City Council - Special Meeting

All right, it's 6.01. Call this meeting to order. I have the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one, indivisible. Please silence your devices, if you would. The invocation, Pastor Joe is not here. I have a volunteer to do the invocation.

Please bow your heads. Dear Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for the day that you've given us, the city that we live in. We ask that you would continue to watch over us, keep us safe, help us to make good decisions, wise decisions. Please protect our public servants and pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Item 1D, audience participation. Anyone wishing to speak, there's a forum by the assistant police chief. However, item 2B is public hearing, so you will not need to fill out a form. So next we have 2A, budget workshop, Kim Quinn.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. This is our, I guess, final proposed budget. I'm just going to go over some of the highlights of what changed between the budget retreat and what is in the proposed budget. uh... i was mentioning to council member sinclair that we thought we had certified values a week ago and then last friday we got noticed that there were errors in the tad numbers so we they recertified friday we got numbers saturday and then we didn't we got the tax roll saturday but we didn't get the final numbers that we needed to calculate the tax rate until monday so that's why it took a while for you to get this information The proposed budget is using the de minimis tax rate. We'll go over more details into that, just like the original proposed budget did, although the numbers changed a little bit, and they are more favorable. The other changes that were made on the revenue side were senior center membership fees. We will not be increasing the resident fee. It will remain at $20, but the non-resident fees will increase from 60 to 120. So the revenues have been re-estimated, and I think I estimated about a 25% decrease in membership due to that pretty substantial increase. We recalculated the rental inspection fees based on some of the additions that you made and then changes to the insurance, the cost of insurance. So it will be necessary for the rental inspection fees in order to cover the cost of the program to go from $100 a year to $115 a year. and then Diksha has been working on a fee study and one of the ones that we noticed that the city compared to other similar cities that our animal service fees were slightly behind and so we've adjusted those fees accordingly and the revenues have been re-estimated to reflect the proposed rates I'm not going to go through all of the ongoing expenses. They're pretty much the same as what we've covered before. It's just here to remind you that the cost of providing the same level of service is going up. The biggest, I guess, increase in this proposed budget is the TMRS rate going from 7% to 8%, and that would be beginning January 1st. We also mentioned that there would be a 1% temporary salary increase to offset that just for January through September 30th of 2027. There are no salary adjustments. There was a vote of the employees and that was what they chose to do. TMRS increase versus instead of a salary adjustment. As far as ongoing expenses, I think we've talked about all of these items. I'm not going to go into them again unless there are any questions. This next slide just, whoops. identifies the changes that were made between the budget that you saw at our Saturday workshop and the final proposed budget. Just mentioned the senior fees, the animal service fees, there was some to staffing and animal services, so those are reflected where two part-time were converted to one full-time position. We talked about the TMRS increase. After the Saturday meeting, we added the $3,000 for the jail door maintenance. We added the enhanced software for the rental inspection program. talked about that will increase the fee, annual fee for the rental inspections. We added the funding for code book replacement. The holiday gift card value is increasing for employees from $50 to $75. The barricade rentals were added back for $20,000, that's $10,000 per event. Something that we added after the last council meeting, the presentation by Tarrant County for the home program, we added $5,000. There was a discussion, an email sent today that the minimum, I guess, requirement would be $10,000. So if that is what the council chooses to do, we can increase the... 5,000 to 10,000 if that's something y'all want to entertain participating in the CDBG Home Improvement Program.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's, especially if the ship is not performing. I mean, I think it's, yeah, the ship is sinking. Yeah, I think that we need to do that. Even if people aren't aware of it, maybe get it out more, and if we can help make that happen, I think it would be good.

There were some questions we asked that we didn't get answers for, like, one, how many people are currently signed up for this in Saginaw? I mean... I would like to get those questions answered.

I mean I guess the question would be each time each occurrence it would have to come to us anyway right to release those funds are we preemptively approving those funds.

You're giving those funds to Tarrant County and Tarrant County.

I thought they said that we would match it or whatever.

It's a 25% match. The plan is to come back with a proposal. Sorry we didn't get that done prior to. It's kind of a last minute decision, but we will bring that for you so you know all the details of the program. Because right now I'm not familiar with the process of doing that. That's fine. I think it's a program that will be an official just from the brief that I've read over it. But answering those questions like Councilmember Lawson has, I'm not prepared to do that, but we will get those answered.

So we can leave it at five and then adjust it after? I mean, is that something that we can...

We can do whatever you would like us to do. I will mention that, and I don't know about the home program in particular, but we've participated in CDBG programs for sidewalk replacements for many, many years. And the way that works is after the project is identified, then the county tells us what our match is. and then we make payment to the county for the match, and then they handle the actual, the rest of the project. And I'm not saying that's how this is, but I would imagine it's similar to that. They both fall under CDBG.

So we could, could we... We're penciling, but we're gonna use, can we pencil in 10,000, but before we commit to it, have to come back and do a vote for the budget?

If that's your pleasure, we could do that.

Okay. And that last thing on the budget is, can we afford this?

The $10,000? Yes, sir. We would still have a balanced budget. Yes, sir. And then the last thing that changed since the last time you saw were health insurance coverage. Melanie has done a really great job of working with our benefits consultant to come up with a plan that will give similar benefits at a lower cost and managing the premiums. so those numbers have changed slightly i've also re-estimated again when i when i talked to you before some of the other revenues based on year to date and then the property tax revenues have changed based on the adjusted values just because of the timing of all this i was going to mention between now and when we do our final proposed document. I am going to re-estimate the current projects that we have and then re-estimate the current year down and add to next year's budget, it will just be the amount that's carried forward. So whatever's currently budgeted that we aren't gonna spend by the end of the year, I'm gonna roll forward. We usually do a mid-year adjustment, but we have quite a few projects that are ongoing that aren't gonna be completed, and so I wanna start 10-1 off with a budget for those line items. So you'll see those changes, but they're easily identified and easily explained. Um, this is just a picture of the graph of the overall general fund budget. Um, you'll see the big change between adopted the blue and the red line, um, on the expenditure side in the current year is kind of, it kind of, um, blocked that out, but it, the, um, is the renovation to the Keter building was the big mid year adjustment. And then next year, there aren't a lot of one-time items. And so that's why you see the proposed budget going back down. But what we like to see is both purple lines, revenues and expenditures are pretty even. These are the numbers. for the um that back up the graph and like i mentioned i'll change the estimated column those will go down and the proposed will go up so basically what happens is our current year estimate what we don't spend will go to fund balance and then it'll get rolled forward and spent next year are there any questions on general fund changes okay thank uh... the debt service fund is just an explanation uh... because debt service fund is also funded with uh... property tax revenues these numbers are estimates based on the tax rate impact analysis that we want that samco went over with you as you know we're going to issue debt on august fourth they'll come to you with art with the bids so uh... based on our best information that we have We've put together the budget based on those estimates. Um, what else did I want to say about this? Um, we are planning on drawing down debt service fund balance by about 300,000 and that's just to lessen the impact on the taxpayers. Um, we're issuing debt for, um, the fire. We're issuing certificates of obligation for replacement of the fire engine, a fire engine renovation of station two and land for animal services. And then we're also issuing Voter approved debt for the McElroy Phase 2B, which I wrote it down because I can't remember which is which. Spring Hollow to Lavon is 2B. And then beginning the design for the animal shelter are the two big items there. And you'll see the INS rate, that's the portion of the tax rate that pays for debt service, is going up by a little over three cents, about three cents. And these are just the numbers that back that up. okay so this is where we ended up with tad numbers uh... almost exactly equal seller certified values were three point one nine six and last year certified values of as of july twenty fifth were three point one nine seven we had a hundred and four million in new value twenty eight million of that was residential seventy six was commercial The big increase in values were the Falcon warehouse project, the remaining Tricon building, and then all of the building going up in Belt Mill. So those were the big driving forces of the new value. We talked about using median taxable value instead of average taxable value. And so that's just showing you in 2025, the median was $278,006. And in 2026, $268,076. So there was a decrease by about 3.6%. The tax rates that are necessary to be calculated, and we talked about this in our very first budget workshop, is the no new revenue tax rate. If you recall, that is the rate that generates the same amount of revenue as last year on the same properties. And this year that rate comes to be 54.8556 cents. and the voter approval rate is the no new revenue rate for just the operating side plus a three and a half percent growth factor plus whatever is necessary for debt and then if you have unused incremental value which we do not and then the de minimis rate which the proposed budget is based on which is the 58.6649 cents that is the rate the no new revenue rate plus the rate that will generate $500,000 plus whatever is necessary for debt. So you'll notice that the de minimis rate is not much more than the voter approval rate. And that has a lot to do with our added value. What else was I gonna mention here? I guess that was it. So this is a comparison showing, again, based on the median home value, the current year, a median home value would pay $1,472.46 a year in property taxes. And the proposed is $1,572.67. So in a year, the increase is $100.21. For a senior, that is, the difference would be $43.21 in a year. And Councilmember Lawson, you asked what is the percentage, so for a median home value, that would be 6.8%. Although I will mention that the state requires us to make lots of different advertisements and so some of those percentages are different sometimes they're asking the depending on which advertisement it is sometimes they want you to do a home value of a hundred thousand dollars some they want you to take the total tax revenues so in some of these advertisements you're not going to see the 6.8 percent Any questions on the tax rates? Okay, then we've got one more fund to go over and this one is, we just haven't talked about this, but it is funded with property tax. This is the TERS fund where the city puts a portion of funding in here based on the incremental value, so the incremental increase in the value of the properties in the TERS area. And the county and the college district also participate. And this is the fifth year of, this will be the fifth year of collecting funds in the TERS. And this is the first year that we'll have expenditures other than I think we did some abatement of the old fire station and we have administrative fees, but we are proposing to fund the debt service for the McElroy portion of the bonds that we're going to issue. The tourist fund can pay for that. So that's being transferred to the debt service fund. And the proposed value in the TERS fund next year will be $117 million up from $66 million. So a lot of the new value that I just mentioned before are properties within that TERS zone. And these are just the numbers that reflect that. And then the last thing I was going to mention is that the next item on the agenda is for you to vote on the proposed tax rates. We need a record vote on that so that we can advertise it in the paper. We can advertise it on our website. So that will happen by Friday. And then our next council meeting is a public hearing on the budget. That would be August 4th. And then there'll be a special council meeting the very next Tuesday, August 11th. And that we will have a continuation of the public hearing on the budget. We will have a public hearing on the tax rate. And then that is when there'll be a vote on the budget and the tax rate.

So when do you want that vote so that you can publicize it?

Tonight, that's the next item on the agenda. Yes, sir. You're not committing to a tax rate. You're just voting that this is the proposed tax rate so that we can advertise it. And then the actual vote for the tax rate would be on August 11th. It's just a step that's required by the legislature.

Seems like in the past when we voted on this, I have no problem voting on it today, but it seems like there was a thing that once we publicized it, I thought there were special, if we was to change it, there would have to be special.

You can you can so the. The tax rate that we advertise is the highest that you could go to unless you wanted to start the process all over again. So you could adopt a budget equal to or less than what we advertised, but not higher than what we advertised without starting the whole process over again.

And we don't have time to start the process.

No, sir.

That's what I was getting at. This does come with a little.

there's a timeline that we're meeting yet that we've got to meet that's right um so yeah so we always just say this would be the highest tax rate that we could that you could adopt but this is not actually the adoption of the tax rate i know it's a little confusing i guess we officially adopted on 8 11 right yes sir council any questions

Just appreciate Kim you as always do an excellent job.

Thank you it's a group effort we leadership and all of the department heads and even many other people in the departments work very hard and Elizabeth is out today but she's also vital to making all this happen.

so this will take us to item 2b consideration action regarding proposed fiscal year 2026-2027 tax rate so at 623 take us into a public hearing and kim blaine um i have just a sample of what the advertisement will be that's okay

It's just a form that's required by law. We can't change it, so I just thought I'd show it to you, but it's basically just gonna show us all of the different rates that I just went over with you, and we just need to take a public, a vote on the proposed tax rate so that we can publish it. I don't have really any other.

Does our audience member have?

Anything? Would you like to come up and speak about the tax rate? OK. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for being here.

There's no questions at this point. I'll take us out of public hearing at 624, and I will entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, I make a motion that we approve the proposed tax rate as presented.

Seconded by Mr. Lawson. Motion passes. Item 2C, work plan update. City Manager Gay-Ram.

Managed to hurt my hip, so I might stay seated if that's okay. Is it coming up? So our work plan projects, monthly update, not a whole lot of changes from last month. After we get the budget taken care of, we'll kind of focus back on some of these projects. We're still working with Air Mason, which is the vendor chosen for the update. We've done a couple initial reviews of the policies. The next step would be to send that to our own legal, to Bryn and his office for review. But it's progressing. Next item, the creation of the Friends of the Park. the parks board i don't know uh jared have they talked about this any further at parks board meetings we did talk about it at our last meeting um just still in the the beginning processes of that and and looking for candidates to possibly fill those positions So if you all know of anyone that might be interested, I mean, as you're aware, we have a hard time filling our own boards and commissions, but they are looking for volunteers, looking for interested people. The goal is to create this organization that would be a fundraiser. So I think they've got two or three, but they want some more. So that's kind of where we are. Once they have enough people, they have intentions to bring bylaws and then create the 501c3 file with the state and all that, make it tax exempt. Not a lot of movement from last time on this one. We've got proposals. We are probably going to break a recommendation here in the next, once we get out of the budget. And I think potentially some of this money, we may look at beautification, but The idea is to do a tree assessment and then also talk about how we might potentially incentivize the relocation of trees as they relate to like homeowner sidewalk repairs or driveway approaches, that sort of thing. You might recall our last council meeting we had, Susie gave an update on the signage project. So based on feedback from the council, we're going to bring a proposal for the vendor to go through with the tasks, if you recall. So that included kind of a design manual, identifying the locations where the signs would be placed, and then sort of an implementation schedule. I think this has been discussed with the Parks Board, and the Council's direction was to split the funding between beautification, which there's some fund balance there, and then the Parks Board, so I think not much to report since our last meeting here. I will say, although it's, These little things make a big difference. I've gotten compliments. I'm sure you have, too, on our street signs. And we're still in the process of replacing street signs. But I think maybe five years from now, if we implement these signs, it's going to be really nice. Probably so nice, people will steal them, which happens all the time. Okay, we've got a, PATROL put together kind of a steering committee for the, to discuss the economic development plan update, so it looks like they've got a meeting scheduled. Anything additional?

It's just gonna be across the street. I mean, we'll get a first report out after that.

Sounds good. Our last meeting, we discussed the street maintenance fee. We're still moving forward with that. Really, no update since last time.

Yeah, on that one, I mean, to me, we left that meeting, I guess, we had bounced over to the law office to see what risk we'd have if we just went with a for worse proposal. their numbers? Because I think the original estimate was it was going to take like a year and a half to just get an estimate done.

Yeah, and that was the only one that I had received information back on. I actually have a meeting set up with another consultant hoping to get some different information than what I was able to share at that time. And also look at a bare bones type of I'm sorry the word escaped me, but a bare-boned quote and process of what they're doing to see if it would take less time than what was originally said to me by the one consultant that I talked to.

I guess there was two things. One, it was expensive. Wasn't it about $200,000?

What they had told me was $100,000 to $200,000. And then it's going to take a year and a half.

To me, that's... I'll just tell you. On council, I like this. I don't want to go any further.

Jared got a copy of the presentation that was given in Fort Worth. I sent that out to you all. It's got some good information. The fees vary across the state, so Fort Worth is not the only city that implements a fee. I think Waco and... Waco was $8 or $10 a household. So it varies widely depending on need and whatever the appetite is. So we'll review it and come back.

Can we check with the city attorney at Council Member Lawson's request to see if we can tag on to the Fort Worth plan or the other city's plan? Brenton has a copy of it.

I think at the very least we would need some review on our own. But yeah, absolutely. We can look at it. And again, I mentioned this, it's my understanding that the Fort Worth City Council intends to adopt that through their budget process and probably will implement it sometime in the next year.

And that's what I was looking for. To me, I'd like to get it implemented so that we can start collecting money so that we can start fixing our roads sooner, not a year and a half from now. I'm thinking months, not years.

Yeah.

Our next meeting, so next week, Vicki's gonna do an update on rental fees, deposits, and kind of a general rec program update, so that's, stay tuned. It's been some time since our deposit fees and facility rentals have been updated, so it's due. Nothing to report here for the hotel market study.

seems like we're behind on this one so is this something we're going to be able to focus on and at least get it moving or i'm still waiting on one more quote from somebody before we discuss but just on the hotel side during the summer it kind of died off on hotels that are interested in the area because maybe they're using their hotels on vacation but a lot of the retail side also kind of dies off in the summer. So hopefully we'll catch up in August when everybody goes back to school and the parents don't have anything to do, but to actually work.

That makes sense. Do you think you can get, because right here is study, study beginning is conducted. So we think we'll be able to get that done, get it kicked off and done in August.

I'm going to wait until we get the third quote before I make any timeline adjustments. What's that, September is the end of Q3?

So I don't know how long they're going to take. Did we find the funds to do this? Because that was part of the discussion.

So yeah, that's the other consideration. We didn't want to do anything until we knew kind of where we stood with the assessed value in the budget. But yeah, it would be, it costs money. And we can't use, unfortunately, can't use hotel occupancy tax for this. uh so that'd be a consideration maybe in the future how we're going to pay for it or if it's still a priority so i mean that's what i'm saying i mean if this is something that's going to get pushed out we ought to just state it and understand and i think we uh like pedro said the retail recruitment and business recruitment kind of goes in cycles and I think it's realistic to recruit a decent hotel in the city. It would just take some effort. I saw an article the other day that DFW was one of the most active hotel, new construction hotel markets in the country. So the demand's there. A lot of people want to visit and be here. And as you know, our existing hotels leave a lot to be desired. This project is essentially complete. I think it's in a monitoring phase. I'm not aware of any new issues related to property standards compliance. I think building code makes some routine sweeps there. And fortunately, with a couple of hotels, the police department is a frequent visitor. We'll pick up strategic plan review probably October. Been some time. Our completed projects.

On the bonds now, I know you had talked about us doing like a quarterly update or something.

Yeah, I think that'd be good. I think... We're probably pretty close to closing out most of our 21 bonds. I think the parks board had discussion about the last bit of money for playground improvements. It's always good to remind people. And I think maybe we could put together a video just to show people where we are and then maybe let them know what's planned for next year. Because if you recall from Kim's presentation, some of our new bond monies will be, we're implementing now for design and other projects. Probably the most exciting of which would be the new animal shelters. So we'll go through the process selecting architect and that sort of thing. Yeah, it'd be good. I might add the videos, they just... continue to impress. You might have seen the last couple videos about a walk-up song. So there was five, six hundred likes for the Public Works Department and a couple thousand for the Police Department. So it's fun. It's definitely reaching people as opposed to our normal channels.

So that's all.

We'll do it again next month.

I think with the video, thank you. And I think for the videos, I think it's also important to note because I have people that I read the comments and some people are like, is this what our money is being spent on? And it's important to note that there's a person who does this for us. So each video is not costing to produce and whatever. He's very talented. He does a great job. So thank you.

Yeah, and you've probably seen the police, the BPAP breaks it down, so that's been super popular and teaching people how to drive and pay attention to stop signs and such. So, yeah, it's good stuff.

Any other questions, council? All right, we don't have anything for executive session, so I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

Mayor?

Go ahead.

I'll second.

Motion passes 638. We adjourn.