Remarks by Cole Stanley
414 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 5 of 17
- Play at 56:44
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 58:19
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 59:14
“Okay, yeah, I think that's really where I'm drilling in is, you know, if you were given a number of, say, 20.9 million, right, we're having a hard time going back through to see where did that number come to you, like, how did we get it wrong?”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 59:32
“In the questionnaire? Yes. Okay, so there's a paper trail. So we can go back through that questionnaire. We can see that that 20.9 was placed on that, and then you just worked from that number. So if we find the error on our side, then we do what we've done. We come to you, and we have you adjust that.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 59:51
“Okay, and then the number that you are now working on lines up with, and this is a city staff question, lines up exactly with Bond Council's statement. Is that correct, Mrs. O? There we go. Thank you. yes sir okay um good well so council do do you guys have confidence that everything has been taken care of double checked documented so let me let me follow up on this so tell me again what went wrong here you want me to go”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:10:44
“Councilman, I know the 3.5 doesn't equate just to the pennies. It'd be nice if the state of Texas maybe had considered the communication piece of this more so than the computation, right? Because it's very difficult to communicate to the taxpayer what the actual is that can be approved on this side of the dais. That's only relevant if we're trying to push all the way up to that number, right? If we believe there's a chance we can take care of staff, continue to invest in the organization, and take care of our taxpayer down at a lower rate, then whether it's .447 or .5 or 452 doesn't…”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:11:46
“And so, you know, I'd say the warning flags that we sent up here were not minded. And so, what I would like is just to know that there's some sort of double check out there. that a future mayor and council aren't gonna sit in the position of trying to figure that out. So I think bond council and the debt schedule, I think audit committee, places like that would be really good for people to be able to sit that have the time to double check that. And then just looking at the rates and the calculations, I think it's a good one that we caught it. So I'm thankful that we've got a really good…”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:14:24
“Councilman Prescott, we can't see you, but we still can hear you. Do you have anything you'd like to add, sir?”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:14:35
“Okay, so he logged out. Did he text anybody that he has something to contribute before we move forward? No, not right now. We'll come back to him to make sure that there's nothing we skipped over. Thank you guys for speaking. Appreciate you. Thank you, Mayor. Okay, we've got a task in front of us here. Discuss and consider proposed tax rate. As you know, it can be the highest tax rate that you could pass, and then you could always consider something else. But I think with the painstakingly slow process that we've gone through here, I'd like to arrive at a rate that we know we're comfortable…”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:22:38
“Okay. Um, really good. Well, I love the reserve questions. Um, I think we need to continue to dig in. I know. We were previously reserving too much because we were reserving a total. Uh, in the general fund to run the city, and then we had independent, um, we call them what inner. departmental or intergovernmental, interlocal, what do you call interdepartmental transfers? So with those, they were reserving on top of reserves. And so I think I have a lot of confidence in knowing we have our general fund reserve that's healthy. And now each one of these independent departments that are set up…”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:24:22
“Okay. I'll take the 287 because I had it at 286.6. And so I think if we could say 287, what does that get us to here? If you're looking down the line, you guys are prepared to pull roughly 6.6 or 6.7 million over from reserves to balance that budget and keep us at our minimum or I'd say above our minimum. Is that correct? Okay, great. So what's not included in that in council, I'm going to attempt with, unless you guys want to pull the reins in, I'm going to attempt to try to negotiate a few things that we don't have included in this. One thing that would be helpful would be $600,000 for pay…”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:25:21
“The other thing would be to just take a small amount of money and put it into what we could call a senior citizen's account. And when I say small amount of money, I mean just even $100,000, not even $500,000, but just to put it into an account, create something there that could be, I don't know if it goes through, parks and rec, if it goes through community development. However, we have good entities around town that provide services for seniors and they could apply to that. That money then could be able to get out into, you know, I hate to say it, but I mean, it's great organization, but…”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:26:43
“Okay, so the beta rate would bring in $6 million more than what's been proposed with the 800,000 sales tax. Okay. I would say that if we took all of our pay increases, and this is very important to talk about the people that aren't in the room right now are our boots on the ground. And so if we want to continue to get, you know. mainline repairs at 2 AM and stay healthy in our core services and infrastructure growth and build out the city. I want to say it was somewhere around, was it another $400,000 to get an additional 1% increase?”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:27:24
“711. So between the PD and the fire department, it was another 800 or so.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:27:33
“1.55 million. Across the board? Across the board.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:27:45
“And if we look at another 600K for the positional increases. We're at 2.1 million. And then my only other ask is just to start going down the senior citizens road. So that's 2.2 if you did 100,000. Yeah.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:28:07
“Well, I'm curious if I am looking at that. So I've always disagreed. I feel like we run a budget once a year and I feel like we have always communicated that we have annualized expenditures that are every year expenditures and then we have one time expenditures. And though I want to kind of, you know, drift that way and say, yes, a project that we go and do for a million dollars once that project is over, then, yes, we don't need that million dollars there anymore. But I believe the entire budget is a one time expenditure. We make one time decisions once a year and the healthier they are, the…”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:30:41
“Okay. Another one, while they're working on that debt service, 802, 925, right below that. What is that? We just spent an inordinate amount of time talking about debt service, and it's all built in on a whole other page. So why do I have $800,000 for debt service on this page?”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:31:07
“Yeah, but they're covered already under INS. So, like, why am I double-dipping it, deducting it out of here? The INS goes straight into that debt. The INS is already calculated.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:31:34
“CAN WE LOOK AT THAT, STAFF, AND SEE WHAT THAT IS AND WHAT THE 5.5 IS? WE'VE GOT A COUPLE WEEKS BEFORE WE'VE GOT TO ARRIVE AT THIS. I PERSONALLY FEEL LIKE WE COULD PRODUCE A BALANCED BUDGET AND STILL STRETCH ABOUT $2 MILLION, PUSH FOR 4% PAY INCREASES ACROSS THE BOARD.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:32:16
“And Mrs. O, that is not already factored for transfers out of those budgets? Because, go ahead, I'm sorry.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:32:49
“Yeah, I think we're going to have to dig into these transfers quite a bit deeper because that goes back to the $8 million in transfers where we're seeing some of that that's hot tax, some of that's M&O funded. It's all special revenue related. Yeah. Super difficult to track the way we break it down on this, but then let's take a break and let's come back. Let's take 10 minutes. We'll regroup, and then, Council, I'll be quiet and listen to you guys tell me what your plans are. Okay, we'll go ahead and call ourselves back into session here. Councilman Prescott texted me that he's got to jump…”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:46:13
“Yes, sir. So councilman, I wanted to give you a minute to kind of weigh in on what you'd like to see council do as far as a potential rate and any budget priorities that you're still pushing for.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:47:57
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:48:19
“Yeah, we confirmed that. Total revenues.”
City Council · Sep 14, 2026