Council - Regular Meeting

the Pine Bluffs Town Council to order. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I aliance 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. All right. First item of business is the approval of the agenda. I move to approve the agenda. Well, now we have to second it. But uh

second. Okay. It's I got out of order. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Oh, if you want to do the Okay. I don't remember what it was to add um the uh extending of the hours for Pine Bluff Bowl for their tournament. So, okay, perfect. Um do I hear a second? Second it.

Perfect. It's been moved and seconded to add the extension of hours for Pine Bowl for April 12th onto the consent agenda. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the amendment, please say I. I. I. Those opposed. Amendment carries. Back to the original motion of the approval of the agenda. All those in favor? I. Those opposed? Motion carries. The agenda is approved. Uh, next item of business is the consent agenda.

Move to approve the consent agenda. Second. Okay. It's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor? I. Those opposed? Motion carries. on to new business, which we don't have any today. So, visitor comments. Kevin, I would like to make a comment. Perfect.

Um, so I'm here representing the Texas Trail Museum and we wanted to find out if we could have permission to do a harvest host program over at the museum. And I don't know if you know what that is. They do do it out this the distillery. Um, and what we would like to do is the parking lot would be in in between the the pump house and the museum just be able to park two RVs there. Um, it would just be for overnight parking. There's no no hookups. Uh, the way the Harvest Host program works is they have an app. Um, and the RV people who are going down the interstate, they can find different areas. A lot of them are distilleries, museums, uh, churches, all kinds of wineries, all kinds of things. And they can come in and and park free of charge overnight, one night. They just have to buy something or donate. Uh, and usually the the suggestion is about 30 or 40 bucks a night to donate it. What we're looking for is just a way to increase traffic into the museum. Um, also helps the town. Maybe they'll buy go to the restaurant, buy some gas or whatever. Um, we just wanted to make sure it would be okay with the city before we went ahead and did it. Is there any questions or with the harvest host program? They do they're very specific. You you have to be a member to be able to to do it. So, if you're an RVER, you you spend 80 bucks a year. Um, there's certain guidelines you have to follow. Uh, as far as the museum, we can set lengths, if they can use a generator, all that kind of stuff. So, if there's any concerns, we could work with that however we needed to. And I guess I just need to know if you guys would let us do it. And that's really all there is to it. If there's

any questions, I'm fine with it. Where was it again? Not at the museum. Yeah, but where it it would be between the the the white pump house and just in between the museum, just the big parking lot. So where that all that gravel is? Yeah. Okay. And would it just be specific months of the year like just summer months or you can do it year round. Oh. So So when you do that, if we're closed, they can actually stay. Uh what they do is they book it on the book it on your app. They can actually stay and then just make a donation to the museum. And we do have a donation site on the website now. So Okay. I think it's great. I think it's awesome. Go for it. Okay. Cool. I will go ahead and go back to the next meeting and do it then. So,

thank you. All right. Thank you much. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you.

We have to use the one. Let's see. Hey, Kevin. We do have a question for you if you don't mind. Not about this. Yeah. The weather station at the airport. shows that it's down. Do you know? Oh, the AWAS. Yeah. Um it's it's dying. It's in the process of dying. So, the the AWAS, I can give you an update on that real quick. Um we had a meeting about it uh what last Friday, I believe, and they're going to start construction on the new AWAS hopefully about April 20th. Good. And they're thinking it's going to be about a two to three week turnaround to get it done. that doesn't.

So, there's really not much we can do about the old one. Um the uh the contractor that fixes it, the contracts up and there's really not much they can do about fixing it anyway because all the the uh sensors and everything are obsolete and there's it's just dying. So, but the good news is uh hopefully they'll have the the new one up, you know, towards the end of April or the first part of May. That's great. So, thank you. Thank you, Amy. This has been in the works for a couple of years now. Okay.

Uh this AWAS is quite old and but it's very expensive to replace and so it's something that we have to uh plan for and get approved by the all through the FAA. Why do and then and then getting on their schedule for construction,

right? um the airports around the state get allocated so much money um each year, but it doesn't mean they get to spend it that year. Um the state picks projects that they think would be appropriate and um good good use of those funds and maybe your allocation might be used to complete somebody else's project at another airport and then the next year the reverse might be true. Okay. But it all boils down to time and resources and it's too expensive a project for the town to take on by itself. So we rely heavily on on why do and the FAA

you know all all those projects the FAA they typically pick up 90% of it. uh why do picks up I believe 6% of it and then the match for the town 4% but they they can play around with those numbers. Okay. We do have another big project coming up next year which will be the milling of the runway and they're working on that now as far as work. Thank you Kevin. Any other visitor comments? Moving on to department reports. Jenna? Nope. Dave, I'd like to say I do.

You already kind of just gave one if that counts. Yeah, there you go. I can give you more. They also they they got the uh the crack ceiling is all they got that finished. They did that two days ago. Two or three days ago, they got it done. um they still have to come back and and approve it. If you go out and look at it, what they did, uh it's got a lot of big cracks in it, but since they're going to be remilling it, they just kind of did the bare necessities just to save money to to get it done. Um and tomorrow we're going to close the airport for two days. They're going to start doing the geopysical start foring the runway for the milling

that's coming up just so they can figure out what they got to do. So, thank you. Probably the only thing I would add to that was at our last uh airport authority meeting, we did discuss the possibility of having another airport open house this fall. Oh, yeah.

Would you want to come back up to the mic and speak to that more eloquently than I can? Oh, sure. So, what we what we've been trying to do is every two years, um, uh, we try to put on openhouse flying at the airport. Uh, Y dot does have funds that they that we can or grants that we can apply for to that. I think they'll give up like $5,000 that you can use to, you know, buy food, um, give airplane rides. Uh, we can't pay for fuel for the airplanes, but we can we can use it for other things. We didn't do it last year, so we would like to do it again this year if it's possible. Um, I know part of that depends on budgeting and things, so I hadn't had a chance to talk to Kim about it. I don't know if you did or not. We hadn't talked about it specifically, but you had mentioned that we could probably do this and it would be minimal to no cost to the town based on either grants or a donor that was

right there. There was somebody that was wanting to donate a bunch of the the time and money to to make it work. So, we would just we would like to be able to do it if we could. If I guess if all you're looking for is permission and the town wouldn't uh be strained with a lot of financial resource allocation, then I mean I would I would say it's it's more eyes on our airport. Um it's good publicity for the airport and for the town. And I I I think it would be good. Airplane rides are always

Yeah, food's always good. We, you know, we usually get uh at least 100 plus people and I think we've been given like a 100 airplane rides every year. So, don't know if we want to do the rides this year. We're looking to maybe try to do some different things. Maybe get some aerobatics or something out there, you know, just to change it up a little bit, too. So, maybe plus rides, maybe trying to get a hot air balloon out there just to do a demonstration and some of that type of stuff. The paragliders, they they would be willing to come do some demonstrations. So, but we need to start planning now if we're going to do it because people fill up pretty quick. So, yeah.

Okay. Well, I'll uh uh and I guess I before we've always kind of coordinated with Sonia and I'm kind of working on this stuff, so I'll just get a hold of her and and move forward if that's okay. I think it's going. Do you feel like we need to vote on that then? We've never voted to have it before, but if there's like money involved, we would. Yeah. If if you're willing to proceed without any promise of funds from the town, then I think I think the do the person that wants to donate, I don't think there's a problem. So, he was pretty adamant that he wanted to do it. So, okay. Well, that's wonderful. Okay, cool. Very good. Thank you.

That ends my report. Okay, great report. Um, nothing new for me on the WHAM front. Uh, now that session's over, they've all taken a little bit of a break, but I'm sure they'll keep us busy soon enough. Um, Amy, the senior center had some staffing changes, but as usual, Alicia has it well in hand and under control. Wonderful, Alex.

Well, one of our guys up there is Well, I saw him the hobnobin with just with Austin. So I know they're working on the project of kind of reconfiguring what the PD does with respect to the ordinances. Perfect. Thank you, Le.

I have a couple updates. Um first of all, our spring cleanup will start Monday, April 27th. Okay. So, if citizens can have their stuff on the curb the weekend before, our crew will start going around on Monday. Excuse me. Also, I spoke with Wyatt Wilson. He's one of the gentlemen that's working on the Masonic Hall. They will their timeline right now, depending on weather, is April 8th is when they're probably going to start demolition of that building. So, in just a few short weeks, um, what do you say? They're going to install a temporary fence around it and remove some of the items from the building as well as installing some bracing so when it comes down, it'll not hurt adjacent property. So, citizens can be aware of that. Not to worry, it's all under control. Kim is out this week, so feel free to email her if you have any questions.

She's checking that daily. Perfect. What day was the spring cleaning? The 20th. 27th. 27th. That's what I just heard. And Lean, occasionally I know that people might have large items that they need to dispose of and that the next cleanup day isn't for a while, they can just call the town. That is a free service we offer through the town. All they have to do is call us and let us know it's out on the curb and what it is. Thank you. Great. Police department. Nothing. Great. Thank you, Matthew.

All right. Does anyone else have anything that needs to come before the council at this time? To adjourn. Second. been moved and seconded to adjurnn. All those in favor? I meeting adjourned. Thank you.