City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It's uh 5:00 on this beautiful Tuesday, April 14th, 2026. I want to welcome you all and call to order the uh work session for the Blville City Council. Uh I believe we have another entity here who also needs to call to order. Thank you, mayor. I want to call to order at 5:00 straight up the Blueville Community Development Corporation for business and our joint work session with the city council. Do you want to make the public comment item? Do you want me to?

Um I I think we can call them simultaneously. Is this is the time for public comment? At this point in time, a member of the public may address city council regarding an item on the agenda. Comments must be relevant to the agenda item. Citizens wishing to speak during a work session shall uh submit a completed speaker request to the city secretary. And I've got some other logic here. It talks about uh you've got three minutes to talk. Is there anyone here from the public wishing to speak on an item on the work session agenda? From the Flurville Community Development Corporation standpoint, we also open for public comment. And to my knowledge, there is no one who has submitted a request to speak. But if there if there is someone in the audience who wishes to speak at this time, please make yourself known. Seeing no one, we'll close the public session public comment portion.

All right. Okay, we'll move to item 3A, which is a joint meeting with Flugerville uh city uh council and the Flugerville Community Development Corporation Board to discuss goals and objectives for 2026. And I will also open up item, this is item 3A, the joint meeting with city council and PCDC to discuss goals and objectives for 2026. We are now open and I will defer to you if you wish to make comment but I was going to turn the program over to our executive director at your direction.

One one thing I would like to do just before we get into that uh for the sake of those at home on video I want to make note that uh council member Kaufman, council member Ruiz, council member Mateer, council member Ryan, council member David Rogers uh are here with me on the dis as well as city manager Breland uh our attorney uh Mr. Hayes, our city secretary, Trista Evans. Uh, would you care to introduce your uh uh your members?

Yes. So, I am President Derell White of the PCDC board. To my left is Gana Lazada. She is the vice president of the PCDC board. To my right is Oscar Mitchell, the secretary, and Jerry Jones, our executive director. All right. And we also have two PCDC board members that serve at for on the council as well as PCDC board members and that's council member and council member Ruiz. All right. Well, let's get this started. Uh Jerry, I believe you got a presentation for us.

Yes, sir. Good evening, Mayor Weiss, council members, members of the PCDC board, residents, and businesses of Flugerville. Thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. Uh it has been nearly a decade since this community has had new leadership in economic development and so much has changed in this profession and uniquely in this organization. Uh today from a very high level uh we will outline the goals and objectives for the work we are doing in 2026 and the continuation of this work for the remainder of the year. I want to be clear from the start. This presentation is not just about how we will capture economic development metrics throughout 2026, but also about creating awareness amongst our citizens and businesses of how we got here this evening, where we are today, and how we are intentionally working collectively to shape the future of this community. Allow me to introduce uh two of the board members who are not uh present with us. Uh you heard the uh presentation of the presenting of our president, vice president, and secretary um as well as um our board members uh Matea and Ruiz, but we also have Mark Lee as well as Adam Rosenfeld. Uh it is a pleasure to serve uh this board, this council, and this community. Um, I'd like to introduce um to you all uh my team. I will start by introducing our most tenured uh employee at PCDC, uh Lisa Curtis, who started in January of 2025. Um she serves as my executive assistant. She has been a resident of Flugerville for more than 18 years. Lisa brings nearly two decades of professional experience to PCDC. She served as the policy analyst and conference event planner at the Texas Workforce

Commission. She holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas. Basic certification in economic development from the Texas Economic Development uh Council and is pursuing a master's degree in organizational leadership. Uh we also have Andrew Yu uh who started uh on March 30th, 2026. Serves as the business development director who is also serves in the capacity as an assistant director. He brings 20 years of experience across both the public and private sectors including nearly 13 years with the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, one of the nation's leading economic development organizations. He is a graduate of Illinois State University with a BS in international business and holds an MBA in marketing finance from Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Andrew will head the business attraction for primary job related businesses. Uh Stacy Fefficorn serves as our business retention and workforce development director. She joined our team in July 2025 and brings more than 10 years of experience in economic development uh across central Texas. She is a graduate of Texas State University with a bachelor's of arts and public administration with a minor in political communication. She holds a master's of public affairs policy focuses on economic development, finance, and local government from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. She also has a basic certification in economic development and completed the economic development institute at the University of Oklahoma. Upon her arrival, she was responsible for BRE visits and for responding to RFIs. She now solely focuses on the retention of primary jobs and workforce development, which ties to our educational partners.

We didn't have to mention the Oklahoma degree.

I I was waiting for you to say that, but it it gets a little worse. We got one other person and I know you going to say something about them. Uh Adam celebrates his oneyear anniversary today. Um he brings nearly a decade of experience in digital marketing and project management leading high impact campaigns driving measurable growth and strengthening brand visibility. He attended the University of Alaska Anchorage where he completed certifications in fire science, EMS, computer science and engineering. He later attended Portland State University focusing on computer engineering and also has his basic certification in economic development. Adam covers marketing, communications, and events. And in 2025, he covered entrepreneurship and a host of other initiatives. Juliana uh SAP is our innovation entrepreneurship manager. She started on March 30th of this year. She brings a global background in venture development, corporate innovation, and investor relations. She holds an MBA in finance from Hulk International Business School, further strengthening her expertise in investment strategy and innovation. Prior to joining PCDC, Juliana held leadership roles in corporate venture capital and innovation in Brazil and most recently worked with seven trained ventures. Juliano will be working to help our small businesses grow, attracting new ones and luring restaurants, retail entrepreneurs, and startups. Lastly, Trinity Budro is our business research and data analyst. She also started March 30th, 2026. Trinity is a graduate of Texas&M University with a bachelor's of science in environmental

seven degrees from all sorts of places. No college allegiance whatsoever.

I knew this was going there. I knew I knew this was going there. With a bachelor's of science in environmental geoscience. Uh she was also a policy researcher at Stanford University. She recently served as a geographic information systems analysis. Trinity will serve as a researcher on our team and provide actionable insight to assist the businesses we seek to attract and retain. Thank you to each of them for their decision to join the team and bring their expertise to our community. When we talk about economic development, we are really talking about stability in our community as areas of Flugerville experience two different realities. There are aging areas and new emerging growth areas. Safety and retention of values in our homes and businesses that lead to generational wealth and confidence in future of communities, economic development, economic ecosystem and overall ensuring the long-term health of our community from a jobs and economy perspective. And that requires alignment uh between policy, strategy, and community expectations. Which brings me to our one of economic development's favorite topics, which is pipelines. Um, arriving here on February the 3rd, myself, I was excited to get to work. Um, we had three staff members at that time, Crystal, who had been with PCD for nearly a decade, Lisa and myself. Um, in April, Crystal notified me that she was leaving. Uh she was selected to serve in a different economic development role in a neighboring community, leaving Lisa and me. We searched for her replacement two to three times and successfully brought Stacy on board in July, brought Adam to manage marketing in April due to the

marketing manager leaving before my arrival. During 2025, we still understood the mission was to fasttrack business attraction and economic development. 60 to 80% of projects or jobs come from retention and expansion. So those are the businesses that are already here. 20 to 40% come from new attraction, the businesses that we attempt to attract to our area. Listening to council members individually and my PCDC board, I knew that we were a community that wanted to win. The projects we started with were project greenfield and helios impact way expansion. In 2023, there were 17 requests for information submitted to compete for projects through opportunity Austin and the governor's economic development office. In 2024, nine RFIs were submitted. And even with me in the familiarization phase, we were able to submit eight RFIs in 2025 thanks to Stacy. In economic development, we view the pipeline as real projects in which we are considered as a potential location for a project. These opportunities come from the site selectors, from the state governor's office, uh, Texas economic development council referrals, as well as team Texas and regional relationships with bankers and other developers. And here's the reality. Cities today are not competing on interest alone. They are competing on readiness, meaning the availability of utilities and workforce. clarity about who the city truly is versus where it would like to become, the execution of how fast we can move the projects and the interaction with site selectors, their knowledge and their knowledge of our community. Our

job is to ensure that Flugerville is not just considered but selected. These are the goals of the PCDC. This is based off of the 2040 comprehensive master plan by the city as well as the SES 3.0. Uh when you put these together, the following goals are become the city that attracts and grows the most concentrated amounts of high quality business businesses in the region per capita by 2035. become the leader amongst cities within the region that is developing a skilled and resilient workforce pipeline. Invest in projects that enhance infrastructure and strategic development for sites that show significant return on investment in sales and use tax, property tax, and job creation. established Fugerville as one of the top three most recognized and sought-after business locations in the Austin MSA by 2035, leading the region in employer interest, brand visibility, and economic competitiveness. And lastly, become the leading inclusive growth and quality of life city in the metro region by 2035, which would significantly bolster and support our economy. Our goals, although ambitious, are attainable and aligned with the Aspire 2040, the city's comprehensive master plan, and the SGS 3.0, the PCDC's economic development strategic plan, which complements the Aspire 2040. The Seds is just more focused on economic development and is a requirement of our accredited economic development organization designation.

Carefully and intentionally, uh, yes. Can you uh tell us a little bit about the metrics that you're going to use to measure how you've uh how you've reached each of these five goals you got here? We we we're getting there. We're going to it's there. That's later in the presentation. Absolutely. Okay.

So, um just wanted to highlight that goals can produce growth that is predictable, sustainable, and align with this community, what this community expects. Um, in order to obtain this, we had the site consult. Um, it was called consult connect. These are site consultants that sit behind a computer and they look at our RFIs to determine whether or not they're going to come and bring the project to your community or if you'll make it on the list in the top five. Um what we quickly picked up was that we needed to get in front of these um site consultants in order to start to lure them to our community. Um in doing so uh in December they came for two and a half days uh toured our facilities. Um the uh city uh manager and staff uh made presentations on infrastructure on the water wastewater um on the buildout of roads. uh we were able to present them all things flugerville for two and a half days. Uh on that Friday they came up with a SWAT as to what we should consider for opportunities of growth. Um what that feedback the feedback that we re received confirmed some things that are really important. Uh Flugerville is well positioned. Uh strategic location, strong partnerships, aligned leadership, workforce collaboration. Our speed to market is a real thing. uh the fastest roadway in America which is which also connects us to nearly 20 million people travels through what will become the center of our city. These are not small advantages. These are signals that tell investors this is a city that knows where it's going. Our weaknesses at the same time could be considered as opportunities to improve are are sharpening our industry focus,

strengthening our workforce narrative, improving site readiness. This is not about deficiency. This is about precision because today's environment clarity wins. And when I'm when I say clarity wins, uh when we fill out these RFIs, the more in alignment we can be with what is being axed in that uh RFI, the better our chances are at making the cut, so to speak, our opportunities and risk, which in my opinion are the same thing. There's a real opportunity in front of us, but I want to address something carefully. We are seeing growth in commercial and industrial development within our region. We must become aligned with the regional clusters that the collective voice of Central Texas is working harmoniously to attract. Those clusters are advanced manufacturing and aerospace defense, semiconductor and high tech supply chain, infrastructure construction and skill trades, logistics, data and regional employment anchors. These businesses are here and every piece of marketing that is gaining attention is supporting those sectors and enticing more of them. Defining who we seek to become in that space is critical to advancing our community's goals. Not having these businesses located here simply removes us from the opportunity to to attract jobs for our future citizens and benefit from property tax and disposable income they provide. Our strategy is to ensure we address these opportunities

through CEO roundts, BE visits, marketing efforts and storytelling. This is actually one of my favorite slides here uh because I feel like it tells a story about where we are uh as a community. Uh when you look at the household income, it really tells a real story. This is a strong working community. Um but many households rely on multiple earners. That creates an opportunity to bring more primary jobs to Flugerville so that people can work closer to home. Businesses benefit from daytime activity and our economy becomes more balanced. When you look at the middle person where you see 121 I'm going to the 121,000 there's some data that shows that it's between 117,000 to 122,000. So we kind of went in the middle with 121. But when you look at that, the median income paints a picture that I think a lot of us I know for our our organization, we tout those numbers. But what we forget about at times is that you do have the 121 as the median income. But the people to the left are the people that remind me of an example that if we don't do what we need to do to help them scale and retrain and get new job opportunities, it's almost like having three A's on a in your in a class and having one F and expecting to get an A at the end of the year. Just not happening, right?

Can I ask you a question, please? Good evening. Thank you so much for preparing for us this evening. Um, one of the questions that came up for me immediately was, "How can we measure those who live here and actually work here and or apply for jobs here if that's one of your KPIs, key performance indicators?"

So, there are systems and softwares that are set up where we can identify that. We have um and I'm not going to put Trinity on the spot, but we have we have a data analyst that is looking at the software that will give us the most accurate information. Um when you look at the labor statistics, the Department of Labor, a lot of this stuff is census tracked um kind of outline and because it's census track, the entire census track is not the corporate limits of Flugerville. So it makes it difficult to go by the uh census track information. So we're looking at software that can look at our community's corporate limits and then derive that information from there.

Thank you. I mean, I feel like if that's one of our our benchmarks and that's one of our goals, then we need to have some sort of way to be able to track that so that we can come back and say that what we said is an issue. We addressed it and here are the numbers to show that it actually worked. Basically, it it it adds it comes down to bottom line. Okay, let's put some more money into that part. Right. Absolutely. So, thank you so much. That was a great question. I have a question. Where did that uh person per household number come from?

This is from the census data. So we pulled the census data and we pulled it a few times. Want to want to make sure that we were uh looking at the right information almost had a roundt discussion on this. Um but this all this information comes from a compilation of 2020 and 2024 census data information. Um what I again as we go through this uh presentation, one of the things that I would like for you all to just keep in mind is how do we we recognize the 121,000 as the median income, but the people who are directly to the left make less. And in order for us to continue to get our median income to increase, we have to do work that increases the opportunities for the folks who are to the left of that.

So, so median the definition is half make more, half make less. Yes. So that I think that's important because it means that outliers don't skew the the metric. Correct. Bringing bringing more people up higher doesn't necessarily move the median. It just ensures that the the median stays solid. You you really need to focus on the median, not necessarily focus on moving people around within that. And it drives me crazy when people look at the average as opposed to the Yeah.

I mean, I feel I feel a little bit concerned. I mean, that's two in most cases, that's two incomes in the house at 121,000 and still struggling to live. Let me let me ask that uh that question because that is something that uh we should be able to determine from from available data based on the data set that you provided. I do believe and and Melody you correct me if I'm wrong. I think that 2.69 is from the 2024 AFS survey. Yeah. American Community American American Family American Community one of those American American community survey. But

we should have data on dual income households. Do you have do do you have that information because I think that informs what you're talking about, right? Is that 121 based on two people earning or is that that's actually it could be it could be it depends on the the composition.

But in most cases, I mean, I think we're in a state of denial. Let me just say this right quick. I probably shouldn't be so hot, but in I mean, there's a lot of households that are stacked right now. There are many people living in one household in order to live. So it could be two. That's a beautiful picture. Wishful thinking, right? Um but in most cases it is way more than that. And we might even have to include our adult adult children who are living in our household and their incomes as well in order for us to be able to just survive on a day-to-day basis. I am always going to show up as a person with as lived with lived experience. Now the individual number is actually 55.

See, so it's a little less. I'm sorry. So there's an individual median income like just an individual person within Flugerville. And that number was 55,000 and some change like 558. But that that doesn't reconcile with the per capita number that you've got here. Well, the per capita number here is 48,000, but that's again that's not per person, right? Right.

But in order to go from 48 to 55 for a um per employed individual, you're claiming I I'm not going to do the math, but you're claiming that that the kids in school is is much is dramatically smaller than reality. That that number can't be right.

It's a census information. It doesn't necessarily mean that they struck it right on the head. Um, we've had this conversations even at our round table discussions that some of this stuff we've pushed back on. Um, our new numbers for our retail trade area. Um, that's a whole another conversation for another day. Um, we had to send like two or three emails back and say, I need you to justify these numbers immediately. So uh this information it it's not the most attractive but the good news is there is good news but but you said it's not the most attractive our median income as compared to

it's higher then yeah other cities is is very attractive. I I was speaking to the 50. I was speaking to the individual. But I wanted to talk to Kim's point what she brought up. We had we United Way. We had a presentation. Oh wow. I was all the way in October. October um 9th last year about what it takes to live in central Texas and just to survive. Not not any strivings or anything like that. $96,652. Yeah.

And so when we talk about these kind of wages of these folks right there accordingly, you're right. Like I mean it's it's just it's just not enough. It's not enough. And we you know and and this is not a flukeerville problem to be clear. This is a this is a region problem as a whole. And so you are having folks who are living in different areas folks who are um whose kids as you said staying at you know living back at home and then the other things from that. Now you said this was a survey. Yeah. I'm guessing a lot of these homes these surveys they're not going to respond. Absolutely. They're just not. And these are probably the homes that aren't responding to what you're asking for these surveys. So that's she's use that aspect. Now that doesn't help with you looking for strong data points and that's why she brought up how are you going to do that? But I mean I think that's something that is anecdotal but is also something that we're all cognizant of.

Absolutely. And I mean when I think of PCDC, I think about workforce and you know in the work that I do, housing stability means we have to um really um step up our workforce development, right? Because some of those systems that have been in place that many of us have been dependent upon are not necessarily going to be here. They're not sustainable. And so my I mean just a a thought, not really a question to answer, but like how long is it going to take for you to get some workforce development that really that's really going to make it so that you can really live in the space where you work and stuff.

I'm just being honest.

No, that's that's a fantastic question. Um I will tell you the one area that is the biggest struggle is the affordability of homes. Um, anytime you go past 30% of your income to house you and your family, you are already headed in a bad direction. Um, there are some places that have it worse than central Texas. Um, 96,000 is how much you need in order to to make it in Central Texas. If you make $99,000 in Orange Beach, California, Orange County, California, you are poverty. There was a study that came out that said that if you make 99,000 in Orange County, uh California, that you are considered impoverished. So, just to put it in perspective, um there are opportunities. We aren't that far off from being able to um resolve some some of that or alleviate it. One of the biggest things is going to be housing types. Um, identifying more affordable homes. And when you say affordable, I know affordable has a negative connotation, but affordable is actually more relational than it is someone's situation. Um, what may be affordable to one person may not be affordable to the other. And so whenever someone's using that term affordable housing, what they're saying is is not to miss the middle. Um not to miss the uh the folks who need town homes or the folks who may need um the tiny homes. Now I can't fit in any tiny home. I've tried. But for those who can and and who need that as an opportunity, that's going to be important. And so we are seeing this isn't just a Flugerville

thing. you're seeing ADUs um additional dwelling units uh being built on homes uh in brand new homes are being built for two reasons. One, the builder knows that it's not affordable anymore to have a mortgage. And so what they've decided is the best way to do this is to have that person be able to purchase the house and then rent out the ADU or and not even give it to the to the children because the children living inside the the house where the food is, right?

They don't need an additional dwelling unit cuz that mean they have to purchase and provide things for themselves. So they're living in the the the actual house and they're renting the ADU so that they can pay the mortgage. So Jerry, could you could you help me understand? You're talking about the uh the housing type and affordability. How do your goals move the needle on that?

So our goals moves the needle in the aspect of working on workforce development and we'll get to that um to that slide. Um, but the biggest piece of this puzzle for economic development in today's time period is disposable income. After you've paid your bills, what do you have left to spend on frills? And that is how restaurants, retail, and developers are making decisions on where they locate their businesses. So,

and I'd say about this council, I think for the last 10 years, whatever you call it, um we've worked to have a diversity of um homes available for people what you call sheltering right there, you know, either some multif family um you know, condos joined or unjoined right there, town homes from the other aspect specifically because we understood that and and to be fair, I want to give staff a lot of credit for it because um the city has not always had a history of of of diversity when it comes to housing type and u I think it's allowed for people who wouldn't necessarily been able to afford to move here to do so at the same time to your point risky speaking the place if you're going to look for affordability you're not looking places like flugerville roundroin where you're looking at Rockdale and some other places out there for that drive because Gerald because places where you can You drive it until you can afford. Yeah. And that has its own consequences.

And so I don't want to beat a horse on this one, but I do want to I feel like this is a really good touch point as we get to the retail portion of this, but I want to just touch this before I forget it. Um, for those of us who always see apartments coming up on the presentation of the agenda and you start experiencing heart palpitations and start getting upset and flustered and start, you know, burning your keyboard at home on the computer talking about no more apartments. What I will tell you is that sitting in front of the very restaurant developers that you want here in this community, the thing of disposable income is a very real thing. It's not something that Jerry's just saying so that he can get more um facilities built here. It's a real thing because typically how retail and restaurants work is you need at least 20 people, especially retail, you need 20 people to walk through the doorway with the anticipation that one person or two people will actually buy something. So, am I going to put my retail shop in front of a neighborhood that only has 40 single family homes, or am I going to put it next to an apartment complex that has 300 units? you do the math. I'll leave that alone. So, I don't want to get in trouble about that. That's a that's a hot topic. Um, what I wanted to to paint here as it relates to the business attraction piece, I wanted I wanted to talk for a moment about where we should be at the end of year two. So, what we did was we went and pulled up the data for Texas Economic Development Council on in year two. Sorry, Jerry, if you don't mind, let me interrupt you on the last slide on the primary job growth goals. These read to me a lot like activities and not outcomes. How do we get to a point where we're actually committing or projecting actual outcomes

for res?

I'm so glad you asked that question. I really am because when we talk about economic development, economic development is like building a house. It's like building a house. You don't just start putting a roof on top of the dirt. You have to put the foundation. You have to put the studs, the walls. That's all activity. And that activity is what leads to the business deciding to come to the community and hiring of jobs. Most projects, most economic development projects take two to three years. That's not Jerry. That's not Jerry. Anybody wants to search it, search, trust, but verify. two years is how long most economic development projects take to materialize. So when you see these examples here as activities, they are activities that lead to the results of attracting businesses. So if we don't, and I'll just give you one last piece here.

If we don't take the time to respond to at least 70% of the RFIs, that's an activity, but if we don't respond, we should be responding to any of them that we qualify for. I mean that align with Louisville's community and vision. That should be 100% number, right?

No, I I I wholly agree with that. Um I I I think my my concern here and and you hit the nail on the head, something I've been been saying for a while now. Uh these do look like activity, not outcomes. You mentioned building the foundation, but the organization has existed for what 23 24 years. We we had a foundation already. What's what's going on? Um going back to the slide where I highlighted that that was 17. So when we talk about the organization existed, the organization had a foundation. I expect you came into an organization and picked up where they left off.

That goes back to the conversation of the pipeline. The pipeline is the foundation of economic development. Do you have the pipeline in the organiz stepped into a situation where I'm sorry, Mr. Jones tipped into a situation where all the people were gone. So he's had to rebuild the organization from the ground up. Now thankfully we've had some continuity in the board, but the staff ain't nobody there that was there a year and four months ago. So he is rebuilding the foundation.

And if I could touch on that, when we talk about foundation, economic development relates to pipelines. How many projects are in your pipeline? When earlier when I stated that there were 17 that were the RFIs were sent out for 17 in 2023, there was nine in 2024 and there were eight in last year. Out of all of those projects, the only projects that still remain as active are five. Those are the only ones that remain active. One of the projects was between this is in 2024. One of the projects was between us and one of our neighboring cities and they chose our neighboring city. And so when I talk about foundation, when I talk about activity, what I'm saying is as an economic development organization, when you come into a pipeline of having projects that are ready to go, if you don't have projects that are ready to go, you then have to do this work here of doing RFIs. And just to touch for a second,

can I ask one question? Um, oh, I guess I could ask, but go for it. Um, how many like on average how many projects should there be in a pipeline a given year for an economic development corporation first year? No, I'm just in general like you just said like so your expectation literally what Doug how many should get added to the pipeline in any given year? Yeah. At any point in time in the organization's maturity. Yeah. So in year two of an economic development director coming in, you should complete at the end of the second year, you should complete at least one to two projects. That kind of goes back to this one here

or because the way you the way you articulated it was that there were you said five active projects when you when you came in. Yes. Um but then you said you should have one to two complete when you so are you saying like out of that out of those five theoretically in that case you should have one to two of those completed in there or is the completion a project like I mean I think what's the issue what's the definition of so complete means that you're land that you've been selected that's what I mean that you've either received a BRE project that you either have got an expansion project on underneath the belt. What's the acronym stand for?

B, business retention and expansion. Okay.

So, you've either secured a retention project or you've secured an attraction project. Most of these projects take two to three years. the the the going joke in economic development is is what you shovel the dirt for in a groundbreaking ceremony, the next executive director will cut the ribbon because the average time period for these projects take two to three years. Um which is why in year two at the end of that year what is expected across all most 4B um corporations in the state is you have one to two small to mid project wins. Um and going back to that five RFIs that are still active. They're still active in consideration of Texas. we've applied, but there's they're only they haven't made a commitment as to whether or not it's going to be Flugerville, if it's gonna be Central Texas, if it's going to be El Paso or any other place in the in the in the state.

So, going back to the mayor's point or question, how many should be in there? Like, how many should be in the pipeline? Yeah. I mean, if our win rate is whatever number you want to say it is, right? 10% or 5% or whatever it is, then we need a pipeline. Yeah. Much like you were saying with the retail business, 20 20 people come in the door to get one. Correct. So that makes sense. So So how many do we need to have in the pipeline in year two? It's it's a little bit deeper than just pipeline. You should have you going to add to the pipeline, right?

I mean, yeah, I would expect that. I mean, we're partially into year two now, and I'm a little bit concerned that we're talking about activities and building the foundation when it's already been a year, and now we're talking about another year before we have one to two maybe small project wins. So, so that's now, you know, going on three years before we actually have a deal closed. And that's that's kind of concerning, assuming I'm reading what you're presenting here correctly.

Well, let me go back for a second again. when I got here in February and then in April, the only staff member that had economic development experience besides myself left. I then went from February all the way up to July before having a second individual who understood economic development. And what I will tell you when it comes to filling out RFIs is that it's minimum a 10-page document and all of them have to be predicated to that specific project and the area dealing with water, sewer, um distance, how many people uh fit a certain a certain workforce background, the educational attainment levels. All that information has to go in those documents every single time that we get there. and they're not sight they're they're sight specific um and the projects you you're doing that work and then by the time you get completed another one probably is going to come in and so or it goes quiet it just really depends on how many you get some like for instance this week we got three of them back to back that typically doesn't happen typically we get maybe one or two and then all of a sudden they really start coming in so RFIs are that there that it's not a welcome letter saying we want you to come to the community now send that off. It is actual research that you go in and look at what they're asking for and they're very specific. Um just to give you an example of something I did this week. I sent Andrew on a mission to apply for an RFI because the average wage was $135,000 and I got excited and then uh reviewed the RFI and it was a great RF RFI response. He did a great

job. Uh it was a seven out of 10 when it was scored. The only problem is is that in the RFI, one of the little technical pieces was that you had to have a rail spur automatically killed our chances. And so, yes, a rail spur that you railroad spur that you had to have a rail spur. Yes. And so it automatically took us out of consideration. Those are the types of things that if you're not if you're if you're not able to solely focus on that specific thing, you will you will find yourself tripped up or spinning in wheels. And so,

so is that an example where you went through the process of writing and trying to respond and then realized at the very end of the survey that we wouldn't qualify or I guess I'm curious why my your goal here is respond to 70% of RFIs that align with Flugerville's community and vision that one doesn't align. So, it seems like if that's a requirement for the RFI, thanks but no thanks. And you move on to the next. You don't waste your time on something that that we qualify for. It's simple. The problem is is that the first RFI came through it was compatible. Mhm.

They then come back and throughout this process they are shrinking and getting more and more defined about these projects. So you may get at the beginning of the week on a Monday or s or Friday that here's a project RFI and then by the time you start working on that project they send an update in the middle of you going out trying to get the information. All economic development professionals complain about this. We've been complaining about this. I've been in economic development for 15 years and it's almost like trying to um argue with a sign board. It's not going to change. The site selectors are who they are. They're going to send the information the way they want to. They'll send um revisions in the middle of you collecting data and trying to fill out the request for information. It is frustrating, but at the end of the day, you do it because you want to try to land a project. It's just the reality of what we deal with. So,

so let me go back to the the slide where So, we're talking about business attraction and achievements. So, you're saying your goal is to have one to two small to midsize projects at the end of this year. Well, those slide here shows is we went and aggregated information and pulled from Texas Economic Development Council.

Oh, so this is not actually our goals. This is just generic goals. This is sharing with you that in year two, at the end of year two, for a secondyear executive of an economic development organization, this is where that organization should be accomplishing as it relates to business attraction that come from. This is the 4B Texas Economic Development Council. They they do surveys all throughout the year and they also aggregate the the information.

So, they're looking at it differently though. So if we're so if this is just a benchmark, the next slide where we have your goals doesn't mention this stuff. And so that's where I'm getting tripped up now. Now that I realize that this is just a generic slide and not what we're trying to do, now I'm confused about even more about the next goal slide because again it's it's activities. And my secondary question to that is if we're going to go and which slide are you talking about? This one here. This way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, either way it's all it's all connected, right? So, so this one,

if we're going to go out, let me just play this out. So, if you're going to tell us that, you know, we should be expecting one to two small to mediumsiz deals by the end of 2026, it'd be the end of two years, uh, and we're going to start doing these activities. Do we are those businesses in our pipeline already? I would hope that if you're telling me Yeah. So, if you're telling me that an economic development deal takes 2 to 3 years and we're going to have one to two of them in year two and if we don't already have those opportunities identified, then I'm worried about how we achieve that. Granted, you don't have that goal on here as a goal, but I think it it needs to be right. We need outcome based goals and not activities. Councilman, the the two that in most 4B corporations would get at the end of year two. Uh at the next council meeting, you all will have the two already to review and approve. We've already hit this benchmark that most 4B corporations hit at the end of the year. We're hitting it at the beginning.

You keep you keep saying that, but hold on. Let me clarify the the economic development corporation has existed for 23 24 years. So yeah, it's it's your second year, but we had interims, we had continuity. My my expectation is that we we're not benchmarking on on year two. We're benchmarking on where the organization is in its maturity. I will I will say one of the things that that strikes me your your slide here is primary job growth goals. that's going to encomp encompass both business attraction as well as retention and um expansion. I should say attraction and expansion. So,

mayor, can I ask a clarific clarifying question? Are you saying that the executive director or anybody who holds a position should be held accountable for what the organization should have done the last 20 years? My my expectation is that the day you arrived the pipeline should have had 20 to 40 projects in it. Well, then we should keep going. I didn't have that. So, I'm going to ask what metrics we have for that time frame to give you that expectation. So, I mean, I don't know cuz did we have that those metrics and that information in 2024 presented to us? That's a that's a good question.

I mean, that was more than half of this council has sat on that board. So, now more than half of this council has sat on that board. So we we have some expectations and some history. But I'm sorry, Caesar. What's the question? Oh, no. I was Melody had a question. I was saying you might be able to answer. So there's assumptions that um of where so whatever we're going to close in 2026 is typically something a function of 23 to 25. What what we did in 2023 to 2025?

Yes. 2 to three year. So my question is do we have I mean you have RFIs um you know which is different than pipeline. So my question is what did our pipeline look it look like in 23 24 25 and now we have five in 26. So that would be the trend that I would look because that's the starting point of where someone comes in. So having a new employee come in it depends on what was done the two to three years prior to their arrival. So, if we're talking about real actual projects, when I arrived, I pulled up 2024 agenda for PCDC to see what topics were being discussed in executive session because executive session should be the only place that projects are discussed that would be related to a development opportunity. and all of those projects did not materialize. There was one particular project that ended up going to a neighboring city. And then there's one project that's not a real economic development, like primary job project, but it's more so a sales tax project. And that one did not materialize because the the the developer chose not to go forward with the project. So again, when I say that there was zero real projects besides Greenfield, it's it's it's it's not Jerry, it's the actual

No, no, I'm going to challenge a little bit on that because the council agenda PC agenda, I'm sorry. Excuse me. The items that are on the executive session agenda are enumerated by project name, but those are the short listed projects. Those are the not the not the RFPs that you sent out, but the ones that came back and said, "Yeah, let's let's talk." So there there should have been an awful lot of more RFIs that were that were sent that needed to be tracked.

Well, is the RFI or does RFI equal pipeline? What's your definition? I reached out to opportunity Austin and I reached out to the governor's office yesterday because I wanted to make sure that when I come here to present to you all that I had my facts and figures correct again 2023 17 RFIs were submitted in 2024 nine were submitted and in 2025 eight were submitted and out of all of those projects only five of those projects are still active meaning that there's consideration but they do not have a specific site.

And I think that's how a salesunnel works, right? Is you pull in as many early leads as you can and you work them until they get all the way to the end to a conversion, which would be in per this slide. So that's where I'm curious. So even if we if it's true that there were zero deals worth doing when you came in a year ago, then my immediate next question is, okay, well, what's that pipeline look like now? which is the 70% of the RFIs. If you are starting from zero, the only way to get to an outcome is to have activities and you have to continually have those activities to to get to to the I mean it depends on clarification and it just clarifies because I'm here my head two things.

You're saying that when you got here there were no projects in the pipeline but I could have swore you said except for five there were five in the pipeline when you got here. No, that's why I'm asking for some clarification on that. And thank you for that because I want to make sure I'm I'm clear in what I'm saying. There is five active projects from 2024 and 2025. Okay?

So, the nine that was were done before I got here plus the eight that was done underneath uh when I got here, out of those two years, there's only five remaining that are active. and one of them are remaining active from 2024 and there's four that remain active in 2025. Out of those five, you said two should be coming to fruition here pretty soon. Correct. So, I want to make sure I'm being very clear. Uhhuh.

Our RFIs are not the only way you get projects. You also can meet up with bankers, which is something that we've started doing. and bankers say, "Hey, I know this developer who's looking to locate here, yada yada." Or even I've had council members reach out and say, "Hey, go and talk to that person. I think they're interested in in

I would imagine Venturefest would would identify some businesses who are looking to open a location or move a location." Uh Derell, you may remember this. I remember early on in my tenure at PCDC, one of our goals was specifically to identify a Flugerville owned business that operated elsewhere and bring them into city limits. Uh and and we identified at least two of those. Um one houses your office uh at this point. Yeah. Um and and another one uh I think is one of our largest sales tax generators.

So So I mean there can be targets like that. They can come from anywhere. they can come from uh hunting and farming, right? So, so several ways to do that. I I would really like I think we're falling a little behind. I want to get through this and the next item. Um so, if you could take us through your the the rest of your goals and then I think it'll be an opportune time for us to go around and recommend any uh changes, amendments, or guidance that we have uh when we get to the the end of this. And Jerry, this is exactly it. I'm less interested in relitigating everything. What what are we doing moving forward? And and um it is moving forward.

Yes. Oh, no, no, no, that's that's great. That's what I was saying. Um and and part of that is for us to be able to be more cognizant of like we asked that, you know, the number in the pipeline. So, and if you don't have it now, that's perfectly okay. Just get us something where we can understand what we should be anticipating that because to Melody's point is that okay, listen, if we're going to use a metrics, then let's let's Yeah. Let's let's make sure that we have the solid numbers now so we're all on the same page. So we're not guessing about what was there before or what was there after, but like moving forward, what does it look like? So then we have this conversation in a year. What does it look like? Does that make sense? No, it makes it makes perfect sense. Um

I would like to know um the disposition of the 23 or the 17 from 2023 and what happened with them in that report. And we will we will ask. The frustrating piece is a lot of times they do not give us the answers. But I we there's nothing wrong with us respond or whatever. Yeah, but we can at least ask. Many times we won't have a I'm sorry. Many times we won't have a corporate name to understand, you know, where they actually landed. We can at least figure out what happened to them, whether they

decided not to come to the area or great city. I'm sorry. Goals. So for 2026, and obviously we're already in 2026, so we're underway in this right now. Um 100 primary job related site visits. uh two of the projects that I was just referencing uh to you all um that was coming that's coming to your um to you all for a vote next um council meeting came based off of the interaction of one a site visit that we did um a BRE visit and then also um a relationship that preceded um our um our our team and so having these types of visits that um allows our staff to go in and talk to these uh businesses and just express to them, hey, we're here. We looking to assist. How what are you experiencing? Are you having a hard time hiring um employee employees? What are your needs? Um you know, what are your hindrances and what are your opportunities? Um we are continuing to update our HubSpot. HubSpot is uh our CRM. It's how we uh collect information on who did we go see, when did we see him,

what is CRM stand for? Customer retention relations management tool. Cool. Thank you.

And then also gauges our outreach and engagement. Um and then also to continue building partnerships in education and workforce development through the PEC, the Flugerville economic No, not economic. Flutterville Employment Coalition is the piece of the workforce that was spelled out in the workforce study that was commissioned last year. Uh Stacy is taking that document and trying to bring it to life. um working with not just um uh Flugville ISD, but she's also brought in partners like Texas uh state um TSTC as well as um Austin Community College. Um also famili I'm sorry I thought I heard somebody. Oh

no, no. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. familiarizing apprenticeships, formalizing uh apprenticeships and FLville ISD and mapping mapping pathways for future labor needs. Um and then also hosting uh the governor's small business summit. Um for this is the direction that we're going in for uh Juliana who's the innovation and entrepreneurship uh manager. Uh our goal this year is to submit 60 um packages to retail and restaurants um that have been on many uh list for quite some time. Um, we now have the ability to uh attend trade shows that are centered around that uh as well as um send information to uh lure and attract those uh potential uh businesses uh to our area and then also to build a stronger partnership with the SBA, SBDC and SCORE. One of the things I will tell you that is one of the most personal and professional frustrations for me is to uh hear stories of accidental entrepreneurs. My my personal belief is there's too many people who um are on payroll uh throughout small business development communities that should be uh doing their job to connect with small businesses. And so we have uh had conversations all the way up to the deputy um regional uh secretary for SBA uh in order to identify how can we pull pull these um organizations together to um be more intentional in how they do outreach and engagement with small businesses in our community. Uh, next would be having local developer fam tours. Um, which hopefully ties also

into retail space rehabs. One of the things that we've noticed um is uh developers are more geared towards coming in and purchasing um already built strip centers because of the cost that it takes to uh build new buildings. and they're looking for incentive opportunities to come in retrofit that space out and um add more attractive uh restaurants and retail.

What is your goal? Because I'm I'm looking between the both slides the goals for business retention workforce and the retail and business development goals. And so it sounds like to me, correct me if I'm wrong, for the goals for business retention workforce, this is what essentially Jonathan was talking about was building that funnel.

Yes. And so um what you would have you know so I see that one spec one specific number is the um is business retention visits but um out of that out of these out of all these how many how many do you expect to get in the pipeline bless you or should should be an expectation for and like I said I mean you're the me we we don't know but what we're trying to better gauge that does that make sense? No, it it it makes sense.

And and the same thing for when I see retail space rehab, which I think is exactly idea cuz I think one of the reasons that drives me nuts is that we have all these amazing restaurants and all these places here, but people don't like the they don't like the storefront. That's just what it is. they they don't realize it because they that's a very real thing. Do do you know in the number of either um restaurants retail space that you're looking at to like can we put a number with that? Does that make sense? So we have the list of restaurants and retail spaces. Um there's about 7,000 on that list. It's a it's a national 7,000 in Flickerville.

It's 7,000 different retail and restaurants. And so what we Oh, that's your target. That's your target. That's your mailing list. So we're going through that list. Okay. And we're already identified 60 and we haven't even gotten to the C's yet. I mean, it's it's it's a lot. So um 60 is the goal, but our expectation is to exceed that that number. So let me let me jump. So, sure,

I'm going to ignore the fact that these are activities and not goals, but um it one thing that does make me a little bit nervous about some of these is I I personally believe that we should be aiming for more quality than quantity. So, I'm not going to get mad if you say it's 25, but they're ones that we feel really good about and that are going to make our residents just extremely super happy if we go and close instead of saying we're going to send it out to 7,000 different companies and hope, you know, we get a few in the pipeline. So I would consider that when you think about recasting these into being actual measurable goals. Um so that's really the biggest piece here. Yeah, that's just an example, right? You could go back to the hundred site visits too, right? So there's a list,

right? We could go we could visit every one of them. And then my one other thing is

let me go back real quick on this finish. And then I think what what I would love to see beyond that as well is given that you have seven people now like that's a lot of throughput and I just looked up on the comprollers website average EDC has between one and five employees. So we're beyond what most EDCs in Texas have at if we're at seven. Um and so I would also then expect to see these activities probably get condensed beyond the uh the benchmarks that you're sharing with us as well. Right? Because if we assume most cities are going to have two, three, maybe four employees and we've got seven, we ought to be cranking through this, right? We ought to be exceeding the benchmark, not trying to say that the benchmark is our goal. So council,

and now to your to your point, I was about to say two weeks. Yeah, you probably increased it by almost 100% in the last two weeks. For sure. But but there should be a this is for the year, right? I I do want to touch on um When we look at when we look at comparable when we look at comparable cities uh comparable 4B corporations um the four that um come up are Sugarland, Plano, Round Rock, New Brownsville, and Frisco. And those do a really nice job. Each of each of those organizations minimum is eight. Okay. So, um

I mean, hey, I'm saying that to say as good as Frisco. Let me just say this one last piece here. I'm under the impression Frisco has three. So, you may need to site your source on those. Regardless, we don't we don't need to litigate this. I want to make sure that we're moving forward with goals that are actionable and demonstrate outcomes as we move forward. So, let's let's focus on focus on that. Jonathan, you make a great point. Um, I I want to see us doing those site visits, responding to those RFIs, but I want to I want to understand if you'll go to the next slide here. U respond to your question about the go to the next one after this real quick.

Um, what I'm what I'm looking for here when you say submit 60, I want I want to see land six, right? Attend to and and do what based on that attendance. What do you expect to get out of that? not what you expect to put in. Um, on Venturefest, host the fest. Well, what are you getting out of hosting the fest? Uh, retail space rehab. How many how many vacant retail spaces do we have in town? Cuz I I can't think of any. So, I'm wondering if that's a a relevant goal cuz are we going to are we are we going to renovate any? Cuz if you if that's a goal to rehab retail space, but we don't have any to rehab, then so

you're going to fail that goal. So, mayor, the 60 um the 60 submits, you you don't you don't have to respond to each of these. This is this is a conversation we have, and I think there's there's a lot that we probably need to come back and and discuss in the future, but I want you to to make sure you understand what the the council's goals are for you, and those need to begin with outcomes. I I'm asking I was asking for clarification when you say to submit out of the 60 that we submit that to hold me to a goal that six will say yes. Goals are goals are something we strive for, not something we we always achieve. Okay. And we recognize that. No, it's okay.

Goals outcomes are things that we should have influence but not necessarily total control. And and and the way in the way the way it's being articulated is just that is that we're we're trying again, we don't do this for a living. You do, right? So it's you educating us on what should be the expectation. So if you have this, what should the yield look like? You know, and and that I mean and that's fine. You know, I mean, whatever the number is. Sure. I mean, we just want we don't we want to know what the number is. If your goal is two restaurants and one retail space and you say, "Hey, it's going to take us 300 people that we got to go, right? 300 people we need to reach out to to hit that because we're only from then. We need to staff through that many contacts." Yeah.

Sure. I don't know about that. But if those are the outcomes we want, yeah, that many people. Speaking of staff or we dial back research on the fly, um what I've what I see is that the uh EDC uh staffing level uh generally is around nine uh people per 100,000 population. So I think you're right in that uh where did you

where did you pull that from? I pulled that from AI from Grock looked at 64 different love. Would you like a list of all 64 of them? So, I just want to touch real quick for a second. Come on. Come on.

You all will hear a little bit later about the Nexus project. Um, one of the other concepts that is continuing to take place and take form is the conversation around placemaking. Um, the discussion around indoor outdoor uh, food hall and kiosk. One of the things that I've continued to see here in this community is that um, there is a huge desire for uh, restaurants that and and I love raising canyons. I absolutely love raising canyons. Um but folks would like something a little bit different than fried chicken. Um that is just their preference. And so um one of the things that we are noticing is is that developers are not building new facilities for anything less than national chains. Um and if you notice anything that has been built

Why is that the case? Is it because that's a guaranteed ROI? Is that what it is? Guaranteed dollars. So, let me ask you this cuz we do I mean I think I think one of the biggest parts of your presentation is going to be um with JLLL so we can get to that um for the Can you go back I'm so sorry. Can you go back to the Yeah, the consult placemaking

can you make sure like whatever I mean that's good cuz you're right cuz I think that's something and I've heard that from staff too. They've tried you know rears this is something that we're really interested in. How would you measure whether or not you're making that goal outside of oh wait all a sudden we have an outdoor indoor food hall. Is there any other like how would we know that you're making ways toward making that a reality? Well, for starters, you would have to get um a consultant that identifies if there's information that's already available. That'd be great. But a consultant would outline what our in our what's prohibiting us from being able to have a private developer come in and just do it without a partnership, right? that provides us the information that we need to know going in and negotiating with developers on PP3s, public private partnerships as to what we need to bring to the table to shore up what they would need to feel comfortable making that investment uh and bringing that type of development to the community.

So essentially what what I would suggest is this is that staff has definitely done research. kind of this person in the green right here explicitly. Um, oh wait,

Serena for sure. I I know that I know that. Um, absolutely because that was a conversation we had years ago place and I saw it like that talking to them see where they are with that. So then you have that baseline then just like you said looking at the consultant and seeing if a P3 is necessary or not. Um because I know that you know the places I've visited about that what's been amazing about that is that the various different food choices and the outdoor music that's available to which I think is another key landmark for that as well. And I know you haven't said it yet but I know you said it to us as a board. You're looking for places inside the city right now as we speak to go ahead and looking for these anchor spots. Correct.

And yes and this is just an example. This is at the uh um Amazon Q2 um facility in Arlington. They took a a space here right out front of the uh Amazon Virginia, Texas. Virginia. Virginia. Okay. Um yeah, definitely Virginia.

Um and so each spot, each rooftop that you see is a different uh restaurant or business. Um and then there's the water bar in the back. I I'm I'm sure they only sell water back there. Um, but you're allowed to be able to um enjoy a a glass of water at the water bar and then eat and uh shop and dine uh in those areas. But this is the type of development that right now, this very moment is uh even what we would call only typically drawn to urbanized areas like the Austin. And so there is a a gap that is going to have to be addressed um in order to lure um that type of development to this uh to this community. This is just another angle. And if you wanted to go extremely, you know, out of whack, don't hold me to this picture here. Uh but this is just an example of where you can go from here or you can go from that. Um this is our entrepreneur hub. uh this is in its uh second year. Um it's still being tweaked and developed. What I will tell you is is that uh we aren't even scraping the surface on entrepreneurship. Um and I'll dig a little bit deeper on that, but not at the moment. And when I say not even scraping the surface, our counterparts in neighboring cities um are really doubling down on investing in entrepreneurship. Um and that is something that we are going we are already uh experiencing um a lack of investment in suburban office space but you do see it in some of our other communities outside of the Austin.

Well, there's also a lack of investment in office space period. Correct. Right now.

Correct. But suburban office space is different and um it's a little bit more centered around co-working space. Um I we know the drive is there. You can go to coffee shops throughout this whole area and you will see uh people on their laptops working on their business or working on their school efforts or what have you. So we know that the the that the drive is there for that. So would you think like a place like the new city hall would be a good place to have an incubator or some other stuff where people can you can start to get some of these small businesses some aspects where just like you said you go to the coffee shop and you see people on the I mean it's a complaint it's a complaint I hear I'm sure you all hear it all the time. It's like hey I want to be able to have a co-working space here in Flugerville because I'm running my business and I'm hanging out the coffee shop more you know five six hours a day doing that. No, there's supposed to be one opening up on 45 in a while.

Well, it is. That is the industrial version. So, it is opening hopefully on uh 45. Um that's work work flex work flex hub. Um I just reached out to Joel a couple of days ago and he seems like we have the we have the work flex space and we have the third spaces. Um I know I I try to show up to Weston at 7:00 a.m. for my meetings so that I can get a seat. What are you trying to buy? How about cuz at 9:00 there's nowhere to sit. But we've got we got more coffee shops open up. We got city hall with the with the third space cafe and we're going to have space for some of those um entrepreneurs to to work. I'm sorry.

But I will I will share with you guys that other economic development organizations are going beyond relying on the coffee shops and the other places. Uh there are plugandplay, there's generator, there's even has the beehive.

Um and those are just examples of how our neighboring cities are doubling down on investing in entrepreneurs. We have the most um um patents per capita um in this area and we're the we're literally still haven't invested in a co-working space for startups and small businesses and we have the most per capita on patents. And so our entrepreneurs are here, the innovators are here, they're just waiting on us. I mean, we're the ones that are holding back on investing in infrastructure that could really spur and develop in startups. And

so, if I might say, this may be a good segue for the next item on the Uh-huh.

I think we I think we've so the the marketing piece, and I'll go back to it. I don't know if anybody's seen our lovely website. Um hopefully in a couple of months that website will be non-existent. Uh we are doing a website overhaul. Um uh we actually one of the things that kept popping up in um in in multiple different versions of studies is how do we market and communicate with not just the outside world but inside about what's taking place in economic development. And so we have um a a branding and messaging and marketing strategy that is that's underway right now. Um we are quarterly when I first got here we were really telling our story to national publications. If you were outside of Flugville and you read national publications on economic development, you knew everything you needed to know about what was taking place in Flugerville. If you opened up a local newspaper, you had no clue what was taking place. Um because unless there was a article that really reached the the the the level of importance that the newspapers wanted to cover, it uh it just wasn't getting covered. And so what we uh set and set out to do and and we've been doing it now every month

is to reach out to community impact and put a um a a article or a piece in there that addresses economic development and provides some insight to citizens of Flugerville on um economic development this upcoming uh month. it should be out already is a discussion on after the graduation caps are over and everybody has cut the cakes and got excited about graduation, what are we doing to invest in our in our students uh in their future far as education is concerned and going back to the median income discussion. what are we doing to upskill the people that are already citizens that are adults that we're seeking uh to give them opportunity. Um some of the things that we're doing to identify and leverage is the recognitions that this city has received uh from 2025 from 2025 all the way up until January of 2026. Uh in uh 2025, Travel and Leisure uh ranked Flugville the second best place to live in Texas. Uh US News report ranked us 15th best uh in to live in the United States. Travel and Leisure uh as well as the most diverse uh school district in Travis County. Um, and Flugerville, Texas, ranked number 17 among the top 20 career hotspots for small cities under 250,000 in a January 26 report by Co-working Cafe. Um so in August of August the 20th we will have the governor's small business summit uh here at the Flugville

Marriott. Um we are the team is working on that effort now to make sure that the information that those businesses need

that's significant. How'd you view that? So, we were approached by the former um president of the chamber uh about collaborating and um things ended up changing where it was they were getting ready to uh kind of go back out and look for another community, another organization to carry that um initiative. And um we emailed the uh coordinator and said uh we were already wanting to collaborate with the chamber uh and the chamber sent a letter saying that they couldn't at the moment uh be in involved in it and so we took it on and they turned around and and gave us the opportunity to host.

Wonderful. Um we're going to have about 30 vendors. We're want to make sure that we're intentional about the people who serve uh at this event. Uh we've paid very close attention to who the speakers are and what value ad is going to be to these small businesses here in Flugville. I would ask you about hub businesses, but I'm going to let that go right now. So, go ahead.

Okay. This is um the last slide. This goes back to my earlier conversations when I said that we we have to be in a we have to create a space where PCDC economic development, small business development, entrepreneurship, innovation, um college partners and tech uh innovation companies and partners can collide and create something really special. Uh I continue to tell you um and I everybody I speak with, we're having the same conversations that there is a need uh we have a small business uh study that's underway uh to further illustrate that there is a need for co-working space that there's a need for us to make an investment in small business innovation and accelerator hubs. Um this is a very creative community. Um, it's arguably one of the most creative communities I've been fortunate to serve in the capacity as executive director of an economic development corporation. Until we really double down on investing in our startups and small businesses, there are other communities that we should not be losing to on this front that we really should be champion and moving forward on. I'm going to be bringing before the the PCDC board and the council uh in the next uh couple of months something that I think is going to be um bold uh to begin a conversation on what how do we take this to the next level. Um and uh with that I think you guys already done this but it's it's questions.

I'm going to start out with my comments um as time is wrapping up. Thank you so much. um Mr. Jerry Jones and um the board. So, I want to start out with one of the things that I see as a highlight. So, since you've been on, I have noticed a lot more branding, a lot more marketing, a lot more visibility. I've seen you in my social media feeds a whole lot more. Maybe I'm just paying attention. Um, I'm going to say that I still feel like with all the goals, I still feel like there there needs to be some clear KPIs. I'm going to say it again. Some key performance indicators for us to be able to measure um some of these things uh these goals that you're talking about. I think it's going to be really important for us uh to find a sweet spot between the education and the workforce development.

Absolutely. in order for us to move to the next level. We've been talking about it a whole lot, but I haven't necessarily seen anything. Yes. Okay.

Um and then for me, I'm just going to say this. You know, I probably always say too much and out of line, but I feel like there needs to be less surprises on the agenda. and the lack of doing so um uh it kind of takes away from the trust from the council um and the board members and I just think that there's so much opportunity for PCDC and before you even came here I noticed some some tensions and I just wish that we could finally move forward because we're all on the same team

and we need each other and I'm just going to end with that and I'll open it up probably for everybody else to to say anything, but key performance indicators are going to be really big for me.

It you are all of you are not alone. I know that that's exactly what Councilman Kaufman is discussing right now, as well as the mayor. Um the board president and vice president and I have sat down and talked about how do we um spell out these key performing indicators. Uh and so we're we're in alignment with that. this I I assure you the president and vice president both have we're having those conversations on how do we memorialize and outline that I think to the mayor's uh point it really kind of helped me understand um when I hear someone say a goal um if you don't hit it then it becomes well why didn't you hit it and when I hear about the 60 um restaurants and I know that that wasn't the number. It could be 10 or whatever, right? Or two. But when we when we memorialize six restaurants to locate here, that positions mean to have to then be a part of the the trade market and make sure that um you know the market and the economy stays afloat and the investors feel comfortable with making those investments to restaurants. But judging from what I'm hearing, you're you're you're asking that we set a mark and strive to either hit it or beat it. Um, and not so much as to um me paying attention to what I can't control, which is the free market.

I was about to say, I don't think anybody, and this is, and I'm glad you put it with such clarity, right?

Yes. Um, I don't think anyone can hold you responsible for whether or not oil is going to get out of the the straight up horm like the and the and the ramifications of that and how that you know affects one way or the other your ability to recruit for what's going on expansion. But that's just that's not what's what's happening here. What? But if you have a mark in place, then you know, one, we understand better because we don't do your job. So, we have no idea. So, we're relying on you about that. And then two, you get to explain to us whether or not why it was or wasn't hit based on, you know, what's happened, you know, around there that that tells the story for that. Because right now, essentially, I mean, I'm not saying, and that's, you know, Doug put it right. I mean, we got

five. Five. Five. Yeah. Yeah. Who sat or is it four? Four of us. Four of us have served on this board, right, through the years. And some of us are old G's. Some of us just live there. That's why I get upset about the surprises. Yeah. And so, and so because of that, it's it's better to hear to better understand say, listen, we've got this. Then we can we can we can trace it, we can understand it, and then you can tell the story as to what's going on with that. That if that makes sense. It makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense.

I have a couple of questions and I don't need answers now, but I would like to for you and your staff to think about these future. Um, one, uh, would it be possible for PCDC funding, uh, to be used in a workforce development capacity to provide some scholarships for people in Flugerville who wanted to go to ACC for workforce development? I don't know if that's possible or not. I'd like to see if that if that's something that can be done. Uh, another uh thing that I'd like to to see is uh whether or not uh the board believes it would be prudent uh to implement and I I think your whole staff really should be part of this discussion. um a policy that uh the PCDC does not subsidize uh any uh development outside of the uh the 2013 uh city limit area without participation from the ESD.

Absolutely. So it seems to me that that might be a prudent policy given where we are with the sales tax collection there. So again, I don't need answers to either of those questions. Well, you got my answer to the last No,

you know, you guys are considering those those ideas uh in the future. And I want to thank you very much for uh for the presentation. And I we've heard uh a lot about goals. Um and I understand most people think in terms of goals. I want to offer an alternative idea, which is that systems are better than goals. Uh if you put good systems in place, you create opportunities for success over and over again. If you have a goal, you fail every single day until the day that you meet the goal. Right? If your goal is to is to break a four-minute mile every day you run four minutes and 1 second, you are a failure. If your system is to get up every morning and run as far and as fast as you can, you succeed every day. So I'm going to offer the idea that maybe systems might be better than goals and that ultimately systems will help you to succeed in whatever goals might be uh something that you're you're considering. But you know the the goal I'm going to be a millionaire. Great call. Right. Every day you don't have a million dollars in the bank, you're a failure. If you have a system that says I'm going to become I'm going to educate myself every day. I'm going to learn something new. I'm going to add to my skill set. I'm gonna work six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12 hours

every day. I'm gonna get plenty of sleep. I'm going to eat healthy. All of those things will help me get to that goal, but you're every day you execute on the system, you're succeeding.

Thank you for that insight, David. Um, Melody, did you have any any questions, comments? Um I think a lot of my concerns were covered but um I want to thank everyone for on the board um all the employees and welcome to the three new employees. Hopefully um you know the team um now is full and you guys can um execute on all of these wonderful um activities and and goals and systems um that you have before you. Just don't make it a 4-minute mile. You want me to run the form?

So, I I just want to thank you for your your time and your effort for making uh Flugerville uh you know, more welcoming to all of the businesses that we want to have here. Thank you, Jonathan. Uh just real quick, I will say, you know, I think that um I appreciate you all certainly coming in and having those conversations. And I think the high bar and expectations that we're all talking about is because we all believe so much in the enormous opportunity that we have here. And so I just I look forward to seeing you, you know, show us the path, show us how we're going to get there, how your team's going to come together and start delivering on this uh as well as um the other ideas that we've had. But uh that's really all I appreciate. Excuse.

Yeah, I'll just say real quick. I mean, I look at it, we're talking about goals and everything. I look at it wants and needs. Uh we need tax revenue generating businesses in Wigerville. Whether that is small business or big business, however we achieve it, we need this because that offsets our taxes and it helps bring down our taxes if necessary and eases the burden on our on our uh citizens. So uh that is an expectation that I want to see this coming year. We have a full staff now. Um what I think is a want and this is just me. I think a want is the entrepreneurship. I don't think we need to focus as much on that as we should the tax revenue generating revenue or tax revenue generating businesses here in Fluggerville. And uh um so I just hope that going forward we hit more things in the pipeline to achieve that goal. You and I have talked about that quite often. So um that's always been a goal of mine. And I'll just say remember

you get up every day, you put your shoes on, and you strive for a goal. You're never a loser. You're always a winner. All right. Um, just a quick uh quick couple things that I think are much more operational. Something I believe we discussed when we did this last year, I I want to see more operational uh integration between the city and PCDC. I think we had talked about making sure our our calendars and and emails and everything like that align. We've got a uh an administrative services agreement between the organizations. Let's let's utilize that. I don't know if that means you got to give up your Macs for PCs, but I want to make sure that we are collaborating as effectively as possible. Uh, and to that end, we have identified space in downtown East in the new city hall that I think would be ideal for uh collaboration. Uh, you work frequently with our our parks uh and with our planning department. Um, I think the collaboration would be ideal to be uh operating in the same space as much as possible. So, we do have space available for you. uh in city hall and I would love to see you uh move into that uh just as soon as we do.

Uh and with that uh I know we've still got JLL here that we want to hear from. Um so can we how long we got we got 24 minutes 23 minutes. Uh they only have an 84 slide 84 84 it's just 84 pages. They they can get through that quick. So, so I'm going to move on to item 3B, which is presentation by uh JLL, the owner's representative for Project Nexus, outlining the vision, goals, and objectives that align with the stakeholder engagement strategy for project Nexus based on feedback from the PCBC board and council. I believe this is still your joint meeting as well. So,

correct. So, I will also open up item 3B as the mayor just read is identical wording in the PCDC agenda. So, we will go with that as being appropriately read. And once the presentation is closed, we get to the work session, I will call the attorney at that time. All right. Thank you. Welcome. Uh, feel free to introduce yourselves. Thank you. It's terrific to be here. I'm Steve Garvin and I'm the regional director for JLL. Um, I'm here in the Austin office. Um, it's a pleasure to be with you all today and I'll let my other colleague Zach introduce himself.

Hi everyone. My name is This is Zach Orig. I'm a project manager with JLL.

Yeah. So, with us today, we wanted to kind of we've presented to you before. We wanted to give you a project update. We do have systems in place um that we have a process here. So, we wanted to walk you through kind of where we are. So Zach and his team really are the upfront vision. So with any development, we are going to look at kind of the community, what is the vision, what is our goals and then following that which we still are doing in the process is and especially our group and my team is looking at kind of the market today. What can feasibly be there and kind of from the visioning we take that and look at the market study. We'll do proformas where we stand on that and then guide you through that whole process. But right now we want to take you through we had very productive meetings with Jerry and his team and we wanted to take you through the visioning which Zach is going to do today.

Yeah. Yeah. Happy to be here. Um I I think I'll preface really with this. The intent is that um you really to give you all an update but also to let you all know that this document serves as a north star for this project. Right? So every time that decisions are being made in the project that this document that this visioning document not only serves as um our our working uh document that shows that we are aligned per the RFQ that was released and that we responded to and were awarded but that it um we have done the work to show that we are aligned. Right. So um to start and just as a as a quick thing is that this is the exact presentation that we were that we presented to the PCDC board. It is an executive summary. it does not it is not representative of all the work that we've done um but it is you know really the the spark notes if you will so a couple quick things um just to start with what we heard right so we heard during this visioning session that we held with PCDC and um members from the city that uh we have three main community aspirations and four main key concerns that really manifested themselves into project goals which I'll present on the next slide right so the first what we heard is authentic identity Right? How do we produce extraordinary development that reflects Blugerville's unique demographics and character while prioritizing local and regional businesses over chains? Right? I heard that that was part of the discussion as well. How can we begin to flip that narrative? Right? Knowing that we may we do not have all the answers at this point, but we know we want to work towards it together in a partnership. The second is the economic catalyst piece. So um the that the project should be a regional destination that generates sales tax revenue, job creation and tourism through meeting event and convention space. This also applies to things like third spaces, right? The third is quality of life. Um third spaces for community gathering and full service amenities leveraging the Lake Louisville proximity as an environmental asset. Now four key concerns, right? We can't just look at what we want. We have to also look at what potential concerns

are, right? So the first is stakeholder alignment and managing community expectations throughout the process. We want to make sure that whenever we're in front of people that we are providing clarity, right? That we're not just spinning our wheels. Um so we want to make sure that we are make we are walking with not only with council but with the community throughout this process. The second is securing adequate funding and navigating market volatility. I know there's a mention of gas prices, right? Um we cannot control all those things but we can equip you all for success, right? um in terms of how decision- making is is being made. Uh finding their educational and institutional anchor partners was a big topic of discussion that we had as well. And then ensuring walkable connect walkability, connectivity and effective lake integration. So all of that was manifested really in four main strategic goals that we created with the city and with PCDC. The first is market driven programming. All of this must be validated against components um uh against demand, right? the market says this means we don't we should not be overbuilding right that we should be responding to what um the market and is the second is economic growth and I touched on this a little bit already but we should be defining success through measurable sales tax growth and job creation targets um the third is regional destination we want to design signature experiences and quote unquote money shop moments think of those as your Instagrammable your social media moments the things that really lean into the identity ofville um and then lastly authentic character prioritizing local businesses and partnerships that reflect genuine fluerville um identity.

So can you go back to that second uh that second bullet point and that was created in conjunction with speaking to executive director for um PCDC correct? Yes.

Okay. And so those and I just wanted to make sure we point that out because that's part of the conversation about what we're saying regarding what are measurables that we can look at and go from there as well. Yes. And you and part of this is that we actually we had a great document to start from, a great vision already, and that was Flugerville 2040 guiding principles, right? So, um, you know, I'm not going to speak too too much depth around these six items, but you know, we want to make sure that the development is diverse and equitable, right? Who is coming to the the development? We want to make sure that it's welcoming to all, that it's community oriented, that's fiscally responsible, right? And that is responsible um of any funds that are being used for it. environmentally sustainable, really leveraging the um you know the assets around it for it to be um a welcoming environment, safe and healthy, right? Um and then lastly, economic opportunities for all. Um so really this slide just represents that we we did study the guiding principles that were created beforehand, you know, going into the visioning session. Um we also looked at the mission statements, right? So we looked at PCDC's mission which really to become a regional employment center in the areas of business retention, expansion, and attraction. And then we also studied Flugerville's 2040 vision statement. Right? Flugerville is a unique community. It's a modern and charming community. It's diverse. It has an atmosphere of inclusion, vital infrastructure. All of that to say is that they they need to find um that it needs to find itself ingrained in the project um as we begin and really continue working on it. And so this is the vision statement. Um it is to create a vibrant 53 acre regional destination that one enhances quality of life in Flugerville, two fosters community engagement and three drives sustainable economic growth through thoughtful planning, public private partnerships and a collaborative phase development approach. Right? Knowing that this is our vision statement, this helps us make decisions down the road and helps us, you know, when those wicked problems arise, right? Where we, you know, have to make decisions that are tough and have to prioritize different things. So

you you heard as we were speaking earlier quite a bit about the difference between activities and outcomes, right? Uh those KPIs and and the uh strategies. Where in this process are we identifying the the goals for this project? Cuz uh you've got the mission. I I love the mission and the vision there. Um but I want to make sure that we have a good definition of what we expect, what what our goals are accomplishing. And and I think um you're going to get to the timeline here in a minute and I I want to make sure that this council, you know, adopts those goals. Are those goals in here tonight or

Yes. So I just it was in the appendix, but it is here. So as part of our visioning process, um well, first really the we want to understand the difference between a goal and objective, right? So an a goal is a general guideline that might explain what you want to achieve. um an an objective defines a strategy or implementation to attain that identified goal, right? And so really with this, you know, for example, and our first goal was develop market driven programming. The objective would be then to validate program components against market demand, right? So the second create a sustainable place in campus for future residents of Flugerville. That would mean use native plants and water fishing systems to minimize inf infrastructure strains. So the objective really speaks to it accomplishes the goal through an identifiable more specific item. Um and I'll continue walking through these. The third is generate local economic growth. How do we do that? That's defined success criteria around specific sales tax growth and job creation. The fourth is foster authentic community identity. Um that means prioritizing local and regional businesses over chains in any sort of retail strategy. Um and then the fifth create a destination for the surrounding areas. That means designing signature experiences and programming that showcase fluville's unique character with money shot moments or those, you know, Instagrammable social media moments throughout. And that this is on slide 18 of our

got. So I think I think one of my challenges here is that uh the the number one goal there is develop market driven programming. I I see us as owners of this project as the market maker, not the market responder. So I I do worry about I mean obviously we need to build something that is going to be successful but the fact that we are building it means that we can put turn it into what we want it to be rather than what the market you know says it should be. We we often find that what the market says we should be we can outperform it dramatically here in Flugerville.

Right. Yeah. And I do think so the market tells one story right? um what tells another story could be what actually fits on the site, right? Another part of the story is also what the community says and a lot of our charge here is making sure that we are taking all of those things into account and I don't know.

Yeah. And that's where that's where it comes out where we're going to look at those things like what is the market doing? We understand that y'all could could enhance that site and there's other goals in involved, but then seeing what a developer or or what the market's going to come and what it could bear might bring upon new ideas. And then you all have your own ideas and that's where things could really get interesting and that's where we want to get make sure that we have everything buttoned up on the front end with the vision and then go through the process or the system like you said. So, it's really similar to question I was about to ask is whether or not you intended those goals and objectives to be in an in order because if they're not, that's probably a conversation that you should have with us and have us agree to um because that's going to be really important as you prioritize your work going forward.

So, and that was also a question as well as not we we're gonna we're gonna blow all those out of the park, right? Um and then really I think a great partnership is one where both parties are held are able to hold each other accountable. So what we were able to provide to the board during our update was really um an outlook towards the end of the year, right? With the ultimate goal being to answer this question of how do we equip a um a developer for success through the RFQ process, right? and how to Jerry's point that he spoke a little bit about earlier is like a developer can only respond with to so much information and that you can really control that process if you really put the work on the front end into creating a really great RFQ. And so what we're after here is um there's a couple slides and I'm just going to walk through how we are holding the RFQ the documents the deliverables right how we're going to deliver them throughout this year um up until that de developer selection. So, we've um you'll see the yellow arrow is actually in April, but we we presented this to PCDC's board originally, right? So, we're on that 41426 city council meeting, but we're shooting for a draft of our vision and development strategy really towards the end of this month. That becomes a living document, right? And the reason that we do that is because we don't want um any of the data or things that we're capturing to be just one single point in time. We want it to evolve as we hear different feedback, as we hear feedback from you all, as we hear feedback from the community. Um, and so we basically are delivering a draft and some sort of deliverable every one to two months. So you'll see that first draft really by end of April that we'll really work with PCDC to really refine. Um, and then we'll be building it out with things like site analysis, with things like engagement summaries and uh site concepts, market data. And so really going into the summer, we have a big halfway point around the July where we're beginning to put together beyond the vision and development strategy things information related to how we procure, how we implement and things

related to the financial model. And then really as we begin building out those that um living document it, as you can see towards the end of the year, it gets a little bit dicey with the holidays and things like that, but we really want to shoot for really hard deliverables that can be put into the RFQ by early November. Um really with the intention for target developer solicitation going into January. One thing I wanted to just uh encourage you all to do as you go into the strategy, especially for stakeholder engagement, is to spend time with staff, we have done over the last couple of years, a a ton of um engagement across the community, across just about any topic you could think of. And so I wouldn't want you all to have to start over. I would use their knowledge and that data as a baseline um and figure out where you all need to extend it. I'm I'm curious what you you said you want to make sure you get a nice and tight RFQ, right? Um what components make that? How do you what what drives that to make sure that actually comes into fruition?

Yeah. So I would say um specificity helps, right? And so generally um and in solicitation processes, the more broad it is, the more you may get unfocused responses. So part of this process is making sure that we're working with PCDC and with you all to make sure that whatever document that is, you are getting very specific developers that want to respond and are bought into the vision that we've laid out.

Right. As we look at this timeline, one of the things that I I think we need to incorporate because I I do see, you know, obviously we're meeting here tonight. You've got draft one of the vision and development strategy uh towards the end of the month. Uh I do expect we need to adopt some sort of uh resolution that uh adopts the mission, the vision uh and the goals and I want to make sure that those goals are aligned with what we are expecting out of this uh project. So I'm trying to understand should should we have that resolution by our next meeting? Would that be in conjunction with the draft one? Is that an appropriate time for us to review that or do we need to uh do we need to adopt that separately? So, I want to make sure we establish what it is we're expecting.

I was hoping that I figured he was looking down this way. Um I looked over me dead in the face. I was like, "Okay." So, he's more than likely probably looking this way because um we wanted to begin the community engagement piece um at one of the uh signature events that Flugerville puts on which is sites of Flugerville. Um and it's really to get input, right? Just to get feedback. It's the perfect time to have people in the area. Uh and so if that if that's not out of I think you can give feedback with uh while we're still refining the goals.

I think that's fine. You can gather data before you before you turn it into action. Absolutely. The the only thing is I would ask you is I mean since you're driving this right here. Yeah. Um I saw the timeline very ambitious. I like it. what hindering what things may hinder the ability to execute it. I know she DJ knows me too well that that that you may not be able to make it. So, you know, because I mean it's that I love ambition. I love everything else for but we also want to make sure that we set our own expectations for anything that may hinder that ability to execute.

Yes. Yeah. So, I know that the So, we presented the timeline. It is ambitious to your point. Um it also does not mean that it cannot change, right? So if there's different events that I I would say to answer your question directly um is that probably the biggest thing that where we may need to spend more time or revisit is how we're engaging the community. Okay. Um and really what that looks like from a not only from a strategic standpoint but really like who is it who it is we're talking to. Um what sorts of specific feedback we're really looking for. To my point earlier, we want to make sure that we're you know providing clarity where we're where appropriate. Um, but we're also in the rooms that make the most sense to be to get that intentional feedback.

And you do this for a living. So, and you I'm glad you gave us what may be some things that may hinder it. How likely is that to be the case? Always. That's a um uh

well there's one component that is not necessarily on the the timeline but it's definitely a part of it and that is having continued meetings with um PCDC and city staff along with um outreach to council members, PCDC board members and um any other kind of designated stakeholders. So, but those are those are within our power, right? Like those are things that like we should be able to put out. That's why I was saying like I mean and and like again I I think at times

we make asking a question because we want you to give you something to find. If you if you can't define it's perfectly okay. I'm just saying in your experience, how often is it that hey, listen, you know, it's great that we had this right here in six months, but you know what, we need to speak to this person, so that adds another couple of weeks or that adds a couple months. Sure. I I I would say I mean, in development broadly that there are a number of unknowns that could come up, right? Um No, no, no. But I'm saying in your like in your experience, there's always going to be an unknown that's going to come up, but we're very comfortable with the timeline. We think going out to make sure that that's that's my fault. I'm so sorry. I I mean I've conveyed it well.

You said there's always going to be an unknown. What what I'm saying is that so how likely is that going to be the case regarding the necessity to expand that timeline? Does that make sense? Not that you said do the unknowns cause the scope decree cause the the timeline to increase? I mean yes obviously if there's something comes up that we need to speak. So you're saying is this is a goal? This is a goal. It's a very is it a framework? Yes, it structure system. It is a system and I will say like our our decision that like a January coming out will be RFP or RFQ you know how we're going to do the procurement strategy the development community you know come November December and develop

depending on the environment January February is a really good timeline and that's why we're kind of going towards that good very appropriate timeline okay I had one other just maybe like something to keep in mind especially if you're going to start doing community engagement at Slice, which is coming up pretty quick. I would venture to guess that very few residents know that this is even a thing. And so I would be prepared to probably tee up that education when you're talking to people or whatever that approach is. I'm not sure a whole lot of people even know that the city owns this property and that there is this plan. And so something to keep in mind. But but to that to that point,

do they need to know that that we own this property and that we're working on this project in order to provide us the feedback that we need to know in order to build this project? What do you want to say? I I might want more generic information from the from the residents. I mean, I might argue that we already have a lot of the generic data from our residents. I think if I think there may be more value in having something targeted to say, "Hey, here's here's this thing." I I mean, I'm not trying to steer it necessarily, but just something to his point. Yeah. I mean, our our five-year strategic plan had a ton of community input specifically on what our residents want to see. And so, again, might be just going back to my original comment, at least go through that stuff to figure out what is actually valuable um in your engagement.

Yeah, this isn't your first rodeo. We understand. So it's more like yo, okay, listen you idiots. We know what we're talking about. Yeah. And and our goal is not to do any, you know, redundant work. We know that there's been a lot of, you know, efforts towards community engagement already. And we really are leaning on, um, you know, our partners at PCDC to know, okay, maybe, you know, there needs to be a little bit more engagement here or maybe, you know, we should go talk to this group because they were not engaged in a previous engagement. So it is kind of a bothand approach, flexible, right? Um because we want to make sure that we are talk we are not going too fast, right? Um but yes.

All right, Zach, I have to ask you, have you have you conveyed everything that you wanted to? We do have this posted on our regular agenda, but we're wrapping up on our work session. Um you're you're welcome to stick around and present further, but it would be later in the evening. Um have you conveyed everything that you need to to us at this point? Yes. All right. So my expectation is that uh at our uh hopefully our next meeting we we have a resolution from PCBC with the uh the vision uh and the goals and any feedback that we can provide into those goals would be uh would be very appropriate. Uh anything further as we're at uh 659. No, that's a good point. So let's again to Zach

Yes. Um to Z to Zach's point, let's make sure that we have my suggestion would be that we have him here. We're going to have that resolution so we can have that conversation cuz you're based here in Austin. Uh I'm based in Atlanta, but we have a local You're in Austin. Okay. We can have we can have representation. Yeah. Telephone. So like they're more than happy to be here. They're excited. They'll they'll be here.

All right. With that, we're going to uh adjourn our work session. And I will tell the uh the folks in the audience here that we were probably going to take about a a four or five minute break to uh uh take care of ourselves and we will uh we will uh return to our regular session here momentarily and Dell let me do that. Go ahead, girl. And it's 7 o'clock. PCDC is a journ between you and

Good uh good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for being here with us tonight. Uh I'm going to call to order this regular meeting of the Flugerville City Council at 7:09 p.m. on April 14th, 2026. Uh we begin our meetings with a pledge to the US flag, the Texas flag, and I'd ask you to uh rise and remain standing following those for a moment of silence.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I aliance to thee of Texas. One state under God. One and indivisible. Please take your seats. This brings us to the portion of our agenda, which is reserved for public comment. In accordance with the Texas Attorney General opinion, any public comment that is made on an item that is not on the published final agenda will only be heard by the city council. No formal action, discussion, deliberation, or comment will be made by the city council. Each person providing public comment will be limited to three minutes. Uh I've received forms from four individuals wishing to make public comment. Uh if there is anyone else, I do invite you to fill out a form uh or come forward towards the end. Uh the first one I have uh at the top of my stack is Aaron Milis. Uh Erin, did you wish to speak today?

Yes.

All right. Good evening, mayor, mayor prom, city council, city manager, city secretary, and council. Uh, I am Aaron Millis, 509 Sunflower Drive, and I'm here to not talk about water. I'm here in my role as president of the Friends of the Flugerville Library. The friends of the Blugerville Library, a 501c3, all volunteer nonprofit started 45 years ago when Audrey Daring and several other motivated individuals decided the city needed a library after the bookmobile stopped servicing our area. Their tireless work opened the first volunteer library, expanded it, and eventually purchased the land that our current library sits on today. The library is now a city-run facility with an amazing leadership and staff and the friends continue to support them to this day. Audrey is one of our Flugerville's champions and her passing in late 2024 was a loss for our organization and for our city. The friends petitioned the city to name the original portion of the existing library that Audrey worked so hard to make happen for her using the new naming rules introduced just a few months prior. City staff assisted with navigating the process to get it to the point that the proposal was brought before council in May of 2025. This council approved our request in resolution res 1325 at the May 27th meeting. As of early this past week, the signage and plaque have been installed to the specifications outlined in the approved proposal. The timing is fortuitous as the friends host our annual meeting this month. This is when we give an update to the public on our finances, what we've been up to, and it's when we honor outstanding teen library volunteers. We will close that meeting with a dedication of the newly named Audrey T. Dearing Wing. I promise we're going to keep the parliamentary procedure to a

minimum. And I'm inviting you to attend the meeting next Tuesday, April 21st at 6 p.m. at the Flugerville Library. Thank you, and I hope to see you all there. Thank you. Thank you, Erin. Sounds like a great organization that our council members should likely be members of as well. I believe we have one up there on the database. Uh with that, the next uh individual I have registered to speak is I believe this is Leslie Wall. Leslie, you got three minutes. Thank you.

I am going to cover water and waste. Anyway, um there were some of us that came before the planning committee and this council four and five years ago

and we indicated that all the development that was being approved, we did not have the support system supported, but we said yes anyway and we see where we are now. the uh the water systems based on the revenue that is supposed to be paying the bonds is now at $224 million based on bond review board and that's for the close of year 25. We don't know where we're at 26. The total bond indebtedness in 21 for the city was $ 298 million. Total now is over a billion dollars. How in the world are we going to be able to pay for continued water, wastewater, streets, so forth without doing what we suggested and said was going to happen 5 years ago? You've got to raise our rates. And we've all seen those rates go up. I don't mean up a little bit. I mean significantly. I heard back then so many times, we're going to be as big as Corpus. Well, thank goodness we're not Corpus right now. Corpus is only in debt $1.9 billion. And yet they have a population base in their metro area of 450,000. We can argue whether we're 65, 66, 72,000, whatever. They're five, six times our size. And yet they're in debt and this is only twice ours. We have a problem with debt. We have a problem with where it's being allocated. We have a problem with saying yes to developers to keep developing and not make them pay for the infrastructure they need to be paying for. And that's why I'm here saying we cannot continue to spend the money we're spending and keep anything in this town what's called affordable. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Leslie. Next item uh next individual I have signed up is uh Robert Johnson.

Good evening, mayor and city council. My name is Robert Johnson. I'm the owner and operator of Heritage Lake Senior Living in Flutterville. Our campus serves roughly 200 residents right now. We're fixing to open up a skilled nursing rehab that'll service another 104 people. I want to make it clear, it's not about the money. I don't care how much y'all pay me for the land, but it's for the safety of my residents having an entrance that people can get to, mainly fire trucks and ambulances. The city moved the roundabout on Kelly Lane that was in front of our property and moved it off to the other side of the the lane across the street from us. And when they did that, they took away a del lane that I put in back in 2017 to let cars slow down as they come into our property. Now we do not have that. The city has also come up with a new design and never come to us, never told us about it, and went to the fire department, showed the fire department and put a media across the front of our property, making our residents have to come out, go to the right, make a loop around, and go back. They cannot just exit straight out of the facility. The other part about that, the worst part about it is the fire trucks with no entrance to my property. They can only come from the west to enter my property. No one can come from the east. So, if there's a wreck on Kelly Lane, they can't get to my property. Also, we have an access agreement that from the time I've started this property back in 2016 was going to be emergency

exit. Now they're taking it away on the new joints. They're taking it away from us and it's not there and it's not right. We met with the city tried to work it out. Uh we had couple of uh calls on Zoom. I've gone to them and talked to them, talked to the fire department. Fire department agrees with us. They're doing everything saying that that will not work. And then talking to the city, we thought we had it worked out. And then I get a call last week that the city council has voted to go ahead and do intimate domain and take my property from me. We can't have that. I've got too many seniors in the community. We have a fire truck and ambulance come to our property once twice a week. When I'm completely finished this project, we'll have over 500 seniors in our community. And all we're asking for is a lay down curb in front of our property, which would allow the fire trucks, if there's a wreck, they can come from the other directions and cross over onto our property and leave us the emergency entrance. If something happens, they can come to my property. We It's not an exit for us. We'll put the fence up. We'll put everything up that needs to be. So, it's only an emergency exit. But this is something we've tried to do. Our community is thriving. It's doing well. We have lots of seniors. We're fixing to put in a pharmacy, another clinic there, but with what they're trying to do, it's not safe.

All right. Uh Robert, your your time's expired, but I do invite you to uh meet with our staff to discuss those concerns. I we talked to the staff and then we got over. So, thank you. Next individual I have is uh David Armistend.

How do y'all? Good to see you. My name is David Armistad. I live in the I own the property at the entrance of Fluger Fluger Park um right at Valley Meadow in Fluger Park. I'm here tonight because I'm trying to understand something and I'm hoping you can help me make sense of it. Um, I'm here tonight because this involves code enforcement case 66201. I think you have a packet in front of you. I dropped it off. Um, according to city's records, on March 27th at 7:49 in the morning, the property was inspected. Now, this isn't my house. My, by the way, this is the house adjoining. Uh, Fluger Park's a lovely park. Um, we all enjoy it for music in the park. Duchinfest. Hundreds of people walk by that entrance. My house is right on that entrance. The the property in question regarding 66201 is not my house. It's the It's the adjacent house on the other side of the park or of the entrance. So anyway, so on the morning of March 26th 7th at 7:49, the property was inspected, violation was documented, trash and household goods in the front yard and driveway. The notes also indicated a door hanger or advisory notice would be left and that a reinspection was rescheduled for April 6th. But then later that same day, if you look at your packet at 2:39 in the afternoon, just a few hours later, the the case was closed with the vi with the statement, no violations exist. So, if you turn to the photo that that's in your packet, you'll see that's their definition of no violations exist.

Um, but according to chapter 92 of the new ordinance y'all just adopted, if you accumulate if you have accumulation of uh rubbish or garbage in your yard in your property, uh the ordinance very plainly plainly states you shall abate it. So anyway, um when I requested the the files through PIA, I couldn't find anything that showed any inspection photos, no reinspection photos, no documentation documentation of what was removed, no city works activity logs, and I didn't see a copy of the advisory notice that the note said was left. So, I'm just trying to understand the timing. Um, if a re uh inspection was scheduled for April 6, how was the case effectively reinspected and closed in a few hours on March 27th? So, how does the case go from a documented violation with an advisor notice issued in a future reinspection go to no violations exist the same day without any documentation showing what changed? I may be missing something and if I am I'd appreciate clarification.

Mr. Armstead. Uh is your uh is your position that the uh nuisance still exists? Yes. All right. Thank you. Uh let's uh let's get some staff involved in that. All right, sir. Um just to finish up when I read chapter 92, it says that these conditions are not Mr. Ar has but we will uh we will get with you. I appreciate you. All right. Uh and then I also received a a form from Miss Urcha Dunar Presel.

Good evening, Mayor Council City Manager and fellow citizens. I'm not here to complain. I am here to give kudos and flowers to a city staff person. Carlos Jones, who's the project manager for the historic colored edition construction project, has gone way out of his way to resolve any issues we we may have. Saturday, we couldn't get into our church parking lot. I called him and he took care of it. And you don't get that kind of customer service anymore. Today, I called him because I was trying to find out who owned the wastewater line for my house. And he could have very easily said, "Call Southwest, call Texas, doesn't belong to the city." But instead, he went the extra mile again and said, "Hey, here's who you need to call, and they should be able to answer whatever questions you have." and I just say, you know, that's what customer service is all about and that's not the norm anymore anymore. So, I just wanted to give kudos to city staff member Carlos Jones. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, uh, that, uh, concludes the forms that have been delivered to me. Uh, is there anyone else in the public wishing to speak during public comment? Seeing none, we will move forward. I will be moving to uh the podium for three proclamations.

Thank you, Christa. The first proclamation I have tonight is a proclamation uh declaring April 2026 as volunteer appreciation month uh in the city of Flugerville. So, we're very uh uh very excited to have some folks uh who volunteer with the city uh at present to accept that. Uh but I think it really speaks to us. This community has a history of coming together uh doing what needs to be done and stepping up to take care of things. Uh so, volunteer appreciation month is an opportunity to recognize and honor the countless individuals who selflessly invest in the lives of others. Volunteering one's time, talent, and resources improves the quality of life for all residents in our community. And the city of Flugerville would like to thank those who give of themselves and encourage all residents to become involved in volunteer work. So therefore, I proclaim April 2026 as volunteer appreciation month in the city of Flugerville. Uh representatives from the Friends of the Library are here to accept this proclamation. Uh, and I made sure to wear my friends of the library lapel pin. Where are my friends of the library?

All right, let's let's get over here with our friends. I will say one thing. The meeting is open to all next week. So, the invite wasn't just for All right. Come on, my friends. Thank you. My first PA professor.

Oh my gosh.

Two basic things. All right. My my next proclamation is is incredibly meaningful to me. This is a proclamation declaring the week of April 12th to April 18th as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week in the city of Flugerville. Um I I have the honor of serving as the chair of the Capitol Area Emergency Communications District. Uh and earlier today I had the opportunity to meet with our dispatch team. Uh well, not all of them. Many of them were on the phone answering 911 calls at the time. Uh so we do know how busy they are in the eight monitors that each of them have and somehow uh maintain communication and service to our community. Public safety dispatchers are the first and most critical contact our community has with emergency services. They are the vital link for our law enforcement personnel and monitor law enforcement activities while providing them with vital information. The public safety dispatchers of the Flugerville Police Department have contributed substantially to the safety of our community and to our police officers. So I therefore proclaim April 12th to April 18th as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week in the city of Flutterville and communication supervisor Kesha Ramos and Assistant Chief Chris Baker are here to accept the proclamation on their behalf. All right.

Um, I don't have a good side. So, Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Perfect. Uh and uh my final proclamation of the evening uh is also declaring the week of April 12th to April 18th, 2026 as National Animal Care and Control Appreciation Week in the city of Flugerville. Uh I wasn't sure if we'd have any furry friends with us tonight. I guess not. But um we're always excited to have our uh Flugerville Animal Welfare Services in the house. Uh, the National Animal Care and Control Association has designated the second week of April as National Animal Care and Control Appreciation Week. The city of Flugerville would like to express our sincere thanks and appreciation for the outstanding service Flugerville Animal Welfare Services provides daily to the residents of Flugerville. And if you haven't experienced it, that's probably a good thing. Uh, but show up there to adopt an animal. if they happen to catch a stray, they do everything they can to get it back to the owner uh post haste to ensure that those animals are not traumatized by being absent from their furry beds and their their warm dinners. Um these folks do provide many dedicated and long hours of outstanding service in serving animals and residents in our community. So I therefore proclaim April 12th to April 18th as National Animal Care and Control Appreciation Week in the city of Flugerville. And our animal welfare services staff is here to accept the proclamation. Believe they get uh two copies. Are you going to event

my documentation back to me. Everything is uh well coordinated and welloiled. Uh that brings us to item 4 D which is to conduct a presentation on the city of Flugerville water supply. Uh we have uh Mr. Hartsworn, uh Ms. Roberts, uh Mr. Recctor, and Chief Richards here to present. And well, we only have two two chairs. So, I looked at I heard the names. I was like, "Wait a minute.

Well, we'll optimize." Um, and I know I'm very eager to hear. I know we've uh we've heard about so much progress and so much history in the past. Um, but I'm I'm hopeful we will hear about our way forward as we uh as we move through these times. Um, like uh Matt Floelle, thank you for being here. Take it away.

Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council. For the record, Matt Recctor, I'm the director of utilities and engineering. Uh, helping me tonight is assistant city manager for Roberts and I believe Richards, he's hiding back here. Um, so we talked about it was going to be an update, just a quick update compared to our prior um, presentations. Just a recap of where we are and what we've done. So March 4th, we declared stage three. Uh March 11th, we had the temporary bypass in operation. March 17th was the fifth break. March 18th, we were back in service again. Uh just to recap here for you, and I know that this is slightly outdated because it says April 12th on there, but we had to get everything wrapped up and put into the presentation. So, uh as of April 12th, we were at a 631.18 elevation. Remember, our target goal is 633. We're pushing to get to that 633 elevation before we

And what what is the elevation today? Yeah. What's it today? When I checked it this morning, it was 631.31. Wonderful. Okay. Wonderful. It's called progress. It's keep climbing. Keep slow and steady. Slow and steady. System. We haven't met the goal yet. I won't say what that means, but we're we're working towards it. And we're making we're making great progress. We are making progress. I'm glad to see the uh the conservation efforts and the uh the interim uh construction getting us to where we are today. Yeah, our citizens get a lot of credit for what's going

digging in just a little bit. So this orange line you can see here, this is kind of how the lake has has varied over time as we've gone through this project going all the way back to the first break in September and then leading up to again uh as of April 6. You can see we were approaching that 630 elevation and now as I've shared we are over that elevation. Speaking of the conservation, this is what we've what we've seen. So you can see there when we started uh we were we were if we went back further behind this 31 date you would see that that line was trending up up and then on March 1st we hit that 6.1 MGD trigger and uh that's when we started we announced we were going to stage one and then a few days later we went into stage three and you can see pretty much from there on we've trended down towards that 4 MGD goal and Again, just to remind everyone, the reason we came to that 4MGD goal was looking at what we typically do in a winter situation when we aren't watering our lawns and washing our cars and doing all that stuff because we stay inside because it's winter time. And with that, I will turn it over to Miss Roberts. Thank you. So, here on this slide and also on the next slide, you'll see photos of uh the construction uh progress that our contractors are making. So um on the left, the far left and the far right, those are uh the 42 in uh secondary raw water line that is being constructed. Uh and in the center uh you'll see the uh temporary bypass. That's the 24-in temporary bypass water line um that is holding steady and that is that is the line as a reminder that is the line that is carrying uh the flow from uh the Colorado River up to Lake Flugerville.

And here here are some more photos of the progress our contractors are making. Um again this is showing the magnitude the size and the magnitude of the of the pipes that are going in to show that it is not a small feat um that we're doing and that our contractors are doing. And also um on here I just want to remind everyone that up we have an upcoming shutdown. Um it's it's uh scheduled for May 27th. Um it will be a twoe shutdown. So again um we are encouraging the conservation efforts um so that we can uh reach the 633 elevation and and we can have our shutdown.

What does that shutdown mean for our citizens? What do you mean? Hopefully nothing. Yeah. But no, so the goal is to reach that 633, return to stage one, and we will be in in stage one for a little while with the the current environment, but that shutdown then means the lake will likely draw down. It will while we finalize the ultimate uh resolution and new construction, right? That is correct. Um, it sorry, didn't we name it? That's what I was wanting you to say.

But I want to make sure our citizens are are aware that uh and I will tell you there was a time we had we had that fifth break and we notified everyone immediately even though it was resolved in in less than a day and a half. Um, but because water was not flowing into the lake at that point in time and I know that would very much worry some folks. We want to make sure people know that there will be a two-eek time span when water is not flowing into the lake, but it is anticipated. It is planned for and assuming we we get up to 633, it will not impact our ability to use water at that point in time. Um we will get through the construction process uh and sail on through to much happier times where we have uh three times the water moving capacity pushing into the lake. And that's the key is that it's anticipated. It was planned for. It was nothing something new with that specifically. And hopefully if we get to that spit level, our citizens will be okay because

when you when someone hears shut down, the first thing they're going like, "Wait, wait, what? I thought we were doing everything." Okay. So, yeah, that is planned. It's a part of the construction process. We have to we have to do tie-ins. Um, and could you remind me, you said May 26th? About May 27th. May 27th. Okay. And and I I really what I what I would love to know I mean this is a 15 milei pipeline that is is being constructed. Uh last I heard we had one mile left to excavate and install. Um how are we doing with that? Are we are we done with that one mile? Are we are we down to half a mile?

No sir. We're still we're still working on that that that one mile to complete that one mile. We have had some a little bit of delays because as we all know we had some rain. So, um, so that does impact the construction of the of the line. Understood. So, all right. And then that May 27th, two week time frame, we're still on track for that or has the rain caused us to shift that date a little bit or is that the new date? As of now, yes, we have a meeting in a couple of days where we we are going to revisit that and we're going to see if that if the rain delay has has delayed us any further.

And I understand our intention was to coordinate, I think, three different activities to fit within that twoe window. Um are are we still targeting those three different activities to to occur all at the same time? And are we going to be able to get it done all in two weeks? There's no change in the activities that we're targeting for that time frame. Again, we're meeting with a contractor in Thursday. Um, and so we'll we are revisiting that that information. So people like me who aren't necessarily good with dates, just remember Memorial Day after Memorial Day. True. The week after Memorial Day.

Is there um any progress updates on the permanent repair to the existing water line? Um currently, no ma'am. Um that water line is still flowing water. Um but that repair is going to occur during that shutdown period. Okay. So the the actual repair is during the shutdown period and there's not going to be anything prior to that. No ma'am. So right here the center photo that is is that our bypass?

That's the bypass line. And so that's how it is currently looking. So we have to we have to shut down the flow in order to replace that that line underground. We can't run the bypass and work on it at the same time. So that's when I when I said three different activities. That's the repair of the the under creek brake. That's the um finalizing the connections on the new 42in pipe. And that's I believe pump house. Um we do have the pump house.

Yes, that's that's finalizing the pump house. So, all three of those were originally anticipated to require their own shutdowns, but we've consolidated that to to make it happen all at once, get it all done in the minimal impact to to lake levels and uh the potential of our our water supply, which is important because then utilizing our resources to the best of our abilities and location to put it at. Absolutely. Does any question? It did, but I had a follow-up one, but then I lost it one. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Oh, yes. Have the materials arrived for the permanent repair because the last time um it was mentioned that it was going to arrive in midappril. Um have we are we able to procure everything that we're going to need for the permanent repair and it's still scheduled on the materials arrived? No.

Okay. Um so uh when we last presented we were waiting on the shop drawings and the lay the lay plan technical terminology for drawings basically from not only our engineer and the contractor but the pipe manufacturer that has all been figured out. Uh all the materials have been signed off by all the engineers. They have been ordered and we are in the the window that the manufacturer agreed to with our representative uh on delivering the pipes and they will be on the ground in May. Okay. So there's there's there's no hindrances at least right now regarding when the deliverables will actually occur. Correct. Cool.

All right. Is that being manufactured locally? Is that I mean how far does it have to go to be delivered? Uh, I don't know the exact location of where their plant is to to answer that question. I know that they will have to ship them, but the plan right now is that all the materials that we need to be able to repair that 30-inch line will be on the ground ready for us to start building in May. Cool. All right. Are those manufactured domestically or are they being shipped internationally? I can't remember if there's a plan in Texas or Ohio. I believe there's somewhere I don't know exactly where in Texas. There's one in Texas. I I feel like there was something in Alabama that was when we originally ordered these, but yeah, not too far away, but definitely domestic.

So, do we have I'm going through the straight of Hor. Do we have uh information about the updated cost for the permanent repair?

Uh we received the cost proposal from the contractor yesterday. We are vetting that with the owner's representative and the uh design engineer to make sure that everybody is good with that before we proceed forward with it. And I anticipate that both the owner's rep, our team, and the design engineer will all push back on some of the items as is typical in a construction type setting. Um, and so once once we kind of finalize it amongst ourselves, then I'll present it to the city management group and and we we'll bring it forward for council consideration. Okay. So it's it it's first amongst U3, then the city management group, and it goes from there. Okay. Cool.

And then I did have a question about stage two water restrictions because a few people were asking some questions um and I couldn't find it easily for myself when I read the document. Someone had mentioned that in stage two that we were allowed um handheld watering. Is that true or is that only allowed on stage one? hand teaching handheld watering. What do you mean by handheld?

Oh, I'm sorry. Like uh like the outdoor with the hose or something, you know, because there was mention of it in the previous stage. So, someone was sharing information that it was allowed in stage two and so I didn't see it. I just wanted to if you need to get back to me on that, that's that's fine. Well, I I don't have the ordinance memorized, so can we Sure. You're welcome back. It was just I just wanted to spell any

I believe I believe drip irrigation is one of those that that may be somewhere in there as well. Um but our goal is not to go to stage two. Our goal is to ensure we get to stage one as quickly as possible to uh minimize the impact of those late May shutdowns and ensure that we can maintain stage one throughout the uh uh the duration. True, but people were wondering if that was allowed and then why couldn't we do that? So, I just wanted to get clarity.

So, yeah, just like the goal is to go stage one if necessary, stage two, and then get back with the information. The worst thing is ever get bad information, right? So, whenever you get the information, we're good. Thank you. And as a reminder, these are the the activities that we have paused. Uh the city has paused uh to ensure that we are doing our part in conserving in conserving water. So none of this has changed. We are still conserving water. And I'll hand it over to Chief to give an update on enforcement activities. Thank you, Mayor. God bless you.

Bless you. I was surprised by the numbers. The citation numbers. Yeah. Yeah. So, to date, we've issued 82 citations. Okay. Of that, 19 are businesses and the others are residential runs. The effort continues with code enforcement and us to partner together to get compliance. We're after compliance that irrigations be turned off. Uh, of those 82 citations on April 8th, eight of them actually went to the first docket for court. All right. Seven of those were paid or made arrangements to pay. One is going to a bench trial. We have 21 more set for the docket on May 13th

and we're collaborating with prosecutor, city prosecutor, as well as Robert who's witnessing and then the officers issuing the citations as well. Chief, can you go again regarding because it's I I want to make sure everyone here because we, you know, got a new audience every meeting, right? Um, you know, the efforts you doing to make sure that we get compliance as opposed to enforcement regarding some sort of penal action.

Thank you for that question. I I have just a brief summary of the education efforts and the outreach efforts that we did as a city collectively to work on that. Uh, and this is actually shared with the individuals that come to court by the city prosecutor as well when they arrive to court. Just the highlights, 4 PF alerts to 24,000 subscribers. Seven smart water messages to 14,000 utility billing customers. 60 social media posts, Facebook, Instagram, Next Door, YouTube, and X. 250 plus restriction signs across water service areas, including traffic signs put up indicating we're in a a stage one restriction. 57 new items local, statewide, 42 responses to media requests, two press releases on ongoing and ongoing website updates, three key to the city e newswsletter highlights, 1,251 clicks on water restriction related links that we've provided, flyers at every city facility and fleet vehicles, emails to HOAs and HOA leadership two times reminding and emphasizing the the stage one restrictions, and then text and phone call notifications on restrictions to utility billing customers. So all the billing customers that have their phone registered to the meter device received text and phone calls letting them know that we are in a stage one restriction. No outdoor watering. So we we've really tried to go through all those.

Sorry, you said I'm sorry I'm tracking the numbers like a ping pong ball. But but but it shows the fact that um we haven't been reactive. been proactive to meet people where they are, where they gather information, and have numerous redundancies in place in case someone may not check one certain venue or or data line to be cognizant of what's happening.

Yes, sir. And there's still instances where we find situations where there's been a death in a household and a family member may may not know or be elderly, may not been the one. So, we still apply the the reason and logic to working with our community members and making sure that that we have the best interest of the whole community at heart when we do these things and enforcement is not the desire, but it that's what it takes for us to get compliance is what we need to do. Cool. And Community Impact ran a story about this. Um, are there other print publications that are out there that run stories on? I only know of the Community Impact.

Okay. Um, I did have a question. Um, what documentation is used to verify that there was a violation? Um, and and did it happen more in each case? Did it happen more than once? Were they were they given a citation on the first violation that was noted or was it a second violation after they were given a warning?

Thank you for that question. So the instruments are used uh the bulk of our violations have been observed watering patterns. So the irrigation pattern it sprays on the driver or the sidewalk from them going off. We have photo images of that. The other information that was leading us to where to go and investigate water usage is from the water smart data where it registers a consistent pattern of irrigate what appears to be an irrigation turning on at 2:00 a.m. in the morning and turning off at 6:00 a.m. with set water usage that occurs repetitive times through the week. And so that information is fed to us and then we go verify that and look for it. So it's not just off the irrigation data that citations are issued. it is the actual observed your sprinklers were on or there is a water pattern that's left on the sidewalk or the grass or your neighbor knows that we're in stage three and they called in because they're watching your irrigation run and so there's been multiple avenues but all the citations have been except for the one that we were unable to observe but we relied on the data from the water smart with two specifically large businesses that chose to disregard the restrictions and move forward. and they have been cited

and they were well aware of the communication that I was able to review showed that they knew they were in a restriction and I think without too much it's we'll risk it. So um and is that data available to the people who receive the citations so that they can see that for themselves? Yes ma'am it is. They get the photos, they get all the evidence, all those things are shared with them.

Okay. And then are there occasions where code enforcement goes to the property to to deliver a a notification about the citation or is it all um electronic um or text or email warnings?

Thank you for that question. Code has made notifications still today making warning notifications to some residents uh on observed or what appear to be observed violations. And then there is also electronic. The citations are delivered uh by officers based on code enforcement's observation or report and evidence of said violation. And then that's either left with the resident, left with the the uh utility building customer. It's actually emailed to them. They get a text message and they also receive a certified mail copy. So, everyone does get a personal delivery to their to the location, some form of certified mail confirmed delivery mechanism occurs. Yeah.

And in the case that you know you're you're knocking on the door and no one's home, that citation is issued to the uh um the person who is on the water bill. Yes, ma'am. Left at the door. copy sent to municipal court. Municipal court sends a certified copy. They get an email and they get a text. So there's multiple layers of redundancy to ensure that the meter owner or register is notified of their violations.

So ultimately, realistically speaking, is that um a super majority of our citizens are complying. There are some folks who haven't been. those folks who have been will be given the evidence which is what you're alluding to to show why in fact we believe they have in you know uh violated you know what's actually heard with that as well that the service is either done in person or by certified mail which is required by law and redone in a redundant fashion to make sure everyone's put on notice for if in fact an hearing does occur. Yes. Okay.

Okay. Well, I told people this and so I just wanted to make sure because there's people in the neighborhood, they say, "We got this citation. We turned our irrigation off. We've checked it." You know, and so I said, "Well, ask for this information so that you can see what happened." Don't listen to what David Rogers tells you. Sometimes we don't come on. You not rely solely on one source. No. It sounds like you you require visual evidence of the violation. Yes, ma'am. Thank you,

Mayor. Can I go back to something that council member asked, Ryan asked about stage two? Stage two, if we went back to that the operate, so it says for water use restrictions, operation of an automatic or manual irrigation system is prohibited. So you could presumably there you could use handheld um but I think staff since the beginning has probably go back to stage one and get to a level. Sure. So, but I just wanted to clarify because uh you know, so using a hose, a handheld hose, that's not manual irrigation under the under the ordinance, right? Okay. It just wasn't specified either way in in stage two. So, what? Nothing. Oh,

what else do we have? Just a few more slides and we're out of here. Um, moving on to FAQs. Um, so that's why I was like I was like that's what I was like I was like just put it on. I was like put it on there. Well, it but it didn't answer the question.

Um, one of the questions we frequently received was why didn't we move to uh stage two um when we when the conditions allowed? And so in in a nutshell was for the greater good of the residents. Um, stage one benefits the residents and so that is our goal to ensure that we we will benefit the majority. Um, and that's moving to stage one. So, uh, moving on to the next FAQ. Why didn't you start restrictions sooner? Uh, couple of reasons. The first three breaks occurred when there were periods of low demand. So, there wasn't a reason at that time for us to move to um a different a different stage. uh when we moved when we had break four on February 6th, uh we realized and and just to remind everyone, break four was the break that uh occurred under the Boggy Creek. And so that's the one where we had to do the uh temporary the 24in temporary bypass water line, excuse me. And so with that one, um there are a few things. one, the time that it took to locate and repair that um that broken line and also when that line broke, we started experiencing a high uh usage period um because you know started getting warmer, people started going outside a bit more and using more water. Um and then as well we had the dive report um that produced information on the lake depth and so that's when we we realized no we need to move to a different stage which is stage three. Um we still communicate we continue to communicate um and remind everyone of our conservation efforts. So, we've had 98 total social so excuse me, social media posts, 65 news items um from 45

responses to media requests, and five key to the city e newswsletter highlights. Um there have been over 2,000 uh clicks on the water restriction related links from uh the five key to the city e newsletters. And as a reminder, um these are the the areas in which we release information um on the different activities uh that we have ongoing to remind people of just how much water um we have um we've used, how much water is in the lake. Um any news associated with this project, you'll find in uh these these areas. And with that, do you have any additional questions?

Why to call us out? Sorry. We're good at asking as we go. Council members, any any further questions on our our current water situation? Seems like we've got a a good target coming up. What was our goal again? Uh 633. We're going to get there. I just love how we go. Thank you. For multiple days. Yeah, that's for two weeks. Well, the 633 and held it. Oh, to 63. Oh, sorry. Not 633. I know. All right. So, I guess I'm sorry. Do you have another question?

Well, so because I saw some updates on the on the website and social media. Um, originally we were targeting May 1st, but now or then there was an update it might be May 7th that we are expecting to get to 633 feet for multiple days. Was that still the the up the latest as of now? Yes, ma'am. That's considering as including everyone's continuing to conserve water. Um, yes, around May 7th. Yeah. Our goal is 633 and based on on current trends, you're saying we were hoping to hit 633 by May 1st. You're saying maybe 7th at this point?

Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that update. Anyone else? All right. Thank you, Po. Council members, that brings us to the consent agenda. I will call out that one of the items uh item 5s on the consent agenda. Uh also had a uh a presentation that was scheduled for the work session. If you want to see that presentation, I would recommend pulling it. If you don't need to, then you don't. Uh, council members, are there any items you wish to pull from the consent agenda? Uh, yes, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to pull 5 A, 5D, and 5 M.

Is that D as in dog? D as in delta. Yes. M as in Mary. M as in Mary. I got alpha. Delta. Mary. Any others? That's correct. Council member says S. I did have a question. So you were saying we are not then we're not going to be receiving an update. Council member Mate asked to call S. So yes, we will receive that presentation. Oh, you pull Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't hear that. And and and now that you've asked that question, it's closed. So any other any other items, council members? Um Trista, would you uh would you do me the honor of reading the consent agenda?

I would love to. I have items 5 A, 5 D, 5 M, and 5S pulled from the consent agenda. 5B is an ordinance of on first reading with the capturing an ordinance of the city of Flugerville, Texas, annexing for full purposes a track of land to holding approximately 62.73 acres of land situated in the Theopilis Ellison survey section 22 abstract number 260 in Travis County, Texas within the city's extr territorial jurisdiction and recorded in document number 206201486 of the official public records of Travis County, Texas, extended the boundaries of the city to include the land zoning the land as a parks facilities and open space district such land to be known as the New Sweden lift station annexation. binding the land to all of the regulations of the city, approving a service plan, providing subability, and providing an effective date. 5C, Ordinance, first reading with a caption reading, an ordinance amending and updating the city of Flugerville Code of Ordinances, Title 9, General Regulations, Chapter 95, Parks and Recreation. Article four, public tree protection, clarifying existing language, adding a section for prohibited activities, updating responsibilities of the tree care advisory board, expanding use of the tree mitigation fund, providing cumulative repealer and severability clauses, providing for open meeting, and establishing an effective date. 5E ordinance third reading with a caption reading, an ordinance of the city of Lugerville, Texas, granting a franchise agreement for the collection, hauling, recycling, and disposal of municipal solid waste and recyclable materials to waste collect connections Lonear, Inc. Providing the terms and conditions of the franchise grant, establishing a term of the franchise and providing an effective date. Again, 5 A, 5D, 5M, and 5S have been pulled. All remaining items may be acted upon in a single motion.

Council members, do I have a motion? Move to approve the consent. I have a motion in a few seconds. was like just pick another hat.

All right, the consent agenda passes unanimously. That brings us to item 6A. A6A is to discuss and consider action to approve a construction contract with Patent Construction LLC in the amount of 12,572,533 for construction services associated with the TR20005 East Fluterville Parkway, Colorado Sand to Weiss Lane project and authorized the city manager to execute the same. Mr. Director, this is a uh exciting project that I'm excited to see us move forward with. What can you tell us? Good evening again, mayor and council. For the record, Matt Recctor, your director of utilities and engineering. Uh so this item before you is to award a contract to patent construction for the East Flugerville Parkway uh extension from Colorado Sands to Weiss Lane. Um and it is um just over $12.5 million uh for the project. The bid was advertised in December 10th. The pre- bid pre- bid was on January 8th. Bid opening was March 3rd. Uh we had a total of eight bids received. Uh and the con the project is supposed to take a total of 510 calendar days, 480 days to substantial completion. You have the engineers recommendation in your packet as well as the uh contact documents. Is there a map of the project?

Yeah, there we go. I assume this uh basically completes the uh the approach there at Colorado Sand in front of the HB. So, we'll have multiple lanes just going straight on through there. Yes, this is awesome. Excited. I did have a question about the contract. Okay. um that I emailed in advance. I'm not sure if you received that question about there was a general conditions document that was referenced many times, but it wasn't include included in the contract.

Yeah. So, in the you're talking about the general conditions as stated in the contract document that's in the packet. So, the general conditions is about an 80page long document and it's standard with all of our projects. It's very typical in construction projects to have a list of general conditions that basically outline things like you have to comply with city regulations that you these are the people you have to contact if you have issues with your project. Uh it's it's very um boilerplate type language. I guess then what I wasn't able to determine in the the contract that was provided what the termination clauses are. I don't know if I missed it. Um but um I don't have the general conditions right in front of me, but I can get those for you and and you'll be able to see the uh termination documents. Uh the termination clauses within the contract.

Any other questions on this item while pending that uh that information? So So your concern is that you you believe the contract's silent to termination? Yes. I I checked a few things, three things, and that's one of them, and it wasn't in the contract provided. So, fairly significant omission. I'm glad you caught that. I was hoping that um requesting it in um earlier on Monday that we would get a copy of it so I could check that out.

And and to be clear, you're concerned that there's no termination clause. I'm trying to understand in which in what scenario that would be acted upon in a road construction. Is that is that typically a clause? Do we typically have a termination clause in the contract or is it in the general conditions? Okay. Did you did you manage to find one? No, I didn't. No, I I missed that question. And this contract, I think, has been in the pipeline before I I got here. So, you don't see a termination clause? It's not I don't know if it's in the standard. I see. I see severability, but I don't see termination.

I mean, there's also liquidated damages in here, right? which would be a pretty common recourse if something happens any not the same but that's a significant omission could be well generally we we even when the contracts are long they are fully included in the packet okay so that sounds like something we need to fix before we get a final approval

so so my question to Mike is this is that obviously that's something that's would be standard boiler plate or contracts that we can just go ahead and amend as such to add specifically to this. Um and I'm guessing our smise that even though it's um it's understood between both parties that that would be a regular condition in there as well. Do you do you believe that we have to go back to the other party to tack this or do you think that we can approve this with subject to the addition of the um clause and have this taken care of? I I think it may be covered in the standard conditions.

We'll make sure it's in there. I mean, I think you to answer your question, I think you can make a motion and um approve this and I will make sure it's in there. It's it's got to be in there. Okay, that's fine. I I like that. That's You like that? Would you like that in the form of a motion? Yes. Motion to approve um 6A as presented subject to the addition of a um termination clause. If so, absent. Yeah. Second from Caesar.

Kimberly, can you can you hit yours again? Oh, let me do it again. You want to switch it back and back? Try tapping it now. There we go. All right, motion passes 61. Thank you, Matt. That brings us to Sorry, I'm flipping around my packet.

Brings us to item 6B, which is to discuss and consider action uh on a presentation by JLL. This is something that was covered during our uh work session. I'm going to ask the uh uh council, do we have any questions, comments, any goals we want to state? Are we prepared to move forward with goals and vision or do we want a resolution to come back? I think we agree that they're coming back, right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. There we go. Yeah. All right. Any any other discussion on that item at this time?

Okay. Uh I'm going to uh item 6 C was also covered during our work session. I'm going to uh skip past our executive session items at this point and return to our items pulled from the consent agenda. Um, let me find my consent agenda. 5 5 A is an ordinance on first read first and final reading with a caption reading an ordinance of the city of Fleerville, Texas adopting the second amendment to the fiscal year 2026 budget for the city and providing an effective date. Uh Mr. Rogers, you pulled this item. Do you have specific questions?

Yeah, I have one specific question. Uh on exhibit A, which is the budget amendment, uh page two, uh there's a 2.6 $6 million adjustment. And uh it just says, "Oh, um that uh the uh it's additional bond issuance costs and TWWDB loans did not cover these fees. I'm curious why uh that wasn't budgeted for earlier. What's the

communications issue? What happened there?" We don't normally budget for bond issuance costs. That's not something you've seen in our budgets. Um I haven't historically budgeted for those. Um normally they're um normally they're considered part of u the process of issuing bonds and I don't usually worry about them. These were high the costs were higher. Um and we've created a new debt service fund now. And so between the WIFIA loan that we closed in December and the Texas Water Development Board loans that we closed in February, I felt like it was appropriate to get to get this on the budget and get the appropriation made for this fund.

Okay. So, it would be an expense of ours. So, improved transparency. That's fine. I I I I want to make sure that I understand what you said. So, I'm going to repeat it back to you in my language. You tell me if I got it right. Okay. If I got it wrong, tell me I got it wrong. We'll we'll straighten it out. Um, so what you're saying is this has not historically been a budgeted line item, but because you saw this one and it was unusually large, you decided we need to make it a budgeted line item and going forward this will be a budgeted line item. Is that is that

we can we can attempt to make it a a budget line item. Um the very the costs vary so much uh between issuances. I would be kind of shooting in the dark as far as what those costs would be. The Texas development board fees were are a lot more than just a traditional bond closing. Okay. I was not aware of that. Um and so you know that's why this amount is a lot more than we normally see. So, is there something that we can do in our communications with bond council to help make sure that we anticipate what these We can try. Are sure. Yeah. Okay. I, you know, $2.6 million here, $2.6 million there. Pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Sure. So, uh, I appreciate you you pulling it out and bringing this to our attention, but let's I I I like the idea of of making that a separate budgeted line item in the future so that we see all the expenses before we jump into and we can try um and we can put a budget in there. Um, but it all comes down to the factors in play at the time of closing. It'll be a guesstimate every time. That's fine. But it just, you know, as close as you can get. And I know you're you're good at getting close, but ain't nobody perfect. All right. I appreciate it. Thank you very much for that explanation. Tracy, I did have an additional question. Of course, Melody.

So, where are these expenses norm normally um recorded when they occur for all the other bonds that we issue? It depends on the it depends on who's issuing the bond. So in the utility fund, it's usually been in the operating utility operating fund. In the general fund, it'll be in the debt service fund. Okay. So, previously it's been in the regular operating fund. It's not in the capital projects fund, not for debt service. Not for costs of debt service. Okay. I just I guess um don't recall seeing this line item before. We have bond costs every time we issue bonds.

Okay. It's probably in the debt service category. It's a it's a part of service. Okay. So, it's a subcategory of the debt service and so we we wouldn't have seen it. Probably not. It would probably be collapsed with the debt service payments as well. Well, then that explains it. Thank you. All right. Any other questions, Melody? That's it. Very much. I I I had a couple um just some getting more context on the explanations. Sure. Um for utility billing, the explanation was that there was an increased customer service demand.

Um and so I was just uh curious as to what was the increased customer service demand and do you know why?

Uh I think we're growing. Um, and it's not even that. It's that we cannot keep up with the customer service demand between calls and voicemails and emails. And it's really just been a pattern over the last many months, probably over a year, that it's just very hard for the staff that we have. I mean, we did pull some data uh from HUD, Round Rock, Georgetown. Based on their number of accounts and how many utility billing staff they have, they average um between 2500 and 3,000 accounts per staff member. We're at 4,200 and growing. Um I ask utility billing to pull new meters, which means new accounts. Um and we're running about a little over 500 a year. we're tr that's what we did last year. The year before that it was about half that. So we're really um starting to grow our accounts. Um and we want to give good customer service and so we recognize that we're unable to do that with the amount of staff we have.

Does that mean we need to add headcount? That's what the request is. And this is this is in this particular uh customer service person cuz we have two forward facing that meet and greet people. This would actually be uh a customer service behind the scenes that will handle all of those follow-ups to make sure that we're Is this the same role that we have posted now or is this an increment? It is the one that's already out being advertised. Okay. Thank you. and we had a resination. So, we're actually pulling two of them. So, great. Oh, that was my next question. We were fully staffed until Friday.

Okay. Um and then I had a couple of questions on some other line items on the the vehicle replacement. Um it was noted that we're um replacing two because of accident. So, just wanted to clarify um there's no coverage for accidents replacing. they were covered. Um, but one of them paid out in 2025. So, I kind of looked at it. We transferred the 610,000 in a budget to the verve. So, I kind of accepted that payment as being kind of part of that fund balance transfer. The other one will get paid out as soon as an investigation is completed. Um, so that one is slated for like 19,000 being paid out. Um if any money comes in at this point now that the VERV fund has been created, those sale or those insurance claims will go into the Verve to help support um funding the vehicles.

Okay. So we're getting a payout of possibly $19,000 for one. We got some correct. Yeah. But you said three vehicles and it's $300,000. So the cost is $100,000, but we're getting less because it was an older vehicle, I'm assuming. Correct. and all the equipment, the outfitting that goes onto these vehicles. Okay. Um and then my next question is about the PCDC park grant. Um I see that we're uh let me get to that page. Um we are adding a budget amendment for the expenditure on PCDC, but they're paying it to the city. Correct. So wouldn't we also have a revenue?

We could. It's not necessary, but we could. Okay. So, you're not adjusting, you're not doing a budget amendment for the revenue. I haven't put it in this amendment. No. And I looked back, the Wells Point expense was already in the CIP for the year. Yes. In in the city. Yes. Mhm. Okay. And then so I'm assuming possibly the TUR is the same thing. the the TUR. It's an interfund transfer that we're doing from we're actually paying for it out of the TUR. Oh, we're paying for it directly out of Okay.

And that would currently wasn't budgeted for paying for the parking structure. It was not. It kind of got approved after the budget process was complete the THR board and then came to council. So that's why I'm, you know, correcting the budget. So, the expenditure was was approved as its own item, but this is updating the budget to reflect the changes that we've made to it since then. Correct. Okay. I thought the parking structure was approved in the cost of downtown east. A portion of it is not the whole thing, remember? Not the whole thing. 8 million was um

Okay. So, part of the parking structure was in the budget for downtown East, correct? But the other part for TUR was not in the budget. The ter is helping support the total cost of the parking structure. Does that does that reduce the city's expenditure on the It's not offsetting. It's not funding part of it. It's strictly addition. It's helping support getting the parking structure. I love how you say support. Okay. So, bottom line, part of the parking structure cost was in the budget and part was not. And that's why we're doing the amendment. the portion that the TUR was paying for was not in the budget, which makes perfect sense.

It was it was approved afterwards. Yeah. And that was I believe that approval was also part of a um you say a solidification of the total cost of the parking structure because I believe we saved some money on a few or something. Now when you say approved after the budget, you're referring to when the TUR approved it because the council approved. I think the parking structure had a separate contract amendment with contract. There was a later amendment to that project. It was it was literally an amendment to the project and they and they gave us the rationale as to why that

but there was also a a recognition that the total cost of some of the other project pieces was coming in less. So there was we literally saw we saw a cost savings. So what are we going to do with that? And I thought that was highest and best usage of it. At the time though I thought the entire parking structure was already in our budget. So I guess no because I think we had to make a decision about whether or not I think we we amended this. It was um costs were there was some there were lower costs on some portions of the project and higher costs on other. We saved money on on city hall and the rec center, but the parking structure was going to cost more. So, we got the tourists to pay for the more. Yeah. And now that's reflected in our budget.

Something that we've already approved as that in that change order. Yeah. Which I still think is the best in this situation. And it was $8 million more than our original contract. I could tell you that's how much that's how much we are paying for out of the jury. Those were all me questions. Thank you. Mayor motion. I will. Motion to approve 5A as presented. Second. I have a motion. Choose your second. Uh John.

There we go. Motion passes unanimously. Uh that brings us to item 5D. That is an ordinance on first reading with caption reading, an ordinance of the city of Fleerville, Texas, authorizing the lease of city property located adjacent to and northeast of New Sweden Church Road and consisting of approximately 72 acres such property to be used for farming, providing uh cumulative repealer and severability clauses, providing for open meetings, and establishing an effective date.

I don't know who came up with this idea, but that's smart. Good job. I think it's a it's an excellent use of empty land owned by the city. Yeah. But I really think we should have a presentation for the citizens because I know if we don't, we're going to get a ton of questions. Why are you leasing 72 acres? Why are you in the landlord business? So, let's get a an explanation for the record. Mr. Record, good evening again, Mayor Hansel. Glad to have you back. Mr. Record. So, for the record, the the purpose here is this is the farmland that we actually just annexed on I believe it was one of the items on this agenda.

And the idea is we're not actually going to be starting any real work on this project. So, why not get money the rest of the year? And this farmer has been using this land since before we bought it. So, why not lease it out to him and let him continue farming it until we're actually ready to use it? Yeah. Is this a Is this a market rate lease? we this is a fair price for the property I believe.

So I've done some research on that. What we're charging the farmer is $50 per acre per month. Um and that's actually above market for the Travis County area based on the research that I'm not a farmer. I'm not a land expert. I did research on the USDA's website to see what market rates are for a property rentals and we are actually above the market rate for what we would do in Travis County which is which is we're so wait we're overcharging the guy who sold us the land. I did not say that. Mayor, would you entertain a motion? I I would as long as Mr. Rogers questions have been answered. Mr. Rogers questions have been answered. All right. ID is present. I move approval of 5D. Yeah, second.

I second that. There you go. But you got Ken. Thank you. Loses more. Motion passes unanimously. Uh that brings us to item 5M. 5M is a professional services agreement with Walter P. Moore and Associates for Professional Engineering Services associated with the Lake Flugerville phase 2 project PA2402 in the amount of 1,831,821. Uh I believe uh this was also Mr. Rogers. It it is I I I don't need an explanation. I just want a record vote.

Okay. Motion to approve. I did have a question. Uh Melody, what was your question? Um in the CIP the estimated cost for design services for this uh project was 1.37 million and the contract is 1.83 million. So I just was wondering the reason for the additional costs and how that was going to be funded. Straight a hormones go ahead give your presentation. That's right.

So uh partly is the economy. So those are based on 2019 numbers and we use cost estimators each year. Um but the other part to this is that um construction administration has typically been in the construction budget on our CIP. We've made that change. So the CIP you will see soon. Construction administration's in design um to you know it's the design team doing it so it makes more sense. Cool. Okay. So the additional portion that's construction administration part of the contract is that's correct. Now, just I just wanted to clarify what you said because the CIP was from the 2026 CIP, right?

So, I would So, are those costs not um adjusted each year for market? They're adjusted. So, there's escalators on there. It's just tough once you until you get into negotiations and and certain fee. You just don't know. the escalators didn't cover the definely budgeted more than it was in 2019, but you you try to estimate once you get there and and it's again it's going to be pretty close. Um our estimate is going to be pretty close once you add taking the project to completion. That's where most of the additional funding comes from. So that so the line in the CIP now is going to is it going to say design and contract services or

as of right now it's in the design line and you'll see in the CIP the design line stays with construction uh through the years on the on the CIP. Okay. So that will indicate not design is continually happening but that's the other correct. Thank you. You're welcome. May I a motion? Any further questions? Yes I would. 5m is presented.

Second. I got something weird going on. We'll see what happens. Oh, Miss Holiday stepped away. All right, that uh brings us to item 5s. This is the item that was uh included on our work session that we didn't reach. So, uh, Jeff, are you on on tap for the, uh, resolution adopting a Flugerville athletic feasibility study? That's great. Oh, okay. All right. Someone sitting in the back judging you. Just want to let you know that.

Yeah. Yeah. He's got a nice night off tonight. Sitting back there eating his snacks. Sorry, Shane. Okay. um a little later than we were going to be presenting this, but we need to cast that shade.

I want to start I want to start I'll get my uh our consulting team up here to uh to talk you through this, but I want to start by saying I think it's pretty obvious that our city has made some incredible investments in our park and recreation system. Um you know, we won the Texas gold medal last year. Uh we think we're gold medal worthy at the national level. Um one area where we're very obviously deficient is our athletic fields. We've talked about that uh quite a bit just in my two years here. Um and so as part of the parks, recreation, open space master plan. Um it identified that of course. Um and then an action item was to do a feasibility study and see where we need to get for the future. Right. Uh, and I say for the future, we really need to get caught up for the present and think about the future. And so I've got uh Chris Trible and Chad Davis here from Park Hill uh to talk you through what they've done for us over the last couple months.

Okay. Great. Thank you,

Council. Thank you very much. My name is Chad Davis. I'm a partner at Park Hill. And uh in light of the day's events and the time, I'll try to make this as quick as possible. So um this is a great picture of the 1849 part. Um and as we started working with um staff and the parks department uh we started asking the kind of questions that we used for analysis of what the demands are and what the growth and the projections may be for these types of services. Uh in this first um slide what I want to share with you um the data just the fact we we we know more and more that um that we have more access to data and it tells a more absolute story. So we don't want to be um speculative on these things.

What was the transformative aspect that allowed for you to access the weight list hour request data? What was the because obviously because it's unknown we didn't have any weight. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We only just started tracking it.

Yes, that's exactly. So, um and that's what I wanted to highlight here was that um we did start asking staff, you know, do you keep track of the denial of of these types of services to uh those those constituents within town? And they said we actually don't. Now, one of the reasons we did show this in the graph is that we wanted to show that in fall 2023 that they allocated actually 266 uh two 2,663.75 hours of field time. Um and then what you see is that dropped in 2024 because there were fields that were being worked on and they were not at capacity. But what is really admirable um on behalf of your parks department is that in the fall of 2024 they actually increased the number of hours on the existing fields by doing more intense maintenance. Um and so it's just kind of like your own front yard live grass.

Talk about that because part of the concern has always been that um because of the the high usage of our fields erosion would occur and the lack of availability for them to recover. What was the change in the actual either skill set or the actual maintenance level that allowed for us to get what? I'll help you out on that one. So, more than two times amount what we got. Yeah, we now have Ryan Sanders turf uh that's contracted to take care of Ryan Sanders and Ryan Sanders as in Nolan Nolan Ryan and whoever Sanders. Um sorry, Mr. Sanders. And so and so yeah, we've we've been able to Cowboys football players. Keep keep going.

I don't know that it's him. Okay. We've been able to take much better care of our facilities. Um we still are limiting the amount of play because we want to make sure that that investment stays intact, right? Um, but you can see here our staff has has done a good job of doing that, balancing um, maintenance and playability and and safe playing surfaces. Um, with getting as many of these organizations onto the fields as we can. Um, and a a huge part of that again is going back to RS3 um, assisting with the maintenance. They're they're much more scientific than we in the the parks and recck world are. Um, they're not maintained the same way that a a regular park is maintained. Uh there's a lot of science and are

are we just talking about 1849 or we point Okay. Um because I think it's very important to make sure the public understands just how much of a effort you have made to make Wells Point at the same level as 1849. Additionally speaking, I think it's also important to make sure that people understand that usage for games and practice, there's no derision. It's just usage in general. Right. Right. What about um the Fin fields? So, the finick field is maintained, I believe, by um No, there's humans out there.

It's an allocated Yeah, it's an allocated facility. It's not uh maintained to quite to the same level as Will's Point in 1849. I'm off tonight. Not anymore. Yeah. So, it it gets a quarterly service from um RS3 with some oversight on horiculture. So, some nitrogen, some pre-emergent. It definitely doesn't get the service that we give Wells Point or 1849. We also can't protect it. Like, we allocate fields out there, but anyone can go out there and play. And we we appreciate when people go out there and play, but because we can't allocate those fields, you don't want to put a full type of investment in there without some sort of fence or structure that would keep people from wearing it down the hours that we weren't allocating,

which would hurt the ambiance and the, you know, of the actual utilization that area. It's about protecting your investment and making sure these fields are safe for the people that you are allocating it for. So, so um but fenig field is included in the allocated hours. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

And one of the reasons as a as a consultant that we want to look at this is we want to see, you know, is the department allocating the resource, you know, to the maximum possible. We're all taxpayers and we want to know that we're using, you know, the resources as much as possible. um in um the fall of 2025 uh they were able to allocate about 7,462 uh hours but what they started tracking and what we were able to find in the data that they had that and it's expanded in the report is that they had about 860 hours that they were not able um so those are teens and children and people in your community that were told no you know we're at capacity and so we it was very helpful that staff had this so we looked at that um quite often In any community that we go into, everybody wants a field at 6:30.

Wait, wait, wait. How do we know those 860 hours are people in our community? How do we know they're not people from Austin or Round Rocker Taylor? Well, and that is one of the things that we were pretty meticulous about because we we know whenever you get into a metropolitan area, you have a lot of shared use. And so, um, part of the policy of your field allocation use right now, that's the is is that, uh, residents are given first priority. We got 860. We're positive that 860 are residents, resident hours that are not being

No, they're not all necessarily residents. Um, they're they're prioritized uh by residency. Um, every organization is going to have a certain percentage. You should have a different answer to that. We we we may we may want to go to the next slide. Hold on. Hold on. We've got a we got a question here. So, a while ago, I just wanted to clarify. You said that we're going to be using or we are using Nolan Sanders turf. Is that what you said? Ryan Ryan. So, um that's synthetic, correct? They they have a synthetic that they do, but no, they they maintain this is synthetic chemical. Okay. So, not their turf maintenance. Okay. So, we're going to have real grass. We have real grass. I mean, we will continue to have real bra. Yes, sir.

I got to make sure because a lot of places are going to synthetic and I think that would be a You don't want me sneaking that in on you? They're reversing. They're reversing. Next thing you know, you'd be paving lake flu rules. That's right. That's right. Okay. And to answer your question, we we even if we get some team that has the majority of non-residents, there are residents on those teams. Uh now we're not always able to allocate them because we prioritize recreational and residents first, but we I can't think of a time that we've just had a full team of people out there that weren't residents. So I was about to say we never had a full team from Austin. There could be a full team from Austin playing Cap City or playing Pasel, but No, no, no, no, no. Let's let's be clear.

So there's a resident on the field. Yeah. Yeah. You're speaking. Yeah. It may be six kids from Austin and two from Exactly. So they may be playing a team. They may play playing Lonear from Georgetown, but the home team would be someone who is actually, you know, anchored with somebody, a Flugerville citizen. The way we allocate citizen, well, I'm sorry. Are we talking about a team where there's one Fluger person and five? They they have they they they you know if if if anything I I think we've been pretty strong. I mean I'm just going to be blunt with you. Um pretty zealous in our proactiveness regarding making sure that flu resists are prioritized and children over for that as well.

The matrix if there was one team that had one resident and one team that had four that team with four would be a higher priority in the matrix. Okay. So these 860 hours hours those are every single one of those has got a a plug or resident of that team. I can get back to you on that. Okay. Thank you. All right. Doesn't say. So what about the allocated hours? We were just talking about the weight list or the allocated hours. Those are those are ones that h that meet that criteria or the matrix.

Yeah. I mean, I'd have to go. I have not reviewed every single one of these allocated hours. We have a whole team of people that allocate the fields, but I cannot recall any time in my seven years here that we've allocated fields to anyone that wasn't at least somewhat had a resident connection to the frustration of many other people around. No, there would be there would we'd love to have people and if they if a group said no and everyone passed and the next allocation was a group from Round Rock, sure, we'd allocate to them because we would love to have that. that we haven't had residents from Flugville turning down these fields that y'all subsidize at a pretty good rate. Absolutely not. And and that's because this council it's because this council has set that policy. I think the rest of the slides to even talk about uh how many fields deficient we are.

Well, that's what I was about to say. I was like, let's go to the next slide and we can talk about some people we're talking about.

All right, we'll move forward, but we can also move ahead. So, we asked for the data that um or we can also, you know, um move back if we need to. uh we also ask um uh so we look for data hard data that's available to see if the the facilities are actually being maximized as much as possible and I think I can tell you that that is that is something that you're seeing and there is more demand than there is availability um so we then also met with um groups in town um the youth uh groups that we met with you see listed here I'm not going to read them all off um the adults that we also talked to and the parks department reached out to every group that that they had um uh contacts with. Not every group took us up on that, but we did meet with all of these groups. So, we met with youth, adults, and seniors uh in these different areas. And again, we we want to understand if there are any trends or any preferences within the the population. Um and and a very good example, and I'll show you this is tennis. Um tennis is provided by the school district and and there are enough courts out there. So even though national standards say that you're you're deficient on tennis, no one was coming to us saying that they needed more tennis courts. So

I tell y'all you need more t we need more tennis courts. Those I I am I am shocked. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I'm shocked by tical courts. So

so we we we are careful to look at both the hard data and also what are the preferences, what are the trends. Um so uh again this is um an executive summary where we found the most deficiencies. Um we use color indicators like your stop lights. Red is the most serious, yellow is is is moderately serious and green is is just an issue. So what we did look at was um softball the NRPA standard um that is the National Recreation and Park Association and they do a an annual survey of over 900 of their members as benchmarking on a national basis. So these are the benchmarks that we look at per population and they do they do break cities down by the city size um so that you do get respective numbers on that. So, uh, right now you have one city-owned softball field. Um, the NRPA, um, standard, um, population for 2025 population is 15. So, currently you're about 14 fields deficient in softball. Um, if you we start projecting out based off of census data, projections on on growth, by 2030, you'll be 16 short, and by 2035, 18, and etc, etc.

So, what you're saying is less soccer and more baseball. Half the sentence. Hold on. Who's you're projecting out with census data projections for growth? Yes, sir. You're using the United States? Yes, sir. Okay. And and based on that data, how many people are in the city? I do not have those numbers. These are This is a this is a hotly debated topic here. We're politically agnostic on this population. This is this was a population um range bracket. Yeah. So, we're just going to the bracket. It's like 15.

10 or 15. We're not getting into it. You're not going to draw 10 or 15,000. Yeah. 10 or 15,000. Yeah. There was a What's the low end? What's the high end? I want to see. Okay. If we don't know how many people we've got, we don't know how much need we've got. I was just saying we fall in the Yeah, I'm still I'm still interested in this. Let's keep going. I have a a a different question. Yes, ma'am. Um so a city is not the only source of recreation.

That's correct. And so, um, so my question is if you know, unlike you alluded to with the school district and tennis courts, um, I I would like another column that says what's in a certain geographic area that would still be close enough to be to consider be considered serving the the city population. See, that's where I disagree because one of the things, one of the reasons why we went out and grabbed 1849 was because of what was going on with the school district and the lack of uniformity when it was because of people trying to rent out the fields for football.

One of the things and and then and then one of the things when we're talking about softball, you're you're right like you're saying, "Hey, wait a minute. these they have these other fields here, but there's enough barriers and hindrances over there that's been that way for I mean I say decades that's and that's just me being charitable that have not allowed for it to for me at least personally to see um the relevancy of that because it's just not something that comes to fruition having the information.

Well, we we have seven fields, seven baseball fields at uh uh next to Flugerville Elementary. There are quite a few at Northeast Metrop Park, that's school district, that's county. I I guess the question is how how are we genuinely measuring demand? I mean, these metrics are based on on population, but how are we measuring demand for resources? Yeah, these metrics are based off population. as far as why why northeast metro fields both soccer, baseball, football, all that wasn't included is because

I can't guarantee you allocation to even when they're right next to you. Mayor residents, other Travis County residents have just as much allocation rights as you do. Meanwhile, the Flugerville fields obviously get a higher allocation and so sure there are other there are other fields nearby, but it doesn't mean that we have any control of them and that we can guarantee um allocation. Right. Well, I appreciate that you've used that that I guess the NRPA uses population as a standard for their metrics, but how do we measure demand? Because I because I want to I want to know how many fields we need, not how many they say based on that metric because we do have, you know, regional resources.

Well, that's a different question. Let's answer this question then we can go to that. So, the NRPA standard is one softball field per 4560 residents. It's the same for baseball. It's using our uh census uh population of 651 191 from 2020. So we're at 14 fields. So you made him happy. Okay.

Well, no, no. My So I understand the context. What I what I was suggesting is that we inventory what's regionally, you know, in a certain range, what's regionally available. There can be discussions about whether that's, you know, logistically available, but I think by excluding it, we're not because if someone who doesn't know all the history goes comes here and says we only have one softball field when we we are using city money to for other softball fields, it's not really telling the whole picture. And so that's my concern. And I also just had the same question as Doug. This is a national standard set by population, but every city or region could be different. And uh so how you know how are we measuring the actual demand for each of these things and not just going by some standard without you know looking at the local demand?

No, it's a great question because to to mayor's point, we do have Northeast Metro and we've got uh ISD owned facilities within our city. Um the issue with that is the ISD facilities are are pretty small. Um Northeast Metro we have no ability. So to the conversation about uh how many of those resident or how many of those uh allocated hours were to residents northeast metro is not going to take that into account at all. They're Travis County. They're not worried about flugville residency at all. So those fields are not accessible first to flugerville residents like they would be. No, they're they're they're prioritizing Travis County residents of which we are. So, we're we're in the mix. I think it may be we need to

I mean, you can you can look at the number of fields they have across the entirety of Travis County and the population and you can get a sense of yeah, there maybe there are 12 fields there and maybe we get a third of them, but you can at least build some sort of benchmark and metric to to feed into your algorithm. Yeah. And I think to be realistic about this, um, we aren't going to get a facility that has 15 baseball or softball fields anytime. Oh, we know, we know we the conversation. We're setting that expectation. I just need a a better a better guidance than population. I need I need to understand.

And so they did get and and Chad can talk to it. You know, they they spoke with the local uh association to see what their needs are. Are they turning kids away? Um, and the answer based on the answer is yes. And and if we can figure out how many are being turned away. We want based on softball that's much more Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. We're looking at the red slide. I know there's a yellow and a green coming up. Well, and I I will point out I think that the full report was included in your packet.

And we did look at facilities within the geographic region and in one of the appendix they are also listed there. Um I I want to ask I I'm a past um municipal parks and wreck employee. Um I'm also a landscape architect and and that's what I I do you know now. Um what I what I want to to maybe ask a little bit of of um your understanding on is as a taxpayer um you know I pay a certain amount of tax and if I am told that I get park and recreation services as part of that tax um and and and I'm a citizen of Flugerville or I'm a citizen of Dallas or I'm a citizen of of you know Bowmont. Um I I want to know well am I getting you know do I have access to those to those opportunities? If the response comes, well, no, we, you know, yes, you are getting park and recreation services, but we're we don't have enough of those. Um, so we we rely on you to go to the county or we rely on you to go to, you know, somewhere else. Does that person does that is that constituent being served by what some would call basic city services and programs? Um and so we had a good discussion with your staff and and with the with the groups that yes, you know, we we do have access to fields, but one of the things that we heard from from parents was it becomes a decision on how far do we want to drive to get to certain fields? How much do we want to pay um as non-citizens of other facilities? And that sometimes dictates us telling our children, "No, we're not going to do that." when we live in a city that, you know, we would hope would have a certain level of part. And so I'm not trying to be defensive or or anything of that nature, but that's one of the things that as I worked with our council whenever I was in the parks and recreation, you know, um I thought of that as a a vital city service and that is something that that everyone across the city is paying for. And so one of the things that we did ask these groups is how far are you driving? Taylor, you

know, Georgetown, Roundrock, of course. Um and so it does become another issue.

San Marcus So um these are the national benchmarks. Um in the appendix we do list the non city-owned uh facilities and and so that information is there. I don't want you to think that we ignored that because that especially in our Texas metropolitan areas whenever we get so many suburban communities that are side by side and a person doesn't necessarily know that a friend two blocks over lives in a different city and they're going to have to pay a higher usage fee to be on the same, you know, baseball team of a kid that they go to school with and they thought lived in their city. So, we really try to be sensitive to that. Um, it's hard for us in any situation to glean enough market demand information from the county because they don't necessarily ask which city are you from. They just say, "Are you a Travis County resident?" Um, and so we establishing a demand of the market is is really pretty hard. the the first slide that I showed you um you know this data that your parks department is starting to collect is is great and more and more parks departments are having to collect this kind of data um to be more absolute of it's not just hearsay you know how many hours do we have what is our capacity how can we get the most out of this and then and then are we having to turn people away and they're having to start documenting that uh and I think it it leads to very solid information for you to make good decisions um you know about the future. So, one of the things that I will point out here and I may have kind of gone off on a little bit of a tangent is that um you know if you're behind today and and we don't know exactly how many people are driving to other places, you know, to actually be a part of a if they're told we don't have the capacity in Flugerville, but maybe you can get on in Taylor, maybe you can get on in Huau. Um, you know, we don't know that without doing an exhaustive survey, but what you do know is your community is continuing

to grow. You know that at some rate, um, if you're already behind, you need to start addressing that. I mean, you do have folks in your community that are interested in having facilities that are part of their community and that they have priority, too. I'm going to continue to move through these. So, you're deficient today of about 14 U softball fields, about 13 baseball fields. I want to explain a little bit about the acres that we put in here because one of the biggest components of this is you've got to have the land to be able to do this. Uh, when we list in that NRPA standard 2.22 acres per field with buffer and parking. Sometimes, um, you know, if we just listed the acreage of the field itself, you might get an idea that, oh, if we went out and bought one and a half acres, that's enough for the field. We have put an acreage count in here that does include parking and that does include a reasonable buffer per field. So if you say we're going to we we're going to at least try to find a parcel that can accommodate 10 fields, you know that you need 22.2 acres. So we have projected that out just to show you the need in acreage just to kind of give you an order of magnitude as you move forward and as you think down the road. Uh so where you see 2.22 acres for softball, 3.22 22 for baseball. Um, you know, that is again being driven by the the dimensions and the fields that we used u from the user groups. Uh, these are your probably your highest areas of need. Uh, now we're going to go kind of to your moderate areas of need. You see tennis. Uh, again, we went ahead and listed that because NRPA um actually, you know, if we use that alone, um, it shows that you're deficient today by about 10 courts. But I I apologize to the tennis players who maybe were in the crowd. Um no one came forward um on tennis and even in the park's master plan. Um that was not even identified with the exhaustive.

I I think I think for what's interesting about tennis which is atypical to this whole conversation about school district is that those courts are made open for everybody to utilize. Even the ones at Connelly are utilized. You can just walk on there and until 10 o'clock at night. Well, also it's more of a an individual sport. You don't have to organize a team and have hours and do all of that. It is a growing sport as well right now. So, yeah. Yeah. So, a lot more popular. It's growing. It was go It was dying and then it's growing again. But pickle ball is not pickle ball took it over and giving it up. There you go. and and central Texas is, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, madam city manager,

the number one market for picket ball in the United States. It's true. So we maybe maybe we can take some of these softball fields and turn them into pickle ball fields. Maybe I'm not hearing a lot of softball demand. I'm hearing a lot of complaints from baseball players. I I I want I want softball fields. We we we we need softball. I But but pickle ball I I watch I watch people from the city go play softball in Round Rock because we didn't have softball field. We are quite literally

no softball fields seems reasonable to me. I do think we need to do some some step development. I don't think we're going to hit the target numbers immediately. We're going to College Station this weekend. courts are also being provided by the by the private sector. Yeah. So, which is because I I would imagine because it's easier to I mean do that and it's also indivi more individualized and not sport team oriented and it's pretty cool that we're building that little pocket pickle ball court right off of Kelly Lane. That's pretty awesome. So, um rectangular fields is that football?

Yes. Well, those are fields that can be used. They're like the 1849 fields for soccer. Um and the nice thing about a soccer field is that we can break those down into different sizes. You can get three size, you know, certain size within a regulation size. And football, um rugby can also use those fields. So, u there is the standard for that. Um lacrosse. Yes. And then um Mr. Rogers, Councilman Rogers, we do have pickle ball on here for you. Uh and a deficiency of four courts. So, but let me just kind of keep tracking through this because I think you understand kind of the methodology that we looked at. Soccer. Um, you have 13 city own fields. So, you're saying we don't have enough? Okay. And that right now it's green.

Green is just that way too much. Yeah. Is is not as in dire shape. Um, you're just deficient by one field of soccer. Um, and so, but couldn't they use that rectangular field? Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. over over capacity on soccer fields. Yes. Yes. So, um we also looked at basketball. You're over capacity on basketball. You're over capacity on sand volleyball. Unfortunately, sand volleyball is the cheapest thing to build and supply, you know. Just became over capacity in basketball.

Just became literally Let me ask about the sand volleyball because uh my understanding I might be I might be mistaken about this, but my understanding is that in addition to the cityowned sand volleyball courts. There are number of HOA owned sand volleyball courts in the HOA parks around the city. Is that included in this? No, we did not include any HOA activities or facilities because those are exclusive only to those HOA members. Well, in theory and and it's not something that your recreation department is programing. Yeah. So, my our sand volleyball court was open to everyone because there was no pool is the pool is really exclusive. The sand volleyball courts on the other hand are only theoretical exclusion.

Okay. But it does address demand. Yes. Yes. I mean it does. So even though it everyone may not have access to it, the people in that community may have access to it which reduces demand possibly on other Exactly. And and just one important note on that. So sand volleyball, tennis, pickle ball, those are sometimes provided by development. baseball fields, softball fields, soccer fields. You're not seeing you're saying we need to start requiring that for development. We've had those there's some cities doing that that we're looking to build a change.

Well, I I am curious when it comes to those facilities and this may be later in your slides, but we've talked in the past about cost recovery models. Uh, and I am curious cuz this it it feels like what this plan is is recommending, what this study is recommending is is a pretty dramatic development of some fields. I'm wondering if if we don't immediately see demand saturation, is there a cost recovery model for folks who are, you know, outside the city to help offset the costs? Yeah. I mean, you're seeing cities, someone just mentioned College Station. Um, you know, they they've done that really well. A lot of cities have extremely um used this for their heads and beds. I mean um

they're they're building a lot of facilities that are used during the week by their local organizations and they're used on the weekends to fill hotels. Yeah. And it's worked out extremely well from a financial standpoint. We've gotten better. I like how competitive this group is, too.

Just No city's 100% everything, right? Like every city's going to have something. They have less. We happen to have more sand volleyball, more basketball, more skate parks and we have less of something else. No study that I've ever seen has 100% in all these things, right? There's a deficiency in something. Um, and there are places that leverage uh to Council Mater's point, College Station as a as a sports tourism type of hub where they have a lot of fields that aren't even allowed to be used for their residents on weekends because uh they're used for tournament play and so we don't prioritize that as well. So, yeah. No, I just because you see that we're deficient in something doesn't mean one that the HOA, the school district, another group isn't offsetting at Northeast Metro, whatever, or two that we're saying we have to get 15 softball fields in to catch up to this green line here. It's just it's just giving you an audit of where we are currently based off NRPA standards and where we off based off the demand that we heard from our actual users. So really elementary question. These our current numbers do or do not include our facilities that are coming online this year.

The baseball softball do. Okay. And pickle ball does. Yep. The basketball and basketball. Basketball. I don't know what we have coming. You put You put nine. I mean, where are these other? I don't know. Well, we have Geneva Park. We have Heritage Park. Stone Hill. You're counting the outdoor outdoor. We got Stone Hill. Stone Hill. These are all outdoors. Well, I know. I know. These aren't these aren't indoor basketball courts. I mean, this is a Rucker Park, so Okay, so let's go back. How utilized are the basketball courts? Because I would argue one more sports. Oh, man. If we only have eight, then we need more. I mean,

I mean, most of the basketball courts that I see when I'm out are being used by two different groups at the same time. They're each playing. Say maybe like incorporating um it with the uh the tennis or the pickle ball court. Yeah, we would love to see a multisport. You know, we did a good job. Get a get a tennis gopher system. Whatever it takes. Austin FC, the Austin FC court. That's a good utilization of, you know, using a variety of different things for court. We would love to see any future basketball courts looking like that in some capacity, whether it's tennis, basketball, basketball, kickball. And again, there are HOA basketball courts. We're not counting those. And they are like sand volleyball courts only theoretically exclusive.

They are. They also are absolutely exclusive to the people that have been asked to leave. Right. At any one time if someone's out there playing on it they weren't supposed to be or there was a rental or a pavilion or birthday party, etc. That happens on city stuff, too. It does. Absolutely. But we can allocate those. Yeah. Right. But I mean, you know, is is it a demand exceeding the supply problem? Maybe not. If we're not if we're not counting those, I mean, maybe we should only count those as up 50%. But if we're excluding it entirely, we're getting an inaccurate picture.

I totally get it. Just like aquatics, there's a lot of HOAs, there's a lot of backyard pools, there's a lot of HOA pools, but I only manage and allocate the ones that y'all given me ownership of. Yeah. To manage. So, um, American football, I know that it's if we talk about it, we really only have to talk about, I guess, Pop Warner or Pee-Wee football because everything else has a a is there not a demand for city uses for Pop Warner football or anything like that or uh what is it flag football or anything? Do you want that? So, 77 is something that's significant. I don't see that. I didn't see that as a category.

So, it's one of the rectangles. So, rectangles. So, why soccer and rectangles are different? because soccer's a little wider. So, you can play you can play on a you can absolutely play on a football field for soccer, but soccer players like a little bit wider. Also, a football field has a crown uh for drainage that soccer players hate. They feel like they're running up and then back down. Um which they need the exercise, right? Absolutely. Are they being utilized for for American football?

They are being utilized. Here's the thing. culturally a a kid that wants to play football, wants to play tackle football or flag football, loves to play where the adults play, where their heroes play. And so a lot of times we don't get a lot of people wanting to play on these fields that we have because one, the school does allocate them. And two, if you're a kid and you can play at the field where you get to see Friday night lights happen all the time and then you get to play there on Saturday or Thursday, they love that, right? compared to our field with no scoreboard, no goalposts, it's just a practice field. It's just a different experience altogether. So, we provide rectangle fields where football can help.

Okay. Well, that clarifies quite a bit because I, you know, I know I always make jokes, but I didn't I wanted to really know how much the the demand is out there and and I think part of it like this is where uh it's going to be interesting when we talk about the iterations of 1849

because I think that when you look at the the thought process was specifically I remember being there burning everybody up what 2014 something like that is when we we started coming up with the idea about that. We talked about that about hey you listen to usage let's let's leverage that from there but we didn't we just got the musco lights out there right like and I mean and we need to get a um a um a scoreboard out there some things that they have from there they have a place where they can cook so they can make the barbecue and everything else they can make their money on but but then bleachers we need

Exactly. So they're but they're going back to the to the schools and everything else from that as well. So, but if you look at um I don't know if you ever show any pictures of what's going on with the new phase 2 with baseball and softball. Um I mean the the the thought process and the intent intention to detail for that. I mean that just from an eye standpoint over here even just having the boulders that are softballs and baseballs out there accordingly like that's the stuff that really generates folks to be like oh man I want to be there. I want to go there. That is differential difference and and it's it's been interesting to see under Yeah. And honestly, that was a different city manager that we had back then than we do now.

He didn't like

So, so to some of the the point that or some um items that were discussed about using facilities of either the school district or the county. um you know there's rules and and we've talked about you know not always being able to have access to it. So what is the goal in working closer with our partners that maybe have a me you know anou or whatever for if we have additional demand and there is space elsewhere that's not being allocated for other things what about us renting the facilities for you know for those other uh group you know the additional groups to use or um you know organizing it so that we have more access to you know to the infrastructure that already exists.

Historically, when you see tennis courts available and the track available, but you don't see the football field and the baseball fields available or basketball courts.

Yeah. Well, the indoor ones. Yeah. A lot of that has to do with access staffing or wear and tear, right? You can go run on that track all day long. It's really tough to tear it up. Same thing for the the tennis court/ pickupball court, wherever they're playing on those ISD courts. You can go out there and do a lot of play. But if you're getting that on our ball fields, we're limiting it. Same thing with the ISD. You talk to the head coach at any school, which is normally also the athletic director at most of those schools, they don't want anybody, they don't even want their, you know, junior high or high school, the the the the 10th graders and ninth graders on where their varsity team plays. Like, they're very protective of that field and that space. Um, and so when we're talking about fields, whether it's us or someone else, you are paying for the wear and tear of getting on it. Um, have we reached out to the ISD and asked if we could start to rent those fields? No, we haven't. Um, I would imagine it' be a pretty premium rate, but we can look into that.

I was about to say, I mean, so Melody, what we did for our soccer, this is how bad it is. Um, when I was running soccer club, we can go to Cedar Ridge, which is, you know, right down 45, and they were more than willing, hey, listen, you know, we're about to have a rain out turf fields, etc. Right there as well. Can we pay X amount to be over there? Absolutely. You're over there as well. If when we try it here inside flug girl with our own school districts, they don't care about them. They're shutting it down because of wear and tear. Like quite literally. And it and and the problem is that it's been this way for for for quite a long time. So So this isn't this isn't an issue with partners, this is

this is got to be an issue with demand. So I don't think I don't think talking about negotiating with other entities is is appropriate here. I think what we need to talk about is how much do our citizens need that is not being satisfied by our partners. I don't think it's our job to rent something out from the school district. If someone can't get a field, they can go rent it out from the school district. We we don't need to facilitate that agreement. So, what what do we need? And I know you got a couple more slides here.

Yeah. Yeah. So, one of the things that that we did want to show you is that of course in a in a growing market like yours, um the biggest resource is going to be starting to look for land. Um and before you can even um before you can even start thinking about building the facilities, you know, today if if you were going to meet these deficiencies, uh that would be about 94 acres of land. If we look out at 2035, a 10-year plan, that would be about 176 acres. And so that's one of the things that we wanted to help uh the parks department do and that was part of this feasibility study. These are just some of the graphics, an example of the dimensions that we used. Um what you see in the bottom leftand corner is a layout of the field. Um it just gives you the rough dimensions. Right above that, one of the things I want to show you is travel distance. I mean what we heard from some of the leagues were, you know, Flugerville to Austin, uh 17 miles, Flugerville to Hut 9 miles. These were people who were telling us where they were driving to play. Um, and so we put that in there because I'll I'll make a point with that here in a little bit. But in the report, we have um all of these um standards and everything. And then we looked at u what would the price tag be uh by 2035 if you met the deficiencies by 2035. Um that's about 147 million. Now one of the things I have to tell you that does not include land costs because we have no idea what you would pay for land.

It does not include land costs. That does not include land costs heard about. Sounds like most that's a very very big omission. So, one of the things I do want to tell you about this, we we went back and we we've put the most dire need again in red. We've put the most moderate need in yellow and and the light need in green. One of the things about this and and your parks board was excellent whenever we met with your parks board. you know, just because you buy 147 acres or 177 acres by 20 35 um does not mean it all has to be developed up front. Locking that land in much like you did 1849.

But but let me let me pause you there. So I got I got two questions. One, am I over capacity on any any of these types? We talked about basketball and I mean disc golf where we've got more than we need but not for long. Do we do we have any extra land in usage that is is over and above capacity? And two, have we evaluated the the land that we have banked from uh you know, other park dedication? Because I don't necessarily need to go out and buy 177 acres if I've got 85 already hanging around the city that developers have given me for parks. That's a really interesting one to talk about because we do have a lot of space that is either flood plane.

How much how much land has been donated that we we haven't developed. I know you know that number, Melanie. Well, we have 72 acres out in New Sweden. There we go. Well, but we're farming them. So we have branded which I don't know if if it is flood plane and there's a whole bunch of thing but there's like several or a couple hundred acres out there. Yeah. So we have a little under 1,900 acres in our park system. I'm sorry. How much? 1,900 acres in our park system. About 1100 are developed. So we have we got 800 acres but

it's not all contiguous. Right. And a lot of it's flood plane and some of that means you're you can you can play there but can you put a restroom there? Can you put a concessions there? It's tough because you're in a flood plane. So, some of that stuff um parking, some of that stuff affects what we can do out there. What's our capacity for the rest of 1849? We have 300 We have around 300 acres out there and we're on about half. Yeah. And remember, we moved around where the baseball soft were supposed to be because we move because we have fa phase three, right? Yeah,

we do. So phase three has pickle ball, tennis courts. It's got a dog park. It's got some other play areas. It's got some natural trails and stuff there. You are starting to get closer to neighborhoods, right? And so sometimes you don't want to build sports loud sports facilities right on the backyards of people's homes. Those pickle ball people, they know where they live. Tennis is so the important thing to remember here. So, so what what I heard is yes, this doesn't include land cost, but it might not need to include land cost because we have some land around town.

We do. Yeah. Randig was something this not this board, but a previous council looked at and at that time some of the costs and some of the issues with flood plane was the reason that board moved on to what is now 1849 and purchased that property because there would have been limited areas where you could do restrooms, parking, etc. But people develop some of that stuff in the flood plan and we could work to figure that out. But it probably cost a little bit more, right? You're elevating buying new land elsewhere. Mhm. Yeah. I don't know.

But this does give you at least kind of an order of magnitude um of cost per facility. Um and so if for example you were going to move into a bond election and you wanted to address maybe some of the shortage, you could you at least have these numbers. Um and we have escalated those. Uh we we're showing inflation. This is the 10-year plan. There's a plan for for uh each of the milestones. So um 2045 that that cost is up um with growth and more, you know, um population uh to 234 million. We just projected out um uh I believe um the the 20-year plan. out of it. So, one of the last things that we did was we then um used your city limits and your ETJ um and we wanted to at least take parcels that were currently um would allow uh for a four or five field complex. So, uh and then we also ranked these and GIS for suitability based off of your thoroughfare master plan extending out to the east. Um and so what you see is um a small circle that are on those that is representative of that field complex just to give you kind of an idea that's a five field complex. If a parcel was too small for that we we we left it out. But this at least starts showing a pattern of course to the east um that of of parcels that might meet um you know some of the initial criteria if you wanted to start thinking about um acquiring land um and having it banked in an area. Now, the parks board was was great about this. They said, "Okay, this is great, but boy, that's really far out there."

I want to take you back to what I was I was telling you earlier about the people who are driving. Uh, again, someone that can stay in their community versus having to drive to Taylor versus having to drive to Hutau. Um, you got to start thinking about that as part of kind of the long-term service. And we hear it often because it I mean our city's large enough now where the commuter patterns are, you know, you have three or four different commuter patterns and folks just don't know where we are and how close it is to that point. Just like you said, that tipping point where it's like it's not that far away, right? Well, let's not ignore all of the premium spots on the north and west side that you've identified that actually are good fits even more so than some of this on the east that are ranked lower. Right.

Sure. Sure. So just um you know this would be something that you would work with you know um any particular you know land acquisition agent. Um we wanted to at least start showing you know the size of land and the parcels. You could buy multiple small parcels and put those together. One thing I do want to say about your your land that you have picked up maybe it's part of the parkland dedic dedication ordinance is some of that may not meet that thousand foot diameter circle. Um so even though you do have parkland um if we think about a five field or a four- field clover complex um the dimensions of the land are going to become important at some point um and certainly for sports tourism the more fields you can get together um and really help with you know like the discussion on on&m or uh call the station um putting heads in beds and and those kind of enhancements you know economically those those kind of complexes are going to pull in more folks. Um, so that is uh really just kind of a high level uh overview. Um, uh, now that y'all been patient with me, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Uh,

we didn't ask enough as we park professionals up here also, so y'all be nice. All right, council members, this is a uh an item for resolution adopting the Flugerville athletic feasibility study. Do we have any questions? No. All right. Do we have a motion? Move to approve. Second. A motion and a second.

Motion passes 61. Thank you. I appreciate the uh the thorough presentation.

Uh that brings us that was the last item from our consent agenda. That brings us to our executive session items. Uh we are going to go into executive session on item 6, deliberation regarding real property and economic development negotiations pursuant to sections 551.072 and 551.087 of the Texas Government Code related to city property located at 101 East Panon Street. Uh also item 6E, executive session item consultation with legal council on deliberation regarding root property pursuant to section 551.071 and 551.072 072 of the Texas Government Code related to the city's downtown east development and item 6F deliberation of personnel matters regarding the appointment employment evaluation reassignment and duties of the city manager pursuant to section 551.074 of the Texas Government Code. The time is 9:19. We are in executive session.

except funny as Sager about the first time I've ever met when you get a chance. First time I ever met Thomas about 26 years ago. All right, everyone wake up.

Yeah, it's a late night. Thank you all for sticking with us. The time is 11:09. We have returned from executive session and no action was taken. Let me grab my copy of the agenda real quick so I can open uh the open session portion of item 6F. This is to discuss and consider action regarding the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, and duties of the city manager. Council, do I have any performance? Mr. Mayor, may I will you accept a motion? I will. Regarding these two pieces of paper,

uh, Mr. Mayor, I would uh uh move that we adopt uh as written the uh Flugerville city manager role profile and the city manager performance expectations uh sheets uh and that we uh instruct the uh uh city manager to to publish these uh on the city website and through uh city social media so that citizens can see what our expectations are as well. All right, I have a motion and a second. Uh, just for clarification to those of you watching at home and in the audience, these are documents that describe uh the uh type of individual we're seeking as our next city manager and our expectations for them. These are documents we've worked on for um little bit

little bit. Um I will start the vote. That passed unanimously. Uh, I would ask for Mayor, would you entertain a motion? I would certainly would. Um, I would like to make a motion uh for our mayor to begin negotiations uh with James to become our next city manager. Did I do that right? That works. Um, our employment contract and compensation package. Yeah. What he said, James. All right. I have a motion. Second.

I have a second from Jonathan. have Mr. Mayor uh some discussion. Uh certainly.

So, uh I'm going to say first of all, we we talked a lot tonight and in the past about um engagement and uh and transparency. And I think that we uh we've said over and over again that those are very very important uh values very important to how we uh operate the city government that transparency is not just because of money but because it's government for all of us. Uh and our citizens expect us to engage with them before we we make very very large decisions and to be transparent about those decisions. Uh and uh I must respectfully express my profound disappointment with the city council's decision to a to select a candidate as the next city manager without an open search and without competitive interviews and without allowing other qualified candidates to apply. I believe that this is not prudent governance and it is a choice. This decision um uh appears to show disregard for the citizens and disregard for standard and prudent government practice and I believe it undermines the credibility of our city, our council and our incoming city manager. Let me be absolutely clear on this point. I hold Mr. for Hartzhorn in very very high regard. I believe he is a dedicated public servant. He is strong willed, principled and very skillful. James is a devoted husband and father, an active member of his church. He

personally embodies the family values that many residents seek in their leadership. Where some have, I think, unfairly criticized city manager Breland for lacking those attributes, Mr. Hartzhorn arrives with them in abundance. Mr. Artsorn is a man of firm convictions and unflinching determination and he has learned a great deal from city manager Brand. The people who are critics of the city of Flugerville and hoped that they would find a softer touch will not find that in Mr. Hartzsworn. He will be a firm guiding hand at the helm of the city. I fully expect Mr. Hartzhorn to serve with excellence, to execute council policies with conviction, diligence, and integrity, and he deserves that chance. but by denying him an open contest against what we believe to be very many qualified candidates who would eagerly v for this role. I believe the council is undermining him from day one and at this precise moment I believe that is unconscionable. Our city is reeling from a catastrophic failure in the water system. multiple pipeline breaks, declared disaster emergency restrictions, and a lake run dry. Confidence in city leadership right now is at an all-time low, and that is exactly the wrong time to short circuit the process we so recently used with great success in our selection of our police chief. A nationwide search, public meet and greets, stakeholder input, and real community voice.

We are abandoning a longheld and repeatedly proclaimed trans commitment to transparency and openness in government. No one has put forward a convincing case for why we should avoid transparency now that we are making our most important appointment. Flugville's next city manager. Make no mistake, this one decision is almost certainly the most important decision we as a council will make in this decade. Yes, a comprehensive nationwide search is hard. Why should we do the hard thing when choosing the other route is so easy? Why should we do the hard thing? President Kennedy 61 64 years ago in Houston asked, "Why should we choose this as our goal? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal of doing the hard thing will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win. Citizens have properly come to expect transparency for high ranking officials, especially the city manager who oversees hundreds of employees and every facet of governance. We deserve a wide- ranging search, open public input, and the chance to voice

concerns, critique candidates, and advocate for whatever leader we think is best. This is by far the most important decision the council will make in this decade. There are only three appointments we make directly. The city manager is by far the most important. I think it is entirely possible that James Hearth is the best candidate anywhere who would apply for this job. I think if we had a hundred people apply as we did time before last for police chief, James might very well be the best one. And I expect that he will do an excellent job. But we have chosen not to do the hard thing. I think Jack Kennedy would be disappointed in us. We'll never know if he would prevail in an open competition, if he would be the best of 50 candidates or 100 candidates. And that is this council's fault. That is this mayor's fault. They have let down our citizens by closing the door and denying us transparency and the opportunity to choose among a diverse pool of candidates. We as council have failed our citizens. Um, I uh I'm very sorry that we have let this down.

Thank you for those words, David. Obviously, I disagree with uh with many of them, but you are certainly entitled to them. My expectation uh pending the uh result of this vote uh is that we will have uh we will continue a transparent process uh where James is introduced to the community. would say the most transparent part of this process is without a doubt the three months that James has spent serving in the role prior. Uh there there can be nothing more transparent than seeing the candidate uh in action uh and seeing the success that he uh that he had in serving this community. Uh with that uh there is a vote available uh in front of you folks. Uh

have some comments too. Did you want to make some comments as well? Melody, go ahead.

Yeah. Um so I want to be clear today that my vote is not a reflection on any individual. I have respect for the experience and service that James has provided to the city. My vote is for a fair, transparent, and competitive process. For a role of this importance, that means a structured search that allows us to evaluate all qualified candidates, apply consistent criteria, and make a fully informed decision for our community. The city manager is one of the most consequential roles of our organization and our residents. An open process ensures we are considering the full range of qualified candidates both internal and external and helps position the city for the long-term success. It also strengthens public confidence. Residents expect that decisions of this magnitude are made through a process that is thorough, visible, and based on merit. That level of transparency builds trust not only in the outcome but in the institution itself. We have seen the value of this approach in past leadership selections where a broader search, community engagement, and clear evaluation steps helped inform council's decision and provided a strong foundation moving forward. Our residents deserve a process that reflects these principles. Because the current proposal does not include that type of process, I am not able to support it. My vote reflects a consistent standard I believe should guide decisions of this magnitude and one I will continue to apply moving forward. I do have confidence that James will serve with integrity and diligence and do the best for our community. But that is my reason.

Thank you. Thank you. Any uh anyone else wishing to make a statement? All right. Uh I'm still uh pending two votes. Oh, sorry. Uh motion passes 5 to2. Uh so James, you'll uh be spending some time with me in the near future to uh work on some details. Uh I believe that brings us to the end of the agenda. Uh the time is 11:22. We are journed.