City Council - Special Meeting

We'll be ready.

All right, please silence your devices. We're about to start. All right, at 6 o'clock, I call this meeting of the Saginaw City Council to order. Please rise for the pledges.

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

Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one nation. Thank you, folks. Please be seated. Item C is the invocation for that.

Fire Chief Doug Spears. Please pray with me. Gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for all the wonderful blessings you bestow on us each day. Thank you for allowing us to live in a country where people can gather and make decisions based on the welfare and needs of their community. Be with our friends, family, neighbors out in Palo Pinto who are experiencing some devastation. through wildfires. Be with our military across the world and our first responders across the country as they strive to protect their communities and all these things, we pray. Amen. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chief.

Item D is audience participation. Any item on the agenda you can speak on, over by the Chief of Police, we've got the form to fill out. Unless it is a public hearing, then I will call for speakers at a certain time. But any item on the list you are allowed to speak on. Looking forward to consent in Agenda 2A, an action regarding minutes from July 28th. Any comments or questions on that? If not, I'll entertain a motion.

May I make a motion to approve the agenda as approved? Thank you, Valerie. I'll second.

Chauncey?

Please cast your votes. Motion passes. Let the record reflect. We do have a quorum. The mayor pro tem is out. He is actually dealing with the wildfires. He's in his emergency role. He is dealing with the wildfires right now. So we wish them all the well, all the best. Proclamations. 3A, presentations, recognitions. Gabe, anything?

None this evening, Mayor.

Okay. All right. Then 3B is work plan update. City Manager, Gabe Brannan.

So a quick monthly update of our work plan projects. I'll kind of go through them. Personnel manual update. We are still reviewing with Air Mason. That's our internal review here. Pretty soon that'll be sent to Bren's office for their review. Then I'll come back ultimately for council action. We're on track there. Friends of the Park, not a whole lot of movement from last month, although I did add a little note. Apparently there's been some interest from non-Saginaw residents, so that may be something we consider to fill out the Friends of the Park board when that's created. They've been beating pavement and out at special events. I'm trying to think where I saw the... They had a booth. A couple of our Parks Board members were out there passing out information, so. And there's a number of signs throughout. So if you know of anybody that has any interest, please encourage them to take it.

Will this require folks to have any certain roles to be on here? Any, because I know that on our animal shelter we have certain roles that have to be on that board. Yeah.

Does this have those requirements? Sure. I think it would be similar to like our library boosters, you know, you have a president and maybe a secretary and that sort of thing. Their sole purpose is to support the parks and be fundraisers and cheerleaders, so it should be a fun committee. Tree assessment, I talked to Louisa today. She'll have a workshop in probably the first meeting in October to talk about the tree assessment project. if you recall our last meeting or the meeting before we talked about signage where we left it with the council is that would go back to the beautification board and the parks board to talk about the funding we should be able to do that in the next month or so and then that'll come to the council for action i think we will begin our new templates and signage in the parks first so as we do improvements Pitch this to Pedro, the economic development plan update. I know he had a meeting with the steering committee, one meeting, and then I believe there's a second meeting tomorrow. So anything noteworthy?

We went over the SWOT analysis. There was a lot of updates on that. So I think we have a good group. And our next meeting is tomorrow.

Nothing to report. Street maintenance fee. Still keeping an eye on Fort Worth budget discussions. It's my understanding they're going to adopt their maintenance fee as part of the budget. Yeah, I'll visit with him. I think he was going to look at whether a fee is required or legal basis for the calculation of a fee. Yeah. No update here. Kind of in a holding pattern on the market study, although the next steps would be if we want to engage a consultant to do the market study. And then probably October, we'll have a workshop to review our existing strategic plan, make sure everybody's aware of what's in there, If there's any desire for changes, we can talk about it then. And a handful of completed projects. The most recent would be we, through the budget process, we adjusted some of our facility deposit fees, rental fees. Sent out an email just before the meeting. I don't know if you all had a chance to take a look at it. Probably not. But Vicki's working on a number, Vicki Weldon's working on a number of new recreational program offerings, so. A lot of this is trial and error to see if classes take and we can get enough to make it. But there's some fun things planned. And I think one of their bigger projects is they're trying to get a ladies basketball league on Sunday evenings. So that could be something fun here in the near future.

I also saw a nice note about our positive at our aquatic center as well from Vicki.

Yeah, we had another, thanks to the staff and Vicki for another safe summer. It's a big undertaking for our aquatic center activities, make sure everybody's safe, our day camp, but it was a good summer. No significant events and everybody had a good time. Although it's sort of bizarre when it's really hot like it has been this week, people don't come out to the pool. Sometimes you can't win, but such is life. With that, be back next month and happy to answer any questions.

Any questions for Gabe? All right. Thanks, sir.

Thanks. Appreciate it.

Moving on, item number 4, 4A at 607. We're in a public hearing. Consideration of Action Regarding Ordinance 2026-28 to nominate UFP, United Forestry Products of Saginaw, as a Texas Enterprise Zone project. For that, Pedro. Hey, there's Pedro.

Yeah. Good evening, Mayor and Council. If you recall, a few minutes ago, we had an executive session where I stated that there were two companies in the city who wanted to to apply to the state for this and part of their application process is the city council nominating them so our first one up is going to be the public hearing so we did send out a public hearing through star telegram we posted it on the website we posted it on the front of city hall and we sent a letter to the state as per the requirement for the application process. UFP Saginaw LLC has requested that the city of Saginaw nominate the company as part of the Office of the Governor Economic Development Tourism Program called the Texas Enterprise Zone Project. This is not funded with city funds. This is funded only solely from the CELCS tax portion of the state. And with that, I do have the applicants here. And I'm going to actually pitch it over to Jansen, who is part of the company working with two applicants.

Hello, my name is Jansen Givens. I'm here on behalf of both UFP and Trinity Industries. The public hearing, of course, is for UFP. And just a little bit about Texas Enterprise Zone program. It's a five-year designation period. It's valued at $2,500 per job, up to $1.25 million if they had 500 jobs at the facility. It's a job retention and creation program. And the biggest benefit of the program is that it's... Sorry. I'm a bug.

Oh, my gosh. All right. I'm going to step to the side here.

So what was I saying? The... The biggest thing with the program and what makes it so great is that there's no fiscal impact to the city. There's no city funds. It's all the state portion of sales tax that's refunded to the companies. And all that sales tax that's refunded is related to purchases that are actually used at their site here in Saginaw. And it's all audited by the Texas Comptroller's Office and they watch all of the job retention and making sure that they're in compliance with the program. And so UFP, they have about 240 employees here in Saginaw, and about 210 of them will qualify for benefit under the program, you know, under the various rules. And so they'll be eligible for a little over $500,000 in benefit from the program over the five-year period. And as part of that, they're committing to investing over $5 million in their plant here with new equipment and other upgrades over the course of that five-year period. I also have Taylor here as well from UFP as the representative. I just wanted to see if you guys had any questions or anything.

Yeah, council questions? I'm thrilled to keep more sales tax in Saginaw, 100%. We're behind you all 100%. I appreciate keeping the jobs in Saginaw as well. It's big for us, and we want to recognize you all, and we're happy to nominate you. Absolutely, this is fantastic. Thanks for bringing it to us.

Excellent, yeah, and thank you guys for coming out for the special meeting and everything, and we really appreciate that, too, so we can get it in by September 1st.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Any other questions? All right, thanks, sir.

All right, thank you.

All right, so this is a public hearing, so anyone else from the audience is allowed to speak at this time without filling out a form. If anybody else wants to speak on this topic, you're certainly welcome to right now.

I apologize, Mayor and Council. I'm not sure if the WASP wanted to talk public hearing, but I got them.

Pedro, do you have anything else? Absolutely, please. Now's the time.

Sorry, I'm a little delayed. I didn't know if I was supposed to go up with Janssen or not. But first and foremost, I just want to thank the city. Will you introduce yourself, please? I apologize. My name is Taylor Lubinsky. So I'm the regional director of operations of UFP Saginaw. I operate right down the road. So if you all see the big stacks of lumber, that's us. We try to keep them as sightly as possible. So we appreciate your support, first and foremost. I want to extend thanks on behalf of myself and our entire team. We do appreciate your support and are ecstatic to be a part of the Saginaw community and look forward to continuing to grow jobs in the community and support it in any way we can.

Hear, hear. We agree. Thank you.

Let's do it. Thank you, Todd. Appreciate it.

All right. Any other questions, folks? Pedro, do you have anything else to add? All right. Then at 6-12, I'll take us out of public hearing and I'll entertain a motion.

Mayor, I move that we approve 5A as presented. 4A. 4A, I mean. Yeah, 4A as presented. Brack, second.

Please cast your votes. Motion passes. Congratulations. Let's do it, folks. It's exciting. Look forward to it. We're going to 5A. Insurrection Act regarding Resolution 2026-11 to nominate Trinity Industries as a Texas Enterprise Zone project.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So the first one we just passed is the ordinance. Now it's the resolution for Trinity. And with that, I don't know if we have any questions from Council for the applicant or if the applicant would like to come up.

Council, any specific questions or do we want to just hear from the applicant? If y'all are here, we'd love to hear. Now's your chance to say a couple good things about your company, so bring it.

Absolutely. Thank you, Josh Oakley. I'm the facility manager right here off 104 East Bailey Boswell, Trinity Industries, Saginaw 192. We call it the 192. Really appreciate being a part of the Saginaw family. I always send letters out to all the employees at birthdays and I always say, let's keep Saginaw 192 safe and successful. Really appreciate the opportunity and happy to be here and meet each one of y'all. Thank y'all.

I have a question. How long has Trinity Rail been in Saginaw? Do you know?

We bought the facility in the early 2000s, maybe the late 90s.

I thought it was a little longer than that. Captain Saginaw, how long does your memory go back?

I think that they've been there in the 90s. It was owned by Anheuser-Busch before we purchased it.

Mr. Mayor, if I can add, I actually worked for Trinity Industries as a welder back in 1989 at this location. They've been there for a while.

I had no idea that about you. More skills, you're full of surprises, Chief. Thank you so much. We appreciate having you all here. Oh, Mary, go ahead.

I was just curious, out of your employee base, are there very many of your employees that do live in Saginaw?

I believe so, yes. We have quite a few that do live in Saginaw.

That's good. Thank you.

So how many board feet you go through a year, you run through there?

I'm sorry?

Board feet. Lumber.

Lumber? Yeah. Not much. Wrong one. A lot of steel. A lot of steel there.

Yeah. Any other questions for Trinity? Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Any other questions, comments on this issue on 5A, folks?

Mayor, I just want to add something on both of these that we just, well, the one you're about to do right now and the one you previously approved. This is part of the nomination process, so their application is due September 1st, and then we'll hear in a couple months if they get approved from the state or not. But I just want to state that.

Right. That's part of the reason we're having this meeting is so we can get it in before September 1st. And we appreciate the urgency, and we're happy to help. So any other questions on 5A? If not, I'll entertain a motion.

Go ahead. Mr. Mayor, I make a motion that we approve 5A as presented. Thank you.

Motion passes. Good luck, guys. Thank you. Let us know how it turns out. All right, moving on. 5B, consideration of an action regarding a contract with Fuelman for fuel card services.

Pedro, again.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Once again, I feel like Rick Trice when he was speaking all those meetings ago. So before you, we have essentially a contract with FuelMan for fuel card service. Tarrant County informed us, that's where we get our fuel currently, that they essentially give us a Dear John letter and we have to look at our own version to figure out how to do fuel for all our vehicles. We both diesel and unleaded, and we staff looked at all the options. Each one of these options that we looked at were co-ops, so we didn't have to do an RFP process. And out of all of them, we looked at Fuelman as the best one because it had more gas stations within the city of Saginaw and within their network. And with that, I'll take any questions. I don't know if y'all saw the packet or not. There is a portion, and I left it over there at my seat, but Brent is still looking over at the contract, so when you do the motion, you'll say, I approve the motion as presented, pending city attorney review.

Council, questions for Pedro?

This is for us to get new fuel cards.

Yeah, so we currently do our fuel with Tarrant County, but they stated that their fuel barn over there off of Place 4, Princeton 4, it's outdated and they need to renovate it and we will be pushing essentially the majority of it because we use 80% of their fuel currently. So we will be paying a good hefty fine. I don't recall the amount, but it was in the upper, it was six figures. I'm going to look over and see if y'all remember as well.

Yeah, they had a meeting. Their auditor determined that we were exempt from excise taxes purchasing from them. So their auditor came back and said that that was no longer the case. So because of that, that added a markup to the fuel that it was going to be cost prohibitive to continue. And they also said that their auditor, Tarrant County auditor, would require that we share in the capital maintenance of the facility. As Pedro mentioned, as Fay would have it, 80% of the fuel sold there is from the city. So we're the biggest user. But I don't think we want to get in the fuel farm pump maintenance business. So it's easier to just go to a commercial fuel card program, which is very common throughout the state.

Any other questions for Pedro? John?

So I see on our notes here that it was $100,000, exceeds $100,000. I just was curious, is that the cost difference from what we were paying versus this?

So I stated that because our line item budget for fuel every year exceeds over $100,000. So the fiscal year y'all just approved a couple weeks ago is $255,000 of fuel. So essentially, part of the purchasing policy, we have to bring it to you all for approval.

Right. So I'm just curious, you know, gallons wise and the cost. I know it's hard to guess because gas prices are much higher, too. Yeah. But I'm just curious, you know, what that cost is going to look like if you have a guess or an estimate.

I think in your packet, I think we did a calculation in there. If I'm let me look in here real quick analysis. Yeah, there's a cost analysis that we did, and usually we pump about 6,000 unleaded and 1,200 of diesel. And I'm looking through here. I'm trying to find it. Potential cost will be about 200,000, but again, this is only, I'm not the math person per se, I think. That's why I don't have the director of finance job. That's why Kim's our best friend and I go to her office when we need help with numbers.

Part of the reason we're using the county is we got a real nice discount from the county. That discount went away, so that really removed our incentive.

And we have to fluctuate with the market as well.

Right. And my suggestion would not be to not. I was just curious. It's literally just curiosity. And as far as the choice of vendor, we used FuelMan at another job that I used to work at, and they're great.

i was just just curious i think when we looked at it it would be uh close to a wash because the program has some sort of volume user discount or rebate program so that should hopefully net out the excise tax increase so thank you any questions for pedro thank you sir i will entertain a motion on 5b

We have to say pending legal review.

Mayor, I make a motion we approve 5B, pending attorney review.

Valerie, second? Please cast your votes. Motion passed. Thank you, folks. Thank you, Pedro. Thank you, staff, for putting that together. Thankfully, no executive session, right? I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Valerie? Brack, second? Please cast your vote. Motion passes at 622.

We're adjourned. Thank y'all.