City Council - Packet - briefing

Good morning. Before we start today's meeting, I'd like to take a moment of silence for one of our Round Rock firefighters who was laid to rest on Friday. So please join me. Thank you. At this time, I will call the 730 packet briefing to order. And please call the roll.

Mayor Morgan. Mayor Pro Tem Stevens. Here. Council Member Lee.

Here.

Council Member Flores. Here. Council Member Fleming.

Here.

Council Member Ortega. Here. Council Member Montgomery.

Here. City Citizen Communication. We have a couple, so I will read the statement. Any citizen wishing to speak during citizen communication regarding an item on or off the agenda may do so after completing the required registration card. All comments must be no more than three minutes in length. per 2-26B5 of the Round Rock Code of Ordinances, 2018 edition. Any comments regarding items not on the posted agenda may not be discussed or responded to by the City Council per state law. James Cook. Yes, sir. Come on up and state your name for the record. Sorry, name and address.

Yes, good morning. James Cook, 2004 Creekview Drive, Round Rock. And the purpose for me to speak here is I'm just trying to get some clarification. There is a hike and bike trail that is proposed on a survey that when Round Rock, when that area was built in 1978, there was a... There was an annotation on the survey that says to be conveyed to Round Rock. So now on the survey today, there's a mark across the back of my property that says hike and bike trail. When I bought the property in 2010, I didn't even notice that, didn't mind. That property has been maintained by me. It's been looked after. We've had chickens on it. I've got no problem with the fact that there's an easement, but the fact that there's an annotation that says hike and bike trail, I've got a young family now that's wanting to move in. They're first-time homebuyers, and they're looking at this and thinking they're going to have a... cyclists going at the back there. But that particular property, that hike and bike trail goes across three properties and ends up at Lake Creek. And it goes nowhere. And they're objecting to this. They're concerned that they're going to have cyclists at the back there. And my question is, what's going to happen with this? It's been there, like I said, 50 years, 40 years. Can we have it annotated? Is it going to be removed? Is it going to be used? We just need to be able to give the buyers some information as to what the intent of that is so that they have the reassurance that they've still got their own backyard, that they can use it. I've got copies of the survey and photographs of the easement. If you want to see it, I can share it with you.

So we can't respond up here, Mr. Cook, but if you look in the back, Brad Wiseman, will you raise your hand? If you can, you can go back there and give him your materials and he'll discuss it with you further.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Mary Beth Ray. Good morning. Good morning.

I know you all know me. So I obviously am his realtor, but I also live in the neighborhood and president of the neighborhood. So this was somewhat of a surprise. I know the hike and bike trail is there. The easement concerns the new buyers. And so what we're trying to find out is because it says on the plat that was recorded, I guess Glenn Neans, who was con in home builders and unfortunately has passed away, marked it as to be conveyed. So when I've talked to Bradley Dushkin and Rick Akins and Joe Bream, everybody just kind of scratches their head because to be conveyed doesn't mean it was conveyed. So was it conveyed and is it going to be used? I guess that's the buyer's concern because it's been fenced. All these properties all along have been fenced all the way down there. So we're just kind of wanting some clarification from the city to know what is the intent, you know, since obviously it was intended to be in Hike and Bike Trail, but In 45 or 50 years, it's never been done. I guess it was 1976. I think he said 78. But 76 is when Glenn made it. So, yeah, it's been 50 years. So I just wanted to add to that so that you all have a little bit of history. Sure. Thank you.

If you'll talk to Brad and Bradley and then just let us know if you need anything else. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mary Beth.

Anyone else wishing to speak? OK, moving on see staff briefings. See one consider staff briefings and Council member discussion and or questions regarding items on the agenda for the meeting. What is it? June 11th City City Council City Council meeting. So we will have a proclamation for Dravet Syndrome Awareness Day. We will have a presentation regarding the 2026 Spring University graduating class. A presentation and department update from police does anybody have any questions about those at this time? No, okay Consent agenda anybody have any questions on the consent agenda?

councilmember Flores Let me find my notes Yeah one question on g4 The question was just on G4, is that the amount, is that split evenly between fire and police, or is that just as needed? I was just curious if there was any distinction in that.

It's just, it's an as needed. So GTs, they sell uniforms, ammunition, firearms, but they're also a distributor for Weyland warning lights, and so it also allows our shop to Use them when they need some one-offs to repair warning lights.

So it's just the first part when their orders gets in. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Shane. And Council Member Ortega?

On the same note here, you mentioned some of the equipment and supplies. Is there anything else to that?

No, sir. It's strictly, again, uniforms, ammo for PD, firearms, and then whaling lights. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Any other questions on the consent? No? All right.

I do.

Oh, sorry. Council Member Ortega.

On G5, where is the funding coming from?

G5 says IT. Do we have IT? There he is. Romsey.

Council Member Ortega. So the funding will come from both our tech fund and then project funds. So this is just an extension of our existing Ford AV contract. A lot of that has previously gone to the bond project, so a lot of project money. But we're putting this forth so that we can continue those projects. But also, we utilize tech fund for things like Rock and River, where we did replacements.

Thank you. And I have another question on G6.

Okay, G6 is library.

Yes. Can you provide me about this distribution of workflow situations? Do we have library here? And I'll ask that question on Thursday.

Yeah, we'll make sure we get your question answered on Thursday. Thank you.

Anything else? All right, moving on to resolutions. H1, consider a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute quantity adjustment change order number one with Braun and Butler Construction Inc. for the fire station number 10 project. Good morning, Corey.

Good morning, Mayor Pro Temp and council. Glad to see the A-team's back. This change orders to the agreement between the City of Round Rock and Round and Butler for miscellaneous changes both design and owner-initiated items during construction. This change orders for $99,519.89. This will be added back into the owner betterment embedded into the contract. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Questions?

Any questions? No?

All right. Thanks, Corey. H2, consider a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute quantity adjustment change order number one with Smith Contracting Company Inc. for the Gattus School Road Improvement Segment 6 project. Good morning, Michael.

Good morning, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. Gattus School 6, it's under construction. It's going very well. This project, as you see here on Gattus, starts just east of Westview and Rusk Road, and we extend eastward all the way just past the intersection of Redbud and Gattis. This is a change order quantity adjustment. We had bid this project previously and bought some materials. Some of those materials we thought we had on hand, so we did not include them in the bid, so we need to add that into this change order quantity adjustment. And then there's some other items that we already had on hand, and then when we re-bid it, it included materials and installation, but we already had the materials, so we're getting a credit for that. So all in all, it's a $76,000 investment. True up that we will need to pay Smith contracting right now estimated completion if we keep on this path is somewhere around that October to December of 2027 And it'll be a nice six lane roadway, so happy to answer any questions

Any questions?

Council Member Fleming? Not specifically this one, but once this is completed, do you start Redbud? Are you anticipating that's when you start Redbud, or is there going to be another product in between? Just refresh my memory.

So right now, Redbud is under design. You're talking about Redbud that extends northward from Gattis all the way up there to almost 79? Yes. It's under design. We're moving a lot of the dry utilities. We... We'd like to finish this one before we go to construction on that one. Absolutely. So we have a couple of things. We also have Gattaschool 5 over here to the west of this project.

So we're trying to- And is that going to be first?

Yes, ma'am. We want to get further down the road with Gattaschool 6 here. We're still under design for Gattaschool 4 and 5. So once this gets further down the road, then we'll go out to bed on 4 and 5. I envision Redbud North being a little bit later than that. There's a lot of dry utilities there. We're trying to get our funding in order, so we should be finished with six before we go out to bid for Redbud North.

And so Redbud may be then more like 2028?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Flores?

Michael, on the change order item, itemization, it mentions almost... almost $300,000 in missing materials. Are we concerned that material walked away or we never had it?

No, there was some of that. It says missing, incomplete, or inefficient. Some of the material, the piping material was the wrong material. We're not afraid that if you're worried about it, like it gets stolen or whatever. No, I'm not worried about that. There was just some confusion there. Some of the material we... get sent back to the manufacturer of the material. So there was a little bit of just mix up of materials. So not worried about material getting stolen where we're having to pay for it twice.

OK, thank you.

Anyone over here? No? OK. H3, consider a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a real estate contract with Avery Ranch Company, LTD et al., for the purchase of 1.62-acre parcel required for construction of the proposed Kenny Fort Boulevard Segment 5 roadway project.

This is Kenney Fort 5. Kenney Fort 5 will extend from Old Sellers Boulevard. It will be built right through this area right here. It'll bend around and tie in at, which is under construction now, Canterbury 112 or Avery Nelson Boulevard. The area we need to buy right away is from the Averys. It's 1.62 acres, $2.29 a square foot for a total of $162,000. It's about 100 feet wide in this direction right here. This is Walling Bradley Parkway, I think is the name, Walling Bradley, right here. And then this is additional right away we need right through here from the Averys that we're negotiating as well. Recommend a purchase of this future right-of-way for Kenny port 5 from the Avery's for 162 thousand dollars questions councilmember Fleming And then the 229 square foot.

How was that determined and calculated?

That was a previous purchase price that we had already bought from the Avery's in this area, and they just agreed to it It's actually probably lower than if you went out on the market today, so they agreed to the previous square footage price and

Thank you.

Anyone over here?

No?

OK. H4, consider a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a contract for engineering services with STV Inc. for the Westinghouse Road Eastern Water Transmission Line project.

Part of our water master plan for a number of years is to add a second water line down Westinghouse to help us serve that northeast part of Round Rock. So as our water plant is off Westinghouse Road, we send a lot of water that's treated water up to this elevated tank here at Barton Hill. There's a single line there. And as you look, after it comes out of either that tank or down Westinghouse, the water comes through Terra Vista through here. So this second parallel line is the red line you see on the map. From right here, it'll be a 36-inch line that we're going to design coming all the way down Westinghouse over here to 800 Grimes. Then we're going to head south and tie in right here at University. This allows us to push more water to the northeast as it continues to grow to meet those pressures out there. This is preliminary engineering work. It's $235,000 with STV. It's an engineering firm we've used before. And I recommend approval. And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Questions? Questions over here?

Okay. H5, consider a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute an interlocal cooperation agreement with the city of Hutto regarding a wastewater certificate of convenience and necessity service area amendment for a property located at the southeast corner of Redbud Lane and County Road 123.

Utilities that have provided water or wastewater service, we have to have a CCN. It's called Certificate of Convenience and Necessity. That's with the Texas Public Utility Commission. As you see here, we are at Redbud. And here's 79, and then there's a county road 123 running right here. There's a 31-acre tract that's in hatching. This is in the city limits of Round Rock, but it's in the city of Hutto wastewater CCN. So it's really complicated. The CCNs do not always match up with city limits or ETJs. Hutto CCN, not shown here, but it's all in this area here plus this tract right here. We refer to this tract as the Arden tract. You've probably heard of it called that. Pulte is the one that wants to develop it, Pulte Homes. So we have talked to HUDO, and they've agreed to release this tract from their CCN. Round Rock is going to take it into our wastewater CCN. So this agreement before you is an agreement by both cities to agree to a swap, or not a swap, a release from HUDO and a Round Rock acceptance. All this paperwork gets submitted to the Public Utility Commission for approval, and then Round Rock will be able to be the retail provider of wastewater service. That's already in our water CCN, so it will also be in our wastewater CCN. There's a second item I want to mention while we're talking about these. HUDO requested that a second item which will be H6, an agreement that Round Rock will not issue building permits on this site until Pulte pays to HUDO for being released from the wastewater CCN. What I mean by that is HUDO is saying that they have issued debt in their wastewater system to be able to provide wastewater service to this tract. So when somebody wants to be released from that, then their customer base is less. And Hutto wants to be compensated for that loss of future customers. So they're working that deal. Pulte has agreed with City of Hutto on some sort of compensation. Hutto just wants to make sure that they get that payment from Pulte before we get into the development and issuing building permits for this site. So that was a request for Hutto. So that's why both H5 and H6 are similar in that regard. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Sorry. Council Member Flores.

Michael, the Arden track, is that currently today in the city limits? Yes, sir. But then the area to the south of that is not, is that right? Evergreen is not in the city limits today. The Arden track is in the city limits, yes, sir. And then the area north of that that shows the huddle CCN, is that Round Rock city limits as well?

Yes. I'm not sure this is in the city limits yet, Brooks. Do you know? No. Okay. It's in the Round Rock ETJ. It's still going to be in the wastewater CCN of Hutto. Okay. So we'll be having maybe future conversations about that if that ever develops as well. Okay.

Really a complicated mix match over there. And that's that parcel that's forever been looked at and evaluated and discussed over the years. This one here, floodplain issues. Yes, sir. Well, it's wish Pulte success.

Questions over here? Council Member Ortega?

In the land area that we're trying to move over to our system, We already have things in place that's already been there at some point, or are we having to construct something for that use?

Yes, sir. This property here, our wastewater treatment plant is right here. That will be considered upstream, so to speak. So a lot of this area in Oak Bluff Estates, Forest Creek, there's lift stations that we have to pump the wastewater back to the plant. This site will be no different. It will require a lift station with some pumps where they will pump the wastewater, and then they'll build the line back and tie into one of our bigger interceptors along here. So there will be some infrastructure that Pulte will be responsible for. Or the property owner. Yes, sir.

So my next question, because we are aware that that is in the floodplain, so Pulte will have to do an evaluation. What I mean by that is that they'll have to build up in order to build on it. That would also cover our section when we have to connect.

Absolutely. The property owner is responsible for doing a floodplain analysis during our permitting process through planning. We will make sure that no properties or structures are built that affect the floodplain. That will be all through the permitting process. Yes, sir. Thank you.

So after Pulte pays, compensates, HUDO, they are still subject to our impact fees as the building, as the development process goes along?

Absolutely. Yes, ma'am.

Perfect. Thank you.

Any other questions on either one of these? Council Member Montgomery.

Michael, thank you. Is this kind of negotiation typical? Have we done something like that before?

We have. We've done many times. Our goal is, or my goal is, our ETJ, which can be our ultimate city limits, it would be nice to be able to serve that area with water, wastewater. More so on the water side, we've negotiated with Jonah on many times. Jonah's service area does come into our ETJ in the Northeast. Jonah's released some area. We check it out. If our system can handle it, we will be glad to take it in. On the south side of town with Windermere, south of 45 down there, we've done some swaps and changes with Windermere with our CCN. So there's always, really it happens generally on the outskirts. In this area right here, Hutto has zero wastewater infrastructure on this map right here at Harley. So this property, as long as it would have stayed in Hutto's wastewater CCN, it would have been very difficult to develop this area in the city of Nims and Round Rock. So this really needed to happen, get it into our wastewater CCN, because we want it to develop for its best use that it can. So we are always having these discussions with Hutto. other utility providers that have CCNs around our borders. Yes, ma'am.

Any other questions? No? All right.

Thank you, Michael.

Yes, ma'am.

Ordinances I-1, consider an ordinance repealing Chapter 2, Article 2, Section 2-26B-5B, Code of Ordinances, 2028 Edition, regarding procedure for citizen placing item on agenda and amending the ordering of subsequent sections.

I think I do.

Mr. Sheets, thank you.

So I think it would be helpful for the council for me to give you a history of the Open Meetings Act and Citizens Communication. So the original Open Meetings Act was adopted by the Texas legislature in 1967. It did not contain a requirement that the public had a right to give comments at a public meeting. In 1973, the Open Meetings Act was substantially revised. Again, it only required that governmental meetings be open to the public. There was no requirement that the public had a right to provide comments at the meeting. Two years later, in August 13, 1977, an election was held, and the voters in Round Rock approved a home rule charter. The charter included Section 3.11, which reads as follows. The City Council shall, by ordinance, determine its own rules and order of business, and the rules shall provide that citizens of the city shall have a reasonable opportunity to be heard at any meeting in regard to any matter under consideration. The phrase, quote, any matter under consideration obviously implies that the matter be posted on the council agenda. One year later, during the summer of 1978, the city ran out of water when the Edwards Aquifer wells went dry. As a result, there were numerous council meetings in which the citizens demanded the opportunity to be heard and express their concerns regarding the water crisis. This was a very contentious period in the city's history. There was a petition that was submitted with sufficient signatures to recall the mayor over what the water did. And eventually led to the mayor's resignation. So as a result of the contentious nature of the meeting, there were meeting after meeting where it was very tense because the public was demanding to talk to the council. So as a result, on the 26th day of October, 1978, that's the same year that we ran out of water, the council adopted ordinance number 570, to comply with the charter to determine the rules and order of business, and to provide the citizens with a reasonable opportunity to be heard on any matter under consideration. However, at that time, the council went way beyond the requirements of the Texas Open Meetings Act that simply required meetings to be open to the public. and the charter that required citizens to be provided the opportunity to comment on an item on the agenda. The ordinance went beyond the Open Meetings Act and the charter by allowing a process for a citizen to actually place an item on the agenda. It wasn't until 2019, just a few years ago, that the Texas Open Meetings Act was amended to give the public the right to speak about items on the posted agenda at the public meeting. So the city of Round Rock was 41 years ahead of the state of Texas in giving the public the right to comment at a public meeting. During my 45 years as city attorney, that provision that allows a citizen to place an item on the council agenda was never utilized, not one time in 41 years, 45 years. Also, I'm aware of no other city in Texas that allows the public to place items on the council's agenda.

In my opinion, this provision should be repealed.

Any questions?

Questions? Council Member Fleming.

By repealing this, just to clarify, they're not able to put their own agenda item, but they can still come and do the three-minute open communication and speak on anything that's not on the agenda. or that is on the agenda. OK, thank you.

And then also, two council members together can request for an item to be put on an agenda?

A citizen can certainly ask a council member to put something on the agenda.

And it takes two of seven of us, right?

Yes, that's internal policy.

Any other questions on this one? No? No? Okay.

I2, consider an ordinance adopting amendment number one to the FY 2025-2026 operating budget. That's a second reading. Anyone have any questions on that one? No? Okay. I3, consider public testimony regarding an ordinance approving amendment number seven to plan unit development number 23 Preserve at Stone Oak to allow for limited commercial development as a permitted use generally located north of RM 1431 and west of Stone Oak Drive. Frustrating. Good morning.

Good morning, Mayor Pro Tem, council members. So this is a major amendment, amendment number seven overall to PUD number 23. This is one of an older PUD in the city, in the northwest part of the city. Looking at the maps, we're here on RM 1431, Sendero Springs Drive. It's on the south here, coming up and sort of dead ending into RM 1431 before a private drive takes over and goes into the residential subdivision here. There's existing commercial development on the west side, also within this same PUD area, but a different parcel in the PUD itself. The zoning map over here identifies the entire PUD area, including the residential. These are single-family condos, as we refer to them. So single-family structures detached, sold, and then purchased as condo units themselves, rather than fee-simple single-family neighborhood. It is surrounded on other sides by single-family up here inside the city, but then single-family to the south of Arm 1431 in a mud. Here's a look at how the PUD breaks down the different parcel areas. So parcel 4E is the one that is subject to the PUD amendment right now. So currently it is zone PUD number 23. Most recently, parcel 4E was amended in 2018 to allow for a place of worship. A church had purchased the property with plans to develop their own church facilities there. That never came to fruition, so they have been looking to sell the property. They have an interested buyer, Endeavor Real Estate, in order to develop some retail on the property, but in order to do that first, they need to amend the PUD to allow commercial uses in parcel 4E. The 2030 future land use map designates the property for commercial uses, and it's been that way since at least 2010, if not further, but really that was before the single family was developed up here, that this whole stretch has been designated for commercial uses. And this commercial land use designation is intended for areas that are appropriate for retail sales and services adjacent to or next to neighborhoods to help serve those neighborhoods with some of those services that they might otherwise have to drive much further for. So currently in the PUD, it has a base zoning district of office or the OF zoning district and all permitted uses within that district. plus the inclusion of a place of worship with unrestricted square footage of accessory uses, which allows effectively a very large church that also includes schools or daycares and other kinds of facilities within that place of worship. It also allows senior living, including assisted living, nursing home, and congregate care, and a daycare with a maximum of 20,000 square feet. The proposed amendment will change the base zoning district from OF to C1A, or our general commercial limited zoning district. And it will allow the following uses, many of which will have supplementary standards to help further restrict the intensity of them, which I'll go over on the next page. So daycare will still be allowed, but we're bringing down the maximum size from 20,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet. Fuel sales will be allowed, but they will be limited to four fuel pump islands with no more than eight individual fuel pumps. Additionally, any pumps or any vacuum facilities or air pumps at that gas station will have to be set back at least 200 feet from the residential properties to the north. Auto service facilities are proposed to be permitted. These are like your oil change facilities. Again, they have a 200-foot setback from the residential properties to the north. All of those services have to be within an enclosed building, so you can't be doing work on vehicles outside of a building. Obviously, they always have large bay doors that are open during business hours, but those bay doors cannot face the single-family homes. Restaurants and bars are permitted. However, well, actually, I should say restaurants are permitted, but bars are prohibited, and outdoor live music is prohibited at any restaurant that might be established there. Additionally, all outdoor eating and drinking areas must be set back at least 200 feet from the residential property line. Drive-thrus are allowed, and that could be with a restaurant or with a bank or with a pharmacy, but only a maximum of two standalone drive-thrus. A third could be included if it's part of a multi-tenant building and a drive-thru is on the end cap of that multi-tenant building. But again, we have a 200-foot setback for the facilities associated with that drive-through to help increase or create the compatibility with the neighborhoods of the north. Dog daycare, indoor kennel grooming, and training facilities are permitted, but everything has to be conducted within an enclosed building. Animal drop-off hours are limited, and the facility itself is limited in size as well because these can sometimes be noisy facilities. And additionally, sports training facilities or specialty gyms, something like your gymnastics, cheerleading, batting cages, types of uses, those are allowed as well or proposed to be allowed, I should say. But all of those activities must be within an enclosed building. The C1A zoning district also permits many other land uses that we are proposing to prohibit within this PUD, within this parcel in this PUD amendment. So some of those more intense ones include auto body and retail. auto sales, event centers, hotels, urgent care facilities, outdoor entertainment, these are all going to be prohibited as part of this PUD amendment, but normally they are allowed in the C1A zoning district. We're not proposing any changes to the building setbacks. A one-story building in the current PUD has to be at least 50 feet away from the single-family neighborhood. A two-story building at least 100 feet away, we're not proposing any changes to that except for Some of those things that require a 200-foot setback, as noted earlier, tried to draw basically a 200-foot line indicating the distance of 200 feet away from the neighborhood up there, how far into the property that goes. It's almost half the depth of the property. So relegating all of those uses that require the 200-foot setback to the front of the property. There was a lot of public engagement with this one, more so than any normal PUD amendment that we go through or any kind of zoning that we go through. We went through the typical steps of newspaper notice, mail notices signed, posted on the property, and HOA courtesy notice was sent to the Preserve at Mayfield branch there. There was also an applicant-led neighborhood meeting, three of those, in fact, involving different members of the residents there, the HOA, some of the neighbors, some of the property owners as well. They met the developer on site, walked the property, talked about it as well. On April 22nd, there was a city-led neighborhood meeting. We had 18 or 20 of those residents into our office where we could answer questions about how PUDs work, how city codes and ordinances work, how the development process works to help them understand what we can and can't do, additionally answering more questions about the actual property in question here. And we've also received 23 statements via email from some of those adjacent neighbors, and those have been included in your packet. As a result of some of those public outreach steps, a few things have been added to the PUD amendment, including the requirement for a four foot wide pedestrian path, a limitation on the number of fuel pumps, and increased standards for compatibility buffers. So that four foot wide pedestrian path will have to be built by the developer on the east side of this private drive. So the property in question is the one on the right side or the east side of this private drive. On the west side over here, we have a CVS right here at 3000 Arm, 1431 Sandero Springs to the south. This is a signalized intersection currently. And so this is a private drive going to the north, serving the single family neighborhood. But there's also a public access easement over that private drive to help carry people across private property to reach their homes here, but also as a way of getting to this rear access drive to carry them kind of behind some of these commercial properties over there. So the developer will be required to effectively build an unpaved sidewalk along the east side of this private drive to help provide people with a way of walking alongside the private drive but not being in the private drive. And it could also provide at the northern area up here an area for children to wait for the school bus not on the street or within that drive aisle because the buses do not pull into the neighborhood. They pull into the private drive and then they come back out the other way. So having some area off the street for them to stay while they're waiting for the bus will provide for some safety for them. Regarding compatibility, so if you recall, typically when we have commercial development or high intensity development next to a single family neighborhood, there's a requirement for a six foot tall masonry wall on the property line between the commercial property and the single family property up here. In this case, there are a lot of site constraints already present on the site. So as you can see, we've got a lot of different colored lines turned on on this map that represent different utilities. There's a green line representing a wastewater main. There is a blue line representing drainage. There's already a water quality and detention pond back here. There's a lot of trees, as you can tell, as well. And so we have language built into this PUD to allow that wall to be further into the property. And also there's a requirement for a site elevation study that will require the developer's engineer to basically show us the contours and the elevation on the property and how the location of the wall provides maximum screening between the commercial and the residential. We don't want to end up in a situation, because in this part of town, as you're all aware, there's a lot of elevation change, a lot of hills, and there is some steady sloping on this property as well. So we don't want to end up in a situation where A compatibility wall is built on the property, but because of the grade change between the single family and the commercial, it is meaningless. It actually has no effect. And so this will allow us to ensure that the developer is building the wall in a location that provides the requisite amount of screening from the single family neighborhood. It will also allow us and allow them some flexibility to place it in a way that avoids the removal of many trees. So here's a little bit. They've already done some studies of what that will look like. So for reference, we've got the property outline here in a rectangle. These teardrop-shaped features on the map are karst features. So these have been identified either as caves or voids. And they have large buffers around them because water drains into these voids to help recharge the aquifer. So everything within this shaded teardrop section cannot be developed. It cannot be touched in any kind of way. They will have to leave this completely untouched throughout the development process. Those are state regulations, but we help to enforce them. And so we do have a wall, roughly identified location for the wall up here. That would be a six-foot masonry wall. There's a couple of dog legs and some areas where there might be some gaps to try and avoid removing some trees, but This is a preliminary location where the developer believes it will provide the most screening from the commercial side to the single family side. There have been many comments from the adjacent residents about transportation issues as it pertains to the existing signal right here. So as I noted, there already is a traffic signal at this intersection, but there have been comments that the timing for that signal is not ideal. Usually only a few cars can get out, four or five, and that means if everybody's actually paying attention and not on their phones. So those residents not only engaged the city, but they have also engaged TxDOT. The developer has engaged TxDOT as well because this is a TxDOT facility. The city does not have control over the road or over the signals. We can talk, we can converse, we can try and influence their decision making, but TxDOT's going to do what TxDOT wants to do. But to their credit, actually, I was brought into the loop yesterday on a conversation that one of the residents has been having with different representatives from TxDOT as well as with the developer. So I believe on last Friday that TxDOT was scheduled to go out and conduct a timing study this stoplight but also looking at other stoplights up and down and they would re-evaluate over the next month or two if and how to change the timing on those signals because it's one thing to you can't just simply change the timing on one signal right here because this signal is generally somewhat lined up with the green light at the next signal further to the west and so on so you don't want to change the timing of one and then throw off the timing for the rest of the corridor so TxDOT is actively engaged in this and being responsive to the residents request to this point to re-evaluate the timing of that signal. TxDOT will also require the developer to build a right-turn lane into the property. Most likely it will be somewhere towards the middle of the property over here. That, again, is a TxDOT requirement. Anytime new commercial development is built on an arterial roadway like this, TxDOT will require that developer to build a right-turn deceleration lane to get that turning traffic off of the main lanes. Something that is yet to be determined is the need for a designated right turn lane at the signal right here. If that occurs, will it be TxDOT or will it be the developer's responsibility? Again, not something we have control over, but a conversation we're trying to remain a part of and, again, yet to be determined. Last month, the Planning and Zoning Commission considered this PUT amendment, and they recommended approval by a vote of five to zero. We had 10 public speakers from the resident, mostly from the neighborhood out here, regarding the compatibility of uses, signal timing at the intersection of 1431 and the private drive, as well as environmental considerations regarding tree health and drainage, and staff recommends approval.

Thank you, Bradley. Questions? Council Member Flores?

I saw the slide on the setbacks. Are there any proposed high restrictions on those buildings?

The high restriction will remain at two stories, although I think in this case there's also a most of the commercial buildings are really just going to be one story. You might have some office use in there that could go to two story. You could still have a place of worship that could go to two stories as well. I think most of the development you will see will only be one story. But the height limit overall is unchanged compared with the current PUD to the proposed PUD at two stories.

And then to your comment on the turn-in lane off 1431 that will ideally go into the center of the parcel, any thought on how you exit that? Can you only make a right-hand turn, or will they be able to go left?

Correct. So any... The very most likely scenario is that any right-turn lane to get into the property here will also only have a right turn coming out. So all exiting traffic, if they want to turn left, will have to come out here to this intersection to the signal, which is best from a safety standpoint. Traffic is a high-speed roadway. Traffic backs up at this light right here. You don't want people waiting here, waiting to turn left with that limited visibility. So that one driveway will most likely be only a right-in, right-out entrance and exit.

And just curious the the entrance to the condo area is that set gated or is that just open it is gated okay, and can you just go back to the slide showing the four parcels or the various parcels Is that just conceptual at this point or is that what we think it's going to look like I

So this is the exhibit in the existing PUD that has been governing land use for many years now. It is divided up into different parcel areas for land use purposes. So parcel 4B is the single family condo section. 4E, again, is the one that has been a few different things over the years, most recently church. 4C and 4D have been commercial parcels with some slightly different development standards. I'd have to really dig into it to see what actually differentiates them. We have a car wash and CVS on this one. Then you've got some office building and multi-tenant retail over here combined with the quick trip at the corner over here.

And the parcel 4A is a detention pod?

I think that's actually more residential, this area right here. So that's single family fee simple over there, I believe.

Well, then I'm confused. So go back to the previous slide. So that's the full thing, the parcel 4B is the existing condo? Yes. Okay, I didn't catch that. Sorry. I think I'm done.

Council Member Fleming.

So I have questions around the private drive. I go to church right there, so I'm familiar with the area. Currently, I mean, the private drive, I just kind of always look at past the least resistance and where people are going to want to drive through. So I mean, realistically, people might drive in and then immediately go into the existing commercial or they're going to the homes. But if we're adding on this other retail, then, like you said, they're going to need to go on that road a lot more in order to turn left. So who is currently responsible for that road? And knowing that this development is coming in, is there room for discussion about sharing that cost if that retail is going to be driving a lot of traffic there?

Yes, so that has been one of the causes for concern of the residents here is that they have been under the impression so far and operating under the assumption that their HOA has been responsible for the maintenance of that private drive, even though it is shared with existing commercial uses and future commercial uses. Their attorney or the HOA is looking into it. The developer's attorney is also looking into it to see what kind of shared maintenance responsibility there actually should be and should have been over the years. That's something they're still trying to work out and figure out on their own. It's not something the city can necessarily weigh in on because it is private property, even though it has a public access easement granting anybody the right to use that road. So the neighborhood has been concerned that this road is going to get more use now or this private drive is going to get more use and it's going to break down quicker and then they're going to be on the hook to repair it. I don't believe that necessarily is the case, but it really relies on digging into some of those original easement documents and figuring out how that maintenance responsibility was set out. Usually it just says something vague like owners, plural owners, but does that refer to all owners within the PUD area? Usually there would be a survey attached to that easement showing the area properties that are affected by it and the properties that effectively pay into it. So I do know that the developer is very heavily engaged with the neighborhood to determine exactly what those maintenance responsibilities need to be.

Okay. And then I know there was some questions about the trees. I think you've done a good illustration of where the wall is going to be and maintaining a lot of those trees. So that's helpful. But they had also mentioned maybe having a higher wall. So has there been any discussion about that? What is the true impact of going from six feet to eight feet? I know that you said they were going to be looking at if it's sloping and is it benefiting, but what's your thoughts around the six versus eight foot wall?

Staff generally doesn't have a preference between six or eight. We think eight is a good thing if a developer is willing to go to eight feet in order to soothe some concerns of the neighborhood. But I think in this case, we feel like the site elevation study will help create a situation where we're having a fence that is of effective height and provides that level of screening. developers will always push back on an eight foot fence especially when you have a requirement to build it of masonry because it significantly increases the cost there's a lot of structural design that has to go into it as well we feel at the staff level that what we have in the PUD is sufficient to provide that screening but if a developer was willing to go to eight feet or if that motion was made by council it wouldn't be unprecedented we have eight foot compatibility fences elsewhere in the city and do you

Is there truly a benefit, like why the residents are asking for that, or is it just kind of pulling it out of the air?

Just for more screening. Okay. Yeah, but I believe the current requirement roughly matches what you see across the drive aisle. As you can see, a little bit of it right here, the CVS has their only a six-foot masonry fence right there along the back of their rear drive aisle because there are some drainage features back here. So a six-foot masonry fence matches what's out there already on the other commercial tracks.

And then there'll be a lot more trees, which I do know helps. Correct. And then I think the other concern was about business hours. I saw some restrictions of I think 9 p.m. on one of the doggy daycare maybe. So I guess do we have any idea of what they're planning on putting in? What's the thoughts on 24-7? Is that what we're going to see happening?

I wouldn't expect to see 24-7 anything out here. The developer, they have a general idea of what they would like to build. It does involve a couple of pad site drive-thrus for restaurants. It does involve potentially a daycare and some multi-tenant retail. But typically at some neighborhood serving commercial areas like this, you're not going to have 24-hour uses. It's something that will generally be during normal daytime working hours. Also, the prohibition on bars and the prohibition on outdoor live music at restaurants will help to keep some of those hours on the early side. So we're not concerned about late night or evening activities disrupting the neighborhood.

Thank you. Any other? Council Member Flores.

Back to the question on the private drive. Is there ever a time or place where the city would be required to take that over?

No. It's not developed to a city standard in terms of width and geometry and the pavement section. It's really just a private drive aisle. So the city would be taking on, even though it's not a large road or a long road, the city would be taking on its own maintenance burden if we were to take that over.

Thank you.

Questions over here? Council Member Montgomery.

Bradley, could you go back to the slide with the trees? Either this one or the other one. Is it possible that you could overlay the karst location onto where the trees are so we can get an impact on how they will be impacted?

We can do that. Might need to ask the developer for that. I will say the karst situation and the tree situation, while they are both kind of combined on this property, we view them separately. So we have our tree protection ordinance. So we're going to view how the developer will be preserving or moving some of those trees and then proposing to mitigate those that is separate from how they will be handling the karst situation. But again, to your point, if there are any trees within these karst areas, they will automatically be preserved.

Council Member Ortega?

Thanks for some of the answers you've given me because those were some that I was going to ask. But I do have a question back to the private drive. When the development went up on the left-hand side, do they not usually keep a sketch or something to our planning and zoning for that? Because that's probably how that road got there in the first place.

So the private access drive here, including the one behind the commercial area back there coming back out to the stoplight over here, that was kind of laid out by the original owner of the property, the original developer of the subdivision and the infrastructure here. So it wasn't necessarily something that was done with each individual development as they came through the site development permitting process. This was something that was considered at the beginning of the PUD process by the original property owner. So you will see those easements referenced on those individual site development permits. There will be another drive entrance here from 1431 that has a shared access easement over it so that anyone going to CVS or to Quick Trip can come into a different property and transverse those other properties. So I hope that I sufficiently answered the question. Yeah, you did. Okay.

My next question is, if you can go back to the slide where you show the Ks, the graded share... shaded area because I'm seeing points all coming down towards 1431. Is that the possibility of the cave moving in that direction underneath? Do we know?

As far as we know, the caves are not changing shape or size or moving in any direction. Usually these buffers kind of follow something resembling a drainage area that, you know, something falling in a certain rain falling in a certain area might be draining into that cave area, but also relies on a geological study of the land. What else might be under there? You want to leave that land on top of it undisturbed so as not to disrupt anything going on in the cave or to have a building or any infrastructure falling into the cave.

Okay. The next question is a follow-up to that. You may have already answered it. So this is sort of a buffer where they are being recognized and not to build close to it. Thank you. Yes.

I just have, I think, two questions. And my first one is related to Council Member Montgomery's question. So when does that tree study begin?

place to assess those trees that are on the property they've probably already completed one however we won't see it usually until the site development permit application is submitted and that's all the horizontal improvements on the ground the grading the drainage parking the building footprints but not necessarily the building permits themselves because that's when the site development permit is when they conduct all those improvements all that construction activity they have to show us where all those protected trees are located how many they're proposing to remove and All the ones that they're proposing to keep, they need to show tree protection fencing around it that we will inspect before they get under construction. And then also where all the new landscaping and new trees will be planted. So not at the zoning stage and not at the subdivision planting stage, but right beyond that during site development permit review.

And then in theory, if there are protected trees and they want to remove them, they have to come back for approval, correct?

Only to the city staff level as part of the subdivision permit review. The only instance in which they would have to come back to city council for approval is if there was a designated monarch tree on the site. And so a monarch tree is the largest of any given species, at least one of the protected species in the city. So only if they were proposing to remove one of those would they need to come back to city council. We're pretty good at working with them at our level to get them to work around those trees and not come back to ask for removal. But since we haven't seen the tree survey yet, we don't know if there are any monarchs or how many there might be and where they're located.

But in theory, there could be protected trees on top, in addition, not on top, but in addition to the karst preserves making that buildable area even less, more of a challenge. Okay. That was my question. Thank you.

Any other questions on I-3? Council Member Flores.

Just to follow up on her question. I thought somebody, an intern or somebody smart, had done a tree survey of all the remaining trees in Round Rock.

It wasn't all the remaining trees in Round Rock. It was a survey of many, many, many of the existing tree surveys that we already had creating a GIS layer and a usable map feature showing in one place where all of our identified or known monarch trees were. Since we don't have a tree survey out here, it would not have been on there.

All right. Thank you.

All right. Anyone else? No? Okay.

Thank you, Bradley. I-4, consider public testimony regarding an inordinance granting a partial tax exemption from ad valorem taxes for certain qualified historically significant properties. Bradley again.

So this is our annual partial tax exemption program for historically significant sites in the city. This really is our only mechanism to provide an incentive to owners of historic property to preserve their properties in their original historic state. This is something we've been doing annually since 1982 to prevent deterioration of our historic resources. We have a great stock of historic buildings and properties in the city. But with growing development pressure and increased property and land costs, we want to do everything we can to encourage the owners of those properties to maintain them in good working order. So as part of this program annually, we do property maintenance inspections to identify items that, if left unrepaired, could cause structural damage or otherwise compromise the historic features on those properties. And then the expectation is that the owners will reinvest the tax savings into maintenance of the property. It requires an application every year by April 30th. WCAD is actually the one who sends out the applications because we interact with WCAD to convey who is receiving the exemption, who is not, since WCAD is kind of that authority sending out the tax bills and everything. So WCAD sends out the application. City staff sends a postcard to all those who receive that application in February with a deadline of April 30th to submit that application to the city to participate each year. A property must have historic overlay zoning to be eligible, and if they approved for the exemption it gives them 75% off the city portion of the property taxes again it does require a property maintenance inspection and Kirsten Harding planner and our department goes out to conduct all those inspections she compiles reports sends them to the historic preservation Commission so each Commissioner gets you know eight or ten of them to review on their own and then the historic preservation Commission comes up with their own recommendation about which properties will receive the exemption or which ones are proposed to fail for the year. And by city code, the recommendation must be made by HPC, followed up by approval by city council by July 15th of every year. This year, we received 51 applications, which is pretty consistent with the last handful of years. The Historic Preservation Commission is recommending 48 receive the exemptions, totaling $170,588. Eleven of those properties are residential properties with an average value or an average exemption value of $1,626. The remaining 37 properties are commercial properties with an average exemption of $4,127. HPC did recommend three properties not receive the exemption this year. Going back to the last few years and seeing how these numbers compare, again, very consistent on the number of applications and exemptions. In these cases, there were usually 51 or 52 applications received, 51 receiving exemptions. So last year, we did receive 52. There was one that failed. They have not reapplied this year, but they could still reapply next year if they address the outstanding issues that have been piling on for several years. Again, this year, we received 51, recommending 48 for those exemptions. And you can see how the total assessed value of those properties steadily increases, as well as the historic exemption increases in tandem with that, as well as what the net taxes due to the city would be if approved. The three properties that were failing inspections are identified here with a brief list of the issues at those properties. We do everything we can to work with these property owners to make sure that they're doing what they can. They have the information, the resources they need to be maintaining their properties. In these three cases, though, these items have been on an inspection list for years on end. And it has reached that point where if these property owners continue to neglect those items, it will significantly damage the properties. You could talk about moisture getting in where windows aren't properly sealed, paint that is not existent, areas that need to be primed because it's just bare wood. And if that wood starts to rot and then moisture gets in that way. So things that are typically small up front, but they could add up in ways that would cause more damage to a property in the long run. And so these are instances where these things have been recurring maintenance items year after year. And so the Historic Preservation Commission felt like it was appropriate this year to recommend a failure for these three properties. They reviewed all of those applications at their May 19th meeting last month. 18 of those properties got a full pass inspection rating. 30 were needs maintenance. The needs maintenance properties still receive that exemption, and then they're given until April 30th of next year to resolve the items that were identified as needing maintenance, or at least to be well on their way to be working on it. And then three properties, again, recommended to receive a failed inspection reading. They would not receive the exemption this year. Again, they could fix those items this year and then reapply for the program next year and be right back in. Applicants have until August 31st to dispute any of those maintenance issues noted on the inspection reports. I think in our recorded history or in our memory, there's really only been one instance of a property owner disputing those inspection reports. And again, those applicants are expected to complete any noted repairs for the maintenance items by April 30th of next year to get next year's exemption. I think that concludes the staff presentation.

Questions? Council Member Fleming?

Just curious, and I apologize if you already mentioned it, but the three that failed, were they prior needs maintenance and never got it done, and now they're at failed, or are they new requests?

Yes, they've been usually showing up as needs maintenance year after year.

So it's just good to know that we've got some of those controls in place. Thanks. Council Member Flores?

So regarding the same properties, It's their prerogative to apply for this exemption or not apply for the exemption, but there's no other fine or penalty from the city if they don't do the things that they needed to do. Is that correct?

Not necessarily. I mean, if a property is neglected so much that we effectively have to consider it demolished or totaled, you know, to bring the analogy to a car, then it could be considered demolition by neglect. In those cases, or if a property owner even chooses to demolish their historic property, then there's like a payback of five years of the previous five years of those partial tax exemptions to the city. So that's You can almost think of it either as a punishment of demolishing, but really we don't have other mechanisms to compel property owners to maintain their historic properties outside of this partial tax exemption.

Sure. So unless it becomes a code enforcement issue, I mean, that's when we would step in. But none of these three or 48 that were approved, they're not required to do this. It's encouraged, but...

Right. It is our incentive to help them maintain their properties.

Okay. Thank you.

Questions over here? Anyone? No?

Okay. All right. Thank you. There is also on item J, appointments, appointment of a mayor pro tem. Any questions on the Thursday agenda before we go back to today's agenda?

No?

Okay. Okay. D, proclamation. D1, consider proclaiming June 7th, 2026 as World Food Safety Day in the city of Round Rock. And I think we have Amber Erickson here to receive the proclamation. Do you want to come up here and I'll read it for you? Whereas the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations jointly established World Food Safety Day to raise awareness and inspire action to help prevent, detect, and manage foodborne risks, World Food Safety Day is observed annually on June 7th to highlight the importance of safe food in protecting public health, supporting economic prosperity, and promoting sustainable development, and Whereas the 2026 World Food Safety Day theme, From Burden to Solutions, Safe Food Everywhere, emphasizes the importance of understanding the global burden of foodborne diseases and using science, data, and collaboration to create practical solutions that protect communities. Everyone involved in the food supply chain, including farmers, producers, processors, transporters, distributors, retailers, food inspectors, food service workers, and consumers, shares responsibility for ensuring food safety. And whereas the Williamson County and Cities Health District Retail food program plays a vital role in protecting the health of residents and visitors by conducting routine inspections of food establishments, investigating foodborne illness complaints, responding to public health concerns, and providing education and guidance to food service operators on safe food handling practices. WCCHD environmental health sanitarians work diligently every day to ensure compliance with food safety regulations, promote best practices, and support a culture of food safety that helps prevent illness and safeguard the community. Increasing awareness and strengthening partnerships among public health agencies, local businesses, and community members are essential to advancing safe food practices and protecting public health. And whereas the slogan, Food Safety is Everyone's Business, reminds us that collaboration and education are essential to reducing foodborne illness and protecting the health and well-being of all residents, The City of Round Rock recognizes the importance of promoting food safety awareness and supporting efforts that help ensure access to safe, nutritious food for all people. Now, therefore, I, Kristen Stevens, on behalf of Craig Morgan, Mayor of the City of Round Rock, hereby proclaim June 7, 2026, World Food Safety Day in the City of Round Rock, Texas and encourages all residents, businesses, food industry professionals, and community organizations to observe this day by promoting safe food practices and supporting efforts to reduce foodborne illness, proclaimed Craig Morgan Mayor. Thank you.

I think we're on the agenda next to present.

Do you have anything else to say or just read the agenda item?

Just read. We have it in the presentation, so you're going to.

OK, perfect. So then E1, update the executive director of the Williamson County and Cities Health District. Sorry, update from the executive director.

Thank you so much for having us today. Mayor Pro Tem and council members. My name is Amber Erickson. I am the executive director of Williamson County and Cities Health District. I've been here, it'll be a year next week. So I'm very excited to be here. And I have very much enjoyed my last year serving Williamson County and the city of Round Rock. So I'm here to just talk a little bit about the services we have at the district. And I'll talk a little bit about this food safety stuff as well once I get to the environmental health stuff. So our district has been here since the 1943, and we've been serving across the county and our member cities since then. We have locations in Cedar Park, Georgetown, Brown Rock, and Taylor. Our Georgetown clinic has closed, but we do have services at the Carver Center. Both our WIC and our eligibility programs are there. We are governed through our unique partnerships with the county and our member cities through our Board of Health, ensuring that all of our voices in the county have a voice through priorities and decision makings that are shared amongst all of our member governments. We are also nationally recognized through Public Health Accreditation Board, which means our programs, policies, and services are evaluated against national standards, quality, and performance. And we are one of the first counties in the state to get that standardization. And next year, we're up for a reaccreditation. So we're getting ready for that right now. A little bit about our funding. We are a little bit unique in how our funding works. One thing that I always like to highlight is public health is a true partnership. Our funding source doesn't come from one place. About 35% of our operating budget does come from the county, and while our member cities do collectively contribute to about 10%, our state grants and contracts account for about 29%. And the remainder comes from about our environmental health fees, reimbursements, and our reserve, and a few other sources through our clinics. And this diverse funding structure makes sure that we leverage all of our partnerships and opportunities. And we're always seeking additional opportunities to make sure that we are able to benefit all of the residents that we have here. And I'm not going to read this slide word for word, but last fall when I started, we got together as a leadership team and our board, and we were starting our strategic planning process to get our next iteration of our strategic plan, which starts in October. And we realized our mission and vision hadn't been updated since 2017, so we had a little retreat last fall and updated those statements. Our mission basically emphasizes three core responsibilities, and that's to prevent disease, respond to emergencies, and promote and protect the health and well-being of everyone that comes to Williamson County, lives in Williamson County, visits everyone that comes through here. And so our vision reflects where we're headed as a district. We want to help the community achieve optimal well-being through accessible and innovative public health services. And these statements really guide our strategic plan, our resource allocation, and organize our priorities. We also, in that strategic planning retreat and with our staff, re-evaluated our value statements and wanted to make sure that all of our values reflected everything that we did every day. And so those are accountability, collaboration, quality, respect, and responsiveness, which is very important in public health because we often work at the intersection of a lot of different things. through health care, government, education, emergency response, community organizations. There's really not a single partner in the community that we're not working with. So these values really ensure that we remain a trusted partner for everyone in the community. And then to start touching on the things that we're actually doing. So most people think of public health, this is what they often picture, the prevention of disease. So in our clinics last year, we provided about 2,100 immunization services. We managed about 29 TB cases and conducted about more than 300 TB contacts, provided hundreds of women's health visits. One area that I want to particularly point out is our tuberculosis clinic. Like many communities across Texas and the nation, we've seen an increase in tuberculosis over the past couple of years. This is just an increase in natural disease. It's not directed towards a specific outbreak. TB is very, very contagious, and it is very hard to control. Every single case of TB, those individual people that have it, we in the public health clinics, those nurses follow every single case every single day for about nine months. of their treatment to make sure that they remain non contagious and every single one of those cases has to have a very detailed contact tracing and every single one of their contacts make sure that if they get sick They also get that nine months of treatment and sometimes even further than that. So it's very detailed and it's very cumbersome. We are able to manage it right now, but as things increase, we're a little concerned about what that may look like in the future. But it's just something to keep in mind. That is something that we're a little concerned of in our public health clinics. Our WIC services is another big service that we have and one of our most impactful programs. This is our nutritional program for moms and babies and little children. They provide nutritional assistance, breastfeeding support, health education, and referrals to other services. One trend we continue to see, as you can tell on the graph, is that there is a continuous increase over the past few years in the amount of services we are providing. This may have to do with a little bit of the population growth, but it's also the amount of services that are needed. This is not unique to Williamson County. It's a trend that's being seen a lot of places. One of the things that we are excited about is that starting this summer, it's actually starting now, is that the moms will not have to come into the clinic all the time to re-up their benefits. I think they'll only have to come in quarterly is I think what I remember. So monthly they'll get to do that virtually, which will reduce that transportation barrier. So we may see these numbers even increase higher. The next thing to talk about is one of our core responsibilities that gets us into the new sum is our disease reporting and emergency response. Another thing that is continuously reporting is the number of diseases and outbreaks that keep on occurring. And the past couple of years, that increase has continued. At the same time, we are continuously investing in our emergency preparedness efforts. We work very closely with the Office of Emergency Management and all of our response partners to make sure that everyone is prepared for any public health emergency that may arise. One example of that work is going on right now as we prepare for potential Ebola cases. We are working with the emergency management to coordinate an Ebola planning meeting. that is going on this month as we don't want to have any gaps in that planning and make sure that everybody knows what PPE is needed and how to handle a case should we actually have one. And hopefully we don't, but we want to be prepared should that happen. This next slide is our environmental health and community safety. This is the individuals that people mostly interact with. If you're interacting with public health, you're probably interacting with these individuals. The one that I want to point out first is our vector surveillance and control. It's mosquito season, so make sure you wear your bug spray in the morning and especially at night because that's when the mosquitoes that spread West Nile are are active. During the day, we also want to protect ourselves, but those mosquitoes aren't the ones that are known to spread disease. And then we are also preparing and watching what's going on with New World Schoolworm. If you have any questions about that, I am not the subject matter expert on it, but I can get any questions to our entomologist, and he can get an answer back to you. But we are watching that very closely and working with our partners on that. Our wonderful Environmental Health staff, I have some of them in the audience today. They are the ones that go out and do our restaurant inspections and make sure that all of our restaurants are safe to eat at and no one is getting sick. And they are wonderful individuals. One thing I do want to point out is a new mobile food vending law that's changing right now. And effective July 1, the mobile food vending law makes it so that the permitting transfers locally to the state office. So there will be a statewide permit for mobile vendors. We are permitting through July 18th locally. And then July 18th, we'll stop accepting permits. And then if anyone that has submitted payment for permits that isn't permitted by June 30th, we'll reimburse them. They will still be able to have that permit through next year. They just won't have that statewide permit. The application stuff is open for the statewide permit now. They just aren't doing any of those inspections until July 1. We are in contract with the state office. We will be doing inspections locally with the state, so that's still going to continue. We just won't be issuing the local permits. And then all of the local stuff with the cities will still continue as well. And then going to food safety, just to mention a few things on that. June 7th was World Safety Day, and thank you for the acknowledgment of that. Food safety is a shared responsibility. It's across the entire food chain, from the farmers that grow the food, the individuals that package the food, the restaurant owners, the food workers, the restaurant inspectors, and those that consume the food, even to the ones that at the grocery stores, the cashiers, everybody that touches the food is responsible for ensuring the foodborne illness does not spread. And so really thank you for recognizing the importance of that and making that proclamation today. One of the next programs that we have is our eligibility program. And this program is important as it is bringing or linking those and navigating those individuals that need access to care into programs that can help them get that care. As of this year, we are adding to this program, as we have a grant that is now expanding that to Medicaid and SNAP benefits, so we can now navigate and help individuals sign up for those benefits as well, on top of the Intergenic Health Care Program and Medicare. We also have the Cancer Screening Program as well, We do a lot of community outreach. This is just a snippet of what we did last year. We didn't actually document all of the outreach events. Come to find out, a lot of our programs were doing things and not telling us. They were just going out and doing. So we're doing a little bit more better documentation this year. We'll have better information for you next year when we come talk to you. But a lot of the outreach events were actually here in Round Rock. So... We're getting out to a lot of the partners here, the schools, health care organizations, nonprofits. Some of our programs go out to HOAs, the MUDs. All of those partners are extremely important to get the message out about what public health does and what all of our resources are. We also have the Health Care Coalition. This QR code, if you're interested, can get you to our sign-up page. Or if you don't want to click the QR code, I can get you information later if you're interested. But our Health Care Coalition brings together all of our health care organizations, local governments, nonprofits, businesses. There's over 90 organizations involved in it, as well as community citizens. And they put together the community health assessment and our community health improvement plan and then they have three action groups That work on three priority areas and that's access to health care Chronic disease prevention and they are working on food access based on chronic disease and mental health and well-being and These groups are bringing together partners and shared goals across agencies to work on these strategies. We also, in an effort to get the word out about what public health does, we have started a podcast. And everybody has a podcast now, and so do we. So if you are interested in learning more about what we're doing, our first season so far is a little bit about each of our programs. I think we have about five episodes now. They'll go through the end of August. They come out every other Tuesday, so the next episode will come out next Tuesday. And they range from about 20 minutes to 30 minutes, and they're on both Spotify and Apple. Pod and it's called public health is so if you do type in public health is it is not the first one that comes up The first one that comes up is public health is that and it's that is not us so But if you want to just an easy link if you go to our Facebook page, we do link it on there So I want to thank you for having us public health is one of our core things that we can do in the community to prevent illness and and protect our citizens. And thank you for having us. Any questions?

Any questions for Amber? Council Member Flores?

I thought that was very informative. Thank you. Thank you for presenting that. So are health districts required? Does each county require to have a health district?

Not in Texas, no. How Texas law is written is that the state of Texas health and safety code The state office will represent the county unless the county or city governments decide that they would like a county or city health department. And in the 1940s, Williamson County and cities decided that they would like a health district.

And your programs, are they mostly income and age-related or age-qualified or...?

It depends on the program. So the eligibility programs all have various eligibility and financial requirements that limit what they can be signed up for. And the WIC program has specific financial requirements. pregnant woman, breastfeeding woman, infant or child under two, I think. Our clinic has specific things that they can cover. So those are the services that are very, very limited. Our epidemiology program, of course, if it's a notifiable disease, There's no limit on they're going to kind of investigate you. And then our restaurants, there's regulations required for that.

I would think that there's more demand than there is funding for your programs. Absolutely, yes. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Any other? Council Member Montgomery.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. To follow up to Council Member Flores' question, is there ever a need? I see that there's a growing increase in the request for services. Is there ever a need to have to turn people away because you can't provide services to them? And if that happens, where do you send them?

We try to not send anyone away. We try to figure it out. Our eligibility program is the one that's probably going to be sending the most people away. And that's just because they don't meet the eligibility requirements. Those eligibility requirements especially for the indigent health care program for the county Have very very strict requirements that individuals have a hard time meeting And that's really the only time we send people away for the clinic we try to cover the costs if they can't cover the costs. And we are working to, the board just approved us to hire a biller so that we can start accepting health insurance in the next budget year. And that will hopefully help us be able to accept some revenues to help cover the cost in the clinic for those that don't have health insurance and kind of cover that gap. We also make sure that we cover the lab fees for those that can't cover their lab fees. So we try not to turn people away as much as we can.

Any other questions? Well, thank you for being here, Amber, and I've got your proclamations.

Thank you so much.

All right, E2, consider presentation from the Williamson Central Appraisal District regarding property tax values in the city of Round Rock. Good morning, Mr. Langford. Thank you for your patience.

Good morning. No worries. Morning Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, Chief Appraiser Alvin Lankford with the Williamson Central Appraisal District here to give you your annual evaluation update. Happy to be here. We're hot and heavy during the protest season right now, making our way through that. We'll have you a certified role here in July. I'm going to start off the presentation this morning going through some things that are new at WCAD this year. I'm happy to report that we have won the Top Workplaces Award for the fifth year in a row here in the Austin area. We were number eight overall out of businesses between 50 and 149 employees. We also won what's called the Doers Award. I had to look it up as well because I wasn't sure what that meant, but we were number one out of 3,900 plus businesses that took the survey. for this award, and it means that we do things efficiently and well at the appraisal district. So I was real proud of that particular award because it's out of every business that takes a survey in the Austin area. Next, we also renewed what's called our Certificate of Excellence in Assessment Administration. This is through our international association. It's basically a rigorous review of everything we do at the appraisal district, all of our modeling, all of our procedures, everything you do at an assessment office. There's only 11 jurisdictions in the state of Texas and about 65 worldwide that have this designation. And we have now renewed our designation twice. You have to renew it every five years. And we just went through our most recent renewal. We just got the sixth transparency star from the comptroller's office. We are the first appraisal district in the state of Texas to have achieved all six transparency stars and only the 15th local government in the state of Texas to actually have all six. I'm really proud of this particular achievement. We started this process last year and just got word actually last week that we received all six transparency stars. I'm very proud of our staff for achieving this. It really shows the transparency efforts that we're trying to make at the appraisal district. We hand out customer service survey cards to everyone that walks in the door during our protest season. And we've been doing this for about 11 years now, I believe. During that time, we've received over 23,000 of these surveys back. And during that time, we've also had about a 98% satisfaction rating. I say that because people don't generally show up at our office because they're happy to be there. They're generally there because they're upset about their valuation or at least think it should be lowered, right? And so our staff is doing an excellent job of educating them in their valuation and helping them understand why the value is what it is. And so to receive that many back is just a testament to our staff and the way that they're treating the public when they come in. Also on this slide, you're going to see that we're 4.6 Google stars. We actually are around 406 or 407. It's going up just about every week. Real proud of this. This is something we can't make them do. They go home and they do this on their own. So this is members of our public that are rating our staff on Google. And I put this challenge out every year. Love to see another local government that has this many stars. star ratings at that high of a level. I haven't found one myself. I'd love to see another one, but I'm real proud of our staff for having this level on the Google ratings. This is our 2026 Notice of Appraised Value. It looks very similar to the 2025. We didn't change much from last year. What I'd like to point out, two things. Always remind people that the total market value is the value that you can actually protest on the appraisal notice. You can come in to discuss the land value, the improvement value, any value that's on there. But the only value you can actually protest is the overall market value. We can't really separate your home from your land or your land from your home, that sort of thing. It's the overall market value. The other thing I'd like to point out is the QR code at the bottom of the page there. We add to this QR code every year. This is basically a guide to everything that's on the appraisal notice. So if you have a question about all the items that are on this notice, it's a lot, right? There's a lot of wording on here. lot of it is required through the tax code and so it's not me that's trying to overwhelm you with information it is the the legislature that has required us to put a lot of information on this notice and so what we'd like to do is just give you a guide as to what all that means and so if you scan this QR code it's going to take you to a page on our website that will actually explain a lot of that information for you so I just point that out every year because it is kind of confusing when you get this in the mail next Our sales comparison grid that we send out with the appraisal notices on about 90% of our residential properties is still very unique in the state of Texas. We are the only one out of all the appraisal districts in the state of Texas that is this transparent. There is no other appraisal district that actually sends out this sales comparison grid. I keep pointing that out because I keep hoping that there's another appraisal district that will do it. There's a few that are in the process of actually valuing with the sales comparison approach, but they have not gone to this level of transparency in actually sending this out. To me, this is about as transparent as an appraisal district can be, is actually sending the sales out that we valued the property with. Most appraisal districts do just like we did before we started this process. They send out a number and just ask you to trust in that number. We're actually sending you the sales that we use to value that property. So I'm still proud of this and, again, hoping that others will emulate this process. Also, when you look up your property on our website, this page at the top here is what you're going to see. I want to point out a few of the things you're going to see once you do that. The first is this map that you see here. In addition to that sales comparison grid, you're going to see a map that you can click, that market data map button there. That map will show you where your subject property is and the five comparable sales that we used on your property. It's usually three to five comparable sales. So you're going to see the location. You're going to see exactly what that property looked like as far as the picture is concerned. You're going to see the address, the age, all the details about those properties. You're also going to see the sales that we used in yellow and any other sales that we have in that neighborhood will be highlighted in gray. So you'll be able to see a lot of information that's right there for you. That area that's highlighted in blue is the area that we believe is the most comparable to your subject property. And so if you're coming in to protest your property, if you want to use other sales, I would suggest you pull them from that area because that's the area we believe is most comparable. Not to say you couldn't bring in other sales, but we're going to question those because we believe this is the most comparable area. So I always point that out just in case somebody is pulling up information, especially realtors. I point this out to them as well if they're pulling up additional sales. So I'm going to point out a few other details on that page when you look up your property. That market analysis red house icon there, That is an explanation of what has happened in the real estate market in Williamson County since last year. And so we'll give you a lot of data that's out there about what happened in the market, including stuff from the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center. We're also going to tell you a little bit about how we value that sales comparison approach, time adjustments. We're going to go through a lot of information for you right there on that tab. The market data map is the next icon there. If you lost your notice of appraised value and you wanted to find it, or if you've hired a tax agent and you don't receive a notice of appraised value because that tax agent receives it, you can actually look right there on that icon and look at your notice of appraised value. I want to talk about the homestead exemption icon there. Unfortunately, there are tax agencies out there that advertise that they will file your homestead exemption for you. I'm here to tell you that if you just click that button right there and file it yourself, it takes about three to five minutes. And so I encourage you and anyone that you know, if they're going to file a homestead exemption, do it on our website. It really is a very simple process. You take a picture of your driver's license. You upload it to this form. You submit it. And it takes three to five minutes. Unfortunately, what these companies are doing is they're taking about 25% of your tax savings. A homestead is saving about $1,000 now. And so they're going to charge you $250, roughly, to do something that could take you three to five minutes. So please don't hire these companies to do something like that. They provide a service, but this is one service that I think you can do on your own. All right. Some resources that are available on our website. I actually put this in my presentation this year because I realize there's not enough people that are using this function. I present to a lot of realtors in our local area, and I ask this question at these presentations, how many of them know that we have a chat feature on our website? And none of them are raising their hand. And they're kind of known as the local experts on property, right? And it's kind of upsetting to me that they don't even know that this chat feature exists. And so if you look in the lower right-hand corner of our homepage, you're going to see that little chat button. It is there for your use, and I'm going to show you how it works. It's just like any other chat function on a website. You can go in there and ask a question of our staff Monday through Friday during the business day. You can ask them anything you want. I actually asked about a homestead exemption or a homestead cap here on the chat. I actually called down front because I was like, hey, Chief Fraser is about to ask you a question through the chat. Don't freak out. It's just me. I'm trying to get an example here. But you can ask them a question. They'll give you an answer very quickly. It's even quicker than picking up the phone because they can answer multiple chats at the same time, whereas when you're on the phone, you're dealing one-on-one with somebody. They can answer multiple of these at the same time. After hours, if you wanted to ask a question, you can actually utilize the same chat function. It'll create a ticket for us that we'll get back to you in the next business day. And so it's not that you can't use it after hours. You can. We'll get back to you as soon as we can. The other thing you can do after hours or even during the business day, if you look at the bottom of that page, the little button that says knowledge base, you can type in, you can see it over on the right, you can type in whatever your question might be. I typed in exemptions here. And when you type in whatever your subject matter is, it will come up with articles that we've pre-written about those topics. So if you have a question that whatever it is, ag, business personal property exemption, you can type that in here and you can typically find your answer right there in that knowledge base. So you don't even have to pick up a phone or chat with us or come in our office. You can actually answer your questions right there in our knowledge base. So it's available for anyone that wants to get on our website if you have a question 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Another thing that we've been doing for about 15 years, we were the first in the state to produce videos on our website. We still do it. We update videos about once a year. We're putting a new one out there. These videos go through just about everything, how to fill out the homestead exemption, how to fill out an ag application, what it's like to protest your property. We will walk you through Coming in the lobby, checking in to see an appraiser, going to an appraiser's cubicle, going to the appraiser review board, what to bring to your protest. We walk you through the entire process. The videos aren't long. They're like three to ten minutes long. And so they don't take long to go through. But I highly encourage you, if you're going through the process, just to take the intimidation out of it. Go and watch the video. It's real easy to view. It'll give you some calmness going into that process. It can be kind of intimidating if you've never been through it. All right. I know you as cities, you compare yourself against other like-sized cities. It's common for local government to do just for financial purposes. Are you budgeting similar to them? that sort of thing. We do the same as appraisal districts. This year, or this past year, actually, I started looking at how we compare to the average appraisal district our size. I've always known we were more efficient than them as far as the cost is concerned. We're one of the least expensive appraisal districts in the state of our competitive set. But how much are we saving Williamson County taxpayers? And so this one here is budget cost per total dollar, excuse me, total levy. And as you can see in the math over to the side, compared to the average appraisal district our size, we're saving about $8.7 million a year compared to the average appraisal district. So every way you slice this, and I'll show you in the coming slides, if you look at our budget compared to the average appraisal district, we're saving money for Williamson County taxpayers. The next one here is the CAD budget cost as a percentage of market value. And compared to the average appraisal district, we're saving about $8 million a year. The next is CAD budget cost per population. And if you look at it this way, we're saving about $2.6 million a year compared to the average appraisal district. The next one is protests per full-time employee. We're a very busy appraisal district when it comes to protests. These protest numbers are from 23, so they're a few years old now. This is from the appraisal district operations survey on the comptroller's office. They do. And we're saving about $2.8 million a year when you look at protests per full-time employee. So I've always known we were pretty efficient, but I didn't know how much we were actually saving the Williamson County taxpayers. I'm real proud of this, that we're saving this much money for our taxpayers. How we're graded. I put these slides in every year just to remind people that we're not only reporting to them as citizenry, they have the ability to protest their values, but we also are graded by the comptroller's office to ensure that we're doing our job appropriately. So the property value study is one of the methods that the comptroller's office actually grades our values on. And what they do is they ensure that we're between 95% and 105% of market value. So we don't raise values because we want to. We raise values in times that the market is going up because we have to. We're graded by the comptroller's office to make sure we're at market value. If we fall below 95% of market value, we can lose funding for your local schools. If we go over 105% of market value, we can lose funding for your local schools. So it does not behoove us to over appraise, and it does not behoove us to under appraise. It is important for us to be right at market value every year. And the same goes, like this year, when the market value is actually dropping. We have to follow the market down. If we don't follow the market down, we could be over appraised, right? We could be over that 105%, and we could lose funding for the local schools. So it's very important that we follow the market no matter where it goes. And every year that we have the property value study, we are passing the PVS, is what it's called, and all of our local schools are receiving state funding. In the opposite year of the PVS, there is what we call the MAP review, the Methods and Assistance Program review. I think we're in our fifth iteration of the MAP review. And basically what it is is that they ask us a series of questions that we have to provide evidence for to make sure we're following the tax code, we're following appraisal methodologies. And we have never failed a single question on the MAP review. I believe we're one of the few appraisal districts that can still say this. I don't think there's many out there that have never failed a single question. And so I'm real proud of this because they challenge us every year with new questions to ensure that we're doing everything that is required of us. All right. We didn't have a legislative session last year, but we do have new laws to follow this year. Just a reminder, the homestead exemption that they increased is in place. It was in place last year and is again in place this year from $100,000 to $140,000 saving homeowners in our county. The big one that's new this year is House Bill 9 from the last session. It created an exemption for business personal property accounts of $125,000. So every business personal property account is automatically exempted of $125,000. So if they're under $125,000, they're totally exempt. But if they're over that, they get $125,000 off of their valuation before multiplying it times the tax rate. This is a huge impact to business personal property taxes. We were estimating looking at the 2025 business personal property values. This is about 10% countywide of the business personal property value that will be exempted completely off the roll. So it is a very large impact. We're still finalizing the values for business personal property. We should know in the next week or so what the impact for 2026 is. Of course, that's the impact before protest because we're still going through protests right now. But as the renditions are being worked, we're kind of understanding what the impact will be for this year. But looking back at last year, it's about 10% of the values coming off the roll for business personal property. So it is a large impact. The circuit breaker limitation that came into effect about two sessions ago, this was in response to the large increase from 2021 to 2022 when values skyrocketed. the legislature came in and put a 20% cap on all non-homesteaded real property. So if you're a rental home owner, it was capped at 20% increase. If you're a commercial business owner, capped at 20% increase. So that was a trial period of three years. And they had the opportunity this past session to go ahead and extend that, and they chose not to. that circuit breaker limitation ends after this year. And so this is the last year you'll see that circuit breaker limitation on any account. So that will fall off. I believe their concession this past session was House Bill 9. They were basically, for the commercial properties, they put House Bill 9 in place to concede the fact that they're eliminating the circuit breaker limitation. All right, protest results. I get this question a lot doing presentations and also just in the public. How successful are people when they protest their property? About three sessions ago, the legislature put into place what they called an ARB database. And what that was is basically the results of every account that went through the protest season. And really all it was was a large spreadsheet. And it just went through every account, what their notice value was and what their final value was. So it was really hard on anyone to understand what the impact was unless you took that spreadsheet and did a lot of math, right? So what we did this year is we put together a Power BI dashboard that if you go to our homepage on our website and you go to appeal results, it's right there on the homepage. There's white icons, icon boxes on the homepage. And you go to appeal results. This is the first thing that will pop up. And this actually goes through exactly what happened in the 2025 appeal season. Up in the upper right-hand corner, you can choose the type of property you want to look at. So you can select all. You can look at land, commercial, and residential altogether. Or you can look at any one of those individually. Right here, I have residential selected. And so if you look over on the left-hand side where you see appeal results, you can see the median change rate. I split it up three different ways here. So agents that represent over 10,000 accounts, they had a median change rate of only less than 1%, about 0.88 of 1%. Agents that represent under 10,000 accounts, they had a median change rate of 1.1%, and property owners did the best at 2.39%. I like to point this out mainly because agents protest everything every year. They represent a lot of accounts. They don't just protest when it's necessary. Property owners take a look at the value, and they make a decision on whether or not to protest, right? So they look at your home value, and they're like, well, that looks right or it doesn't, and they make a decision based on that. A tax agent, on the other hand, protests every single property they represent every year, regardless if it needs a protest or not, and they clog up the system quite a bit. And so you'll see that because they don't get a lot of reductions in comparison with property owners. Property owners actually do a bit better than they do. If you look on the right-hand side, you'll actually see the estimated tax savings based on that. So on the right-hand side over here, you see that agents are saving anywhere from about $30 to $60 on median tax savings. And property owners are saving about $143 median tax savings. And so keep in mind that agents either are charging a fee Most agents are charging, if they charge a fee, it's about $100 to $150 to represent them every year. So if they saved you $60, now you've paid more than you have actually saved. Or they're charging 25% of the savings. And so if they charge you $60, they've taken 15 of it. Keep in mind that the cost is not taken out of this median tax savings. So put this out here just for people to be aware of what happens during the appeal cycle and what the actual savings are. If you still want to look at that large database of properties, you can click that lower left hand button there where it says search for ARB hearing by account. That will take you to that large database. So we still have that available, but I think the dashboard is a much easier way of just looking at the data. All right, let's talk about market. What happened in the market? So I mentioned the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center earlier. They saw about what we saw. You can look at 24 to 25. That yellow line represents the average price. And you can see a little downtick from 24 to 25. Values were going down from last year. And you're going to see that in the data I present to you in just a few minutes. So here's the WCAT appraisal data. So your overall market value in the city of Round Rock did slightly increase. This is including all new property as well as existing property, remember. So when I say residential went down, you'll see that in a few minutes. But you also had new property come in line. So this is everything combined. So from $30.28 billion to $30.58 billion is what happened on your market value. This is all prior to protests. I always like to point that out because this does drop during the protest cycle. This is a breakup of that total market value. So you're going to see residential is that $4.9 billion in the lighter blue. $7.6 billion is commercial. And that purple, or yeah, I guess it's a purple color there, is multifamily. And the orange is what land you have remaining in Round Rock. By improved parcel count, mainly residential at 33,952 residential properties. The remainder is in commercial and multifamily. By value, again, mostly residential, you do have about $7.63 billion in commercial. Here's where you see some of that reduction in residential value. So keep in mind, this is new and existing residential. Your residential value went down from $25 from $15.27 billion to $14.81 billion. It would have probably went down further if you did not have some new value coming online. And you'll see that in just a minute. So here's your median value from last year. Your city of Round Rock is the blue line. The county is the red line. And so you can see in 2025, your median value was $402,000. In 2026, the median value was $377,000. So it did drop from last year. And that's the same drop that you were seeing on that Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center slide that I showed you a few minutes ago. We were seeing this drop across the county. I tell you, this is a median and not everyone. I say this all the time because there are examples of areas that did go up. There are examples of areas that went down further. This is just the middle. So this is the median value change for the county, or for the city, excuse me. Number of new residential improvements. This helped you as far as your residential value not going down dramatically. You did have 610 new residential improvements in the city of Round Rock this past year. Those new residential improvements, most of them were in the $300,000 to $500,000 range, as you can see in this slide here. You had 267 that were built in that $300,000 to $400,000 range and 147 that were built in that $400,000 to $500,000 range. So back in 22, when we had that large increase, average of 47% countywide from 21, 100% of the residential homesteaded properties were at their cap. Now that has dropped off, and you can see city of Round Rock, y'all, are about fourth from the right. only about 3.89%, so less than 4% of properties are still at their cap value. Just to remind you, the way the cap works is it can max out at 10%, and it will continue to go up 10% until it reaches the market value. Well, if the market value is dropping and the cap is continually going up, they will eventually meet. And so when people complain that we go up 10% a year no matter what, they're talking about that assessed value, which is the cap value. That is not our choice. That is by law. It has to continue to go up 10% until it reaches market value. And so that's what they're complaining about. I wish I had some way to not do that. But unfortunately, that is the law. The NSS value has to increase until it reaches market value. So as you can see, most of those have done that now. So you have very few that are still capped at that 10% increase. All right, multifamily units by year. You did have some new apartments come online. 217 units came online in 2025 for the 2026 value year. Your multifamily value went up slightly from $3.14 billion to $3.19 billion this year, probably due to those new units. Commercial value did see some increase from $6.72 billion to $7.63 billion this year. Your parcel count for commercial is kind of broken up on this slide. It's mainly office at 887 offices. Keep in mind a lot of these are those office condos, those 1,500, 3,000 square foot office condos. And it's broken up in the remainder of the categories on this graph. A number of new commercial improvements. You had 10 this year. So not a lot, but some valuable ones. Commercial new improvement by category. You can see what was built here. Retail, you had four new retail improvements come online. And the real reason I'm here to show you what happened in change in taxable value from prior year, the lighter blue is the existing property value went up. The new improvement value is about $450 billion. And then if you stack those two on top of each other, the change in taxable value is about $650 million. And this is a better chart. It illustrates it a little better. Your market value went up from 25 to 26, from $30.28 billion to $30.58 billion. But your taxable value went up from $26.49 billion to $27.14 billion. So you did have an increase in taxable value from last year. If you wanted to go out and look at this data yourself, we created a Power BI dashboard for you. So I just took screenshots of that Power BI dashboard. This next slide is exactly how you get to that on our website. And so if you want to go out and look at other cities, look at the county, look at school districts, or anything you want to, this is how you get there. And so follow these instructions. You can go out and slice and dice the data however you would like to. So I just wanted to give you instructions on how to do that. But I figured it was just easier to have those slides right here on the presentation. That is all I have. Any questions?

Any questions? Council Member Flores?

It's a lot of information to digest. I kind of felt like I was marketed to a lot more regarding the agents. Are you seeing a big increase in that?

Yes, sir. In particular, Ownwell is probably the one that is marketing the most. They have a very large marketing budget. You're going to see them all over social media, in your mailbox quite a bit. They have billboards up and down 35. They're on the radio and TV. They're everywhere. We call them mass marketing agents. They're kind of a new thing in the last 45 years. Unwell in particular had zero accounts five years ago, and they had around 40,000 accounts this year, just to show you how much they've grown. That is really clogging up the system statewide, especially in large metro areas like we're in, which is increasing our protest levels dramatically. It's been a real challenge for appraisal districts.

What do you attribute the personal homeowner protest and their tax to being... almost 2% more successful than the agents. Is there any tips or tricks there?

Well, I will correct you. They protest their value, not their tax. The main reason is what I said earlier, is they protest when they need to and don't protest when they don't have to. Agents protest everything every year. When a property owner looks at their value and they realize it seems to be a little high, they have a little bit more success because they don't just protest everything every year. And that's why. And as far as tips and tricks, talk to your local realtors. We send you that sales comparison grid. And so a local realtor may have more recent sales than we have. They may have sales we don't have. Texas is a non-sales disclosure state, so we don't get every sale that's out there. So talk to a local realtor, get that information. And if they have a better sale, we'll definitely consider that. Thank you.

Council Member Fleming. Just wanted to understand the process a little. I saw on the slide there was like 57,000 protests. I guess those were in favor when we were looking at Omwell versus the people, or property owners. So when they win their adjustment, you're basing the value on the market and their neighborhood and what transactions. So if these homeowners are winning, Are you going back and reducing other values, or it really does behoove each person? Are you using the research that they're giving you to make better judgments next year or make adjustments to current values, or it is what it is unless you protest it?

So it is what it is unless you protest it, but the sales comparison approach that I send you in the notice is going to tell you the value and how we arrived at it. So if you look at that and you feel it's accurate, there is no need to protest. The homeowners that made that decision may have had information to be able to lower that, but they made that decision because they felt their value was higher. And to correct you on the number of protests, that was just the residential that I showed on that graph. We had 108,000 protests last year, mainly by tax agents. But as far as property owners being a little more successful, it's mainly because they make a decision to protest when they need to, and that's why they're more successful than a tax agent.

And then the information that they're giving you that helps them win their appeal, do you keep that data to use it for next year or it becomes outdated?

If it's property specific data, yes. So let's say they have a cracked slab or they have a deteriorated property or something along those lines, we will keep it for valuation next year. So we'll make notes in the property and that will affect their value for future years. If it's just a sale that we use to lower their value, the next year stands alone. And so it will not affect their value.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Ortega?

On your market data map there, you were showing the yellows as the homes that you used in your comparison.

Yes.

Now, I know as realtors that they tend to use a one-mile radius. And it doesn't necessarily stick in that subdivision because subdivisions can be smaller than others. So are you using that one-mile radius when you can?

No, the only time we would use a one-mile radius is if the neighborhood is a more rural neighborhood. We'll try to stick within a certain radius of the property. Otherwise, we'll use what we call a market area or neighborhood. We'll try to stick with a similar, in that blue highlighted area, we'll try to stick with similar properties. And so we neighborhood, it's an appraisal term, not a subdivision, we stick with a neighborhood area. based on comparability of those properties. And so it's usually a similar builder, similar age, that sort of thing. If we went outside and just used a mile radius, you could get a complete mix of properties that are nothing like the subject property. They have different amenities in their subdivision. They have different quality levels. They have different ages. So we try to stick within that market area or that appraisal neighborhood because they have the comparability of all those things. So similar age, similar quality, similar amenities in the neighborhood, that sort of thing. So we don't typically stick with a radius. We typically stick with that market area, and that's what's highlighted in blue.

Okay. So I'm getting a little confused, though, because market area, when you're saying neighborhood, because I know some neighborhoods are smaller than others. So how do you get the five plus the sales price in there? Because, you know, living in Round Rock, I see that, and I look at it, and I say, well, yeah, I can't protest it because – what I see is pretty accurate. But I'm trying to figure in my head how you do that, because I know some subdivisions are smaller. I call them subdivisions. You'll call them neighborhoods, are smaller than others. So I don't know how you get all that information correctly.

So neighborhood is an appraisal term. Not what we would consider a neighborhood. I'm putting on my appraiser hat here. Neighborhood is an appraisal term. So neighborhood can be multiple subdivisions. There you go. Does that make sense? Yes. And so it can be multiple subdivisions that we consider comparable. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry, we use different terminology, I'm sure, as you do as realtors. Yeah.

Council Member Montgomery. So on the... the protests for property owners. Is there a list on your website of categories that property owners should use for protesting? Do they just protest based on the value?

Categories of what? I'm sorry. I missed the first part of your question.

So are there reasons for protesting?

Oh, types of protests? So on the protest form that comes in the appraisal notice itself, there is a list of protest reasons, and that is the types of protests you can actually file. There is one box that says other, and it could be anything that affects the value of your property. So you can check that one as well. The two most common ways, the first is market. That's the most prevalent one. And that's basically saying that your value is higher than it would sell for on January 1 of the year. The second most common is what we call equal and uniform, meaning that your value is not equal and uniform to the others in your area. So it's not valued equally with your neighbors, if that makes sense. And so those are the two most common ways. There's other ones like denied an exemption or other things that are listed on the notice of protest. But they're specifically listed on there, so you can check those off when you file your protest.

All right. Any other questions? Council Member Flores?

Is it possible to get a copy of that presentation? Sure. Yeah, you actually have one here. I don't know if they can share it with you. All right. Thank you.

All right. Anyone else? No? Well, thank you for being here, Mr. Langford. Thank you. Anyone else have anything? All right. The mayor will be here on Thursday. And with that, we are adjourned at 935.