City Council - workshop

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Time is 5 o'clock. I'm going to call to order this work session of the Pflugerville City Council on Tuesday, July 28th. The next item on our agenda is public comment. Do we have anyone from the public wishing to speak at this time?

A whole bunch of people.

Seeing none, I will move forward to our regular agenda. The first item on our regular agenda is item 3A to conduct an annual presentation on the Parks and Recreation Department. We have the esteemed Parks Director Shane Mize here.

Thank you.

Great to see you, Shane.

I appreciate that. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Of all the forced activities a director has to go through, this is my most favorite. The director's report every year. So thank you for the time. Shane Mize, Director of Parks and Rec. um this is a chance where we can talk a little bit about parks who we are we're a department of 48 full-time 18 part-time this has 120 it's closer to 150 right now and it'll be a little higher once the monarch comes in as well and we provide quality of life services to the residents of pflugerville and the surrounding communities what we manage we have 1700 acres of parks green belts and open space over 70 miles of trails 33 acres of sports fields 34 33 playgrounds with 34 parks, rec center classes, programs, citywide special events, pavilions, gazebos, aquatic pools, splash pads, and a 180-acre lake reservoir that we do a lot of recreational activities out at.

Shane, can you tell us what the difference is between a playground and a park?

Yeah, absolutely. The playground is the vertical structure, you know, the place, the play that's in the park itself. And we have some parks that have multiple play structures, like 1849 S3, for example. And then we've got some spaces that are trails or open spaces. And then the playground The park itself can be parkland. It can be a greenbelt. It can be open space. It can be developed space. And then that could have, well, Point, for example, doesn't have a playground on it. 1849 Park has a couple. And so both of those are parks. Some of them have playgrounds. All of them have play value in some way. It's just how the user interacts with them.

Sometimes it's just running across the soccer field.

That's right. Trail, bathroom, lights, parking lot, all of them come with their own different sets of variables that we're managing and maintaining throughout the park system.

And every single one of those playgrounds has a shade structure, is that right? Every single one. 100%. 100%. Congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Congratulations to all of us. Thank you for following in Councilman Ryan. That's right. That's right. Hat tip to Councilman Ryan.

Wait a minute. That happened before she was on here.

No, no. She did it in 2009.

Yeah. Yeah, before.

Yeah.

for her neighborhood park. Yeah, for the Melody Rhyme Memorial Park with the freaking putting green and everything. Also, we appreciate it.

Let's not call it a memorial.

And thank you guys for coming to that. So you can see our core functions. Park option maintenance. I've already lost control. Recreation programs, special events, facility management, rentals, permits, event allocations, park planning, construction safety. all part of what we do.

Let's talk about special events.

Yes, sir.

So how many special events do you guys manage during the course of a year?

Oh, we have... Large and small, and it depends what you say, you know, a special event is. Like when you think of our, I don't have the exact number, so when you think of like our star parties, for example, it's ultimately a special event or a program that happens pretty regularly in the summer.

Sure, give us a ballpark.

Yeah, we have anywhere from 15 to 25 special events annually.

And what are the biggest ones?

Deutschen Fest, Slice of Pflugerville are our largest for sure. Festival of Lights.

And the Festival of Lights, and we do the Festival of Lights in conjunction with some other groups, right?

Yeah, all of these are in some, what's unique about, not so much unique because it happens in other cities as well, is some of these predate the park department itself, right? So before we had a park division or a park department, you had citizens that were putting on a Deutsche Fest event, putting on a Festival of Lights event. As that has come on and you've seen, special event specialists come on to the department. Eventually, for one reason or 12 others, the city has taken over that activity and continue to work when we can with some of those original founding agencies or service clubs.

Some of those same groups. But Slice is something that we've done. They came entirely out of your department.

Slice came from y'all. There was a desire from this body to celebrate We had had someone from Austin Public Health talk about how this zip code was the most diverse zip code in the Austin Public Health service area or in some sort of demographic region. I don't know how far it spread out, but it was Greater Austin Metro. And from this dais, they were like, this is something we should celebrate. And a couple discussions later on, it was let's put on an event. And so Slice is a slice of Pflugerville. It shows you a cross-section of what this community is from the diversity of the programs, the art, the music, the culture that this community has and offers to its residents.

Credit should be given to Wayne Cooper. He came up with the idea. 12, 13 years ago. Something like that.

And they never got it implemented.

There were a number of instantiation events for that.

I had never heard of a slice of event before we did it. I've seen a lot of events. Eeyore's birthday party and all kinds of things down in Austin. that are unique to Austin but not, you know, called a slice of. But I understand now I saw, unfortunately, not a happy event, but found that there's a slice of event in Seattle. Is this something that a lot of cities are doing, slice of my city?

I think we stole it from a taste of, you know, like it was an idea of a taste of Chicago or a taste of whatever. How do you, there's so many different ways that people dip their toes into a different person's culture. You have your culture, you're grown. You're born into it. It's almost indoctrinated in some ways. It's something that you it's passed down from generation to generation. You hear about it. But how do you interact with other people's cultures? Well, maybe at school, maybe at church, maybe your neighborhood and or.

through music through food through art in some way then you get to learn about so the taste of would be basically a restaurant right so instead of a taste that we're doing here is is broader than that so that there's a lot of ways to we're afraid people thought it would be a pizza are other people uh coming to you and and copying this i know uh that uh parks and rec has had um other and and you know uh professor ride has had people from other cities coming to ask can we copy what you're doing are you having that kind of experience we've been very fortunate for a couple different offerings whether it's our

Cardboard Regatta, our master plan program, Slice. Waco didn't follow us or didn't reach out to us about Slice, but they literally stole one of our lineups when you're like, if you looked at a couple years ago, the lineup of talent, they used the exact same talent we had for a following event for one of their cultural events. I don't know if ours predated theirs.

To be fair, I'm good friends with the mayor pro tem out there, so I told her about ours.

There you go. So we've had some people reach out to us over the years, and it's great.

Very flattering when they do.

So I get to speak to y'all every year, and every year I try to summarize what I think Parks and Rec, why it's important, because it's tough. And this year was no different. I was struggling a little bit with what I wanted to convey or how I was going to convey it. And I hadn't really talked about the power of these public spaces, and public spaces are very important that we get to provide, and there's a long-term Parks and Rec or former parks professionals retired now in Houston used to talk about. There are no red spaces or blue spaces or green spaces, you know, and they're for everyone and and I 100% agree with that and we get to be the provider of those spaces and so I took a couple weeks vacation. I thought about a lot and what was funny was I don't like to vacation like everybody else does. I I got off social media and I put my phone on do not disturb and I stayed home and I just worked out and hang out with my family and walk the trails every day and I thought. of all the different interactions I had along the trails. Just anecdotally, during my vacation, I thought, man, that's a great way to show the power of these public spaces. So I'll take you a little bit along that journey. So I live in Bowles Place, and so I work right next to it, and I work in Heritage Park. So I was in Heritage Park walking by it, or I'm in it almost every single day. Heritage Park is a park that has 103 annual visits. There was bond funds reallocated for when we didn't do the pool at first. Ultimately, we did get back around to doing the pool. And then we redid the Green Red Barn, which had had a report that said it was not structurally stable at that time. We replaced the playground and the trails as part of our improvements in 2024. And in my walks there, I got to see this three-year-old turning four-year-old boy get to do his... his birthday party there. It was so cool to watch. He wanted to be a cowboy. Obviously, that makes sense. And I was telling my wife about it. And my wife was telling me she walks our trails in the mornings. And she was telling me about these three or four Asian ladies that gather every morning on the basketball court. And they go out and they do Tai Chi and yoga and they face the sun and they They go eat at the food forest afterwards and they leave every day. And so I thought, how cool. And so one morning she showed me and we went and walked and observed them a little bit and did our own little walk in the trail. And this park is beloved. And I think at times public servants, public service members. We hear from, we get feedback, whether it's solicitors or not, Facebook, social media, other things. And I appreciated the two weeks off from that. And when I was working on this, I thought, I'm going to go look at what some people have said about our park system. And so without engaging Facebook, I went to Google, I went to Yelp, I wanted to see how our park system was being managed. reviewed and how it stood up and you can see in the left it's 4.6 stars almost 300 reviews to the right you can see since we did the playground improvements it's actually close to 4.8 stars now. The calculation breakdown, we had 44 five stars, three four stars and four three stars over the last two years since we did those playground replacements. But you can see Little Rush on the left and his birthday party and you can see some of the feedback from the mom blogger and her posting that went out to thousands of people on social media or all the people that have just interacted with the park system just in the last couple years and their honest feedback.

um of what they think of heritage park you know i think heritage park is is a good example as well of there there's little little gems within all of our parks too right for heritage i i think about uh you know how many pro people probably don't realize that there's a community orchard now there right that was uh planted by by volunteers and you know you don't see that in the social media posts or the marketing necessarily but there's i think there's a lot of those types of things across our park system where You know, if you're there and you're enjoying the space, you're probably going to discover something that's kind of neat and interesting that you didn't expect.

That's absolutely the hope of what this presentation today is, is that I know that, and ultimately I'll talk about it, but what gets... Measure gets managed. And in a budget season, that makes a lot of sense. And in an upcoming political season, that makes a lot of sense because you're justifying the expenses and investments that a city makes. And I think you can see a lot of feedback. on Facebook about anything we're doing. But if you just go out, if you can step away for just a little bit, and you can walk around our park system, and I'm taking you through the path I traveled a lot on my vacation, but I believe this to be true almost anywhere in our park system. I think you can find that our park system's beloved. We won the gold medal last year. At the state level, that allowed us to be a qualifier for the national gold medal. We did not make the final four. And I was talking to one of the people that was doing the scoring, and they said we were really close. It was a really competitive thing. The top four get recognized at our national conference. And I feel like in some ways it was a failure of my part to get them to understand because i i've been all over the country and i don't know of a better park system than ours and i don't know of a park system that's there's not a park system more beloved than ours our users love our park system and uh i do hope to rectify that in the future that i can get us at least to be a finalist for the gold medal but i think it's a great park system and And if you can step away from the noise and just walk around in it a little bit, like I got to on my vacation, you come back refreshed and reminded kind of why I do this and how great of a system we have. Next is Gillen Creek. Gillen Creek has become one of my favorite parks. We've put a lot of investment in it. The outdoor fitness court started it, and then you saw the obviously needed pool renovations that you heard the community crying out for. But we did park and pavilion improvements. We did turf and more shading at the pool itself. We did a pavilion and park improvements in 2025, and we did more park and connections improvements just this current year in 2026, this spring. And when I was walking, on one of my walks, I saw this family. There were three people. They parked at the parking lot. They were walking. They had these brightly colored shirts. And they had these family members. It was a family reunion. And I like interacting with people in a park system, not telling them who I am. In case they don't like it, then I'll have to hear. But I was asking them, you know, were they here for a family reunion? They said, yeah. And I was like, you know, what was your plan? They were like, you know, we travel around. So they're not local. They were from East Texas. And they had... family members that had recently deceased on their shirts. And that's how they honor anyone that's died since the last family union. They put them on their shirt and they bring them with them to that family union one more time. And I just thought it was so cool that they were at our park. And I said, well, why did y'all choose our park? And they said the upgraded playground amenities that they had saw when they did their site visit was the deciding factor for them. And they had someone that lived in the Flukeville area. And so that person advocated hard for it. But I just think it's cool when you get to see those types of interactions. Gillian Creek is a beloved space as well. You can see Almost 400 reviews, 4.5 stars. And you can see how the public is interacting with this. This is a little bit more of everything. It's got pools. It's got trails. It's got connections to Pfluger Park. It's got a lot of different things. The goats start there or end up there at times, and so you can see someone talking about the goats.

Can I tell you what I love the most? I ride my bike over to the park, and that is is the swings hold plus size people. And I love the swing and it really connects me to my childhood. And so over there is a swing that I can fit. And there's even one that me and my friend can fit on together. And so I just want to express my gratitude for that. That does matter when we talk about all abilities and spaces that are for everyone. These big hips definitely love the swings. Thank you. Awesome.

So next is trail improvements. And we're constantly doing trail improvements. It's funny, my wife, as I mentioned earlier, she walks the trails a lot. She was a school teacher. And it's funny, I think you all remember when you saw a teacher outside the square walls of that school building. You know, you're shocked like they don't live there full time or whatever. And we were walking one day and we saw a kid, he was about fourth or fifth grade. He was riding his bike and he recognized Hannah. And he pulled over and talked to her for a minute. And we asked what he was doing. And he was riding his bike from Gatlinburg. all the way to Gillen Creek Pool for swim practice. And his parents were letting him ride, which is something I think we all experienced growing up, but I don't think it's something you see a lot of people get to do now. But because he doesn't cross any major intersection, he's able to go under every major intersection all the way through. His parents feel that he's safe to do that, which is really cool. Another thing on the trails when I was walking, we saw there's three or four let go moments as a parent, right? Like the day your kids, I got four kids. They're not all left yet. I got four kids that will graduate high school, but they haven't all left the house. But the day they pack up and leave, you know, for the last time, the day that they're 16 and they drive to school by themselves, the day that you're running with them and you let go of the the handlebars and they ride and then that day that they're kind of walking for the first time there's those moments and i got to witness one with a family on saxony trail which was an improvement at one time that was a dg trail that the bond program had improved and there was a father a mother a younger and older sibling and They had all pulled over to the side, and the dad was with the youngest sibling, and I got to see him let go, you know, and see that kid experience what it was like, and they chose to do that on our trail system. And so, you know, I think these spaces matter, and those people probably don't go to Facebook and tell you these things, but anecdotally, I got to experience them, and I think it's important to... to highlight those as well. And so, trail improvements. We were all over the place with trail improvements. And you can see everyone talking about it. The cool thing is I got to pull from different park pages when they're talking about trail improvements. You can see up in the top right corner that one was even translated in Korean. I had to do the translation. So you can see the rich diversity. And AllTrails is an app that on all trails, we score 4.5 out of over 2,000 reviews for our trail system in that app. And those are people that are into it. Yeah, they're serious. Yeah, absolutely. And then Pfluger Park. Pfluger Park has over 250, almost 250,000 annual visits, almost a quarter million annual visits just in that park alone. And Rotary just recently did an upgrade. So we've seen bond improvements. We've seen CIP improvements. This is an improvement with the partnership between PCDC funding and the rotary this pavilion that went over the groove cost the city about $30,000 that provides shade for all future rentals and shade was a priority on our master plan and you know Walking the park system. I didn't get to see this but I know that it happened in uh would have happened on my walk if i'd have been there that day my plan was to try to walk and see it was uh a former mayor jeff coleman um got honored for his he's a someone that's showed the legacy of service through here and the rotary club and he was installed as uh Grand Poupon. I don't think that was a district governor. Yeah.

No, I think it's Grand Poupon.

Four or five rotary districts. And he chose to do it at Pfluger Park, which is really cool. And so I think...

Huge turnout. Huge turnout.

Lots of brisket.

You can see how Pfluger Park is engaged. I didn't even need Google Translate Playground. Excelente. I didn't even know what that one was. And so you can see how some of these... All these are just within the last, I believe, six to eight months for the most part. So it's not even like I'm cherry picking something that happened 15 years ago. This park is below. This park is below now.

Shane, just to be clear for the public, we're not doing anything to incentivize folks to leave review, correct?

No. We don't have a lottery system.

Please give us five stars now.

I can barely figure out how to screenshot all this and add it. I'd have to have staff help me.

So that even speaks more volume about the impression these parks and this system are making of folks that they feel compelled to actually write something.

Yeah, and the average annual score here was a 4.7 out of a couple thousand.

I see that they're Several of these were originally written in Spanish.

Yeah, I think you see the diversity.

We've got a diverse group of people coming to the park.

I think it's important to show that you can improve a park without any type of investment. Now, obviously, investment's coming to Lake Pflugerville, but y'all made improvements to this park just by changing some rules. And I know that wasn't easy, and we had a great discussion about it. And you can see the rule changes here. But I went, and with staff, we pulled reviews just from since the rule changes happened. So this is post the lake filling back up, and these rule changes happened. And you can see what people are saying about your park system and the areas that they get to enjoy.

They seem to be happy that their water is in the lake now.

Water's in the lake. It's a safe place for families to play. I took my children there at 11 a.m. Nice, well kept.

Somebody spelled fun wrong. Yeah, we'll get on to it.

You can also see there's a pretty diverse, it seems like, user base with the people that are submitting. So we talked about the ROI investing and what gets measured gets managed. I wrote this down so I wouldn't screw it up. We'll see if I can get it out. In a world where what gets measured gets managed, I encourage everyone to take a moment, step away from Facebook and social media commentary, and take a walk in our park. It's natural to look for comments and feedback to strive to ensure that we can justify expenses and investment, especially during budget season and the upcoming political season. I think it's very important that we know what our critical feedback is. But if you can, for just a moment, forgo social media and engage with our park system, you might see a family that brought their deceased family member with them one more time. You might see a fourth grader learning about freedom and autonomy. You might see a group of Asian women socializing together while practicing an ancient health practice from their home country. You might be lucky enough to see a kid get to live out his young fantasy of being a cowboy or watch a dad let go of his child's handlebars for the first time. I don't know how you measure that. I don't think you have to search hard to find feedback on social media on how we're doing both solicited and unsolicited. But if you step out into our parks, I don't think you have to search hard to find that there are people that love that space as well. After I finish my PowerPoint on Sunday, shout out to Trista for extending the deadline for me. I got to see a family announcing their newborn at Heritage House in the park system. Brand new newborn. They had a professional photographer. It was 7 o'clock on a Sunday night, and a little family was there taking photos at the Heritage House. And I just watched for a minute. It was exciting to see that they had chosen a city facility to make that announcement in. I just walked around the park. It's a park that I'm in every day, but I just wanted to see it at a different time. I'm not always there Sunday night. I walked around, saw a group of 25 or 30 people that had brought popsicles and lawn chairs to the sand volleyball area. Two or three families that were on our national award-winning playground. We had two different groups using the basketball court for different pickup games, and the pool was at near capacity. It's gotten miserable. You could just hear the joy of people enjoying that space. And that was just on a random evening at 7 p.m. Residents love this park system, and we as a staff are fortunate to be supported by city leadership and city council to be able to provide these amazing public spaces. Thank you. Thank you. And then if you didn't like anything else, I sent you some shirts. You have our Lake Pflugerville shirt, resting beach face, throwing shade, which shows that we're the only Texas park system with 100% shade. And then Pflugerville Park, we wanted to honor the 50 years of service that parks provide this community, and it was honored as the Lone Star Legacy Park winner this last year. Amazing. Any questions?

Council questions, accolades.

When I heard you talk about the big events, the big three that I think I heard you say were Deutschenfest, Festival of Lights, and Slice of Pflugerville. Is that right?

Yeah. Yes, sir. I think Music in the Park and Rock the Block have their own followings, but not nearly the size of scale that those do.

I didn't hear the Fourth of July in there anywhere.

Yeah, 4th of July is a partnership. When I first got here, my first year, it was at the field. It was at the field. And We spend a lot of money to rent the field, to have staff out there, to bring a lot of apparatuses out there. It's my first year. It's 2019. It's that summer. I've been here a month. I started June 3rd, and it's July 4th, and we're shooting off fireworks. And I'm just trying to get my bearings about me. But I know that event cost $70,000 or $80,000 to put on the event at the time. And I don't look at fireworks for fireworks. I look at how people interact with fireworks, with the playground, with the park system. And so when fireworks go off, no matter where I'm at, I start looking at the public and about eight or 12 minutes, you'll start to see people get bored and they start looking at their phone and their face are starting to reflect instead of looking at the show. And that gives me an idea of how long, maybe was it too long? Was it not long enough? Those types of things. And like I said, I'm new director, so I'm just trying to get as much data as I can. I'm also looking around and I see fireworks shows going off all over. And so I talked to city management afterwards and I said, you know, it sounds like Typhoon has a show. Can we do something together? So I reached out to Typhoon, and we made a deal that for anywhere from, fireworks are not cheap. They cost about $1,000 to almost $1,800 per minute. And then there's obviously operationals. You're cleaning up, you've got staff shutting down roads, those types of things. And so I just thought maybe we could combine and save each other some money. Worked with Typhoon Texas, and for the last couple years, obviously not this year, but from my first year here until I don't know if we did in the COVID years, but do you remember if we did in COVID years?

Pretty sure we did.

Yeah, I think we did. We worked with Typhoon to shoot something off. It cost us about half. It was about somewhere from $30,000 to $40,000 of what it originally would have cost us to do this show at Typhoon. And that has a huge following of people. I mean, I think the place our data shows it's, 12,000 to 18,000 people in the areas that we can track, so Stonehill, Costco. Placer doesn't do churches or schools, so we can't really project the parking lot at the ISD because they don't like to give out, for obvious reasons, that type of data. But I think we know that it's a well-attended event. Depending on the size of the location, the fallout zone where we do it, you can sometimes see it from Heritage Park or Walmart or some of those other spots as well.

And we wouldn't be able to do it out at the lake just because there's not adequate parking out there.

The parking's an issue, but now the fallout zone's an issue. So when you shoot a shell, a 6-inch shell, 7-inch shell, 8-inch shell, those shells, you have a bigger fallout zone. And when everyone tells you we should go back to the lake, they're saying go back 20 years when there was nothing but a couple homes out there. You absolutely could have done it out there in that sense. But now, even if I shot from the middle of the lake, my fallout zone is... so narrow that either the shell size has to be small enough that only the people at the lake can see it, which could be something we'd do, but if we can't park them there, then we're parking them at the school and busing them over. Or we shoot it high enough like we do at Typhoon for people to see it with a good sprawl, but we need a place like the field next to Typhoon or the year that that was too muddy two years ago to get the equipment out there, we shut down Pfluger Farm Road and did it out there. And so fallout zone's really important. You have to allow these fireworks to fall. You have to have staff that can put out any embers or flames. Obviously, we work with fire with that. And you have to, sometimes you're threading a needle. There was an area that we were trying to do a fallout zone a couple years ago, and there was the, all the, I don't know, a power station of some sort that we couldn't shoot it at or whatever. And so we had to, we were trying to pivot there, and we had to move somewhere else. And so... As a city develops and gets bigger, it does get tougher to shoot a large shell. You can shoot small shell shows. Anything over three has to be permitted by the state, and there is a policy that you have to follow in a permit time. But you do have to worry about things like fallout zone and the viewing of it, right? If you're going to spend something on it, make sure you can maximize how many people are there and who can see it and those types of things. I wish it was as easy as going down to the little pop-up stand and shooting off some fireworks, but there's a little bit more to it.

Well, it's... I've been to a lot of firework shows that are at and near lakes, and obviously there's a big advantage there in terms of the fallout zone, because anything that falls, falls on water. Absolutely. But our lake is not really that big, and... Um, as you pointed out, there are now more and more houses and apartments right next to the lake.

Probably have shut down the road, too, actually, for a little bit, through the parkway. Like, if he falls, then we'd actually recover the road as well, yeah.

You could easily get to fall out, it would land on the roads. Um, so, other than the field, and, uh, next to, um, Typhoon Texas. Do you think that there are any locations in the city that would be easy for people to get to that are adequate in terms of size?

I think I'd want some time to like do but there's no parking anywhere near Randing, so those neighbors could see it, but no one else could. 1849 is losing the fallout zone that it potentially used to have, but it has parking and a restroom. Not a lot of shade.

No, not a lot of shade.

You know, it's one of those things that it's getting tougher, and maybe it's just you shoot from an elevated spot with a smaller shell size, and it's just those that can see it can see it, and those that can't can go to another location. I think the field right now has a decent, because it still has that area across from it that it owns between it and the historic colored edition that right now isn't developed, but if they develop that in some way, that's a lot of where we shoot those fireworks off previously.

And that street would have to be closed during that.

So there's just factors that we would work through. Anything's possible, but there would be factors.

What about the little park that's down the road from that where we would often start and finish the fun run for the... Oh, Finnegan. Yes.

Yeah, Finnegan's got some space.

Would that be a place where we could...

I'd imagine you could do a four-inch shell at Finnegan. I think, you know, now it's not the six or eight that we've done at Typhoon, but I think you, and as long as development doesn't happen, and obviously development will eventually happen next to Typhoon, but as long as it hasn't happened yet, you know, Typhoon may be an option again as well.

And Typhoon obviously has the advantage of being higher. Yep. So if you shoot from there. people can see it from a greater distance around town. Yeah, it's one of the higher spots. Fenwick Park is substantially lower elevation.

1849 is one of the higher spots as far as my park system as well, but once again, it's so far out.

But it's way out there, so yeah. I'm thinking, you know, something that's central and easy for people to get to, easy for people to see the field and the... Yeah, I still think we have a couple options of locations. Are there any others that come to your mind?

There could be something. I'd have to look. It feels like there could be something north of Neumeister. Or maybe we get some sign off that. I don't know if there's a lot of undeveloped land or if it's all commercial or industrial. What about east of Aldi? East of what? Aldi. Yeah, that's where that power station was a little bit off of Pfluger Parkway, so we just have to watch out for that. But you're right, behind Amazon and behind the Aldi and that new school, as long as we didn't get too close to that power station along Pfluger Parkway, they're probably... Now, I don't know your gathering point where you're gathering a bunch of people there, but your fallout zone is huge there.

So until that develops, that might be an opportunity for the next few years. Yeah. And I just want to make sure that we have opportunities to celebrate the independence of our country. Yes, sir. It's been a minute, but it's still, in my view, that's one of the big three or four holidays. Sure.

The cut last year was difficult. I think we had an 18% cut in our budget. THERE'S OBVIOUSLY SOME COMMENTARY ON THE FOURTH OF JULY EVENT, BUT IT WASN'T, IN MY OPINION, AND I WAS THE PERSON THAT HAD TO MAKE THE FIRST ROUND OF RECOMMENDATIONS ON MY OWN BUDGET, AND THAT'S NOT EASY WHEN YOU'RE GOING FROM LIKE A $12.5 MILLION BUDGET TO A $2 MILLION BUDGET, YOU KNOW, FOR A PARK SYSTEM IS TOUGH. THAT'S PROGRAMS OR PEOPLE, AND IT WAS PROGRAMS. It's one of those where it's it's Fourth of July or it's one lessons or it's camp. You know, there were a lot of hard discussions with those things. And I mean, we put up slice and trail improvements and all that stuff up there. You know, it was just that was a tough cut. We hope to not have to do that ever again.

You know, one of the things, Shane, and I know you and I have talked about this before, I think that your team even in the face of the cuts, like you're talking about, do a really tremendous job on the basics, right? So I'm in a park or on a trail literally every single day. And I can't remember a time when I've seen a trash can overflowing or litter sitting around somewhere, right? I'm sure it happens, but I can't remember the last time I saw something like that. And I'll always remember as well, I think it was the very first constituent email that I got after I was sworn in here on council was some fire ants in the bathroom at the Gilland pool. And you all addressed that same day or the next day. And I think like those types of responsiveness to the public and really care for our facilities is really just exemplary and above and beyond in so many cases, right? There's, an infinite number of things that can go wrong. And I really think that the vast majority of the time, you'll make it look a lot easier than what it really is. So I really appreciate the team. And, you know, the other thing I want to say too is, you know, whenever I'm on the trails, I'm often there in the early mornings when your operations team is also going through. And most of them don't have any idea who I am, which is great. But every single one of them will wave, will smile, will say hi. and i think that just speaks volumes to how dedicated and proud the staff are uh to working in our park system and delivering just a really great experience for our residents they gave everyone a flash card of all the council members i'll tell you there may be four departments better than us as far as that gold medal committee but there's not four departments that have better staff than we do i've got a great team um

And there's not a negotiation on the standard. If it's late and something breaks, it's not well, we can just come back the next day and we'll get to it. These guys and gals work really hard to serve this community, and I'm very fortunate for the team that we have.

And I think as the Mayor Pro Tem will attest to as well, I keep an eye out on our signage. And y'all are also really quick about replacing signage when it breaks or disappears, like hers has a couple times. Which I think is great. And I'm also just real quick on the future facing things. A couple things that I'm really excited about. One is certainly the signage and branding efforts that you all have underway. I think that's going to be a game changer for our parks and trail systems to actually have wayfinding, storytelling, educational opportunities that we don't have or aren't taking advantage of today. So I'm really excited about that. The other thing is I'm constantly reminded about our core of volunteers at PAWS, and you all have your own now in the form of the Parks Foundation. And I think that's just such a tremendous opportunity for us to continue to grow the volunteer core that's helping out the park system, as well as a great way to attract private investment as well beyond what the city can do. And so those are two of many things that I'm really excited about the future of our park system, of having those pieces in place. I think will mean that we can continue to deliver a top rate system.

Well, I've been interacting with the parks and trails since I've moved here when I stayed at home with my girls. And one of the reasons I got involved with trying to advocate for more parks and benches and shades was I remember I was eight months pregnant with my second daughter and I had to sit on the mulch border. in order to watch my daughter. And the one bench was like 50, 100 feet away. And I said, who designed this park? So I got involved in the Parks and Rec Commission through that way. And then also through my mom's club of Pflugerville with Lisa Rogers and organizing 3K Run. at the lake in order to raise money and working with PCDC and the park staff to do the labor to help turn $3,000 into $25,000 worth of amenities, which doesn't go that far now, but it was two shades and five benches between three different parks. So what I've seen from previous councils by advocating is a greater investment in our park system. So it makes me so happy that there are shade at every park to not only make it more enjoyable and extend the time that people can visit, but also extend the life of the equipment. That was one of the other benefits. And then having places for people to actually sit so they can safely, you know, look after their kids. And it makes it more enjoyable. And I've visited every single park intentionally through You know, when I was with the Moms Club. And so that was one of the things that I love so much about this city. And I've been very inspired and happy to see all the investments that we've made. Other things like parkland dedication fee, because we had a lot of land and they said, well, here's this parkland. And I said, it's a lot full of weeds. Yeah. What can we do to turn it into a park? You know, eight years later, I got the park in our neighborhood again with PCDC's help and working with the city. And now it's part of a connected trail system. So it's an example of where a group of people who love their city and want to see it improve can work together with everyone and see lasting improvements that, you know, extend many, many years. and hopefully more to come. So I thank you and all of your staff for all of the improvements that you've built into the parks, for all of the events that you put on to bring communities together, to have fun, because like you said, it is those memories that you build in those places with people you love, friends and family, and also meeting new people. So I think you guys have done a great job. So thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Anyone else? I mean, I was kind of confused, I'll be honest with you, when you said that get away from the noise in social media regarding our parks. That's minuscule, to say the least. I just don't hear people in Tandem or anything else coming together and saying, man, these parks are just horrible. Man, these trails are trash. I mean, what are we doing over here? Instead, I consistently hear the opposite. It is one of the best, not only in the region, not only state, but in the country, the system itself. It is well thought out. It's methodical. Even the financial aspects regarding the different parts and different areas and regions and how the funding of the park system goes has always been well out. You know, I know I come from it a little differently because, you know, I come from a youth sports background and, you know, not soccer, of course, but, you know, football and baseball. And, you know, when we used to meet, you know, in the late, what is it, late aughts? Early, you know, early ten, oh my gosh, that sounds like late aughts. And, you know, we used to talk about, you know, where are we going to plan different events and tournaments and everything else over here. Pflugerville was consistently seen as the place to be. because of its system, because of its parks, because of how remarkable it was. Georgetown has a great system, too, as well. But I will say that it's a far superior aspect regarding the planning aspect and the quality of the fields and the facilities that we have in place now. And I think that makes a demonstrative difference, if you guys don't care about anything else, from a financial aspect, because the funds that come from these tournaments and these people come from all over the country to go ahead and participate and utilize our fields make a demonstrative difference when it comes to our hotels, when it comes to our shopping, when it comes to foods and everything else, sales tax revenue as well. And so, you know, hats off, man. And, you know, I don't think... you ever need to be in front of this dies i don't care i mean me or anybody else is on here and say you know apologize for anything with this park because you've consistently shown time and time again that it's remarkable and what's even more important the people that work in it those there you have a phenomenal staff that really does make a demonstrative difference in everything they do they're great thank you shane once again thank you for all you do for our park system i have the honor of getting to

to accept that award with you at our state convention, and I too am surprised that we didn't make it to the Nationals, but I know we deserved it, and I know you deserved it, so thank you for that. Appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

It is sent to the wrong email. We really did make it. That brings us to item 3B on our agenda. That is a discussion regarding roadway impact fee updates to land use assumptions, capital improvements, and the impact fee.

So, Mayor, if I could, we do have a presentation, we go through it, but in light of some of the conversations that I've had and me getting a better grasp on this particular item, what I would recommend is bringing back an item at the August 11th meeting for y'all to adopt roadway impact fees that maintain the same level, and that would give me an opportunity over the next year to really wrap my arms around it and bring you back something that i feel is more fully baked something that we'd be proud to put our name on and that's more complete that gives you an opportunity to make the best decision possible um so that that would be my my recommendation and mayor i agree i think that um just talking to folks and feeling what we in the community and people in the dives i think that's probably the right way to go about it now i my concern was how it was going to impact honestly growth development we already know what's going on with

Likely next year, you know, add warm and a further cap on that. We just have to have an honest conversation with our citizens that, hey, listen, you know, I love the way, again, I'm going to keep calling it a trivial pursuit piece because I think it's true that, like, we have that pie. And if it's not coming from there, it's going to come from something else. And we have to have an honest impact about how do we incentivize what we want. Well, at the same time, be a real stick with the public and saying, that's cool. You want that. Where is the money going to come for that? And then they have to make decisions on it.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you, Council Member Mateer. I think that we... I think we owe our residents and ourselves the opportunity to think more strategically about how the totality of our impact fees are going to impact our growth and what we want to incentivize and what we don't, etc. And so I think that the one other benefit of potentially keeping things the same for another year in terms of what we're charging would be that, quite honestly, I think some of our neighbors are going to be increasing theirs and we're frankly, might become even more competitive by keeping them the same right now, at least temporarily, right? Since we're at the top end now. I mean, yeah. May or may not come true, but yeah, I think there's some pluses to us being more mindful and careful about this set of fees as well as all of our others going forward.

Well, let me say that I'm happy to hear that we're not going to be moving forward at this time with the idea of of increasing the rates. But the rates that we have are not competitive. Except for Round Rock, we seem to be, by a substantial margin, the most expensive in terms of roadway impact fees in the region. Round Rock is about the same as we are. And I think we're on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. I've talked about the Laffer curve before. I know you guys up here are all on the know about that. But just to remind people in the audience, the Laffer curve is a Concept in government tax economics about. When you raise rates, sometimes you actually end up. Receiving less money, there was actually there was an article about this. Last week, Norway raised their top income tax rate, expecting to get about a 20%. increased the amount of money that they got from people at the top income tax rate and they raised it so much they ended up getting about a 40% decrease because they raised the rate so much that the activity they were taxing dropped so much that the amount of money that they were getting went down. I think we're at that same point on the Laffer curve with our roadway impact fees. Our in-city development, particularly residential in-city development, has pretty much ground to a halt. I don't think it's a coincidence that we put these fees into effect in 2019 and we've had virtually no in-city development since then. I think we should look at reducing the fees so that we are competitive, not just with the other cities in the area, but Travis County, five feet outside of our borders. I know that you have traffic impact analysis and there are fees associated with that. But frankly, I don't think we're competitive. And I think we have gotten to the point where we are choking off the activity that we are trying to tax. And as a result, our tax revenue is going down. And we look at projections from the finance department you see that they are projecting we are going to have substantially less money in Broadway impact fees this coming fiscal year than we had in the last year you know if if you raise the cost you get less demand this is you know economics 101 supply and demand if you increase the cost you get less of it. If you want to choke off demand, then you should raise prices. And I think that's what we've done with roadway impact fees. And I think we need to look very seriously at lowering our roadway impact fees, not just not increasing them, in order to get the development that we said we want. If we are going to have more development in the city, as opposed to out in the county near the city or in neighboring cities, what we've got to do is we've got to be price competitive. And I don't think we're price competitive right now, again, with the exception of Round Rock. And I think... You know, developers can build lots of places. And if we are hostile to development, we will get less of it. Now, Austin taught me that lesson a long time ago. I grew up in Austin. And for many, many years, the mantra from the people in Austin and the city council in Austin was, we're going to make the developers pay. And what happened was the developers went to the outlying cities. And Austin got the congestion. Oh, and also, if we don't build the roads, they won't come. Well, Austin didn't build the roads. They got the worst congestion by some measures of any city in the country. And the people came anyway. They just didn't come to Austin. They came to the surrounding areas near Austin. Now, Pflugerville benefited from that in some ways. But we don't need to repeat those mistakes. We've seen those mistakes, and we can do something else. And that's what I would advocate.

So I look forward to having a policy discussion about all of these issues. And then when we actually have the data in front of us, I definitely want our growth projections to be aligned with what we've been seeing and what reality is. And then also, whatever our impact fees are, I believe that we should really look at having different amounts in the service areas depending on which areas we want to incentivize. If we want to incentivize infill in area A and B, those need to be lower than C, which is, you know, further out. So when we do come to that point, I think we need to look at where do we want the, you know, we already have the infrastructure in some of these, the inner areas, let's get those built first. So I think we need to look at the different service areas as well.

So, again, I agree. I think this is the right way to go with it. Council Member Ryan, I think exactly what you said, incentivizing what we want, where we want it, how we want to do it. But, Councilman Rogers, I can't let that go when you say it's economics 101 because you undermined your own argument when you said that, you know, we're competitive with Round Rock. From what I've seen, Round Rock is not having any problems whatsoever getting the businesses to go in there with that. When you talked about Austin... I don't know if you've looked at Dog's Head. It's specifically going out there from that, their allowance, and they're having that growth from there. What I do see is that I do agree that there is a threshold. There is a specific threshold for folks, what they pay and what they go from that as well. But it's not as easy. It's not a tautology to just go ahead and denote the fact that, hey, listen, if you tax something, it's just going to go down. But there is a threshold. I agree to what it goes from that as well. What's great about this is that this gives this council... This gives our city manager, this gives the staff a year to work, heck, with PCDC, right, as well, to talk about this, speak about this, get a better handle on what's going on moving forward with this as well. And, you know, my hope is that once that's given, once the data's given, I do like what you said regarding what the projections, what actually the baseline is on the projections too. I think that's fair to see what the different numbers are with that as well. That will help go ahead and quell concerns and discussions on that. But thank you. Good job. I agree, James. Good work.

Anyone else? All right. With that, we'll move forward. It sounds like we've got some good direction there. That's going to be item 3C now, discussion regarding municipal management districts, MMDs, and New Sweden MUD number two, transitioning to an MMD. I've got Director Ashley Bailey.

Mayor?

Sir? Can we move to Executive Session to seek Legal Counsel advice on this item? Do you want a presentation first or no?

No, not yet.

All right. Apparently we have some Legal Counsel questions. We will adjourn to Executive Session at 5.56.

I guess we can stop talking smack about Jerry. Okay.

Oh, he's in the audience. It's okay. We're actually speaking.

Time is 6.08. We've returned from executive session. No action was taken. We will return to item 3C. This is a discussion regarding municipal management districts and New Sweden Mud Number 2 potentially transitioning to an MMD Director Bailey.

Good evening, Mayor and Council for the record, Ashley Bailey, Planning and Development Services Director. So tonight is just really a high level discussion just to go over what municipal utility districts are and then also municipal management districts. So the difference is really going to be they are very similar, but one is going to be eligible for annexation a little bit easier. They are self-governed special districts. You are proving it as the host municipality. Typically It's very similar to the municipal utility district. So you could build public infrastructure, provide services within that approved service area. And then they're either created through TCEQ or special state legislation. There's about the same process as a MUD. So the other thing that we have is that you can levy the property taxes, assessments, impact fees, and then it does require the property owner petition. Again, very similar to my... We're trying to read along with you because I don't think it's...

Oh, yeah, it's not in here.

It's not in here? Okay, yeah, that's why I was waiting. Can we get this person's picture? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. You can issue tax exempt bonds. That is not city debt, and it does not affect the city bonding capacity, but the bond issuance does need city council approval. These can be combined with TIF districts. That's not what the proposal is tonight. TIF is tax increment financing. That's not on the proposal, but that is common with MM.

Ashley, can you explain what are tax-exempt bonds outside of them being tax-exempt?

I'm going to phone a friend on that one. Okay, never mind.

I'm just asking.

And then the eligible MMD improvements very similar. It's just gonna be the public infrastructure including but not limited to street sidewalks You can do public art lighting drainage water and sewer and park facilities as well So with this one, you may be familiar with New Sweden Mud 2. It is on the eastern side of Pflugerville's ETJ, north of Seal Road and west of County Road 973 or FM 973. So what they are looking at doing is potentially going from a municipal utility district to the MMD. So that would be to negotiate a development agreement that was submitted formally just a few weeks ago. And that would then have to proceed to council approval once that's negotiated. And then the other item after that subsequent to that would then be a voluntary annexation agreement. Proposal and then as well as the zoning and that would be concurrent with that full MMD Creation so with that the main point of this one and I'll get to this in a second so you can look at the concept plan here and the main thing is that the Rebate on those taxes would be to cover our INS rate our interest in thinking so There would be a rebate but it would be less than our current taxing structure that we have with the city So really just wanted to open up the discussion on special districts, because we do have a special district policy. It does not currently cover what an MMD is or how council views those, and so really needed to get some feedback so that we, staff, could negotiate that development agreement if so desired.

What's the difference between an MMD and an in-city MUD?

Not too much for my knowledge. I believe the difference would be that the MMD would rebate the sales tax, or sorry, any of the tax. an in-city MUD, you would have two taxing. So you would have the city tax plus the MUD tax on top of that.

And what's the governance structure of a MMD, and how is that different from the governance structure of a MUD?

The governance structure is not too much different. Typically, the first time out for your board of directors would be created by TCEQ, and then you could have council appoint, similar to how we do most of the other boards here.

TCEQ?

TCEQ can appoint the boards, typically.

It's for an MMD.

Interesting.

So a MUD is elected, are you telling me the MMD board is appointed by council?

I believe it's technically just appointed, not elected. Interesting. So there's no elections at all, or that's just initially? I believe initially it is appointed by TCEQ, and then subsequent to that it's appointed by city council.

So TCEQ does it with, I guess... They ask council who they would like, or they come to developers? Is that between both of us regarding who TCQ would put on as the M&D board?

I would have to get you more information on that one. And then I will also check on if it can be elected or not. I would assume that it could be similar. Interesting.

But with a MUD, it is required to be that the board of directors is elected?

I believe so. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't mean you have to meet in the MUD district or...

Rarely are there contestants. Yeah. So to make sure I understand the request here, you mentioned the rebate of the INS, which would essentially fund the infrastructure in the development, right? Correct. That would be the idea. So if the INS is funding the infrastructure in the development and the MMD is issuing debt,

to pay for that infrastructure then would that rebate offset the pretty much directly offset the bond debt for the infrastructure so they would be the ones that MMD would have the bonds so that they would be able to still pay those bonds and the INS rate for the rebate would then cover our INS rate that we already have for the city interesting so how does the property taxes work overall for this MMD because it will be annexed into the city so it will only have the city tax rate and it won't have a separate mud tax rate well we have the mmd tax rate um so it'd be a separate district and i can get a lot more information on that and that's similar to an in-city mud that plays city taxes plus the mud taxes it would be dissimilar from that i believe it would only be a rebate it would not be the full taxing right my

So looking at this from a math perspective, my assumption would be that the rebate would essentially offset the MMD tax rate. There wouldn't necessarily be a need for an MMD tax rate or it would be very minimal because the ad valorem rebate would be covering the costs associated with administering the MMD. That sounds right. Which, if that's the case, it sounds an awful lot like a TIRS or a TIF, right?

That's what I was about to say.

It sounds like all we're doing is we're dedicating the improvement value to the, or a portion of the improvement value directly to the infrastructure in the zone.

Does that make sense, Ashley? Because it doesn't seem like it's going back in.

it would to pay for all the bonds that were so they would be paying for their own bonds and that would also cover the city yeah i'm trying to think because everything that i researched a lot of times the mmds also have that tiff returns district with it um yeah so that you would be able to then pay for some of that as well in this instance because that would be two separate boards that does get to be a little bit more um a little bit more tedious. And so that's not being requested on this one, but it is possible. I know that a lot of the MMDs that are in the Houston area do have a TIRS or TIF with their MMD.

And I think what I saw on the slide as well was that the MMD issued bonds would have to go not necessarily to the board, but to council.

Typically, yes.

As opposed to a MUD, which the board can do whatever they want, basically. Right.

And sometimes in the DAs or that your consent agreements, you can have a clause in there that says that you want to see what the MUD is doing. But in this instance, typically those MMD bonds are then also approved by council.

And I think all our MUD consent agreements contain a clause that restrict the amount of debt that they can't issue. Correct. So the MUD board essentially... Issues debt once and then doesn't have the authority to do it again.

Ashley, can you remind me what?

Some of them are wild wild west.

He's talking about here in Pflugerville or just muds in general.

As per our mud consent policy. Yeah, it wasn't always that way.

Because some of our long-standing neighborhoods, that's why I was confused for a second.

No, you're right. Keep issuing. They're still issuing. We've got a handle on it.

So, yeah, because this says MMDs can levy property taxes, assessment, and impact fees. So I'm assuming that's in addition to the city taxes.

I guess I would need to see how... We would have a full financial outline of what that impact is going to be. This was just going to be... Do we want to consider this MMD? It is a different financing structure. It has proven useful. I know that there's a really cool one up in the Arlington area. There's multiple out in the Houston area. So it is, it's a valid financing structure. It's just that we only have one that has not really been activated yet on a piece of Tim Timmerman's property. For this one, it is important to point out that mud number two is a little bit bigger than what you see here on the screen. This would be the portion that would be annexed. It is slightly mud 2, so this would just pull this portion out of mud 2. So there would still be a portion remaining. What is mud 2? Mud 2 is actually... Is it black?

I'm sorry. Is it the black outline?

Everything, no, it's actually larger than that. This would just be the MMD boundary for what would be pulled into the MMD. Mud number 2 actually goes a little bit further, and it goes a little east of FM 973. Hmm. Oh. So you could just pull a portion out.

Interesting. Just curious, how do we get out there from an annexation standpoint? Like what leads us? What's the Oregon Trail that allows for us to grab this?

Is that Vine Creek there on the road?

Dysentery.

So that main road that you see on the north side, well, that little portion, the flag portion on the north side would be Seal Road. So they would actually be annexing over to Seal Store. And so we do have some development agreements in lieu of annexation and some other things. We should be able to get there fairly easily with the annexation practices. Interesting.

What does that obligate us in terms of roads or other services to get out? I mean, I would also want to see a bigger map of like where's the city limits in relation to this.

100%. That would be part of a larger discussion. This is just to determine if we want to have a discussion on municipal management districts for this. Some of the expansion of roadways and water, wastewater, those things that would go into the ROI that we do for any of our annexations at this point. But we would have to look at how far do we need to go, how far are those lines, and then also consider that a lot of that would also be paid for by those bonds to be able to service the development.

Which is probably the incentive part.

Would be in addition to the city taxes to pay for all the rest of the regular city. Right, so their bonding capacity would have to cover their own improvements. Yeah.

So that's how we, I mean, because that's our advantage, right? Because it's like, oh, wait, no, these have to actually pay for the infrastructure that we're looking for out there.

So I want to make sure that I understand the approval process here. So it would have to go through TCEQ and planning and zoning and council before it gets created? Is that correct? Ms. Bailey? Does it have to go through our planning and zoning commission and the council and TCEQ before the MMD gets created?

No, not necessarily. So for development agreements, those only require council, and then the MMD would be able to be created by TCEQ with council approval as well. So it doesn't have to go through planning and zoning? Correct. The annexation and zoning, however, at least the zoning portion would still need to be heard by Planning and Zoning. So when it is annexed, it would follow the typical development process you see for anything in cities. So we would have the public hearings and invite the public to come speak and the neighbors that would be in the area.

So this looks pretty well drawn out already. Would you anticipate this coming forward as a PUD?

Most likely. With the mix of uses, you can see on the right side of your screen the darker red orange those colors that's all commercial so likely you would end up having that planned unit development just for the mix of uses that we would have and then the interface between the uses plus the residential and there are a few holdouts there for potential city involvement as well for city acreage and and to be clear we don't have to get legislative approval for any of this You don't have to, but that is one of the avenues the developer could pursue.

And let's be clear about that because I have a client who had an issue because somebody went to their state senator to file a bill to create a district as opposed to going to the city on it. So the developer, him or herself, could do that. But we as an entity, if we work together right there, we do not have to deal with the legislature dealing with the bill and doing that and being forced on us for a better life.

You mentioned the possibility of city infrastructure. This is pretty far out there. Would we envision like a police substation or something out in this area?

It is something to be considered. Obviously, that would change the capital improvement program. So it would certainly be something that we would need to look at a little bit further in the coming years. But typically, I know with these, you usually have about 10 years to act on if you want to take over the property or not. And that has been the standard. The other is that this is not in our water CCN. It is in our wastewater.

Oh, okay. It's in our wastewater. Which water CCN is it in?

Is it not Manville? It is. Is it Aquamanville?

Aquine Manville?

Aquine Manville.

Are they looking at trying to get rid of some?

There was something in here about saying the city to take assignment of the contract and be the retail provider of water.

Oh, that's part of it?

No.

Oh, okay. It's a deal point that they would be in our system, one of the deal points.

Yeah, it certainly thinks that we can all, everything is pretty much on the table for negotiation. Those are attached to your work session packet and then we'll be able to negotiate.

And just to be clear, Ashley, If that's one of the deal points, it would be them going to Manville slash Aqua as opposed to us going to them saying too bad, so sad. Okay.

Well, obviously we have the developer here. Would you like to come up and clarify anything? Is he a lawyer? He's been working on it. I don't know. He's not a lawyer. I don't know what I hear from him.

Mr. Tiemann, feel free to come forward.

Don't make up any legal terms that you don't know.

I can kind of give an overview first. Good evening. First, thanks for having me, Mayor, Council. So the idea is you guys have a proposal and I came up with the idea of an MMD because it's essentially, in my mind, a more commercial-friendly type of special-purpose financing. A MUD can do a lot of things, but an MMD, they can do commercial assessments. They can reimburse the developers for some of the commercial things. So I think there's more tools in the toolkit, if you may, to incentivize commercial development, which I see is a good possibility out here, capturing The arterial and the 973 intersection, I think, is a big deal. That's a big deal for us. We obviously have other residential that we can build, so we're not going to try to slam a bunch of single family right up against the road. And then I would say that single entity, in terms of what you want to annex, why don't you just stay in ETJ mode? And I think single entity permitting road impact fees aside. But with a single entity permitting, it's a lot faster. And I don't know, I can't explain to you if Pflugerville or Travis County is more difficult on the commercial side, but I can tell you Pflugerville is faster. So speed is helpful. And then PUD is an opportunity for us to think outside the box. So, hey, what do we want this to look like? Kind of make it something unique. You know, the street scene is, we spend a lot of time on the land plan, which we're not married to, of course, because really the seal road alignment drives a lot here.

A road apparently some council members need to drive on more.

So, but we have kind of the roundabout, which Travis County hates roundabouts, or sorry, does not like, or I don't know. They're not a fan of roundabouts, so I've been told. I'm trying to work on that. But, you know, who's ever heard of the term, like, covered land play? Covered land play, like a, covered land play would be like, you use a land for a, um, you use land for a purpose, like a golf, I don't use golf, that's a bad example, like a storage unit or something that's lower intensity use and in the future it can be taken out and something else. Oh, converted into, yeah, okay. So the way that I have the commercial thought out is the retail's pushed up front, there's parking lot behind, you know, in the future maybe there's an opportunity to do a parking garage. It's just like, I'm probably close to end of life here, but parking garage. Parking garage, and then you can add more stuff on. And all you need is the D word. It's not data center's domain. But if you look at the domain, the way it developed was there's lots of parking lots, and those get kind of filled in, but they start off with all the things close to the road. Granted, structured parking, you have to have pretty high rents to support that.

Matt, how far are we... Melody asked a good question. Since we can't zoom out, how far are we from, I guess, 290 and 973 right here? It's about the midpoint.

So the midpoint between, like, you know, I would call it Bryce's Crossing is where 1660 and 973 is. So, like, when we envision this, like, we'd love to have HEB come knock on our door. I think the radiuses work. if new sweden mud one develops there's some residential out there um you know the where i think this is a good deal for the city and it's a good deal for us is that we're trying to get to attract some commercial which brings sales tax and last time i checked the legislature is not going after sales tax or going after ad valorem taxes so um There is some downside to us because when you typically do an ETJ MUD, it'll be like $0.95 of tax rate. And the way that a MUD works is there's $0.95 rate. It's voted in. There's a bond authorization just like you guys have for a GEO bond. And then as you issue debt, the portion of the tax rate will go to, they'll take some of that tax rate and go over to debt service. And so in this instance, I think our total tax rate. So just to be clear, what we're asking for is a rebate on the city's portion of the INS and then the MMD is stacked on top of that. Okay, so it's in the city and then it's like Falcon Point, but there's no TERS. And you might say, why are you doing this versus a TIF MMD? And the reason, I think, is it's just cleaner. It's simpler. Like, there's not two boards. There's one board, you know, in there, and it's a contractual assignment of those taxes every year to the MMD, and they can issue debt on that. Now, there's obviously a defined timeframe on the tax rate, but that's the idea. And that's how we came up with it.

Interesting.

But it is, I mean, my opinion is I would prefer elected directors versus council-appointed directors just because, and I don't know the exact law on it. Please don't quote me. I know in a mud you've got to be a resident.

Would that tell you about the same legal terms? You don't know.

I said I'm not a lawyer. The best thing I have is the council we have on this is ABHR, Allen, Boone, Humphreys, and I don't know what they are stands for. But I think they can be, in an MMD, I think they could be agents of the commercial tracks too, not necessarily just a live-in resident.

So I think there's a little bit more.

So it would make sense that maybe there's a resident, maybe there's a commercial representative on the MMD board or something like that. And then there has to be some I don't know the exact process to levy an assessment. And so I need to dive more into that. I know that it's, I'm not an expert on it, but it's a levying assessment. It seems like to me an easy, a way to control, a way to pay for the drainage that's related to commercial, any sort of private road maintenance, landscaping, things like that. So that's kind of that's and i don't know how like for example stone hill does it i don't know how they're managing all of the common infrastructure and landscaping but this seems like an opportunity to do that so make sure it pays for itself as opposed to us sending our staff down there i don't know i don't know how you pay for the landscaping stone hill line i believe that's a property management yeah they might have like a property owners association um So I think, you know, helpful that I'm not asking for any sales tax or anything like that. That's kind of where, I guess, the upside is you get out there. We're somewhat pioneering to get out there with commercial, and it might take a while.

So the reality of the situation is that given the... the limits the ledge have put on us, how easily could we go out there otherwise with that? Well, let me ask you this, just to be blunt. Why would you do this if you're saying there are other ways that are, you know, that are either better for me from a financial standpoint or easier to manage than trying to get something like this done?

So, I guess, well, there's people that... that I work with that don't like the idea, to be honest with you.

Could one of them be your father? Yes.

But I think it's the commercial standpoint, easier permitting. I say easier, just one, it's easier to talk to one person versus two, and you go back and forth, and now you're interpreting two sets of rules. There's some advantages. Pflugerville doesn't have water quality right now. I don't know if you're planning on adding it, but doesn't have water quality. Travis County has waterway setbacks. So you're losing some developable area to that. And time value money. Like, time is money. I know that sounds crazy, but somebody shows up and they want to do a project and they give you a year to execute. Like, unless you have a preliminary plan and a construction plan and something, like, it's going to take a while in Travis County to get it done. That's not a knock on them. reality maybe it's their workload, but So for the number of employees they have work money, I think flexibility to do something cool with the PUD if it's a PUD or PUD but You know, we'd like to we'd like to be able to to manage that and to be clear. I We want the PUD to be reviewed and somewhat figured out and to be in a draft exhibit in the agreement. I know you can't, it has to go through P&Z and all that, but I don't want, all due respect, I'd rather not agree to the deal and then go to the PUD and we don't get what we want or whatever. I'd like this to be a collaborative process leading up to the DA, if that makes sense. That's fair.

So are the improvements for Seal Road, is that part of the infrastructure that would be covered by the MMD, or would that be responsibility of the city?

So our proposal is that we do a TIA, and then we figure out what mitigation. There's some stuff here that says initially construct half of Seal Road and then extend the other two lanes. Whenever the other two lanes get there, or you know essentially we're going to do a traffic study and I don't know if we build it all together but the idea is to our development is taking care of the seal road portion and maybe some a little bit of extension in the development the full the full four lanes and you can understand from our standpoint and we've said stuff to the county is that it's already

I mean, I hate to say this, but it's already been too, it's already late on Seal Road, given the amount of traffic that we see every single day on that road.

I agree, especially with, I think there was some work going on, was it Jesse Bowles? Yeah. It was closed down, there was a ton of traffic on Seal, so. And remember, there's not a lot, I mean, we might get, there's a lot of cut-through traffic that comes down Row Lane and Seal Road that's coming from, I don't know where, but.

I was very surprised during our latest winter storm. I had no idea that they had closed completely Cameron Road from Seal. So people who were in our neighborhoods on Carmel, they couldn't... No, not Carmel. What's... Lenar Homes. Oh, Middle Ark. Middle Ark. They couldn't get out. I had no idea. I was like, yeah, they actually closed it right by Seal's store. Because of, I guess, there was some ice or whatever was going on over there from there as well. So... Interesting.

So to talk about the water real fast, so there's 308 acres that are part of the original New Sweden Mud II that are in Aqua CCN, and then there's a 58-acre piece in the northeast corner in the western kind of, it looks like a triangle with a knife edge on it. It's 112 acres. Those two pieces are in Manville CCN. So I originally went to Aqua and asked for a wholesale contract, and They did a feasibility study and they approved it or they sent their approval letter and then there was an agreement that they sent over. And so we've been working on that. And then I was having a discussion with Manville and if you guys don't know, they have a 30-inch line coming in from somewhere east. It hits Blugerville along Cameron Road south of St. John's United Methodist. I think it turns into 24. So they're going to turn that line north along Cameron Road. And we're working with them to do a pump station on the western edge of this track. So there's going to be two 24-inch lines from Manville.

Where would that pump station be?

Kind of in the vicinity of the... There's a little blue dot

This? Oh wait, he can't see what I'm doing.

Yeah, it's basically the western, right up against the floodplain on the western side. So that's, Manville, I don't know if you know, but Manville's not, I mean they might be selling water to cities, but they're not doing wholesale contracts anymore for muds.

Why is that the case?

What's that?

Why is that the case?

I don't, I don't know. Okay, go ahead. I don't know, to be honest with you.

It's just a different way to sell water. Oh my God, keep tap dancing. Alright, keep going.

Either way, if it's Manville Retail, I'm not asking the city to take over a Manville Retail system. It'd be Manville Retail. If it was Ock, I'm like, hey, this is... Whenever you get into an in-city district, an MMD or a MUD, and they're trying to run their water system with... city and you know it gets it gets there ends up being too much operations and maintenance expenses on the district to support that with all the taxes that makes sense it's easier for the city to do it I know that if it's like an ETJ mud it has their own wholesale contract they've got their own infrastructure it makes more sense for them to run that's just that's my opinion but either way I'm not sure what they're going to come back with. So right now we're doing a Manville feasibility study to see what they want. And we've submitted like according to ESD 2 for fire flow. So commercial takes a lot more robust water system. Residential is 1,000 gallons per minute for an hour. And commercial I think is like 2,000 gallons a minute for maybe two to three or maybe four hours. It comes out to like a half a million or a million gallon elevated tank. It's pretty big. Depending on whether or not they want to go with an elevated tank or they want to go with a ground storage tank with pumps. So either way, I think we might end up paying for a water tower. We'll for sure end up paying for a water tower if it's aqua. Yeah, you will. There is a water tower out there. It's got a happy face on it. But it's not really.

It was in the Transformers movie. Transformers 4.

Not super helpful for Fireflow or a lot of other things.

It's white. I think it's white.

Any other questions for the developer?

If you can call him that.

I guess to land the plane here, I've talked about this deal for a while with several of you. I think that we're interested in doing it, but, you know, again, time is money, so I'm kind of getting a feel of are you receptive to this proposal? And I don't think there's any action to be taken on this item. It's just discuss only. But that's kind of where we are. It's a policy decision to staff's credit. It's kind of a new thing. It's outside the box. So I guess I'm saying some direction would be nice. I appreciate it, Mr. Tiemann.

Yeah, from a policy perspective, I don't have any objection to an MMD. I don't know if a MUD or a TERS would be more or less appropriate. An MMD doesn't worry me. The extent of the ad valorem rebate concerns me a bit. That feels like it could be excessive. I think we need to understand the ROI on the development. in order to make sure we can go forward. And you make an interesting point about the sales tax. I almost wonder if there's a scenario where we can rebate an amount equivalent to a portion of the ad valorem based on the sales tax revenue from the parcel to ensure that we... Let me put it this way. To incentivize you to ensure that the commercial gets built quickly. Because that would be... if we're trying to get that as a benefit i want to incentivize it as as a benefit so that's that's my feedback on it council any other feedback from policy perspective concerns or apprehension on an mmd i think from my standpoint mayor what i love about this is that we're having the discussion and we can help shape to what it is as opposed to some of the boxes that we are in

That's what we want with that. I think the reality of the situation is that we've been hamstrung by the ledge regarding how to get out there. And we know that we've been saying it for, I feel like, it's not a decade, close to a decade, that our portion of 973, we need to shape it 973 before it shapes us. And the biggest concern is seeing... I guess I'm going this way, so I might as well say it out loud. What Maynard has done. I mean, Maynard has, I mean, they are blowing and going over on this side. And it is quite astonishing to see how they're defining the actual corridor. And then Taylor, you know, what's going on out there with Samsung, how they're finding it from their end right there as well. So what does that ultimately look like? And how else do we get out to 973? to put our flag to try to see what we can establish and work from that. I like the idea of incentivizing some business out there. I like the idea of redevelopment. Like, hey, listen, we put something out there now, but what can it ultimately go ahead and come to fruition on? I just want to better understand the legal parameters and what what we can or can't do, what we can or can't establish here to better ascertain this. But I love the idea and I love the concept. And I left you a softball on this, but I hate you so much, but I'll bring it up personally. I mean, you grew up here. This is your community. This is where you grew up. You and your family completely over and over again show how much you care about Pflugerville in a lot of different ways and a lot of different approaches right there as well. Y'all need to help our football team because they need to make sure they do well in the playoffs. That's another story. But the reality of the situation is I appreciate that and I understand that you're coming from that standpoint, that you want to see Pflugerville do well because you and your family are Pflugerville. I get that.

Thank you.

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

We're both deaf. We can't hear you.

What?

All right, let's start with Cesar.

You said you put in an application for a man bill. Do you know when that's supposed to come back? Do you have a timeline on that?

Yes, sir. So, officially, August 21st, the feasibility is supposed to be complete. They have Kimley Horn doing it. But, you know, hopefully by the end of the summer, we know which way. And then it's... Once that's done, to be honest with you, it's kind of a which one is more economic for us because I'm going to have to go to one or the other and get out of their CCN. You would like that to be negotiated, not an expedited release. So it was weird, ACWA, when I went to the board meeting, which is fun, you should go to one, and then they said ACWA called them and asked them if they wanted to serve this whenever we were doing our feasibility. So I don't know if ACWA is just going to let it go or what.

Okay.

I just want to echo and amplify what Councilman Matera said. Because I know that there's concern up here on the dais from those of us who don't know you as well as Councilman McHare does. And I think there's concern in the general public about cutting special deals for developers. And we all know that some developers, they're just here for one deal and then they're gone. They're here to make a fast buck and they don't have concerns for the long-term well-being of . And I think it's important for the folks up here and the folks out there to understand that the Tiemann family has been committed to Pflugerville for a very long time. If you live in or near anything that has Black Hawk in the title, you owe that to, in large part, to the very hard work for many, many decades of the Tiemann family. And if you think that the Black Hawk developments are good developments, well, Your family is largely responsible for that. And there are, as a result of the many decades of dedication that your family has brought to Pflugerville, I think it's entirely reasonable for Pflugerville to show your family and your companies a level of flexibility and deference that is a little bit higher than what we would give to some fly-by-night developer who came in from far distant lands and said, hey, I've got this one great idea, and then I'm going to leave Pflugerville in five years and you'll never hear from me again. This is obviously something you've been working on for a long time, and it's part of a very complex and well-designed series of projects. And I want to thank you for all of the work that you and your family and your company do. You have great people. Thank you, sir.

Any further direction, discussion?

No. Mike, if you just can get us something from a legal standpoint, we'll get it. Thanks, bud.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Damon. Thank you, Ms. Bailey. That brings us, let's see, we've got 13 minutes, 12 minutes. Items 3D is discussion regarding July 4th city events. All right. David, I believe you requested this be on the agenda.

I've got some questions about that. Before I do that, I want to pass down, I did go to several different AIs and have them give me some information.

Mr. Rogers, did you want to talk about it now with 12 minutes? I think this is going to take more than 12 minutes.

Is this going to take more than 12 minutes?

I don't know that it will.

You don't think so?

Okay.

i was trying to give you more time thank you so um i have a couple of questions david i think you passed out the wrong thing this is this is about roadway impact people this is we talked about what we impact fees earlier and i talked about how to So we're on item 3D discussion regarding July 4 city limits. I'm just giving you that for background. It's not directly relevant.

This isn't for the item we're discussing.

This is not for the item we're discussing. I'm sorry, I meant to pass that up when we were discussing that earlier. Background for you guys, read, consider, digest, throw it in the trash, whatever you want to do. But I do think that it's useful information when we're talking about roadway impact fees, which obviously will come up again in future sessions. So... have a couple of questions so I and some other council members and some other members of the public have gone you know dug through some of the video of our discussions about the budget and July 4th and from what I've been able to determine The council only talked about the July 4th celebrations twice. And I want to know, is that correct? Am I missing something? Do we have more than two discussions ever about the July 4th celebrations from the Dias?

I'm assuming you're asking staff. I'm asking staff. I know of two.

I know of two. I'm aware of the June 24th comment regarding the budget. Right. And on March 24th, I believe. That's correct. When I expressed my intent.

I just want to make sure.

Oh, wait. Yeah. In the March 24th meeting where I expressed my expectation that there would be fireworks.

Right. Yeah. Okay. Were there any other conversations from the dais that I'm missing?

Nothing that I found. Not that we're aware of.

Okay. I was afraid that that was the case. Okay. The folks up here have heard me talk about the Gospel of John 8, 32. Now, those who bleed orange know that there's only one excerpt from the Gospel that is on a building at the University of Texas. It's on the south facade of the main building. And it says, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Law school. Oh, the law school had one, too? In fact, as a seven-year-old, the very first time I saw that verse was on the main building at the University of Texas. Before I read it in the Bible, I read it in stone. at the tower. I hold the pursuit of truth to be the highest virtue. But it's only one of many. And as my Rotarian friends remind me, it's not enough that a statement be true in order to justify speaking it aloud. Rotarians have a credo about that. before speaking, ask first, is it true? First question, is it true? Second question, is it fair? Third, will it build goodwill and better friendships? And fourth, will it be beneficial? So in thinking about this, I've considered all of those things. Particularly, will it be beneficial and is it true? I'm going to say some things that are painful. But I think leadership requires us to tell the truth. And it also requires us not just to identify problems, but to identify solutions. And I have proposed jointly with Councilmember Ryan and Kauffman some solutions. But here's the truth. By failing to recognize and celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding, we failed the city. Everyone here, everyone on the dais, everyone in senior leadership, I do not exempt myself from responsibility, though Councilmember Ryan and I voted against the budget that eliminated funding for fireworks. And I grant Councilmember Ruiz grace because he was not at the presentation where for seven seconds, one time, We were told that there was a cut in funding for the fireworks in the middle of a very long presentation about many budget items Including the cost of health care for our employees, which was a very very large budget item That councilman Ruiz was unaware of the budget cut and that the remaining council members were also unaware was reinforced by watching the video of the discussion of the March 24th, 2026 meeting, which Mayor Weiss referenced just a minute ago, between the Council and the Pflugelville Veterans Advisory Task Force, and then Deputy City Manager Hartshorn was on the dais, and PVAT and Councilman Ruiz, raised the notion of doing a more extensive July 4th celebration for our nation's 250th birthday. No one from staff mentioned at that time that the July 4th celebrations had been completely defunded. To quote Councilman Ruiz, This is our nation's 250th anniversary, people. There are no do-overs. Now, Pflugerville has conveyed to our community that we just don't care to celebrate our country, our independence, and most of all, the very people that have put their lives on the line to ensure we have the freedoms we enjoy, our veterans. I think that is particularly egregious in a city like ours, where approximately 15% of the population lives in a household with a veteran. Again, to quote Councilman Ruiz, as a veteran, I understand that fireworks do not equal patriotism, but this is our 250th, and we couldn't even offer an alternative to the fireworks. This milestone deserved a thoughtful celebration of our country and our community. If fireworks were no longer an option, I struggle to understand why we did not pursue meaningful alternatives, such as a concert, a patriotic celebration, a family event, or another community gathering. I also understand, and I think Councilman Ruiz is correct in the statement, that budget concerns require trade-offs. My concern is not simply about $25,000, $50,000. It's about priorities, communication, and the lack of a contingency plan for such a significant occasion.

Can I ask a question? For clarity. May I ask a question, sir?

Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am.

I just wanted to ask you, where did those quotes come from exactly? If you could be clear about that. I know they came from him.

Yeah.

Social media or on the dais?

Council Member Ruiz shared this commentary directly with the city manager and the members of the council. I do not believe that Councilmember Ruiz made these comments public, but he did give me permission to quote them.

I just wanted clarity on that.

Again, to further quote Councilmember Ruiz, we regularly allocate public resources to celebrate and recognize a variety of important events and observances throughout the year. Given the significance of our nation's 250th anniversary, I believe it is reasonable to ask why we were unable to find the resources or develop an alternative celebration for this milestone. This question deserves an honest answer. We deserve this answer. Now, I feel bad about this. And frankly, I think if you don't feel bad about the fact that we neglected our nation's 250th anniversary, you don't belong We, we are all guilty of failing Flutterville. Now this failure is so grave that at least two council members have or are considering resigning. Now I'm unaware of any other failure in the history of the city of Flutterville that has produced such a response. So what do you do when you've wronged someone? or in this case, more than 69,000 someones. You express sincere regret, you make amends, and you take steps to make sure it never happens again. So tonight, I apologize to the citizens of Pflugerville, young and old. I voted against this mistake when I voted against this budget, but I do not exempt myself from responsibility. While council member Ryan and I voted against the budget that eliminated the funding for fireworks, leadership requires more than casting one no vote. When council later restored more than $180,000 to parks programs, more than three times what the fireworks show would have cost, there was an opportunity there had communication been more clear. Though the city manager has authority to spend what a fireworks show costs without council approval, I should have pushed my fellow council members harder to make certain that the 250th anniversary fireworks program was part of that restoration of parks programs. Now let me say, the buck stops at the top. The ultimate responsibility for this failure is with the mayor and the council. But the failure was not only at the council level. The city charter requires that all cuts in city programs be identified in writing in the budget message to the city council from the city manager, and it does not appear that this was done. By failing to properly and appropriately inform the council of this decision, city management has failed in its duty to not make council look like idiots. I commend council members Kaufman and Ryan for their engagement on social media, speaking out on this issue. But I think it's clear from the public response that there is a non-trivial proportion of the people in the city of Pflugerville who think that we do, in fact, look like idiots. This experience shows where our process has fallen short. The proposed elimination of fireworks was mentioned briefly. Again, I want to emphasize this, for seven seconds. Watch the video over and over again. I timed it. Seven seconds. During one budget presentation, it was not identified in the written budget message or elsewhere in the written budget materials presented to city council by staff. As a result, a very important community decision did not receive the attention and deliberation and discussion it deserved. Decisions of this significance should be clearly documented, openly discussed, and fully understood before a budget is adopted. When Councilmember Ryan and I and Kauffman talk about transparency, this is exactly what we mean. Transparency is not simply making information available somewhere, it is making certain that important information is communicated clearly enough that the council can make informed decisions and the public can understand those decisions. Asking questions so that important information is clearly communicated is not, as some has claimed, some form of Spanish inquisition. That disrespectful and unwarranted disparagement is grossly inappropriate and smacks of prejudice and ignorance. Asking difficult questions is our duty. It is a necessary prerequisite to, as John said, knowing the truth which will set us free. Leadership is not just about acknowledging mistakes and asking difficult questions. Leadership also requires proposing solutions. And that is why Councilman Ryan and Kaufman and I have proposed charter amendments and ordinances to strengthen transparency and accountability. These proposals include clarifying the Charter's reporting requirements for significant park programs and events, along with broader transparency and accountability measures to help ensure that important decisions are clearly documented, discussed and understood before they are made. I hope my fellow council members will join us in giving the voters the opportunity to decide these improvements, or at least in enacting them in ordinances to build a stronger process for the future. Now, everything I have said believe is true and if John 832 is to be believed this truth will set us free not because the truth is easy but because it gives us the opportunity to acknowledge our mistakes to accept responsibility and to do better in the future that is my hope for this council and for our community we cannot change what happens We will never have a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country in this city. But we can learn from this mistake. We can strengthen the way we govern and move forward with greater honesty, transparency, and trust. Thank you for indulging me. And thank you for allowing me to serve. and I hope that we will all do better.

Mayor. Thank you, David. Appreciate you for those very powerful words. Thank you for your statement. We have gone long over the work session. We did run a bit over. I imagine we'll revisit this. Some folks probably have additional comments they'd like to make. We'll revisit this in the regular session. Time is 7.06. The work session is adjourned. We'll move directly into... Let's do it. Our regular meeting. So there you go. The time is 7.06. We will convene our regular meeting of the Pflugerville City Council on this Tuesday, July 28, 2026. If you would join me for a moment by rising to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, as well as the Pledge of Allegiance to the Texas flag, and please remain standing following that 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 pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible. Thank you. Please take your seats. This brings us to a public comment on our agenda. 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 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. I have two Statements wishing to two people wishing to make a public comment and I'll call others following this miss miss Sarah Williams If you come forward you'll have three minutes to speak

Hi, y'all. My name is Sarah Williams. I am a new resident of Pflugerville. We moved here buying our first home in February. So I'm really grateful to get to meet you all and for this opportunity to speak. I'm also a local nurse, and I'm really invested in public safety and public health. I know it's not up on the agenda today, but I wanted to leave you with some comments that are deeply concerning to me. So I didn't know about the flock cameras or the Axon cameras that are equipped around town and that surveillance is being deployed here. I honestly can say I don't know if I would have bought a home in Pflugerville if I had. This technology, unfortunately, has been used in its actual uses in deeply disturbing ways. These companies want us to believe that mass surveillance catches criminals when the data nationally shows that the crimes that it claims to solve would have been solved without its aid. It's just another bolstering piece of evidence, but those criminals would have been brought to justice and that it's largely non-violent crime. What this technology has been used for includes the employees of Flock using live surveillance of children's play areas including gymnasiums and pools to do sales demonstrations. At least 18 known instances of officers across the nation have used these flock and similar products to keep tabs on romantic interests and their exes. In fact, one officer accessed this footage of a woman he was stalking over 400 times. A sheriff's office here in Texas actually used the searches of these footage to track down women who were seeking life-saving medical care, viewing over 83,000 networks across multiple states to try to penalize someone for accessing life-saving health care. These cameras have been wrong. There was a man that was pulled over when his license plate was misread. A seven became a two. The traffic stop led to a brutal police encounter where a dog attacked him and he was hospitalized, leaving an innocent man brutalized. There's really no independent audit system for these. In fact, it's been noted that these abuses are only the tip of the iceberg, that until someone complains, they don't know that they were inappropriately surveilled. In fact, it's been quoted, abuse goes undetected until they bring complaint up, and these avenues for recourse are becoming increasingly absent. They don't want us to know what people are looking up on these cameras, and they're very easy to hack into for anyone with strong computer skills. I'd like to thank both Doug Weiss and Jonathan Kaufman for responding to my email that I reached out about when I first moved here and noticed these cameras specifically in Moose Park near my home. Actually passed three of them on my daily commute. The Moose Park one points directly at a playground and knowing how sensitive the information of our neighbors and their children are, the times that they play, If they are with a trusted adult or if they bike there themselves, I really don't think that we should open up the door for folks who might seek to harm local children to have easy access to that kind of surveillance and information. I really hope that in the future when flock cameras come up for renewal that everyone would vote no on using these tools in our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Williams. We also have Andrew Sobok.

Good evening, council. My name is Andrew Sobeck. I am also here to talk about the flock safety cameras. I know the contract is up for review soon. Obviously, they are intrusive, they are dystopian, they are government overreach, and we as Texans are particularly sensitive to that. Seeing how many are facing children's parks is quite concerning, especially with these documented cases of women being stalked. I understand as the technology gets cheaper and AI brings about new capabilities that there's this temptation to want to spy on us, but it creates a bad imbalance of power. And this is a solvable problem, but so far I think that's been insufficiently met. First, this needs to be consensual. Any surveillance contract should have public approval. Also, in order to maintain consent, we need to be able to revoke consent at any time. Citizens need a quick way to get rid of these cameras and not wait for something bad to happen or have some quick response when something bad does happen. I think that we need some way of petitioning to remove these, just like we have other ways of petitioning for recall. I think we could do the same thing here. Second, we need transparency, and what I think that looks like is real-time public audit logs. We should all be able to look and see who is searching for what and when and why. I think that this would help prevent abuse before it occurs, and that way we're also not waiting on the sidelines for some sort of internal investigation if some abuse does occur. We, us Texans, want to have a good relationship with our police, but we cannot have a good relationship if it's built on an extreme imbalance of power. We need accountability, we need transparency, we need consent in order to have a good relationship. And I think it's the responsibility of our city government to facilitate that good relationship. I'll ask you all to cancel the contract and figure out a privacy policy that we can all agree on. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Silvak.

Is there anyone else from the public wishing to speak during public comment? Seeing none, we will move forward with item number four. That is our consent agenda. Council, do we have any items to be pulled from the consent agenda? For Charlie, for Delta, anyone else? All right, Trista, would you read the agenda for us?

Absolutely. Item 4A, ordinance on second reading with a caption reading, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Pflugerville, Texas, accepting and improving the Tourism Public Improvement District Final Service Plan for the district assessment rate and assessment role, appropriating $361,000 in revenue to the district for the fiscal year 2027, and to include in fiscal year 2027 the new Tourism Public Improvement District Special Revenue Fund, providing other matters related to the subject.

again items 4c and 4d have been removed from the consent agenda all remaining items may be acted upon in a single motion second i have a motion from david and second from rudy you will need to pull the screens down to refresh the page

If he does blow on it a couple of times.

Like the video game cartridge.

Get all the dust out of there.

All right. Motion passes unanimously. How old are you? That brings us to Item 5, our public hearings. Item 5A is to conduct a public hearing on water and wastewater impact fee audit results. Tracy.

Yes, getting new mayor and council, Tracy Waldron, city finance director. Yes, so we initiated an impact fee audit for water and wastewater fees due to the initiation of the water and wastewater impact fee study. This is a new requirement by local government code 395. It is a required action prior to increasing any existing fee. This audit spanned from October of 2014 to September of 2025, so it was a 10-year look back on these fees. So some of the results that the audit identified prior to fiscal 24, these fees were not maintained at the service level. This is occurring currently. And there were a few calculation errors identified and a small variance in reconciliation. Overall, though, I did participate in the 10-year audit. It's a lot of data and going back 10 years, We've changed our processes over 10 years, and so I'm still pleased with the outcome of the audit, but that is my presentation.

So when you discussed and you articulated that prior to FY24, these fees were not maintained at the service level. I'm actually trying to figure out who's still here. So part of the conversation was the fact that our service to entities outside of our city limits was not necessarily at the same level as it was. I'm trying to think who would know this.

It was really just the separation of the funds, and now they're being separated completely and being tracked at each service level within the water and wastewater service areas. That's really what we're referring to.

It's just wastewater service area one and two, and there's just one service area for water. Correct. Okay.

All right. Any questions from council? This is a public hearing. Is there anyone from the public wishing to speak on this item?

Move to close the public hearing. Second.

I have a motion from Jonathan, a second from Kimberly to close the public hearing. Mr. Ruiz has stepped away from the dais. Motion passes unanimously. That was only a public hearing item 5 B is to conduct a public hearing on water waste and wastewater impact updates to land use assumptions capital improvements and impact fees Yes, so similar to the the other impact fees something that I proposed not making any changes to or bring it back to you next year All right, so in that case we do not need to You can still hold the public hearing if you want if there's anyone here that wants to Is there anyone from the public wishing to speak on this item?

Move to close the public hearing.

Second. I have a motion and a couple of seconds. I'll let you choose.

Somebody's listening to Kim.

Motion passes unanimously. That brings us to item six. Item six is our first supplemental agenda. On our first supplemental agenda, we have to discuss and consider action to approve an ordinance on first reading with the caption reading, an ordinance of the city of Pflugerville, Texas, ordering a special election on proposed amendments to the Home Rule Charter.

Any presentation on this item? This is just bringing back what you all agreed to at the last meeting. There was a couple Not typos, but things that we corrected from Council Member Ryan's email that aligned with what y'all are wanting. So with those changes.

So you did make updates after the draft that you sent us?

So there was the one. I think it was procedure instead of proceed. Yeah, procedure instead of proceed. And then like may instead of projected.

Projected instead of project.

Right, right. Yeah. And then like on the appointing an ETJ member. I think the language changed from shall to may or something like that. To allowed. So it's discretionary, right. Required to allowed. To allowed. So for some reason you couldn't find somebody, you could still have your right.

Which made sense. Which both meet the intent. Yeah, that makes sense. That's what we talked about.

I didn't think we said there must be an ETJ on every commission.

I said so.

How many years? I know.

Long time coming.

Move to approve?

Second. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve. That ends our supplemental agenda. It takes us to item 7, our regular agenda. 7A is to discuss and consider action to approve the procurement and installation of air-cooled HVAC units for the electrical buildings located at the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant in the amount of $299,450.50 and authorize the City Manager to execute the same. Ms. Granger. That's it.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Shelby Granger, Assistant Director of Water Operations. We are asking that you consider acting on the purchase and install of AC units for the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant. We're currently running into issues with the chiller units that are installed currently. To date, we've spent $130,000 in repair and rental units to keep those buildings cool.

Can you make sure you say that louder?

Can you say that again? $130,000 to keep those operational. And so when you come to electrical buildings at pump stations or utilities facilities, those rooms have to be cool 24-7. If something goes down, we have to get a rental on site immediately. And they have to put up with a lot of heat from those electrical parts that are installed and drives and whatnot. So this is us getting ahead of let's not continue making repairs and make the purchase to make this a permanent move.

So let's just be clear, ma'am. You're saying that we've almost spent almost half the amount it would take to actually buy new ones to do the repairs. So in your estimate, you've done your fiscal responsibility and due diligence to bring us something presentation to have a lasting presence in there.

And they're asking for 70,000 additional to continue to make repairs. So we are on rental units right now, which is why this is such a critical item.

Let me ask one question real quick. You mentioned the existing units are chillers. These are air-cooled. Why the move from chillers to air-cooled?

Currently, we have three electrical buildings. Each building requires 10,000 gallons of potable water a day to run those units. Additionally, the major issue we're seeing with the units failing is those lines freezing, even though they're insulated. With the winter storms we've been seeing and whatnot, we get so many piping breaks, and as soon as you have any plumbing issues with that, the unit goes down. It can take days to get somebody out again.

Chillers are the worst.

Was that recycled water or just per day?

Right now it's potable water. It is potable water.

Was that water recycled or were you actually having to draw 10? We were having to draw that water. It's a mess.

So this will be This won't require the same level of water. Correct. It won't, no.

No water at all. Correct. I don't know that much about HVACs.

Fair.

The air-cooled will draw more electricity, as I understand it.

I do not know the specs on the specific unit, electrical versus the two, but that wouldn't necessarily surprise me.

All right.

I would like to make a motion to approve a seminar.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Mayor, I've watched the movie Weird Science and Back to the Future, so I understand the electrical aspect.

Motion passes unanimously. That brings us to item 7B, to discuss and consider action to approve the procurement of two influent lift station pumps for the central wastewater treatment plant in the amount of $143,000 and authorize the city manager to execute the same.

So these two lift station pumps are replacements. It's not something we're adding on to the system. We had two pumps fail this year. So we always have a spare on site. It's a part of a resiliency and redundancy requirement. So one of these will be a direct replacement of a pump that we have offline right now. So we usually have five pumps available. We have four right now. And then the second pump will act as a backup redundancy. And this, just so you all know, is at the central wastewater treatment plant. So it's what pumps our wastewater up to start the treatment process.

Mayor, would you take a motion? Certainly. Motion to approve. 7B is presented.

Did I have a second? Yeah. Sorry, that time I couldn't hear.

It's contagious.

Motion passed unanimously. Before we make it through our repeated items, I'm going to take us back to the consent agenda and those items pulled. The first item pulled there was item 4C, that is weight room equipment lease agreement with Marathon Fitness Inc. in the amount of $96,765.18 for the first year.

for the monarch recreation center uh david you pulled this item uh do you have specific questions i did uh i want to know uh why we went with this vendor and why we're leasing instead of buying these these pieces of equipment and mayor to to be fair to him um i wanted to get the presentation because i i had a question what i saw in the contract too as well so all right uh david do you restate your question for me Why did we go with this vendor and why are we leasing rather than buying these pieces of equipment?

Is there not enough pelotons for you, Council Member Mateo?

Well, you know. I know these turn over quick, but we have Director Mize here with us. Shane, what can you tell us about this?

Did you give me your shirts back?

We're still going to get you out of here. Okay, okay. We can figure out how to filibuster.

I don't know how to get the... Am I not... Am I doing the presentation or just answering this question?

Yeah, we'll start with the questions. We'll start with the questions for Rudy and then answer my questions along the way.

Okay, so the question's for you. We purchase strength, we lease cardio. Strength lasts for a longer time. There's only a couple bolts that you have to replace if you're ever replacing a nut. or something like that on the pad or the actual strength equipment itself. Cardio itself, I have been into, my dad owned a weight room, my sisters managed facilities, I've managed municipal facilities, and I've had to go in in cardio machines and flip decks, and there are some things you can do if you own those cardio machines outright to extend the lifetime of them. You can do it, and some people do it. Most places don't, though. Most facilities do lease because after a couple years, you want to bring in the new product line. Exactly. versus owning it, nothing makes a facility look less than its competitors than a 10 year old treadmill, even one that runs well, even one that's been well maintained. So the recommendation from me as a staff member, but also from the financial consultant, commercial fitness that the developer paid to have give a recommendation was to purchase Cardio, or purchase street, lease Cardio. They gave us three or four facilities or brands to consider. This was one of the brands pre-court which we had a relationship with and that's why we chose to continue with them off by which is a great company.

Why this brand, this vendor instead of a different vendor? So as far as pre-core?

No, no. Marathon Fitness. Right. So as far as pre-core, the product line only is repped by Marathon Fitness in the state. So you have Matrix, you have Cybex, you have pre-core, you have Lifetime Fitness. Our Life Fitness. I think those were the only. There may have been one more option. But True has a poor commercial line. They're great in hotels. They're great in residential.

Aren't they great in hotels? Well, they're made for the frequency of use at a hotel.

Fair. These commercial lines are great. That's a lawyer. And we had three or four options. Any of these would have worked. I've worked with Precor for a long time. I inherited when I first got here. We use Precor. We go through Marathon and we like their service. We like their sales team. We don't have any problems with the preventative maintenance that we received for the seven or eight years we've used Marathon currently in the Precor line. So the recommendation was to continue using that brand.

So it's primarily experience with this vendor that have been uniformly positive. And Precor is one of the best. They're literally one of the best. And in terms of the price competitiveness, how close are the different vendors?

Yeah, I think all those top brands are priced pretty competitively. It's like a Ford versus a Chevy versus a... Dodge, they all kind of know their market and everyone else's market. I think it's six and one half dozen of the other. At that point, all of them were on buy board, all of them were in a certain range. I don't think this was the most expensive or the cheapest, but it was, I don't think, we didn't take every single one of these product lines through all four options, but when we looked at the buy board pricing structure, they all seemed very similar. All right. We're not buying a Bentley when we need a Ford. No, sir.

I noticed he didn't mention Jeep, and we have great trucks, too, but that's another story. Do you? You know what? You better quit. Slide five, bud. Slide five. Slide five. There you go. Oh, that was Ford. Excuse me. So, city responsibilities. You said exactly what my concern was. So... do we have to do that?

Especially, do we have the skill set to be responsible for our maintenance, repair, and insurance in the term? So the city is responsible for maintenance and repair. We have, with this purchase, preventative maintenance for the first three years. So of this five years, three years is absolutely going to have preventive maintenance with the thing we'll be doing at the last two. If I don't think at that point the staff can handle the last two years of maintenance, and it's not flipping decks, at that point it's like putting a towel under the tread and just running it while we run it, those types of things, then I'll bring back to y'all two more years of preventive maintenance contract that comes out quarterly and maintains these through the life of the lease.

That was literally my only question just given my experience at Jim's. I was like, okay.

We will be doing daily maintenance. We'll be doing checks on those things.

Which is preventative, yeah. But it's very different than, you know, getting into that. Making sure they're running every day. Yeah.

So if you come back to us and you want that contract for the last two years, what's that going to cost us? I'd have to price it out.

I don't think it's, I don't want to project here. I'd have to price it out. This looks like two firework shows every year. Yes, sir.

Approximately.

Yeah.

Mayor, you entertain a motion.

Oh, hold on. I'm sorry. Real quick. So those last two years, we're going to have to buy basically an extended insurance in order for them to do maintenance on something we are leasing. They own it, but we are leasing it. But we have to pay for the maintenance on it.

Because there's a chance that we can do a balloon payment and own these out right after five years. And what I would recommend after five years is we will constantly evaluate usage and continue to move placement. So let's say there's five treadmills, but two are in front of a TV, for example. Those will get spiked in usage. So we will constantly be moving quarterly treadmills. But let's say at the end that we do not want to purchase all new treadmills. We want to keep some. We could balloon payment these and take these on. a couple of them that have the lower usage or whatever and so we could own these outright like we do currently at the rec center the ones that we have now we're owning a couple of these um so uh that that's just how this system works you're you're kind of all right it's kind of like it's industry standard you still do an oil change on a loose vehicle that you have or whatever you know

Yeah, no, that's what I'm thinking of. Most leases, I mean, you're basically, you're renting it and you take it back to them for everything. I know. Yeah. I mean, you don't just say, you know, the engine blows out and it's the manufacturer's problem.

If the engine blows out in the first five years, they're not charging us for it. This is quarterly preventive payment.

So on the invoice, it said it's about $2,100 per quarter.

Okay.

So 8,000.

About 8,000 a year.

So the price might go up.

Sure. The price will go up.

Yes, the price will go up.

It always does. No way.

But it's not extensive. That's Econ 102.

It's not. Would you say that was an Econ 102?

What were you about to say, Rudy?

I don't know. She's got a discussion with us. Motion approved for CS presented. Second.

I have a motion from Rudy, a second from David. Motion passes unanimously. Let's tackle 4D. That's a change order number two in the amount of $12,000 for sound talent and production services associated with the city special events.

My question is real simple. Why? Go ahead, Shane.

Good evening, mayor and council. Welcome, directors and clients.

Have we seen you before? That's right.

Yeah. So if this was a contract that we had done and it wasn't on the approved purchase list, we would be able to move up within, I think, 20 or 25%. But on the APO, it's only 10%. We have to bring it back to you. It's just one of those things that what it costs to offer services, $135,000 for stage, talent, equipment has gone up to, was it 140 something? 148 and so we're just bringing it back to y'all now. We are playing. This is our 50th anniversary of D fest and we've got bitty bitty bonda spasmatics. We got easy band. We've got a bunch of different bands. We got the spasmatics. That's tight. Well, we will. That's legit.

Yeah, we approve it. My understanding of this item is that in order to acquire additional talent for the event, And seeing as we have additional hot tax funds available to spend on this, we have the opportunity to hire additional talent. It's a win-win.

This is all coming out of hot tax money? Yes. Correct me if I'm wrong, don't we have fewer events scheduled for the upcoming fiscal year than we did for the last fiscal year? I think we have about 20.

After you asked me, staff teams me greatly. I appreciated that. But I think it's 25 programs and special events over the course of the year, about 25. And what did we have in the last fiscal year?

About 25. So there's no change? No, sir. We'll see when we get the budget. But we are spending an extra $12,000 on talent fees. Yes, sir. We better get the spasmatics. Yes, sir. All right. Move to approve.

I thought he wanted to talk about the fix. Second. I have a motion from David and a second from Kimberly. Motion passed unanimously. All right. I will return back to the items repeated from our work session agenda. That brings us to six hours So we covered item 7C, item 7D, and item 7E in our work session. We will continue with item 7F, discussion regarding July 4th city events. David, did you have anything to continue?

I have said my piece. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

Other comments, questions from council on July 4th event?

Well, in light of Mr. Rogers' comments about searching for the truth, I'd like to get the truth. What happened? Is that for me? Yes, sir. Okay.

All right. Well, I'll start by saying that this next budget will be the first one with my name on it, and it does have fireworks. So let's start with that one.

That's a good start.

So the other thing I'll say is that I don't want this to come off as excuses, but I think that context is important. Around the March timeframe, we were still engaged with Typhoon Texas. We still thought at the time that they were going to do fireworks. even without our support we also realized what happened in march i got the phone call from matt who'd been on for like three weeks saying that we're going to be out of water in 45 days so immediately in the crisis mode right and we are just now starting to see daylight on that situation many months later so i think that context is important and that had implications for parks it had implications for typhoon texas who now had a very different outlook for revenue, right? Not knowing if they'd be able to open in the summer. So things changed for them. So that's kind of the broader context, right? I think certainly communication could have been enhanced. There's no question about that. I think if any of us could go back in time, we would absolutely have done it. There's no question about that, right? My brother's in the active military right now, right? So all I can say is that It won't happen again. I'm very sorry that we didn't do fireworks as well. And we'll we'll just get better. That's all I can say. Right. I think we'll we will keep communication will be enhanced. I think we have demonstrated an increase in transparency in the way that we're doing financial reporting. We've also implemented a process where in any subcommittee. is also those minutes of those meetings will be reflected in a weekly update. So all those things that are discussed about what we are or are not doing will go in the weekly updates. So there's heightened transparency from that as well. So I think our game plan moving forward, I don't think something like this is ever gonna slip through the cracks again. And like I said, fireworks is in there for 2027. I know it's not the 250th, but that's all we can do is make it right moving forward.

And cuts in any budget will be given to us in writing any any any budget item that is reduced from the previous year because I think if that had been in writing or removed or removed there were so many different ways it could have been brought up that had been in writing I think this entire problem could have been solved but to your point even even writing it once is not enough right I recognize that right it needs to be if it's if it's a service level cut it should be stated more than once and we will absolutely

This year, just a preview of your 27 budget, the main cuts are to personnel, and really our saving grace is creating an enterprise fund for the Monarch that's shifting a lot off of your O&M from your general fund into that fund. That's really our only saving grace because y'all know that our revenue is flat, right?

Yeah.

But so we have, and with PCDC's contribution to supplementing the first few years of the Monarch, that has also saved the day, right? Revenue is super tight, but with those two changes, we're making ends meet and having a fireworks show.

What I would ask is going forward, um, as Mr. Rogers mentioned, this was, we would talk about it. The mayor mentioned it. I mentioned it in March. Um, I think I said something like, uh, I hope we have, uh, we have something big planned for the 4th of July. And you mentioned something about the fireworks. Um, you're at the ship now you're, and this is your helm this year, you know, you're the head of the ship. Now I know things are going to be operating differently. I ask that going forward that for you and your staff, if something like that comes up and y'all catch it, please let you know and you let us know. Because the whole room, nobody in this entire room said anything. And I just, I have a hard time believing that nobody caught that. Nobody said, oh, crap, we don't have fireworks.

Yeah.

somebody had to have heard that.

When we say something that we have an expectation and it's inaccurate, call us on it. We had expectations.

And that comment was in March. It was in March. It was before Typhoon.

And I appreciate your explanation. I mean, we were under a lot right then.

The other thing I would say, too, is, like, we took it as far as we could, like, there is a point where it's like, okay, is there any reasonable way that we could pull off a fireball show at the end of time?

Here, you don't... Let me speak. Because I do want to say, I do want to comment on that. I want to make sure I didn't get on... Doug has a soliloquy, so I want to make sure... I'm here as well. But I also wanted to talk about him, too, as well. I do want to say that this is where I agree with David explicitly is that we win as a team and we fail as a team. That's just what we do. We stand up and everything else. That's how it works. They don't care about anyone here or there. It's like government's working for us or government's not. And what was really surprising was to hear from people yet I've never heard from who ever complained about anything to say their comments and say it out loud. I want to apologize because And I want to make sure this is on the record. I know that some people watch work sessions and some people not. There's a reason why people like myself and a lot of these people in this guys don't comment on things publicly. It's because of what we're trying to do is not create a quorum. We have been talked about, we've said it numerous times, I guess let's talk about publicly. We have to be careful about where we comment, how we comment, what posts we're commenting on, and we gotta make sure, oh, wait a minute, okay, we're not doing this, because then after that, these folks need to chase this down because it becomes part of the public record. So if you're not hearing from us for a reason, it's explicitly because of that. Because that was something that I just reflectively did for years and then I started to realize, like, holy crap, wait a minute. We are all having, like, a conversation out publicly from that as well. We've got to stop that. So that's the reason why, you know, a lot of us don't do that. And particularly as you get older, it's like something like, okay, listen, you know, we've established who we are and what we do with the community. Let the next generation and other folks go from that and express their viewpoints and concerns and develop that rapport and that respect that's necessary with the community. And Doug and I had a conversation right when this came up. And what we were shocked about is that being the two most senior people on here, We had no idea. It was just something like, wait, what? How are we hearing about this publicly? That's not the way things work because we have a good staff. We have a good community. We have a good machine going on from there as well. So when you hear what James had to say regarding, hey, this is how it goes in, understand that that's truly what happened here is that it slipped through. Now, I'm not going to lie. we're not happy, it's not acceptable. But I mean, but that's what happened. Additionally speaking, I want to make sure this is clear too. i was in constant contact with these folks and jerry because i want to give a lot of credit to jerry too as well for like days trying to come up with how many different things that we ideas exactly yeah exactly there's several people on council that were all working i don't think we all realized it yeah at the same time the staff was putting in exactly to get to to try to see what we could do at the moment So it wasn't something that we saw and we're like, well, all right, too bad. No, people were working behind the scenes desperately upsetting at moments our spouses of how much time we're spending on this, you know, because it was like, this is important. This is something that's key for the community and work from that as well. And so I do want to make sure I say that publicly to you because you probably won't get that. Folks won't give you that from that as well. I think that moving forward, as long as, like you said, that we have a place where it's reliable, where you can see in the budget that this is paid for, this is funded for, that works great. I think it also gives us an opportunity, honestly, to revisit what we want to do on 4th of July. Like, you guys know I've been saying it for years that I've wanted to parade. I've won the parade, but we've also had the Deutchenfest parade, and so we were like going from there. We don't have the Deutchenfest parade anymore. But in all sincerity, what I'm glad about is for us to have this conversation publicly, have this conversation earnestly with one another, and with respect, and with accountability. But you do have a good mayor. You do have a good city manager. You do have a good council who's trying to do good by each and every one of you. We're not always going to be perfect. We're going to try our best. And we understand that for you, that's all you deserve, period, is our best. Can I add on to...

So I appreciate this conversation as well. And I just really feel like I need to add on to, just because you don't see us on social media making all of these comments... Doesn't mean that we don't care. I actually was expecting and waiting for my Typhoon Texas tickets so that I could go to the fireworks. I was like, where are my tickets? That's just how I was acting. My point is, is that we're talking about the fireworks, but there's a bigger conversation as well. Um, we're at City Council on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month, but there's a lot of other conversations going on outside of City Council. And those who are leading those conversations on social media really kind of silence because we can't have conversations about other things. And so it's something we need to talk about a little bit more, but that happened with the Fourth of July, and it'll keep happening with other things. We cannot all be on social media, and I wish we weren't using Facebook as our means of news and communication about what's going on in the city. I still like that people call me. I still go to breakfast, meet you, meet you on the trail and ride my bike. and have a conversation with you, but we cannot use social media as the end-all, be-all for Pflugerville News, because we cannot all participate in it. By the way, how many of us, legally speaking, can be on there, for the record?

Three at a time on each subject.

So you know that three, just so everyone's clear, the three people that are watching.

Who's on first? So when Mr. Rogers talks about himself and Melody and Jonathan, it's not that we're against it. It's just only three can work on it. No one else can be brought in. Nobody can discuss it.

Talk to a fourth person without violating the open meeting. Right. And you guys have all heard me say this, but I want to say this to amplify Rudy's point about the Open Meetings Act and the Public Information Act. You all know that I was friends with and the lawyer for James Maddox, who was the Attorney General of Texas. Did you call him James instead of Jim? He was one of the primary authors and sponsors of the Open Meetings Act in 1975, and he and I had a number of conversations about it over the years, about why he did it, how they did it, and what the spirit was. So I am, I think it's fair to say, a little bit of a pain to the other people on the Council about that. it is it is very important and you know we work in different groups right so I will sometimes have a conversation with Cesar and Rudy and I'll leave Councilman Ryan and Councilman Coffman out of that conversation I might have a conversation with Councilwoman Holliday and the mayor and leave everybody else out of it This is the limitations that we have given to us by the state government that are about making sure that we don't have backroom deals, that we don't make decisions in smoke-filled rooms, and that everybody in the public gets a chance to see us make the decision out here. And I think that that's very important. And to Rudy's point about people working hard to make sure that we got this business about the the fireworks worked out, I will say that Mayor Weitz called me in the hospital and said, hey, but then I said, Mayor Weitz, I'm in the hospital. He said, okay, I'll get back to you later.

I think he had more empathy in that.

No, no, that was about right. I did it.

I did it twice. He was hustling to try to get something done. you know, until the last minute. And the trouble was, because we weren't aware of it soon enough, we couldn't get to the solution in time.

We couldn't get to a solution that was appropriate, safe, and acceptable to the community.

Right. If we had been made aware of the scope of the problem in March, we could easily have fixed the problem before July 4th.

Can I add one thing?

It was the... think James accurately described it as a weakness in communication that we will not see in future and I'm very happy to hear his pledge and I look forward to working with him and I and I appreciate his the steps that he's already taken towards greater transparency that has been a watchword for this council and since long before I got on here, and we can always become more transparent, and I look forward to more progress in that area. James? Thank you all very much for this very energetic discussion.

I would just add, to close on, I guess, that you know we weren't able to to pull it off in the end but i'm very proud you know when i think about the conversation that when i called chief richards the conversation was like if we if i'm able to pull this off can we can we do it and the answer was absolutely like we'll make it work like the to the best of our ability we'll try to provide the safest event possible same conversation i called the assistant chief at esd2 uh dan burger um whatever it takes. Like if we can pull it off, we'll be there to support you. Same thing when I called Cherry with PCDC. Whatever it takes, we'll pull it off. So it didn't happen in the end, but I'm proud to live in a community where everybody pulls together to try to make it happen. We have good partners.

Well, if I may add, I've kind of mulled about whether or not I'm going to say this or not, but, you know, I'm a big mouth. Everybody knows I say what's on my mind. When this happened, I actually personally called the head of the PVAT, our Flugerville Veterans Advisory, the commander of the DAV and the commander of the American Legion, and I personally apologized. Told them I took all blame. I'm the sole veteran on here. I should have caught it. I didn't. But that's not what bothers me. I mean, I shouldn't have been put in that position, but what bothers me is what you were talking about on social media. The audacity and actually let me back up to staff, especially you veterans. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to be put through what you were put through because on social media, the audacity of some people to call us unpatriotic when this is the biggest group of patriots that I've ever served with on council and in my working life. For you to go on there and call people who have served their country and sacrificed almost everything, people who are dealing with PTSD, people who are just dealing with this every day in the most horrific way, for you to call them patriotic, I think it's cruel. And to use Rudy's word, it's repugnant. And you know what? If that costs me later on, it costs me. I don't care. It was cruel because we are not unpatriotic. It was a misunderstanding. It was a mistake. And you know what? I'm sorry, and I can only say that so many times, but that wasn't right.

Thank you, Cesar. Thank you again for those powerful comments. So I will say myself to the public, I too I apologize and I'm sorry that we missed it. I will tell you, James mentioned, going back to something David said during the work session, we don't come forward with problems and complaints without solutions. James had come forward say we would be having minutes of subcommittee meetings in our weekly would I have Recommended we do and since I set the agenda, I guess I get to do that I believe we have five subcommittees my expectation for those of you who serve on subcommittees is that we will have a Presentation during a work session twice a year Each subcommittee. So I think every every five months you remember when we used to do that.

I

It's been a long time. Well, I want to make sure that the rest of us aren't missing any of the decisions that are during.

No, you've been longer. Oh, wait, did you hear that?

Now she wants to be on other ones. All right, all right. We'll note that for appointments. But, yes, we have several. attempts at ensuring that communication and Concepts and future plans are clearly disseminated to Any other comments on this topic I Just want to say I feel like we've given if you haven't heard it.

I feel like we've given a collective apology and and we collectively hold ourselves accountable for what did not happen for the Fourth of July.

Yes.

Always have, always will.

All right, thank you. We will move forward. We have three executive session items remaining on our agenda. Item 7G, deliberation of personnel matters regarding to the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, and duties of the city manager pursuant to Section 551.074 of the Texas Government Code. Item 7H, discussion of personnel matters pursuant to Section 551.074 of the Texas Government Code regarding performance evaluation of the city attorney. and item 7i pursuant to chapter 551.072 of the Texas government code deliberations regarding the purchase exchange lease transfer and or sale of real property related to the limestone commercial to pfluger farm lane north project it is 7 57 we are in executive session it didn't say 10 57 it said

Yeah, he told me.

Time is 9.03. We have returned from executive session. No action was taken. I do not plan for any open session items on here, Council. It is 9.04. Time out.

Can we take a picture real quick?

Where do we need to be? With the Mayor.

Alright, alright. Where's the flag?

They wanted it for some publisher or something to do a selfie.

What does he make these for? They send a message about it.

Oh, National Selfie Day.

All right, all right.

This isn't mine, ladies and gentlemen. All right.

All right, I got really screaming.

He did they did literally put that in our arm, what's our our weekly yeah, I said All right

I can actually get one tomorrow.

I need to get me a jacket like this, man. Dude, I love these.

I bought four. Because I was like, these things are amazing. And I'm like, you only wear them in the summertime. So I'm like, okay.

So it's only like eight months out of the year?

You came to see the couch I have naked like this?