City Council - Regular Meeting

I now call this regular council meeting of the City of Santa Fe, June 18, 2026, to order. Natalie, roll call, please.

Mayor Brandon Odom.

Here.

Mayor Parton Marks.

Here.

Council Member Schrader.

Here.

Council Member McKamey.

Here.

Council Member Jeanette.

Excused.

And Council Member Dickerson.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you, Natalie. If you'll please stand with me, we'll do the invocation and the pledge of allegiance to the flags. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to gather as free people and to have a say in our government. Father, we just ask that you would be with us throughout this meeting, that everything that we say and do would be pleasing to you, that it would be according to your will. Father, we just ask for your continued wisdom upon the leadership of this city, state, and country. Father, that you be with our servicemen and women as they are fighting to protect our freedoms, that you bring them back whole to their family. You give their family the grace and peace that surpasses all understanding while they're away. Father, we ask a special hedge of protection over our first responders as they keep us safe here at home. Father, that you would just give them an abundant amount of grace, Father, as they serve our citizens as the hands and feet of Jesus. And finally, Father, we thank you for your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who died and was resurrected to bring us salvation so that we may have a relationship with you. And it is in his name we pray. Amen.

Amen.

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 and indivisible. Thank you. You may be seated. Fortunately, people that sit on the front row are the only people that are immune from having to give public comment. So we appreciate y'all being here and looking forward to what y'all have to talk with us about. There's a sign-up sheet there on your right if you'd like to address the council. I have three minutes, and you have to use all of them, so we'll give you some time to prepare. I appreciate y'all being with us here tonight. We'll go ahead and get started with the mayor's and city manager's report. Did we want to go ahead and bring the association up? Yep, let's go ahead and bring them up. All right. We'll invite, I think, probably Officer Cannon and Myers there, and with the Santa Fe Police Officers Association, they have a special presentation that they want to make.

Good evening, Council, Mr. Mayor. As you all know, starting last year, we started doing scholarships for high school students in Santa Fe. We were able to expand it one more year, one more scholarship. So we're awarding two this year. So we're going to give Mason Norman and Colton Wagner and then we're going to send off money to their prospective colleges. The certificates, they say this certificate and the $1,000 scholarship is probably being awarded to Colton towards his upcoming academic year at Tarleton State University. We commend Mason for his exceptional well-written essay and steadfast dedication to academic excellence, and we wish him the best of luck in Stephenville. Mason essentially says the same stuff, except he's going to Texas Lutheran in Seguin.

All right.

So if Colton and Mason would like to come up here. I don't know which is which, sorry. Congratulations. They want y'all between the flags.

You're good. Thank y'all. Congratulations, everyone.

That makes Santa very proud. Thank y'all. Are either one of y'all playing ball at those schools? I play football. There you go. Really? All right. No sports. No sports. All right.

Academics is good.

We're proud of y'all, and y'all are making Santa Fe proud. Thank you to our Police Officers Association for investing in the next generation of Santa Fe. We certainly appreciate that. While y'all are more than welcome to sit here for the rest of the meeting, don't feel rude if you want to excuse yourself. I understand y'all came just for the awards, but y'all are more than welcome to stay, but you're not going to hurt our feelings if you want to excuse yourself. All right, now we have item number two, presentation showcase Santa Fe photo contest. Oh, Ms. Carla, OK. MS. All right.

Howdy, Mayor, council members, and guests. About two months ago, the city launched a showcase Santa Fe photo contest, inviting our residents to capture and share the beauty of our community through photography. We received a number of wonderful submissions that highlighted the landscapes, wildlife, sunsets, and unique character of Santa Fe. Tonight we are pleased to recognize our top three winners. In third place, we have this enchanting photo that was taken by Catherine Embassy in her backyard. There's that one, which is really cool. And we'll be posting these as well on our Thank you.

Yeah, there's some of us that are older up here.

We don't see. Yes, it's far away. And then in second place, we have this lovely photo that was taken by Misty Wingate on Pearson Road. Okay. Which is nice.

Oh, wow.

And then in first place, we have this precious photo taken by Peyton Cumby. So thank you to everyone who participated and congratulations to our winners. And we truly enjoyed seeing everyone's photos and Santa fade through your lens. In the coming weeks, the winning photographs will be displayed in our lobby at City Hall and they will be labeled with each photographer's name so that residents and visitors can enjoy their work. Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Also, thank you to everybody that participated in that. That was a lot of fun. I hope that we can continue to do that every year. I think that's really neat.

Maybe we can do something like paintings or something. Yeah. Artwork.

Paint some trash cans. Exactly. All right. All right, now we'll have the presentation approval of minutes from the May 14th special meeting, the May 21st regular meeting, and the May 28th regular meeting. Council, those minutes were provided to you in your agenda packet for your review. Make a motion. We approve the minutes as presented. Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve the minutes as presented. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, Natalie, roll call, please.

Council Member Schrader.

Yes.

Council Member McKamey.

Yes.

Council Member Dickerson. Yes. And Council Member Marks.

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Item number four, presentation of department reports.

Mr. Collins. We're going to jump right on into this. All right, we will start off actually a little different this time with the finance department. I wanted you guys to pay special attention to our sales tax revenue. As you see, in 2025 for the month of April, we brought in roughly $88,000, and that has increased slightly for 2026 to $90,500, right above there. So we had about a 2.5% increase, so making our year... changed 2.9%, so definitely lower than what we had projected last year and last year's budget, but that's still steady growth, so we're glad to see these numbers. And then kind of if you see the 12-month average here, we're definitely below for the month of April, because you know we're two months behind, but hopefully we can bring that up in the summertime. All right, next, as we do every month, our top 10 sales taxpayers in the city is one being Sloan Lumber, and three being Amazon, four, HEB, five, Tractor Supply, six, Reliant Energy, seven, Dollar General, eight, Bighorn, which they surpassed McDonald's, which is huge for this month, and then, of course, McDonald's, and then O'Reilly Auto Parts. So, Bighorn is now the number one restaurant producing the most sales tax in Santa Fe. All right, let's move on to municipal court. As you see, we've had some increases. So there were 213 new cases filed for the month of May, 110 warrants issued, and then our revenues collected increased significantly to 42,000. So thank you, Lisa, Sherry, and Susan, for y'all's hard work in helping raise that revenue. All right. Next to our community services department. We had 96 permits issued in the month of May. We had 11 new residential permits. So these are up, which is good. So we've got some new houses coming up here in Santa Fe. We took in right above $61,000 for the month of May and completed 18 inspections. And just so our citizens know, if you hadn't seen Miss Georgia earlier, Argentine left us as our community services director and we had Ms. Belinda McCrory who is serving as our interim director in this transition time. All right, next for the Parks and Community Center. This, I think, is the most rentals we've had in quite some time. At Thelma Weber, they had two rentals. Runge had eight. Joe Timbala Park had one. And then the Therapeutic Garden actually out here had one, bringing in $3,165. All right. Next, for our police department, we had right under 3,000 calls for service for the month of May. We had 58 arrests. We had 534 traffic stops, and 150 of those traffic stops got a citation. For CID, they have 82 active cases going on right now, 15 new cases in the month of May, and they cleared 13 cases. And one item I'd like to bring up is that our Captain Lino Garcia graduated today from the FBI National Academy, and he walked today, so we're extremely proud of him. That is quite an honor, and very few people get to achieve that in their life, so we're extremely proud of him.

So like 2% of all?

I believe so. I believe it's 2% of all law enforcement get to do that. Chief Storrs and him are our two fire departments. It's awesome. All right, next to the library, they had 2,160 circulations for the month of May, 149 active accounts. They had a door count of 1,854, so our per capita rate is 12.33%, and our taxpayers saved roughly $28,000 for the month of May. um one other big item for our library is the state of texas accredited the library for the year of 2026 so that's our fifth year in the row of being an accredited uh dated library by t slack awesome congratulations thank you and happy birthday week thank you All right, next is fire marshal. So he had four burn pile inspections. He had 34 burn permit renewals, 194 total active burn permits right now in the city. There was six fires in the Santa Fe city limits. And he had eight fire safety inspections for the month of May. And then under his code enforcement portion, he had 14 new cases. He closed five cases and he has 25 open cases right now for code enforcement in the city limits. All right, for the Resiliency Center, they had a significant decrease in their amount of counseling hours from April to May, but it is still an increase from May of 2025. So they are seeing a lot of people coming in there, so we're really happy for that. It's a great community resource. And then, again, they had a 22% increase from May of 2025 to 2026 in their amount of clients that they're seeing. So that's a great thing that our community, I think people are seeing them now. I won't say more than ever, but more than they have in the past year. So it's a really good resource for everybody, for everyone's mental health. All right, any questions?

All right, thank you Mr. Collins.

I will say I've been noticing a lot of new culvert sets, and so that goes with our building projects.

Yeah, that's what I was just looking at. We didn't have a report from the street department.

Yeah, but I was kind of, we skipped that, and Parks and Rec has had some good things going on, but... I do see the culvert sets.

They were inadvertently left off. I don't know how I left it off.

I like seeing the culvert sets, though.

They all look good. They've been so busy with culvert sets and drainage projects they didn't have time to put up.

Avenue L is finished. It looks good. It does look good.

Absolutely, yeah. All right. Item five, citizens' comments. Any person with city-related business not on this agenda may speak to the council. Time is limited to three minutes in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. The city council may not deliberate on the comments. Personal attacks will not be allowed. Impersonal matters should be addressed to the city manager during normal business hours. Do we have anybody that would like to address council at this time? All right, we'll move down to six business, a new business. One, consideration of possible action. Appointment or reappointment of one member to the Civil Service Commission to serve a three-year term to expire June 2029. Mr. Collins.

Yes, so the appointment to the Civil Service Commission is actually one of the few appointments that I get to make as city manager and which you guys validate up here. We had three very well-qualified applicants for this commission, being Craig Foss, Chris Day, and Mr. Donnie Head. And it's my recommendation, just based on experience and their years of living in the city of Santa Fe, that I'm recommending Mr. Donald Head for the position. I think that he'll be a great addition to that board, and he has my full confidence in serving in this position.

So, council, this would just be a motion to approve the city manager's nomination.

I move to approve the city manager's nomination.

Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve the city manager's nomination of Mr. Donald Head to the Civil Service Commission. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, Natalie, roll call, please.

Council Member Dickerson?

Yes.

Council Member Marks?

Yes.

Council Member Schrader?

Yes.

And Council Member Kamey?

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you, Council. Item number two, consideration of possible action awarding requests for qualifications. Number COSFTX2026-06 for citywide legal services and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with the awarded vendor on behalf of the city.

Yes, so thank you, Council and Mayor. Tonight, we went out for RFQ last week and took in, we had two respondents, and so we had Greg and Greg and then Shirley Mills Law Firm that submitted, and we created a committee and went through and judge the applicants and we feel as staff that Greg and Greg law firm is the most qualified and we would like to move forward with them for our legal services and just as a reminder this is RFQ so we'll have to go into negotiation with them once on pricing once we after you guys prove this and they're actually here tonight I don't know if you guys wanted to come up and speak and introduce yourselves or not but thank you guys for being here was pro bono not

Dang it.

So one term you knew, right? There you go. Yeah, so Chris Gregg and Dick Gregg III here on behalf of Gregg and Gregg. We have the privilege of working with our father who just turned 86, still working with us. We represent quite a bit of different cities that you see in your packet. And we're very privileged to be here to be considered.

Where are you from?

From Houston.

Okay.

Yes.

Our offices are in the Clear Lake area, so we're just up the freeway. That's all right, right? Yeah. Real close. Yes. That's where I personally live. The offices, it's actually technically in Houston, but it's definitely the southern part in the Clear Lake area in Houston.

They're a little bit closer than Austin. State Center Boulevard and Bay Area, pretty close to those major intersections.

Val Vista, Clear Lake Shores, Kemah, Manville. Yes.

You could make a meeting if you had to make a meeting for sure For sure it's in Lake City Lamar Yes, and then we have we have various relationships with different cities some of them. I serve as a judge I in some of those towns. Some of them we serve as city attorney. Some of them we serve as city prosecutors. Some we do both prosecution and city attorney. So it just depends on the city that we represent. But there's many, many cities in the area that we do have a relationship with. And we certainly would like to have one with Santa Fe. DAVID BURRAGE- Yeah.

Well, appreciate y'all being here tonight. Council, do you have any questions for either of the Gregg brothers? I'll entertain a motion, council.

I move to approve award RFQ number COS FTX 2026-06 for citywide legal services to Greg and Greg PC. and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with the awarded vendor on behalf of the city.

It's been moved and seconded to approve award RFU number C0SFTX2026-06 for citywide legal services to Greg and Greg B.C. and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with the awarded vendor on behalf of the city council. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, Natalie, roll call, please.

Council Member Marks?

Yes.

Council Member Schroeder?

Yes.

Council Member McKamey?

Yes.

And Council Member Dickerson? Absolutely, yes.

Motion passes. Thank you, Council. Item number three, discussion and direction regarding amusement machines within the city of Santa Fe. Chief Renta.

Okay. Lower this here. Now you can hear me. Yeah. Good evening, Councilman. Mayor. So in your packet, it's got the background on it, the information regarding amusement machines within Santa Fe or the ever-known popular eight-liner games within the city of Santa Fe. So I got a little speech here as far as kind of some items hopefully to cover. Recently, one of our neighboring cities received unwanted attention when it comes to game rooms and the infamous eight-liner machines back in February of this year. The eight-liner and game room conundrum is not just a regional concern, as many Texas cities are aggressively banning the eight-liner type amusement machines within their jurisdictions. Supported by court rulings such as a major ruling by the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, 11 March 17, 2022, and a case tracing back several years, the Texas Supreme Court ultimately allowed it to stand. The appellate court declared the eight-liner slot-style machines are illegal lotteries under Texas Constitution. Supported by this court ruling that defines these devices as illegal lotteries, local regulatory concerns, local governments are drafting ordinances to allow them. So just a few of the cities within our county of Galveston County is Kemah, Dickinson, and Lake City have already drafted particular municipal ordinances to ban them outright. It is not just stuck to our regional area. It is throughout the state of Texas upon doing some research that's going on in Dallas, South Texas, and the Valley area. all over the Austin area, Plano, it's throughout Texas, and it is in particular a legal conundrum, one could say, as far as how one defines it and how one's drafting it. But it does seem like the local jurisdictions are gaining some traction referencing the second Supreme Court's ruling. in drafting the ordinance. So we do have a ordinance that's drafted similar to what Dickinson proposed, and we'd like to pretty much follow their lead on how they initiated it. And I will reach out further to our folks in CUNA to see exactly how they did their ordinance to share with you all, at least something that's local and kind of consistent with upon our neighboring cities.

So it's a $500 charge per day that they have per machine is what Dickinson did. And so, you know, I'm believing that that's the direction that we should go in, but we want to get your, you guys' opinion on that.

$500 per machine.

For having a machine in the city illegally.

That's right.

Council, I'm in favor of it. I brought this to Seth, asked him to talk with Chief Renton, put it on the agenda, and actually reached out to one of the council members in Dickinson that I found out had kind of been the... leader of putting this ordinance together, but I think it's the right decision, the right direction to go in Santa Fe. It gives our police department the ability to regulate it, not regulate it, but to enforce the ban. And I don't think we need to play around with it.

No. Hitchcock, Lamar, Angleton. I mean, it's just a matter of time. I don't know how many we have, but I'm zero tolerance for it.

Did you happen to look and see how many machines? I do not have a...

I've been made aware of some of the businesses that do have them. I have not done the actual investigative process of counting them or doing an accurate inventory at this time. I'll be working with other chiefs and... Just asking. If needed, working on that regulation if needed. But I do not have a definitive count.

Don't they just cut your eye out and see if they pay out or not?

But I can tell you I've seen them throughout the city within Santa Fe.

the other thing is and we're not putting on anything tonight we're just kind of giving direction on whether it's something we want to pursue or not but the other thing that we talked about I think maybe at the at the maybe it was in the agenda setting meeting but you know that we would give them some time you know make it effective 30 days after we pass it so that it gives them time to get word out that hey you know you need to get rid of these you know so

We'll do a social media blitz, and then we'll reach out to any businesses that we become aware that have machines.

I'm not aware of any game rooms in particular that we have in our area, so that does kind of change some of the definition of it. Yeah, I think it's about information releasing to those businesses that might house them. I think it shouldn't be a difficult task reaching out and alerting them of the changes upcoming for Santa Fe's interest.

Can we plan here about not creating any game rooms?

No, that's already.

Just make sure it's all in the same.

Yeah, they wouldn't be able to create them because the machines are banned. It wouldn't be enough to create.

Some type of zoning ordinance, I believe.

And it actually, yeah, it includes even like video poker games.

A lot of them for sale on the internet right now.

Not bad. Council, are we all in agreement to have the fire marshal pursue this ordinance?

Absolutely.

Thank you, Chief. All right, we'll move to item number four. Consideration of possible action first and final reading of an ordinance of the City of Santa Fe, Texas amending the budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2025 and ending September 30th, 2026. Mr. Zepeda.

Mayor, Council, this is the second budget amendment for the fiscal year 25-26 and it is a mid-year true-up. We're trying to align actual expenses with the new software. We have several departments that are alerting where their expenses are going now, so we're just making sure that we're aligning it based off of those expenses. Some of them are a little over, some are a little under, but all the expenses are a net zero. The only thing that we're adding to this budget amendment is a decrease in revenue, which is outlined in our most recent sales tax report, which we've projected at $141,000 for the year and a decrease in revenue based off of, instead of a 9%, we're looking at about a 5.3% for the year. So that's what that accounts for. So it's nothing to do with additional expenses. It's just less revenue that we need to project for. So that is the net effect of the general fund. And we wanted to make you aware, too, that we'll be coming back next month next council meeting with the EDC's resolution to amend their budget to include the $1,300,000 and the $750,000 for drainage expenses that they had already passed and council had approved, but we need to formally adopt that ordinance on the city side and then, of course, resolution on the EDC side. Beyond that, those are the major changes for the second budget amendment, and we recommend that it be approved.

All right. Thank you, Rudy. Mr. Zepeda, you get three amendments a year, so choose them wisely. All right, Council. What say you? Make a motion to adopt an ordinance for the second amendment of the fiscal year 2025-2026 annual budget for the City of Santa Fe. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt an ordinance for the second amendment of the fiscal year 2025-2026 annual budget for the City of Santa Fe. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Natalie, roll call, please.

Council Member Schrader?

Yes.

Council Member McKamey?

Yes.

Council Member Dickerson? Yes. And Council Member Marks?

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you, Council. Number five, consideration of possible action approval of a capital improvement plan for the City of Santa Fe for fiscal years 2027 through 2031. Mr. Stahel.

Mayor, Council, again, this is our annual capital improvement plan. If you recall, on May 28th of last month, Council unanimously adopted the expenses for capital for the 2027 fiscal year. This integrates those changes in capital spending to the five-year plan, which is what we're presenting tonight. It is comprehensive. It's five years' worth of expenses totaling $7,382,539. And the capital questing for next year that council approved is $2,711,624, of which, as you all know, $1 million is that grant from the state for Runge Park. And some of that, too, is the playground equipment that we will not be able to finish this fiscal year, but we'll probably finish and get approved by early next year. And so it really needs to move to next year. So we did make that one change just so that we can align with what we expect reality to be. Beyond that, everything else is exactly as council last saw it. I hope it's not too many pages for you.

I would like to add that I want to thank Mayor and Council for making major investments in our infrastructure through this budget. I think that that's really important, and I'm very thankful. I know that our staff and our citizens will be very happy with a lot of the projects that we're going to get to complete in fiscal year 27.

Thank you for bringing up a balanced budget, too, even though we kind of expanded it out. Absolutely.

That'll certainly help. It's coming.

I move to approve the capital improvement plan for the years 2027 to 2031 as presented. Second.

It's been moved and seconded twice to approve the capital improvement plan for the years 2027 through 2031. as presented. Council, any further discussion? Natalie, roll call, please.

Council Member Dickerson?

Yes.

Council Member Marks?

Yes.

Council Member Schroeder?

Yes.

And Council Member McKamey?

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you, Rudy. Okay, before we go into executive session, any announcements?

Picket fence marketplace is this Saturday. It's the 3rd. It's their third Saturday event with vendors and stuff. They're on Highway 6. Saturday mornings, I think they run from 8 to 4. Good little market, you know, hometown.

Yep, we encourage you to go out there.

Other than that, just getting ready for Stars Over 6.

Heck yeah. Yep, that's what I was going to say. If y'all haven't heard about our 4th of July celebration yet... We're going to be doing it at the Galveston County Fairgrounds. We're going to have vendors and food trucks, mutton busting, pie baking contests, fireworks show, councils having a hot dog eating contest. And so it's going to be a great time out there. No, I don't know about the hot dog eating contest, but we're going to have a good time. So come on out there. It's free, open to the public in conjunction with the Galveston County Fair and Rodeo. Really excited about partnering with them this year. And so we hope that you will come out and enjoy the fireworks show and a day celebrating 250 years of America. That's right. Yeah.

All right. Anything else, council? We're also, the t-shirts have been approved and approved. they're ready to go pretty soon. You'll be seeing those on the internet. You want to buy a t shirt for the event and have it on at the event or you can buy it at the event either way. But the t shirts are coming out soon. Seth, I believe you got a lot of vendor traffic today.

We sure did. We've got a lot of vendors that are going to be others who had a lot of food vendors, boutique vendors. I mean, vendors from even things I've never had or heard of. I know we even have a is it called boba tea? Is that what it's The boba tea. So, I mean, we've got vendors from all areas. Outside of Santa Fe. Yeah, outside of Santa Fe for the spectrum. So, we're really excited, and I know that the T-shirts will be available. They're red, and they say, We the People on them. I think it represents Santa Fe. So, we love America here in Santa Fe.

Absolutely. Amen. All right. Anything else? All right. Item number six, executive session closed to the public pursuant to chapter 551.087 Texas government code regarding economic development negotiation. Again, y'all are more than welcome to stay, but you're also more than welcome to excuse yourself as well.

All right. 8.10 p.m.

Call this meeting back to order, council. Motion adjourned. Second. Moved and seconded to adjourn. Thank you.