City Council - Regular Meeting

we will begin. So number one is the annual financial report but that's going to be given by you right? Okay. So, we'll wait. We won't make it. We'll make you do it twice. Okay. We'll wait till 6. I don't think you want to hear it. No, it's a good It is an audit. So, you said it's good. That's all y'all want to hear in this brief section of what we're doing. I'll keep it brief. Thank you, man. Moving along to the next one. Consent agenda, right? Huh? Well, well, we don't have to vote on that. We just have to listen to it. So,

you have to accept it. Accept it. Yeah. So, did anybody review the uh the chief's 873 page annual racial profiling report? I only made it to 800. I just told I just told Susanna that based on what I read, she's going to drive me around town. Looks like the ladies get stopped less than the men. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I think we're discriminating against you started. I think it's those who are doing the things they shouldn't be doing are mostly men. Is that what you think, Misty? Surely not. No, I know.

All right. Does anybody have like we're going Chief said he's got about three and a half minute summary report he's going to give us. So, does anybody got anything that they would like to discuss? I thought that it was well within the percentages, you know, of the the racial races that were stopped. I thought that was, you know, gosh, low if anything, you know, we don't have a racial pro profiling problem based on that report. You know, I understand what they're trying to get to, but I would say we don't have that. So, good job training your guys.

Um, the next thing is the uh quarterly investment report. Of course, that's the chief at the end of the table. Did Did everybody Did you look at it, film through it? Anybody have any like major things sticking out? I didn't.

All good. Okay, we'll let him get his synopsis. Okay. So, there is a This is on the consent agenda because a resolution authorizing continued participation with the steering committee with all the cities served by pretty much straightforward. Yeah, we we've done this each year. This just gives us rep representation among all the cities when Encore does a rate case. We also do the atmos during committing and just allows us all of us cities to pull together and negotiate so that we don't have to do it individually. If we if we did it individually and didn't want to accept their rate, we would have to vote it out and the city would individually have to deal with the negotiation or go to PC and all that cost is pretty significant. So this creates a lot more leverage by putting a large number of cities together.

Uh so everybody agree with that. We're going to throw that on the consent agenda. Yes. Is there is there any um is there going to be any push back to this additional rate increase? That's I was misunderstood. They're going up slightly. I think they argue it down every time. Yeah. Not the set rate or is that the argued down rate already that they've gone to? No, I mean typically they come out with the original rate and then they'll come back and negotiate a real rate and then that's like they had like a number of increases since 23

like more than once a year sign like a couple two three times a year in some case I don't know and I think this last one the way I calculated roughly if you use 2,000 kilowatt that's an extra two bucks a month which but I mean how many times You just pick up two bucks a month. Seven 10 times. Now we're 25 bucks a month. You know, I have to cancel that. I don't know. My Netflix goes up faster than I think ago was 10 bucks. You need your password on this. I can't I can't afford that. Oh, yeah.

Um All right. The the last thing is uh we have one public hearing tonight and there's one part that you know about which is to approve the taking the funds for the sirens out of and there's a second part of that and Craig you want to talk about

so we've been uh on the policy board with the metropolit planning organization which does all the transportation planning for multicount region around here probably county but actually I think we're just county multi we do all the transportation planning used to be called the NPO we're actually in the process of changing it now the governor after two years finally approved our name change so we'll now be more regional name just wake up but uh so we've been working with them and one of the things that's we've been discussing is that uh Tex is starting on the northern end of the business 77 corridor through Mlennon County. They've actually funded the project on that end and working their way down. And we've talked about the fact that that passes through four separate cities, Lacy, Lake View, Belme, Waco, and Robinson. And uh talked about the potential need for having some kind of uniform regulations or criteria for development as it pertains to access and circulation. We're not talking about what kind of buildings they can look like or something. We're talking about how does the traffic move? You know, do we have raised medians? Do we have bicycle paths? Do we require driveway separations? Do we require developments above each other to require cross access easement so you don't have to pull out of the road to go down 100 ft pull into another business? and there's no standardization of that. So, we've been working to do that. The the big goal is we don't want another huge drop. We don't want to turn into a big portion of business 77 is either undeveloped or prime for redevelopment. So, we feel like over the next 20 years at Councilman Rogers has been involved in some of the meetings there. So, one of

the things that the four cities involved decided on is to retain an engineering firm to come in and do kind of a study and determine what would be the most effective guidelines so we can work toward establishing those standards. That way, as it develops and works its way down, we'll have consistency. You won't suddenly cross a line and everything changes. You'll have a smooth flow. So, the cost of the study is based on the amount of the roadway in your city. We're only going to moonlight. We can we can apply it south of there but for study purposes we're just so the estimated cost to retain the engineering firm to do all that's 100,000 and based on the mileage in each city our share comes out to 23,000 so that's what's in the budget is an adjustment for 23,000 to fund that study u Waco basically Lake View and Belme have already committed to it. It's just I didn't get it time to get it on the last council agenda. So they're all going forward with it. They're just voting on us.

So after we after we take the money for the sirens and we take this money, our fund balance, we still have 24 24 days left because it went up a little more than I projected with the which you'll get that what the ending balance was last week. projected out but it actually I think it's almost 100,000 more than what I projected out yeah but it should that's spending the fun I mean the the bond companies are like never spend your your fund balance down but you can't do that you can't because then your voters are going to say well why are you saving all this money so but part of the purpose of having a fund balance is to pay for unexpected cost so

credit and and we're I mean we're still well above 18 so 24. That's a It's a long way. Okay. Any questions? Everybody okay with that? Um, okay. Anything else? All right. We're journ till 6:30.

We have a quorum and please rise for an invocation from our lovely Mr. Charlie. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank come to you thanking you for your blessings. We thank you for this city incorporated 1955. the year I was born, Robinson, Texas. Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to serve this city. We just thank you for the leadership. Thank you for Craig. Thank you for all of our employees that are faithful and do a great job. We're we're really blessed to have this city to live in. So, we thank you for that. Thank you for all of your blessings. We pray that you would uh guide in everything that we do, everything that we do and say and in our meetings, in our endeavors to serve our city in the best way we can. It's in Jesus name I pray. Amen.

Amen. 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. Thank you. May be seated. Roll call. Burch here. Ben here. Camp here. Master George here. May here. Rogers here. Snager

here. Perfect attendance. The city council invites citizens to address the council on any matter, including items of the agenda, except public hearings that are included on the agenda. Comments related to those will be heard when the public hearing starts. Please limit your comments three minutes. The council's not permitted to take action or discuss any item not listed on the agenda. When called to speak, please state your name and address. And if speaking on a specific agenda item, please state that. I have no blue cards tonight. Moving on, we have a presentation from Patilla Brown and Hill for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025 annual report.

Mayor, council, thank you'all for letting me be here. Uh, y'all should have a paper copy in front of you. I think y'all had it in your packets as well. This is just the final sign copy. All the numbers that you've looked at are the same. My name is John Manning and I'm a partner with Patilla Brown and Hill. And we'll go over um some of the highlights of the annual art. If you look at page one, this is the real reason that we were here is to express an opinion on the financial statements um as presented by the city of Robinson. This is an unmodified opinion, meaning we didn't have to modify this for things that the city didn't have ready. We have some cities that don't keep up with capital assets or don't keep up with certain parts of their books to have a full set of financials. The city doesn't have that. So, of the four types of opinions that we can give the unmodified opinion is the best. And you know, I know we work with Karen and her team, but this report really is a city-wide effort. I mean, you guys put controls in place. If people don't follow them, they don't work. So, the fact that people know that there are policies in place to follow, that they do follow them. You know, y'all were talking about budget earlier. You know, a lot of the controls that y'all put in place are good. People follow them. That's one of the reasons why we're here in February presenting um final financial statements. So, great effort on the parts of the city. If you look at page four, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here, but you know, a lot of people don't look at financials all the time like auditors or the finance department does. And this is really a good place to look if if you don't have a lot of time. It's called management discussion analysis. And what this does is kind of narratively break down what some of the numbers are saying. And if you don't have a lot of time to look at this, this is where I would look at a lot of your attention. If you look at pages six and seven, you know, it has two years of comparison data. Used to they would put a total column where you could see what happened last year versus this year in the financials. They don't do that anymore. So kind of neat to look at last year versus this year. see some of the things that occurred in 25 and be able to see those in the financials. Um, but looking at page 13, we'll start

looking at the financials. And this is a balance sheet. So, this is your assets and liabilities and ending equity as of 9:30 2025. And you have your general fund, debt, service, and capital projects. Those are all um what we call major funds, meaning they're big enough to be listed individually. A lot of your smaller funds are in that other governmental funds column over there on page 14. Um really a very simple balance sheet. You look at we look at audit risk like what's the risk of this number being wrong? And when you go down your balance sheet I mean you have cash equivalents and investments and restricted cash that make up 98% of your assets. So, we send out confirmations and the banks and the uh pools send back a confirmation saying that's how much is there. So, we're getting independent verification that those funds are there and in the name of city Robin. So, it's not like we're just taking statements and going through them. We're actually getting them from third parties and they're saying yes, that's what the city has with us. So, not a lot of risk and not a lot of ways to have an error value in cash. So again, liabilities very simple as well. That biggest earned revenue is uh the remainder of the ARPA funds that are still there as of 9:30 that are waiting to get spent. And the rest of that big amount there is accounts payable which again is in capital projects and those are for projects that were or the work was done before 9:30 but payment was received till after. So it's just like bills that have acrewed and we're showing them there. So, not a very difficult balance sheet and nothing trending in the direction where we're like, "Hey guys, this this is heading in the wrong direction. Let's take a look at this." So, that's really good. You'll look at pages 16 and 17 where the sheet I looked at earlier was just one day. This is a 12-month summary of revenues and expenditures. So, you can see here your property taxes, sales

tax, um, franchise taxes, all those items are listed out separately there. And if you look again from a risk standpoint, property taxes 100% collected by somebody else. All the money is just wired here. So we're able to get reports from the Clinton County and make sure that your ending receivable for unpaid taxes. Your revenue for the year is correct. Sales tax, we go straight to the state website. We don't even need the city to look at that number and make sure it's right. So again, not a lot of risk here in these uh revenues or expenditures for that matter. Some of the things if you look over here at the bottom of page 16, I think y'all were talking earlier about fund balance. You can see that general fund actually went up about 190,000 by the end of the year, which is great, which puts that at seven a little over $7 million this year. And so I think they were talking earlier about having 281 days or something like that. So it's it's it's a good healthy fund balance. And I have places where the fund balance is not healthy and it's hard to get it back. So, I I applaud that you guys have reserves and that you are mindful when you're looking at your budget that, hey, we can spend some of this, but we also know we need to keep a reserve there, too. So, we we appreciate that the city does that. The other thing that kind of stands out here, if you'll remember, um it stands out on these financials, if you go to that capital projects column, you can see down towards the bottom that issuance of bonds of 23.6 million. Those were the notes that were the certificates of obligation that were sold in 25. So those are here. You also see a large increase in fund balance where you spent some of the old money and new money, but then you also had the new money come in and you saw a large increase in cash in that fund as well. So all in all from the governmental funds, everything looks really good. If you go over to page 19 again, this is your water fund here, which is your business type activities. And again a very simple balance sheet.

Uh predominantly thing different here is we capture capital assets for the water fund. And your total uh capital assets there are about $41.5 million. So even though this fund balance is a lot bigger than the general fund, just keep in mind that's because there's a lot of capital equipment there that's not very liquid. So um but still unrestricted is a little under 3.2 million which is a very good reserve there. And if you look at the water sewer fund over on page 20 was able to add a little over $2 million to net position there and had a transfer out to the general fund of about 740,000 as well. So it still helped fund the general fund for the cost that it you know helps offset those and still had a a very good year. This year you did not spend enough federal money to do what we call a single audit where we have to go look at your federal programs. So we've had that in the past. this year we didn't have to do that. But all in all, I think your financials are trending in a really good direction. Um, everything when we get here is in very good working order. Miss Sanchez and her team have everything ready for us. They've loaded up in what we call an engagement organizer. So the first day we started, we have a lot of items already in there for us to start. Again, a lot of these we don't present until the end of March and we're here middle of February with with a full set of financials with an opinion letter in them. So that's a credit to Karen and her team and we really appreciate all the help that they give us while we're here. Um, also as part of our audit, we go around and we do just discussions with different random people and we ask them like, "Hey, do you know of any fraud or you know, is there your boss telling you to do something you don't think is right?" And we're happy to report that nothing came back with any kind of uh, you know, negative comments or or things that they thought were going on. and everybody knows that there are procedures in place and that people are checking them. So, a very good audit. I can talk about this as long as you want me to, but uh I just

wanted to kind of hit the highlights, let you know that things look good financially, and if you guys have any questions, I'd be glad to to talk about that. Now, does anybody up here have any questions for them? Excuse me. Thank you at this time. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, councel. Thank you. Uh so, we need to accept this So, somebody will start down that road. I'll make a motion accept the report as second. All in favor? I any votes? Okay.

I'd like to just commend Karen and her staff for the job they've done. We've been lucky to have her on staff for all these years and she's never ever let us down. Really appreciate that. Agree. It starts at the top. Greg, we we do appreciate you and what you do. the right people in place. I inherited her. I inherited her. You did? Drove her a little crazy the first couple years, but Karen, you're not allowed to reach Yeah. Don't Yeah. Don't think about it. Don't Don't think about it.

All right. Uh Yes. Thank you again, Gary. The U. Next, we have our police chief to give us our 2025 annual racial profiling report. All right, mayor and council. Thank you. This is the annual racial profiling report which covers January 1st through December 31st, 2025. And I imagine most of y'all have looked over this data in your packets. So, I just have a brief summary here of it. Um, in 2025, Robinson officers conducted 3,020 traffic stops, which is an increase of 28% from 2024. Uh, 59 of 59% of those stops involve male drivers, 41% involve female drivers, and these percentages are consistent with prior years. Uh when broken down by race and ethnicity, 61% of the stops involved white motorists, 21% involved Hispanic or Latino motorists, and 15% were black motorists. The remaining 3% involved Asian, Pacific Islander, American Indian motorists. When compared year-to-year against available demographic data, no dis disproportionate or concerning trends were identified. Uh the majority of the stops were for violations such as moving traffic violations um such as speeding or traffic control violations followed by equipment or registration issues and only a small number of stops related to pre-existing knowledge such as outstanding warrants. Uh out of the more than 3,000 traffic stops, there were 113 searches conducted of vehicles. Uh when these searches were conducted, they were based on probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Uh contraband and plain view inventory searches were incidents related to an arrest. And contraband was discovered in 65 of these searches, which was usually

illegal drugs or paraphernalia. There were 33 arrests resulting from traffic stops in 2025. Uh during the entire reporting period, no complaints alleging racial profiling were filed against any police officer and the department maintains a clear and accessible complaint and combination process. Uh this information is provided to each motorist during traffic stops as part of their citation or warning. They're available online and available at city hall and the police department. All officers have completed the required racial tra racial profiling training through TCOL and the the Robinson Police Department is operating in full compliance with state law and maintains strong oversight and training and shows no evidence of racial profiling practices. And this report will be submitted to TCO soon after we presented it to you. So they'll get it in there tomorrow. Any questions?

Any questions from council? Do we have to accept this too? Yep. We typically do have to vote to accept the report. Somebody. All right. I'll go ahead and make the motion to accept the police report given by illustrious police chief Larry Adams. And thank you, sir, for all that you do. I I don't say that in just Thank you for your service. Yes, sir. The motion. That's a motion. Don't have to write all that down. All in vote I. Any opposed? Go deeper into the numbers. That passes. Hey, we just saw how you treat the males.

We just know. Um, all right. Uh, next we are going to have uh Craig give us his synopsis of the quarterly investment report for December 31, 2025. All right, this is the quarterly investment report for the first quarter of the fiscal year. Um, the beginning book value and market value was 69,46,200 for both book value and market value. The ending book value and market value as of December 31st, 2025 was 67,556,881. That number is still high because of the the amount of debt that we issued back in August. Most I don't think hardly any of that debt has been spent yet. Those projects are still in design and things like that. Um let's see. The average quarterly yield was 3.98%. And the rolling three-month treasury was 3.85. The six month was 3.89 and the text pool was 3.83. This is one of those rare occasions where we actually are higher than those other comparisons because rates have been coming down, but we were able to lock some of uh our money into longerterm investments and so those have not matured yet. So, we're still recouping a little bit higher interest on some of our our investments. Uh the total quarterly interest earnings were $687,190 and that's also the year to date since this is first quarter. And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions of the council? Can I have a motion to accept that one? Make a motion to accept the quarterly investment report ending December 31st, 2025. I'll second that motion. All in favor? Any opposed? Uh we have two items on the consent agenda. To approve the February 3rd city council workshop and regular meeting minutes and to approve resolution 20262R authorizing continue participation the steering committee cities served by I have a motion for that. I motion to approve consent agenda items 9 and 10 is written. Second.

All in favor? Any oppos? At 6:47, we will enter a public hearing to consider and take action on ordinance 2026-004, an ordinance of the city of Robinson, Texas, providing for an amendment to fiscal year 202526 budget to reflect appropriation transfers as outlined in exhibit A ordinance. So, so very briefly, this is a adjustment to the budget that was adopted uh prior to the beginning of this fiscal year. Uh just go over the changes in this. Um first change is the beginning balance has been amended. Uh when we did the budget back in July,

yeah, just decided to go to sleep right in the middle of it. Um, when we did the budget back in July, we were projecting an ending balance of 6,875,994. As you saw in your audit tonight, the unrestricted actual fund balance as of September 30th was 6,990,694, which was an increase of 114,710. Um, there's two recommended changes in the budget. First one is change line item 6124550 professional services and to increase that by 23,000 that is to cover the Robinson share of a corridor study that is being done to establish criterion guidelines and standards for traffic circulation and access along the business 77 corridor and we'll cover the section of Robinson from our north city limits to moonlight. Um, and if you have questions in particular, I saw Mkesh Kamar, our NPO director has snuck in. So, um, if you want any specific questions about that after the public hearing and then, um, the other one is to make changes to the police department budget to add line item 615 805 instruments and apparatus for the purchase of the sirens the council previously approved. Keeps going to sleep on me. And uh that increases 263,000. I just rounded it up a few hundred dollars from what the original amount was. So it was a nice round number to put in the budget. Uh so that increases the I think it's

I think it's operator error. There it goes. Um let's see. So that increases total expenditures from an original budget of 10,428,527 to 10,714,527 which is a 286,000 increase. And it decreases the ending fund balance originally projected at 6880 6,880,5 to 6,78,715 which is a decrease of 171,290 from the original budget. I'll be happy to answer any questions after the public hearing.

Anyone else to speak on this matter? If not, we'll close the public hearing at 6:50. Questions from council? I have none. All right. Uh, I'll entertain a motion. Motion to approve ordinance 2026-004, an ordinance of the city of Robinson, Texas, providing for amendments to the fiscal 2025 2026 budget to reflect appropriation transfers outline exhibit A of the second. All in favor? I post pass. Anybody have any request for future agenda?

More of a kind of a followup on a request just thinking ahead. We talked about maybe a master plan update update. What's the time frame on a start to finish? That's something we'll probably have to budget because we don't we can't take that on ourselves. So, I would say that may be something we need to look at incorporating into the next budget process, which actually is starting internally to crank up now, but uh that's We'll need to retain somebody to help us with this.

So, um, soon as obviously October 1st, but sometime thereafter, but then what's that normal? 6 12 month. I would say you're looking at six months minimum because you're going to want to do some kind of surveying, which we also this next fiscal year is the next time for our surveys anyway. We already have that build, you know, kind of planned in. We did the one in

23 and they recommended we wait three years to do the next one. So that'll already be part of it. Typically you want to do a survey like that anyway, but a lot of times you want to have town halls and maybe some kind of focus groups or things like that. So you need time for that process to play. But I would think typically six months

and and I would prefer, you know, with more time. Tim and I have had some good conversation about a couple of topics, but the I think the thought I take away from it is town having town halls where council can get together and get some of that direct feedback, maybe even potentially champion some ideas that that we may have, see how the public, you know, respond to those ideas. You don't need to go through the you can do town halls you want to. Correct. I I you know, I I like having the opinion of of the others so and not just Can we put that on the next agenda if you want to talk about I mean there's some places that do them just kind of regular. I mean, you know, two or three times a year.

My my town halls end up being a cup of coffee or or a lunch, but I like, you know, being able to shoot the fat with with other council members on what their thoughts are. I should run this off a cliff if it's just me. I mean, we can we can put that on make a note. We'll put it as a discussion on the next agenda to discuss about possibility of regular town halls meetings. I know you know what I'm asking. We're here. So, he's here anyway. All right. We're here anyway. Anything else? I do.

Do Can we do you think we can do the Texas pledge when we do our meetings, too? I don't know. It just bring We can put that on for future discussion. Okay. We can't decide anything because teacher discussion now I wanted to memorize it. I had it in school. That's been a long time. I know you got it again. It's been a while. That's the only place I know that does it regularly is school. Yeah, we did a school board meeting. We did a lot. All right. Anything else? 654.