.

You see the gas pumps every time they get that seal that they come in and check the gauges. A lot of that stuff's been taken over by other regulatory entities right now. Department of Agriculture. Yeah, that's Department of Agriculture.

Well, unfortunately, everything I've learned is a little bit archaic.

The thing is, state agencies used to be The agencies have increased to regulate almost all areas. Conflagration. Major fires. Should we just put that one?

major fire that's about it and i liked that everything was working if you had a fire in this one it was going to travel that's true you're right we didn't have sheet rock in the in the way that we do now where it's fire where rated and things like that well one of the most famous a very famous u.s supreme court case that came in i think 1876

We had to learn about law school, and it comes up in TV every now and then. And it was a regulation, I think, of San Francisco that had building standards for all the laundromats and all the laundering areas in the East. What that regulation really was, it didn't do anything for fires. It did everything to regulate Chinese migrants out of the city. And so the fire was used as an example, and that's why that San Francisco ordinance got shut down, because the entire ordinance was supposedly addressing fear of fire spreading. But they only targeted the Chinese because what they were using was materials. Anybody else, it just really only targeted one group. So those fire ordinances have always been a weird kind of little species to regulate. They weren't always regulating fires. They were regulating businesses. Sometimes they were regulating ethnicities who ran certain businesses. And in San Francisco, they were trying to run out all the Chinese launderers out there because there were so many of them. And so they were trying to run them out. They said they're fire hazards because they had a lot of hot water and they burned fire. And so, but that was what, they said, well, we'll regulate them through the fire. And they got, they got in the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court said, ah, nice try, San Francisco.