City Council - Regular Meeting

I now call this regular meeting of the City of Santa Fe Council, July 16th, 2026 to order. Natalie, roll call, please.

Mayor Brandon Noto. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Marks.

Here.

Council Member Schrader.

Here.

Council Member McKamey.

Here.

Council Member Jeanette.

Here.

And Council Member Dickerson. Here. We have a quorum.

Thank you. I will now invite Pastor Josh McDonald with Arcadia Baptist Church to come up and give the invocation. Then we'll do the pledges together.

Heavenly Father, thank you for our city and for our council members and those who serve. I pray you give them wisdom and protection, Lord, in their hearts and their minds as they lead. And Lord, I pray that you, Lord, just be with our meeting tonight, God. I pray if there's any contentious subjects that come up, Lord, that we remember, Lord, that we're all in the community together for the betterment of our community. And Lord, that we love each other, Lord. And we pray all this in your name. Amen. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to

for all honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one indivisible thank you you may be seated

That was a very good unit. All in unity here. Absolutely. That was good.

All right. Unfortunately, the recipient of this month's Mayor Spirit Award is not able to join us tonight, so we will have to reschedule that. I will go ahead and move down to item number two, presentation and approval of minutes. The June 11, 2026 special meeting and the June 18, 2026 regular meeting. Council, those minutes were provided for you in your packet.

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 Schroeder.

Yes.

Council Member McKamey.

Yes.

Council Member Jeanette. Yes. Council Member Dickerson.

Yes.

And Council Member Marks.

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Item number three, presentation of department reports by staff. Mr. Collins.

All right, everybody, I'm sorry for the technical difficulties we're having, but we'll jump right in. All right, we're going to start off with the finance department. for today. And so for our sales tax collection that we got for the month of July, which is from two months ahead of here, we have seen a significant decrease in our sales tax revenue. So from July of 2025 to July of 2026, we only had not quite a half a percent increase. And if you remember, we always budgeted for a 9% increase. That brings us down. We brought a little under $360,000 this month in totality. So right now we're on par from 9% to really only collecting 5% increase over last year. You can go to the next one, Carla, for me. All right, and we'll jump over to our municipal court. We had actually quite the jump in the court for the month of June. We had 237 cases filed. We had 76 warrants issued and 123 warrants cleared. And our revenue was up this month to almost $37,500. all right and next to our community services department we issued 208 permits for the month of june so you'll see a definitely significant increase there we only had four new residential permits of those and our fees collected was right over seventy thousand dollars and we completed 127 inspections in the month of june All right, so a few projects that finished out. Mulberry Farms, of course, gas station and shopping center, their permits have been paid. We haven't had much movement there, but it's still pending. The quick car build-out was completed, and then the service center of the gas tanks have been installed. Which is great. So they're right along track, still aiming to be open in October. And then we had some approved plats. We did a minor plat in the JTE subdivision and then another minor plat in the McLaughlin Pines. As far as our rentals go, we brought in $1,400 for the month of June. We had one rental at Thelma Webber, three at Wenge. We had three at Timberla Park, which is pretty high. That's the highest I've seen in a while. And then we actually had one here at the Therapeutic Garden. To continue on, going to our police department, we had almost 3,500 calls for service. As you guys know, we usually average around 3,000, so we definitely had an increase in calls for service in the month of June. We had 50 arrests. We had 180 traffic stop citations that were given out of 485 traffic stops. And then for CID, they have 24 new cases for the month of June. They have 76 active cases, and they cleared 29 cases. It's always a good thing when you can clear more cases than you've got coming in. So great job to our CID department. All right, next to public works. We had 30 segments of streets that were patched with asphalt. Several debris and trees were picked up out of our ditches. That's a continuous effort that we try to do to keep our ditches clear so that water can flow downstream. They excavated 7th Street from Avenue E to Avenue F, 250 linear feet. And then we had paving on Avenue L from 6th Street to FM 1764. I know a lot of people are glad to see that project complete. We're sorry that it disturbed everybody's lives, but hopefully it'll make your tires last a little bit longer when you're driving on there. And then from Avenue M, from the car wash to 6th Street, we paved there as well. So as far as drainage goes, we had 184 linear feet of new culverts that were set. And then 40 linear feet of culverts that were reset to correct drainage. And then our culverts along ditches that were dug out and washed out. And then we had several culvert entrances throughout the city that were cleaned out as needed. Let's go next. All right, to the library.

Okay, I want to add to that. Uh-huh. Slope more guys been out doing a good job. They get, they came out after the rain and you know, I know that's when you can't put a real more, but slope more guys came out and caught some of the high places. It looks good.

It's hard to control.

It's hard to control that Johnson grass, but, uh, I just want to, you know, they did get out there and it looked good. I was, I was like, wow, boy, this rain and they're out the next day. Good job.

Well, we've instructed them to stop putting fertilizer out when

We also had several of our drainage projects get completed.

That's correct. We've had several of our drainage projects get completed. We've got a couple more that are still pending with Metro City.

Down Avenue L and 11th Street, all that looks great.

Yeah, it's come out really nice.

How's the Bel Air neighborhood coming along?

That's the last project in it. They'll probably start Monday on that area right there on Avenue T. Good deal.

Which they've had a couple delays due to the rain, unfortunately.

Oh, yeah. We're doing drainage because it floods. Yeah. The rain does play a factor there.

It's part of it. All right. For the library, as you guys can see, for the month of June, since school's out, we've had a lot more. Usage at the library sits up to 3,635 circulations. We have 170 active accounts right now. Our door count was almost 3,200. So our per capita ratio is 21.27. And this is the highest amount that I've seen in my time here that our members have saved right above $34,000. So that's awesome for our taxpayers.

They're busy. Seth, where are we at on the playground equipment there at JT Park?

They were 12 weeks out, so I can't remember. I don't have an exact date.

It's going to be 12 weeks before they even break ground? Correct. Oh, gotcha. Okay, I thought it was 12 weeks to project completion.

I thought they were going to do some pre-work for the drainage and stuff for this.

foundation foundation work yeah foundation work but um uh but i mean it's 12 weeks well i don't know i don't have an exact timeline they haven't started yet yeah they were talking about coming out there and leveling their points and then setting like pilings there correct

All right. So for the fire marshal's office for the month of June, he completed two burn pile inspections. He had 37 burn permit renewables. We have 186 active burn permits. There were five fires within the city limits for the month of June. He did one fire plan review and then five fire safety inspections. And then as far as code enforcement goes, his office had 14 new cases. They closed five cases and they have 29 cases open.

So one quick question is really for Chief Shores, I guess, and I may have asked this before. The calls for service, does that include EMS and fire, or is that just PD?

That's PD. Okay.

But that's the community, correct? Sir? It's basically, it's the community. That's just not all city. We help those calls.

Correct. Even if we get dispatched to a call with our county, that still counts as a call for service.

Okay. Do you track the... ems and fire calls as well since that goes through our dispatch we have the ability to yes sir i'll be curious to know what that how much that increased this call volume so that i think that contract's coming up pretty soon all right anybody else all right thank you all right thank you mr collins all right now we have uh citizen comments i'm number five any person would

agenda may speak to the council time is limited to three minutes in compliance with the texas open meetings act city council may not deliberate on the comments personal attacks will not be allowed and personnel matters should be addressed to the city manager during normal business hours the reason why we can't deliberate is because state law requires us to only discuss things that are on agenda that are posted 72 hours before the meeting So if we have citizens come and bring up an issue that wasn't on the agenda, then by law, we didn't post that, and so we can't discuss it. So please don't think that we're ignoring you, but we're just staying compliant with the laws of the state of Texas. So first up is Mr. Rice, Scott Rice, if you'll come up, please, and state your name for the record. And you've got three minutes to... Address counsel, give or take.

Thank you. Scott Rice, 13-410 Bob White Drought. Hello, everyone. I recently watched the video from your meeting about fireworks. And I know we're desperate to raise money in sales tax and everything we can. And you guys are trying to do what you can. But for me, I'm a no on the fireworks. I don't want them in the city. I know we have a day that we're supposed to be shooting them every holiday, but it actually sounds like Beirut at my house. And they shoot them until they're done. Doesn't matter how many days they have them, they shoot them. Doesn't matter what time of day or night, they shoot them. Doesn't matter how loud or soft they are, they shoot them. So we can raise a lot of money if we actually start fining people that we're supposed to be for firing fireworks after the day. i know that the fire marshal actually testified that he does not write tickets and never has written a ticket for fireworks i want to know why not why aren't we writing tickets why aren't we saying this is the ordinance we fire them on this day you don't fire them the next day you're disturbing everybody's animals everybody's chickens dogs cats whatever family members with ptsd i heard mr schroeder testify that He didn't like it. He didn't like what it did to his animals, but we need the money. We need our 30 pieces of silver. We need that tax money. So I'm a big no on the fireworks. If we're not going to obey the ordinance, why have it? I mean, why do we say we're going to get everybody one day to fire them every holiday, but we're not going to do anything if you fire them every day, 10 days. They were firing them until July 10th. So there's your opportunity to make some more money for the city. Actually write tickets for fireworks. Don't just show up, oh, we didn't see you, or oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know the ordinance. Put it out there. Tell everybody, we're going to warn you. We're going to fine you. Our citizens want to live in peace. I do not want to, my wife leave town, go to our daughters, go in the closet because our house is shaking from fireworks. I don't know if these are the fireworks we had when we were children, but they sound like they're not. They sound like they are the army or they're all this tannerite that everybody's using. We saw the explosion on the news of the tannerite the other day that was unbelievable. People get hurt, but I don't know what y'all think about it, but I know y'all can't discuss it with me, but I did watch the video. I wasn't able to make it that night, but I know you're trying to get tax revenue any way you can, and just like Mr. Collins just said, we're low on tax revenue, but we have flock cameras now. It's against my constitutional rights that you guys have sold yourselves out for flock cameras. I don't like it. It's Big Brother. They're already abusing in Pasadena, the cops. It's all over the news all over the country. It's an abuse of power. I'm a no on fly cameras, too. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Scott.

Appreciate you being here. Man, it's like you've done that before or something, man. Finished right on time. Thanks, Scott, for being here. Appreciate that. Next, Anthony Cappadona, if you'll come up.

I signed the wrong place.

Okay, no worries. Cole Dixon. Okay. So we'll let you all come up whenever it's time for that agenda item. All right. Is there anybody else that didn't sign in that would like to come and address council? All right, we'll move right along to a new business one, our consent agenda, agenda consideration and possible action adoption of a resolution approving assignment of private activity bond authority to Texas department of housing and community affairs and containing other provisions related to the subject. Council, I'll entertain a motion on the consent agenda.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented. Natalie, roll call, please.

Council Member Schrader?

Yes.

Council Member McKamey?

Yes.

Council Member Jeanette?

Yes.

Council Member Dickerson?

Yes.

And Council Member Marks?

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you, Council. Item number two, consideration of possible action, adoption of a proposed property tax rate for tax year 2026, fiscal year 2026-2027, and approval to publish the required notice of public hearing as prescribed by Texas Tax Code 26.06a. Mr. Rudy.

Mayor, Council, thank you for having me. Good evening. So this is a consideration for adopting a proposed tax rate which, as you know, at this stage, the city has not yet received the certified appraisal rolls for the appraisal district, nor have we had the calculations for the no new revenue rate or the voter approval rate as required by Texas tax code. That will be coming in July 25th, and then calculations perhaps in the beginning of August, and that's when we normally sit down and say, okay, now these are our final numbers, but since we are a little ahead of the schedule, since we were able to get a lot of the budget done, the heavy lifting, the capital, the expenses side done, and we have a good idea of where we're going to land on the revenue, but we're not exactly sure. The idea that we go ahead and have a limit to what we could propose for tax rate later on is probably worthwhile, so we went ahead and proposed, we're proposing us to leave the tax rate the same as the upper limit, As you know, if the council does not take action to establish the proposed rate tonight, then that rate, we'll just use the no new revenue rate and we'll go straight to the approval of the meeting for the adoption of the budget and then the tax rate. But this gives the council the opportunity to discuss any other rate other than the no new revenue rate as soon as the calculations are done. If we don't do this tonight, then we really can't discuss it at all. We can go lower. We'd have to go at least by the no new revenue rate. But since those calculations haven't even been done yet, it seems prudent and cautious for us to go ahead and just wait by limiting us to what our current rate is right now. So any questions? I know I've sent them. Rudy, what is the no new revenue rate? We don't know. But the calculation that I have for the no new revenue rate is 0.227944. The current rate is 0.37 cents. for $100 of value, more than that. So we're talking about 0.37 as far as the amount of taxes.

Can you give the exact rate?

The exact rate of the current rate is 0.231630. That's the current rate. What is it again? 231630.

And we'll say no new revenue rate one more time.

The no new revenue rate that I've calculated, and I'm always wrong, only because there's a lot of numbers that I don't get in my calculation. It's pretty close. It is 0.227944. Rudy, do you know any above or below? I'm always really conservative, so my numbers are always lower.

Yeah, I thought during the budget workshops we were looking at a .19 for some reason. I don't know what was on that. But when did you say that we'll get the certified?

We'll get the certified rules on the 25th. That's when they're due. Sometimes they're a little early. Yeah, they usually are. And then we get the – they go to the tax assist collector, and they, along with ourselves and the appraisal district, we all compute – with all the numbers that they finally give me, the no new revenue rates. And we all agree, we sign off on them and say, okay. And that's when I plug those in and I have a final document to present to council. But since we're on an accelerated timeline, council wanted us to fast track the budget. The earliest with all of this for us to get the budget passed would be, even with the proposed rate, would be August 13th. So I wanted to make sure that we did this tonight in case there was any ideas or any thoughts of a rate between the known revenue rate and the existing rate before or ahead of the calculations that come in. So it's pretty straightforward, not a lot here. Like I said, this is not a, it's more of a procedural requirement more than it is a policy objective. This doesn't mean that the council is expressing any intent to adopt this rate. We're just needing to hold ourselves to a limit. And that gives us room to talk about something other than the no new revenue rate once we get to the rates. We don't have any idea what they are at the moment. Close, but not the exact numbers.

Mayor, I move that the city council propose a no new revenue tax rate of proposed 0.22794 per hundred valuation for purposes of setting a public hearing under tax code 2606.

So I've got some conversation to have first.

Sure. We'll take the motion and second, then we'll open the floor. So it's been moved and seconded to adopt the no new revenue rate as the proposed or to propose. the no new revenue rate at approximately .227944, but obviously that could change once we get the certified rules in. Council, is there any further discussion?

Yes.

Council Member Marks?

Yes, just information purposes, I guess. Like Rudy said, we're here tonight just because law requires us to set a proposed tax rate. And we're here to state that we are not interested in going above the current tax rate. So no rate increase from where we currently are. But a couple of things. It was stated that we had a balanced budget with no deficit. The budget actually was not balanced. There was over a $900,000 deficit and it's only balanced today because we pulled a million dollars out of the general fund to balance it. Because it's the right thing to do. It's the community's money and it needs to be reinvested back in the community where it belongs versus holding that money while the city services and infrastructure deteriorate. Reality is the current year's budget that started as a balanced budget, and I'm talking about the budget we're currently working in, not on, is projected to be $200,000 deficit due to the missed sales tax. So that's another $200,000 that we're going to have to reach into the general fund to bring in to balance the current budget that we're operating in.

Correct.

This is another reason that I have stood firm on not projecting sales tax increases and factoring that number into our budget. It's money we don't have, but we're spending it like we do, and we've got to stop doing that. And this is a prime example of why.

So hang on.

Invest nearly one million in road, infrastructure, equipment projects. This is true, but only because we pulled a million out of the general fund. The no new revenue rate did not support that. Maintain approximately five and a half months of operating reserves. It actually is gonna leave us with 5.4 months. If we hold the current rate, that number drops to 5.2 months. which is dangerously close to the five months Council has discussed increasing the reserve target to. This is really not something new. We do this every year. i don't believe anybody up here is looking to increase the tax rate however the way the law is written if you don't adopt the no new revenue rate anything above that is considered a tax increase because of the way the state worded the law i feel it's important to have these discussions to understand the consequences of either adopted rate the current or the no new revenue Today's agenda item is to set a proposed tax rate which is required by law. This is not the final agreed upon tax rate. We can always accept a lower rate. This is simply the rate I will not exceed. I can't speak for the rest of them, but I think they feel the same way. It is difficult to adopt a no new revenue rate at this time unless we blindly and irresponsibly move to do so due to the fact we have not received the no new revenue rate calculated rate from the tax assessor. So we don't know what the rate's going to be. It's, in my opinion, irresponsible to accept that, to adopt that rate right now without knowing. We pulled a million dollars out of the general fund for next year's upcoming capital expenses This was done because in the past we disregarded the needs of our department heads that allowed them to be successful in their day-to-day Operations and we've done that year after year Including our parks baseball fields city facility upkeep public works staffing the list goes on they all suffer because of that Currently operating expenses are roughly $760,000. Many years ago, it was agreed to hold three months of operating expenses. The city manager, finance director, and council have had recent discussions and agreed that three months is insufficient by today's standards. After pulling out the capital expenses for the upcoming year, we are left with 5.4 months of operating expenses, nearing the increase to five months that we've been discussing. The new revenue rate this year only increases tax revenue to the city by $123,000 over last year. The cost of doing business for the city is outpacing that. So it's going to get to a point where it already is, where we're spending more than we're bringing in. That's why we're having to pull money out of the general fund now. So just quick numbers, and these are just real simple round numbers. At the current tax rate of .231630, a $300,000 home pays $694.89 in property tax. At the estimated no new revenue rate, they would pay $683.84. That's a difference of $11. a year in property taxes. On a $450,000 home, it's $16 a year. Over the past nine years, the city has held the rate three times and either lowered it or adopted the no new revenue rate the other six. So this is one of the reasons I propose we hold the current tax rate where it is at this meeting, and we have future meetings that help us determine what the real no new revenue rate's gonna look like, and we can make a clear conscious decision. We can always go below this, but we cannot go above it. This is not gonna be the permanent rate. And that's all I have.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Council, any further discussion?

I, Look at $1,325,000 that we spent for 4.1 acres through the EDC and the budget that we hold in the EDC. And we'll talk about that on the next agenda item, or the last agenda item tonight. The equipment we bought. When you double your road materials and you double your paving budget, you have to have the equipment to do that job. That was in the budget. That's some of the stuff we put in the budget. We put redoing the city hall in the budget. I believe that 4.1 acres, the reason we bought that was for future sales tax and to increase our sales tax. And I believe in the growth of this town. I believe in the sales tax. I talk about it all the time. I have faith we're going to grow. I have faith we're going to put stuff in the corridors that benefit the other businesses in this town. But we did that for a reason. We spent that money. We okayed it. I didn't vote for it, but we okayed it, and I'm on council, so we okayed it. We bought it through the EDC. I don't see how we can buy something like that with our plans for it to increase taxes, sales taxes, increase people coming into this town, and then raise some nice taxes and it is raising their tax because because the appraisals and everything come in it goes higher it's this way every year i also think i'm going to go to that 4.1 acres we have people right now we have developers they want to come in here and talk to us they want to give us ideas And we're going to have to make a decision, because we're not going to settle on that land like we did Barringer. It shows good faith. It shows a strong city. And it shows a city that does the right thing for its businesses approving this tax rate that I made a motion on. It makes somebody come into this town and want to do business with Santa Fe. instead of going to our doorstep and filling up Lake City, filling up Alvin. Now look at Lamarck. That's all I've got to say. But we put things in the budget that we could have taken out of the budget if we were going to do this. And we had budget meetings. And I thought we had come to an agreement on this. maybe we should have had more budget meetings but we're here now and uh i want city hall to be clear of this i want this done early because i want to start working on new stuff we said here we'll talk about that we'll talk about that later in another but i want city hall to be free of excess stuff they do that they don't need to be doing and we start working on the new stuff i mean we start working on bringing business we don't have an edc director we've got seth doing two jobs right now set these to concentrate on getting people in this deal to do their jobs uh not watching us bicker over this. And I understand Mayor Pro Tem's, I know where he's coming from, but I just don't think this is the time to do it.

And I just want to reiterate that none of us are up here to argue. We're up here to discuss.

That's what the options are and what the impacts are both ways.

That's right. So we can make the right decision.

Council, any further discussion? All right. I invite anybody that would like to come and speak on this. We'll listen to the citizens' comments. Whoever wants to come first. Y'all can draw straws or play paper, rock, scissors. Just state your name for the record, please.

Cole Dixon. I live right here on 22nd Street. I'm 24 years old. Worked for Centerpoint Energy. We'll be moving in right here in what I'm told October. My wife's a nurse at UTMB here in Galveston. There's no way in hell that we should be making almost $200,000. And I mean, granted, some of that isn't up to y'all as far as the county tax assessing stuff goes. But my mortgage is $3,000 a month. You start increasing some of this stuff. You know, I'm 24. I just got into a house two years ago. You want your up and coming people that have lived in the city since they were in kindergarten to buy a home and continue to reside in the city, but. they can't if you continue to raise taxes along with rising interest rates and everything else that's going on in the housing market how can we ask that anybody try to move into this city i'll be honest with you i have thought about moving to angleton or anywhere besides santa fe this is where i grew up this is where i want to lay roots this is where i want to raise my kids but if i can't provide everything that I want for my kids because I'm so busy having to keep up with the city constantly increasing taxes. There's no reason for it. Why would I stay here? I'm in this town every day of the week. every day i spend my money at just about every local small business that there is galco hardware there's another lumber supply out here the gun vault in santa fe several several small businesses but when i'm throwing every last side dollar to taxes how can i afford to keep these other small businesses in in business if we're blowing all this money because we need a little more money how can you expect a young couple to come in here and buy a house i have a modest house i don't have some half a million dollar home i have a three hundred thousand dollar home my mortgage is three thousand dollars i'm not struggling to pay it but every dollar that we can keep around our home counts i've got two kids now at some point they're going to be in baseball sports If I'm sitting here paying all these extra money just to taxes, how am I expected to stay in this city? I can move elsewhere and be a lot better off to raise my family. I want to raise my family here, but I'm not going to continue to do it if all we're going to do is raise taxes every other year. There's no point in it. That's all I got to say. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Is there anybody else that would like to address council?

Bear with me, guys. I got pulled back.

Too much golfing.

Or caddying. I do not golf. I do not even caddy anymore. I'm going to give you, yeah, my name is John Welch. I own Galco Hardware here in Santa Fe. Just want to give you guys some perspective from a business standpoint. I hear what the individual says, and I echo a lot of that. Owning a business is a little bit different than that.

Hey, John, is that green light on that microphone? Looks like it. OK.

There. You hear me? Hit it one more time. There you go. Got it. Anyhow, I don't have a vote with you guys. I want to come up, though, and give some business perspective on what it's like to actually own a business in today's economy, not just in this city, not under this tax burden or anything else, but I want to echo it from kind of what the gentleman just said from a residential standpoint. In a residence, I would hope that his salary has remained the same. over this inflationary period that we've all experienced over the last two years probably so if he's lucky he works for a company such as center point where he gets a three percent annual increase that doesn't happen for business Here's what real business looks like. I looked at the numbers before I left today. Where I stand right now, seven months into this year, I'm $110,000 down from last year. You want to wonder where your tax revenue comes from? Right there. I'm $110,000 down in seven months. And guess what? That comes out of my personal reserves. I don't have any savior. It comes out of me. It comes out of money that I've already made in a retirement account that I worked 31 years to get long before I came to Santa Fe, Texas and bought Galco hardware to try to save that. That's reality. Now, along those terms on my floating dock that I get to live on, in the six years that i've owned galco my operating capital has gone up fifteen thousand dollars a month a month driven by three main categories mortgage taxes and insurance those three things have increased my operating cost by fifteen thousand dollars a month Now, if you look at the $110,000 that I'm down right now in just this seven months, if any of you guys would like to come by the store, I'm a very transparent, open book. I'll show you real numbers so you can really wrap your head around it. But if you look at that and you see those two things going in opposite directions, that's $30,000 a month that I'm down just since six years ago when I bought Galco Hardware. i would beg any of you guys to look at me and tell me that you would make that kind of investment whether you love this town or not and that's just the god's honest truth would you make that investment i'll tell every one of you guys just like i just told my daughter that manages my store who was griping not too long ago about how hard life is and i looked at her politely and said i'll tell you how hard life is when you come into this store and you work 75 hours a week like i do and at the end of the week you have to write a five thousand dollar check to make sure everybody else gets paid then you have something to gripe about until then don't come talking to me about any gripes or about how we need to increase something on you or this or that that's reality of business now i don't know if my fellow other businesses would come up here and give you guys that kind of information but that's what you're seeing that's why you see a armadillo cafe closing down That's why after 39 years in Dickinson, you see a Sutherland's closing down. 39 years, guys. Kroger, after 47 years in Dickinson, they're not just closing down because they're printing money. I promise you, if they're printing money, they're not closing down. They're staying afloat. It's because it's hard. And there is no savior coming to save me. You guys decide, vote on a tax increase. Naturally, I just got to pay it. But at some point, I'm going to come to a consensus of saying, does Santa Fe still need Galco hardware? Because if they don't, then I'll gladly and politely go away. I've got plenty of money to go sit on a beach and sip Mai Tais. and that's just uh i'll leave it at that but consider that when you're ever considering a tax increase all of us are already strapped so it's not like we're in here just today saying hey you know times are hard times have been hard for three years four years so just remember that too that's all i have thank you thank you john is there anybody else that would like to address council

This is why I came, not to gripe earlier, but just took that opportunity. That wasn't griping. That was citizen comments. That was citizen comments. That was a warm-up. I actually had a whole different speech prepared. And I'm looking at what you say about a $300,000 house and a $500,000 house and how much we're paying and how much will go up or go down depending on the rate. I'm a very anti-property tax person. It makes me sick to work all year long to pay $12,000 out of my pocket. I have to save $1,000 a month just to pay Ms. Johnson, that letter that comes in the mail that I cannot stand getting her name, and I gripe her out. She says, it's not me. It's not me. Don't kill the message. It's the legislature, right? I just fume when I get that letter, and I have to look at every one of my properties. Me and my wife have several properties in the county. So, not just Santa Fe tax, I pay Lamarck, Hitchcock, Texas City, and each one of them is different. Different tax rates, different school rates. And what I look at is my overall tax. Okay, y'all are getting beat up over $700, $600. That's about what I pay for the House of Santa Fe. My biggest problem, of course, is school taxes. That's where all of our taxes are accumulated. But the biggest problem for me is when I look at COMM, College of the Mainland. I cannot stand paying College of the Mainland taxes. It's as much as your city taxes. I wish we were giving you all that money. If I was giving you $1,500, you wouldn't be up here asking for a little $11 or $12 a year. I can afford that. I wish you had a box out here where I could just give you $12 donation for the park or whatever because... It's accumulative taxes is what people have a problem with, right? Not your city tax that's $300, $500, $600. We can all afford that. We spend that going on Airbnb, paying a cleaning fee at Airbnb. So the problem is accumulative. That's Charles' problem because that's why people don't want no tax increases. I don't know why we pay so much in College of Mainland, but I went and took a course over there, and I still had to pay full price. Why? Why? Why is the League City paying for campuses that are getting built over there, and they don't pay com taxes for 150,000 people? Why are we that gullible that we let this happen to us, that we're paying for a secondary education It's voluntary. Our kids have to go to primary school. We have to pay that school tax. We do not have to pay for comm. I want it abolished. I want y'all to figure out a way to get rid of it or cut it in half and take the money. That's my solution. I was going to beat y'all up on the tax rate. I heard there was going to be a big discussion on, we're going up on your taxes? You can take $12, $15 out of mine. I'm paying ridiculous amounts in Texas City Schools When the refinery should be paying that. There should be no school taxes in Texas City, but they're more than Santa Fe's per dollar. A little bitty $150,000 house is $2,500 a year in Texas City. I pay $4,000 a year to Santa Fe schools. So it's not the $650 or $350, whatever y'all are paying. Really worried about. I'm not worried about it. Told you. I'm not beating you up.

Thank you all. That donation can be made out to the city of Santa Fe. Sorry, I didn't hear what you said, Scott. Come on up, if you'll state your name for the record, please.

ANTHONY CAPODOA. I live here on 25th Street. Excuse me. I concur with the first two individuals said, Mr. John and Nicole. I did not grow up here. I grew up here. I grew up in Galveston. And I'm telling you, it doesn't seem like much, but every penny matters. And like he said, buying property that we don't really need. I mean, there's your operating budget that we could have been spending on things we need here in the community, investing in the police. Up here in the building.

That's not yours. I'm sorry. That's the last guy. Oh, you got the timer set on me? Sorry, I'm an Aggie. Numbers are hard. I understand.

Married to one. But anyway, yes, I agree. We should adopt the, what was it, the... The no new tax revenue rate, because right now it's speculation that it may go up a certain dollar amount. We don't know. But as of now, I wholeheartedly believe we should stay with where we're at with the no new revenue rate because I grew up living here and I don't want to have to have my kids move away from here just because of taxes. Thank you.

Thank you, Anthony. Anybody else who would like to speak? No. I appreciate y'all being here. And speaking, addressing council, there's just a couple of things that I have, and I appreciate Mayor Pro Tem Marks and all the council members. We've been talking about budget and tax rates since February. We've had some really great conversations, obviously some really hard decisions to make. And I guess the first thing that I would say is on the 975,000 roundabout number, that we were talking about pulling out of our general funds is for capital improvements. And I supported that because they're one-time expenses. So it's not like we are supplementing reoccurring annual expenses out of money that's not going to be there again. So they're big one-time purchases. And I supported that for two reasons. Number one, I was under the impression that council was all on the same page about adopting a no new revenue rate. That's changed. The second reason is because we've got 5.6 months of operating expenses in our rainy day fund or general fund balance, whatever you want to call it. We're only required to have three. We've only ever adopted any formal resolution to have three months. And so to me, it doesn't make sense to raise taxes on our citizens to turn around and put money in our bank accounts. I think it's much better served in their bank accounts. Part of that capital improvement plan, a big cost of that is a $250,000 renovation to City Hall. I've got some renovations that I'd like to make at my house. I'd like to put new floors in there. I'd like to put a roof over the patio I got in the back. Although when the appraisal district finds out about it, they'll raise my appraisals, but I can't do all that at one time because I can't afford it because I got to pay taxes and insurance. Um, so I have a hard time justified taking money from our citizens. to fund a city hall renovation. That would be nice, but that's not essential. I think raising taxes should be a last resort. If we were sitting here tonight, and we were at three or maybe even 3.5 months of operating costs, and we were in a deficit, and we were either going to have to cut services or raise taxes, then I'd sit up here and defend it. Hey, folks. Y'all elected us, y'all hired us to keep the city going, to provide city services, and in order to do that, we're going to have to raise your taxes. I mean, we don't have any other choice. We've exhausted all other options. Raising taxes should always have to be the last resort. We've got $975,000 of discretionary spending that we can cut. We can balance the budget on the no new revenue rate, get pretty close. There's always going to be a need for more money at the city. I'd love to pay our employees more. I'd love to pave every road in the city. There's a lot of things that I'd like to do. But the bottom line is we have to live within our means just like we have to in our personal lives. So we do what we can with the money that we have. The other thing that I want to bring up is, you know, Mayor Pro Tem, and I appreciate you putting those numbers together, you talked about the difference between a $300,000, $400,000 house and all that.

That's all fine and well. And don't stick to my math either. I went to Texas City.

That's good information to have, but what I always think about is our businesses. So our residents, they have a $5,000 homestead exemption, so they're not taxed on the first $5,000 of their value, which isn't much. But for the first time in the history of Santa Fe last year, we adopted a homestead exemption, even if it was only $5,000. It's a step in the right direction. But then they're capped at a 10% increase. So the most their property can go up any one year is 10%. Thankfully, the governor is working on a tax plan to make it even less. Hopefully that comes next year beyond the state legislature. But there is no homestead exemption on non-homestead properties such as rentals or secondary or businesses. And businesses have a 20% circuit break, not a 10%. So their values can go up 20% year over year. There's nothing they can do about it. So it's a lot more of a burden on the businesses than it is that person that has a $250,000 or $300,000 house with a homestead exemption. Not to mention the fact that our businesses aren't getting school district homestead exemption or any of the other homestead exemptions. So it's tough on them. We're considering this, I think, in part, Mayor Pro Tem, because of the decrease in sales tax. When our businesses are hurting, we know they are because our sales tax numbers are down. I don't think that the right answer is to kick them while they're down, unless it's absolutely necessary. I think raising property taxes right now is kicking them while they're down. And then the last point that I would make is we have been, will continue to be going into executive session from time to time to discuss development agreements that may or may not have a three 80 agreement as part of that, where we discuss giving back some property taxes or some sales taxes to businesses, to developers that are coming into town to develop. We've got one, a 380 agreement, that's getting pretty close. And I just have a hard time sitting here or being out in the community and telling our residents that we need to raise taxes on you to fund City Hall, but that the next time a developer wants to come in here and build a commercial property, we're going to give them a percentage of their property tax back to them for a certain number of years. Just don't think that's right. I don't think it's the right thing to do for our citizens. We're talking about $125,000 difference between the no new revenue rate and the current rate. So we don't know exactly what the number is, but we know what the numbers are going to be close enough to know what the delta is. If we're really that concerned about the position that we're gonna be in with the no new revenue rate, then it would be my suggestion to council, and if the vote goes that way tonight, I'll be asking our city manager to put the capital improvement plan back on the agenda so we can cut some things. We can cut the city hall renovations from 250,000 to 125,000. There's your money. Let's adopt the no new revenue rate and cut it. We can put 125,000 for the city hall into next year's budget if that's what we need to do, but it'd be nice. I'd love to put new carpet and fix the ceiling tiles and do some things in here. But to me, when you raise taxes, it's because you have no other choice and you have to do it to continue essential services. And that's just simply not the position that we're in tonight.

I'm just sitting. I don't take a whole lot of notes. I don't speak a whole lot, but I sit and listen and I pay attention. But I remember a certain individual sitting in one of our budget workshops that made the suggestions to do the renovations in the city hall, carpet, ceiling tile, and all that other stuff. Now he's talking about doing away with all of that stuff.

Yeah, you can say me.

It's okay. Oh, I'm looking like I did. You're right. I never and we never did. Decided we were going to go with no new revenue. We was working on budget workshop. We kicked a bunch of different rates around We never took that vote because that's not what you said.

Well, what I said was most of the time And you're right. It could be just a difference of perception, right? But most of the time Oh, I know what was said, too. I absolutely supported the capital improvement plan, and I said that just a minute ago when I was under the assumption that we were going to adopt the no new revenue tax rate because the majority of the time, except for just flipping back and forth every once in a while, the majority of the time when we were looking at that budget dashboard, it was set on A, the no new revenue rate. That's what we were looking at the majority of the time. Maybe I just assumed, and you know what happens when we make assumptions. I just assumed that we were all on the same page because nobody really voiced a strong concern of what we're talking about tonight, which is okay.

That's what we're here for tonight. We're talking about the no new revenue plus our current rate versus our current rate.

Correct. We're talking about no new revenue versus. Right now we're talking about the no new revenue rate. That's the motion that's on the floor.

I'm bringing up another. Discussion. We're talking about between no new revenue and our current tax rate. Correct. So play on words. If our current tax rate, why are we saying that's a tax increase?

It is a tax increase.

If it's our current rate.

We ain't raising no rates. Because your appraisals went up. It's not our fault. But we know it, and we can either decide to compensate for it, or we can pass the buck.

Say, oh, that's not our fault. We can't help it. I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying, because I've got issues with the president, too. But that's how we compensate for it.

That's just the way the state law is written, Bubba.

I understand.

If anything above the no new revenue rate is, in their eyes, a tax increase. No, it is.

I'm just saying words. It's not. It's not a tax increase. The difference between the no new revenue rate and the current tax rate would be an increase of $125,000. Where's that $125,000 coming from? From the appraisal division. No, it's not. Where do our taxes come from, Bubba? Councilman, I'm sorry. Councilman, no, this is property tax. The difference between the no new revenue rate and the current rate, if we adopt the current rate, we would bring in $125,000 more than we did last year in property tax. Where does that $125,000 come from? From the taxpayers. Okay. Their bill is going to go up. So it is a tax increase. I get that. If we adopt the same rate and your appraisal went up 10%, your taxes are going up 10%. Oh, I know all that. Okay.

So can I ask a quick question? It's not just a play on points. Can I ask a quick question just for clarity? For the purposes of tonight, we are not adopting a tax rate, right? We're making a proposal, then we still have to come back to adopt the tax rate that we're gonna implement, correct?

That is correct, practically. But in my opinion, that's a play on words.

How's that?

Because we shouldn't even be considering it. Why leave the door open if you're not going to walk through it?

Because I don't know what the no new revenue rate looks like. We know that the no new revenue rate is correct. It's a guess, just like Rudy said. It's a guess. We don't know what it is. I wouldn't go finance a car without knowing what the rate's going to be. and this doesn't lock us in to the current rate if we propose that tonight we can still come back as we're going to have to to review the no new revenue rate and approve a tax rate at that point well that's what i'm trying to get across is that we're not asking to increase taxes we're making a proposal until we have all the information and then we're going to circle back and have these conversations right and these people will be here again to listen to it again but with the actual numbers

My argument is that there's no need to even consider anything above the no new revenue rate. We know that the no new revenue rate is, it doesn't matter what the rate number is, we know that the no new revenue rate is going to give us the same amount of money that we had last year plus $130,000 for improvements and new inventory coming on the rolls. Let me ask you a quick question.

The has the no new revenue rate ever increased over our current tax rate yes so we could do that again by blindly voting to accept the no new revenue rate that could happen again that it could actually be a rate increase over what we currently have no because it'd be no new revenue yes but with no preliminary our no new revenue rate was a tax increase last year a year before right

so it could happen again that's why i don't want to blindly vote for it so two things about that number one we already have preliminary rules that are indicating that that's not going to happen this year number two let's say that is the case i guarantee you one thing if the no new revenue rate is an increase adopting this the same tax rate as last year is an even bigger increase

No, because our no new revenue rate went above what our current rate was that year. Two years ago. Right. That's true. So they were actually forced a tax increase on them by the state because the no new revenue rate went above our current rate. That's true. And we can stop that right now by saying this is what we propose. It's not what we approve until we get that number. My next question is, nothing stops us from going below the no new revenue rate if we chose to.

No, that's true. And we still could. So if we adopt the no new revenue rate tonight, then that means that's the highest we could go. So if the no new revenue rate ends up being more, we can go lower to match.

No, of course.

And I don't think any of us are, but I'm just saying that we are proposing that the no new revenue rate would be the highest. So if it, if it ends up being that the no new revenue rate is higher than our current tax rate, we can always go under it. But the preliminary and Rudy's been calculating this data. He's got it dialed in pretty good. He's not perfect, but it's very close. If I'm not mistaken, preliminary roles that have been set to the counties are not indicating as they were two years ago.

That the no new revenue rate is going to exceed our current rate So if I'm not mistaken Rudy did you make the comment the other night that if we didn't do anything tonight that we are locked into the no new revenue rate

that's great so whatever it is it is that's going to be the highest that we can adopt that will be so so we can come back we're not locked into it we can't come back and go down but it does set the ceiling but it does mean that we don't need to do any public hearings and we don't have to put a notice out it does change the dynamics a little bit when it comes to the notices, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to come tonight, because we have 30 days from the proposed in order to allow the public notice to look at it and then come back next month for the hearings. So all that being said is that there is a timing factor, and that's the only reason why we're doing it now as opposed to now.

Rudy, one question. Dr. No New Revenue Rate, and it's higher than what it is that we say. Still, we're going to go up to that No New Revenue.

We can go down. We can go below it. We can go below it.

But we're going to go. We say 0.22.

Yeah, because the motion that we made tonight, No New Revenue Rate, which is approximately. We don't know exactly what it is. I think the spirit of the motion that everybody understands is it would be the No New Revenue Rate. DAVID BURRAGE.

We're not locking into this number if it's higher.

DAVID BURRAGE. In 30 days. We just got to get it out there.

DAVID BURRAGE. And I think what I just heard right there is, this is just a proposed property tax rate. Whatever you said tonight, you cannot exceed it at a later time. You can go below. But I thought I just heard you say, can we go, if the known overrevenue It comes out to be larger than what you set tonight. You can't go higher. Correct. We have to go. We're setting the ceiling tonight.

You're setting the ceiling. And it's just proposed. So if we set the .227944 tonight and the no new revenue is actually .23, we cannot go to .23. Correct. We have to stay at the. Correct. That's correct.

I mean, at the end of the day, we're talking about around 1% of our budget. I mean, if we can't cut 1% of our budget, if we can't find budget savings somewhere to make up the difference of 1% of our budget.

So this happened to me before in another city. This is not just one year, though. It's forever. So that one decrease below the no new revenue rate.

is perpetual we'll lose that going forward forever so it ends up being a lot more so should we redo the motion or amend the motion to not include the actual percentage and just save the no new revenue rate i think we have to give a percentage as part of the motion how do we yeah it's got to be a rate it's got to be a number eight because we have to we have to publish it you're right you're right on that rudy uh because then you know every year that you adopt the no new revenue rate then that becomes this the standard It's my goal and my hope always has been ever since I got involved with the city of Santa Fe that we have enough sales tax coming in and other streams of revenue that we can adopt the no new revenue rate every year.

That is my hope as well.

The county's done it for 15 years in a row. I'd like to see us make it go away. I'd like to have a zero property tax rate. That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. But what I would say, council, is there's no sense in opening the door if you're not going to walk through it. We can be done with it tonight, or we can drag this out another month. But if we're not going to walk through the door, there's no sense in opening it. We're talking about $125,000. If we're really concerned about that, we can pull $125,000 out from the city wall renovations and balance the budget that way.

I guess my point is that's a conversation for the next meeting versus this one. When we actually adopt a tax rate. Sure. That's true. Would you be at the next meeting?

Yep. Be at the August meeting.

We will have the numbers at the August meeting. Yes.

Council, is there any further discussion? I'll restate the motion that was made by Council Member Schrader to adopt the, or to propose the no new revenue rate, .227944, seconded by Council Member Dickerson. Council, are we good? Yes. Okay. Natalie, roll call, please.

Council Member Marks.

I'm not going to do it on a blind number, knowing that we're not locked into it, so I'm no.

Council Member Schroeder?

Yes.

Council Member McKamey?

No.

Council Member Jeanette?

No.

And Council Member Dickerson? Yes.

Motion fails, three to two. We can postpone.

We can make another motion. We can make another motion. I would suggest y'all agree on some proposed tax rate. So for publication purposes and stuff, there is a ceiling. That one failed. Someone can make another motion.

So I'll make a motion that we propose the current tax rate at point two three one six three zero and we will not exceed that.

It has been moved and seconded to propose a tax rate of point two three one six zero. for fiscal year, for tax year 2026, fiscal year 2026, 2027. Council, is there any further discussion?

DAVID BURRAGE. And can someone also add the idea of the approval to publish the required notice of public hearing? DAVID BURRAGE. Oh. DAVID BURRAGE. In that same motion. DAVID BURRAGE. Sorry. DAVID BURRAGE. Yep. DAVID BURRAGE.

Man, you're killing me.

DAVID BURRAGE.

I want to make sure . DAVID BURRAGE. So we will. DAVID BURRAGE. All right.

So I'll make a motion that we propose a tax rate of 0.231630 and publish the required notice of public hearing as prescribed by Texas Tax Code 26.068. Second.

Been moved and seconded to propose a property tax rate for tax year 2026 of .23160 and to approve the publishing of the required notice of a public hearing as prescribed by Texas Tax Code 26.068. Council, is there any further discussion? So there will be a notice going out from the city of Santa Fe that city council is considering a tax increase this year. That'll be in the paper going out to all of our citizens. Natalie, roll call, please.

COUNCIL MEMBER JANETTE? Yes. COUNCIL MEMBER DICKERSON? No. COUNCIL MEMBER MARKS?

Yes.

COUNCIL MEMBER SCHRADER?

No.

And COUNCIL MEMBER MCKAYME?

Yes. Motion passes 3-2. All right. Item number three, consideration and possible action authorizing the sale of city-owned property. Chief Shores.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Before you and your packet is a proposition to sell two pieces of city property, unit number 0858, which was previously used for our detectives. It's no longer needed. It's been replaced. We'd like to auction that off. And unit number 5036, which is 2008 Crown Victoria. It's currently or was our Citizens on Patrol vehicle. It's passed its life, exceeded its limits and expectations. So we'd like to try and sell that also.

2008, that's brand new. I'll put the jump box on it.

We'll see if we can get it started, but I don't know that we'll be able to.

Oh, you just got to hit the starter a couple times.

I move to authorize the sale of unit number 08588 at 2017 Hyundai Sonata and unit 5036 at Crown Victoria by public auction as presented. It's been moved and seconded to authorize the sale of unit 0 8 5 8 8 2017 Hyundai Sonata in unit 5 0 3 6 at Crown Victoria by public auction as presented Council is there any further discussion?

Any further discussion Natalie roll call, please Dickerson

Yes.

Council Member Marks?

Yes.

Council Member Schrader?

Yes.

Council Member McKamey?

Yes.

And Council Member Jeanette?

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you, gentlemen. Number five, discussion and direction regarding the qualification, selection criteria, and appointment process for city board and commission members and revisions to the board and commission application. Number four, discussion and direction regarding compensatory time for exempt employees. Mayor Pro Tem Marks.

Thank you. So our salaried employees are expected to work extra hours at times. That's a given with the salaried position typically. However, special events such as the Stars Over Six, our Christmas festivities, Easter festivities, that requires employees to be away from their families and working outside their normal schedule for several hours without compensation. And this significantly affects your work-life balance. So a salary is typically based on a 40-hour work week to establish an hourly pay rate for the salaried individuals. For example, a salary of $50,000 a year equates to 24.04 an hour. If an employee works 60 hours in a week, that pay rate drops to 16.02 an hour, an $8 an hour decrease. Just my opinion, this is unfair to the employees and their families. And I would like to consider a policy that compensates our salaried employees for these special events and to fall under the city manager's purview for approvals. So I'd like to know council's thoughts on that.

CAPS that they can convert to comp time?

DAVID BURRAGE. So Mr. Collins is working through all of that now on how comp time or pay may look. And that'll be part of the policy is how they utilize it. And I assume his approval. They can't just earn it. It needs to be approved.

DAVID BURRAGE.

I think they should just tough it out. DAVID BURRAGE. But this is just the conversation. Do we want to pursue a policy and see what that looks like?

When you bank your cop time, are we going to bank it at time and a half?

No. Bank at true time, and it won't be paid out.

Yeah, because I think the goal of it, we want people to use the time.

I mean, we want people.

I mean, I think the big problem that we have with staff now is that they don't use their vacation time. And so we want them to use it. It's a benefit of getting to work at the city. And it'll only affect 12 individuals who work here. And, you know, our... non-salaried employees are compensated you know you know I'm getting double time or time and a half it's a holiday or not and so they all you know got that benefit and unfortunately with our salaried employees. I'm not trying to work them to death. And so they really showed up, especially at the Stars Over Six event. I know several of y'all were there and saw kind of the time that it put in. But giving them a way to help them spend time with their families that's been taken away from them during special events I think would be fantastic. But, you know, we could set a policy where they would have to use it within a certain timeline and that they couldn't use it for certain weeks of the year. It's kind of, and I'll tell this to the general public, I tell my staff this, I've never told an employee, no, they can't take a vacation day. They know that they come to me, I want to take a vacation day, or if I'm sick, if you're sick, I don't want you here, I want you at home, doesn't matter what the issue is. But, yeah. I would like it for them to be able to use some of the time that they're spending, especially on the weekends. I mean, y'all know, I mean, for the Pasco Boyts, I mean, they're working 60 hours a week. It would be nice to be able to compensate them for that, for them to be able to take off some time and just, you know, kind of restore because we run a small staff, and I know I expect a lot out of them, and they work extremely hard, so I couldn't be prouder of them.

These are non-prime time vacations?

Non-prime time vacations, that's correct. So I can't have everybody take off at Christmas or at Thanksgiving. I mean, there's just certain times that we'll have to.

You're just looking for us to see if we want to compete with it. That's correct.

Yeah, I will bring forth a policy, but I just, we want the permission to go forth to be able to put a policy.

And my thought is, you know, an hour today, hour tomorrow, not necessarily tracking that as much as we track the special events that take a day, two days, those kind of things.

It would strictly be special events, not like emergency services and things like that.

Yeah. Well, so when we have like in times of an emergency, we already have that now where we get the pay. Y'all did that like for this council.

Remember after barrel? Correct.

After barrel. That's correct.

Hourly.

So out of that, you put that $500,000 in that emergency allocation account.

What I do want to clarify... Because both you and Mayor Pro Tem both said, you know, that oftentimes they work 60 hours a week. When we originally talked about this in the agenda setting meeting, we talked about using this to compensate them for special events like the Christmas market or the 4th of July event.

That's what I just said was the 60 hours during, like, the Stars Over 6 event. That's correct. I was giving an example. Yeah, and normally, I mean, typically I work 50 hours. I mean, you sum up my paychecks. but my payroll but you know but for those not just speaking for me but for our directors like when we have an event like stars over six or for our Christmas market whatever the event is you know if it's a holiday event that requires that you giving me the authority to say yes we can you know give you comp time and my reference to the 60 hours was just to show the comparison between

on how their pay rate drops.

Oh, I know. When I worked at the school, I worked for free after Christmas break. So I understand. Before I ever hit the... Everybody needs to use the microphone so we can hear. Check, check. Okay. Is our pay going to go up? Is our pay going to go up? Do we get paid overtime? You better believe it. Okay. Double the council salary and triple the mayor's salary on the next budget.

Seth, will this include council meetings, EDC meetings, P&Z meetings?

If it's during a special event, like say we have Stars Over Six event like we just had, and let's say I use Belinda, and Belinda's got a P&Z meeting that she's got on Tuesday night, and on Monday night she's got a Parks Board meeting. that time would be included in that. So whenever she hits past her 40, anything above that, so let's say she hits 72 hours, 32 hours of that would be straight comp time.

I'm a believer in comp time because I ran a large operation at Dow, and it was seasonal. And comp time saved me in the budget process. And it's right to give back. I have a lot of employees that went to Mexico for the winter to see their families. And they would ask me, can I accumulate comp time? So they would have a paycheck when they were gone. And I know this is different. You're not going to do it like this. But as long as this is managed, by the department head first and then by you and you okay.

Well, it's just the department heads.

I'm 100%.

With the exception of two employees, with the exception of the only two that it would affect would be Tiffany and Lori that are not department heads. And as my staff know, as tough as I am on our timesheets, we'll be A-okay.

I'm for comp time. I mean, as long as you're managing it, you know what it's for, and we've approved the event or whatever. You know, I don't think it's, you know, I'm for comp time. I think it helps the city, and I think it's... I think it's a morale booster for the employee.

So let's say in one week, if we had the Stars Over Six event again, let's say on Saturday like we did this year,

Monday night, she would have her park support meeting where she would have to stay late. And then Tuesday, she would have her PNZ meeting where she'd have to stay late. And then let's say, worst case scenario, Thursday, we've got a city council meeting. And then on Saturday, we've got the Stars Over Six event. So anything past her 40 hours in any of that time worked within that Sunday to Saturday. would be anything above 40 would go towards comp time. So let's say she worked 72 hours in that time. 32 hours of that would be comp time that she could use at a later time to use it like a vacation day.

But shouldn't the meetings be part of the salary? that's that's kind of why we're bringing this up just because i thought we were just talking about special events i didn't know meetings were classified as special events well it's only if we have a special event so a meeting that way because i mean it's pretty typical i mean we don't see the stars over six and all that that's what we're saying is is we're a special event like that so are you saying that if if the stars over six wasn't that saturday

she would not get comp time for the pnz and parks that's correct she wouldn't get comp time for that only if she would not if there wasn't an event only especially it's in their uh

The job description, it's in the job description of salaried employee to be in the meetings that they're on. He's saying like if they have meetings that you would only be on.

So the reason we're bringing this up because we made staff come in on a Saturday, on their time off, on a holiday. And so that was kind of the reason. They had to sacrifice from the family. Just giving this as a benefit to them to be able to have it.

I have no problem with it. My question was the We have the Monday and Tuesday meetings. That should be part of their salary. But you're saying you're going to add those hours to these?

I think meetings are in job descriptions.

But he's talking about 32 hours.

There are. So it is in job description. And how we do here, I mean, everybody, even department heads. For our citizens that don't know, even I submit a timesheet every day. So when I come get here at 6.30 in the morning and I leave at 6.30 at night and I took hour lunch, it's reflected on my timesheet. And so the mayor signs my timesheet every two weeks. I sign every department head's. And then they sign each of their employees' timesheets. So we all, even though we're salaried employees, that's how we keep up with our time so if we take off let's say that i have um a doctor's appointment that i go to i take off that two hours for the appointment uh it's not we don't just kind of equal it out we we do straight time here at the city so we we keep our time try to keep it exact as we can i mean that's what's reflected i mean y'all seen my time sheet so and i mean you can see any of theirs as well

I think what he was trying to say is that since we would have those meetings already, it's in our job description, we're going to hit over 40 by the time we get to the event. He's saying the hours we work for that event would be the comp time.

Yes.

Not including the meetings. Not 32 hours.

Right, right.

that's what he was trying i think he was probably just throwing a number out there yeah i was throwing a number out there um but no i get what you're saying though yeah i get what you're saying so what we're saying is give belinda 32 hours so like let's say for but like for this it's you know we i get it okay we can we can put that would you like to come make a citizen comment

I'm sorry for picking on you tonight. You're just easy to pick on.

From what I understand, not assuming, Council Member Jeanette, but from what I understand, it's the consensus of council to give direction to the city manager to go ahead and draft something up. Yes. Agreed. Okay.

All right.

Thank you all. Got it on record.

Very good.

I have number five, discussion and direction regarding the qualifications, selection criteria, and appointment process for city board and commission members and revisions to the board and commission applications. Council Member Schrader.

Well, on the application process, we can clean that up. It needs to be for all boards. The people that have been in that pool for like six months or so, they need to be contacted. You know, even if they were in the pool for last year and they didn't get there two years ago, they need to be contacted or not even in there.

so i will we do keep their application on file for two years so if if they've applied within those two years we will call them to see if they're still interested that's what i want yeah and i another thing that i don't think everyone realizes is that you don't have to just turn in the application and check one board you can check multiple and we'll put those towards those boards also that's correct um i have people call me just like that and i've applied for this board and this board

you know and I've guessed because I've got a phone call that's just one of the things but our meetings I'm gonna take the EDC for we need EDC part four we need to have a better idea of how to conduct the meeting And everybody needs to be kind of the same. You know, we don't sit here and, you know, let John Welch come and sit beside me and wait until, you know, he wants to speak on his agenda item and then let him speak on his agenda item. The people that run the meetings need to know how to run a meeting. And there's time and places for him. It's not sitting at the table. And I'll talk about the EDC. We want to talk about money? I know how to get a lot of money. And I've talked about it before. And I know it makes people mad. Abolish the EDC. Dissolve the EDC. We use the EDC at kind of like our convenience. And I understand it. But we wouldn't be having this budget discussion. We could have an EDC board. Sitting right up here. The only thing we need an EDC for is to give money away, like a bear grant. Everybody around here knows what I think of the bear grants. I think a couple of them have been OK, but I think they got out of control. you know that that's a thought process and that's a thought process we're going to have going forward uh i want to see the park sports stream i'm on the park sport i don't we talk about events we talk about this stuff i don't think there needs to be a candy trail i don't think there needs to be an easter egg hunt There's realtors in this town, and there's the Chamber of Commerce in this town, and there's churches in this town, and they all do the same thing. That's a community event. That's a community service. The Parks Board, you know, and I'm not no physical fitness specimen, but I can tell you right now, I'm going through type 2 diabetes, and I have Our parks need to be about outdoors, physical activity, not picking up eggs with candy, not having a thing that we walk around and get candy. An event does not have to be a park sport event just because it's in a city park. There's money right there, and there's time. want this city hall to be the most successful it can be. And I think we pull our employees to do other things, and they have to do it because the board doesn't do it, or it gets pushed off, or something crazy happens. We had that with July 4. And I'm going to talk about that later at the very end. but for people that think july 4th and that stuff out there wasn't pulled together at the end by the help of everyone that wasn't an easy event uh there's a lot of situations that came up during that that should have been handled way before but it came together and it was done and it was a good event but it can be done better uh I watch PNZ meetings. I watch these meetings. I don't know if other council members. I watch the meetings because eventually whatever's going on in that meeting comes here. We started off with training, and I've heard it from board members. We started off a training deal where we talked to them, and we brought people down here. We brought our old lawyer down. Now we have new representation. I'm going to ask you to do what we were doing, to have our board members come in so they know how to run a meeting. They know how a meeting goes. They know what's expected of them in a meeting. We're about to get into zoning in this city. And we're about to start that. And that's going to take city hall time. I want city hall time and resources done on stuff that's going to benefit the city i mean we have y'all are sitting in here and every one of you are sitting in here for sales tax and you want your sales better and i want your sales tax you know uh But I would like, and I'd like to see, you know, what other people think. I mean, do y'all think we should have a candy trail? Do you think we should hunt Easter eggs? You know, our Christmas deal, it's a big event, and it works. I'm all for it. Pick your events. I'd like to see, you know, as far as the parks and all, I'd like to see a community work day. Maybe a biennial community work day. And you get in there. There's no way, there's no reason we should have to take a piece of park equipment down because it's going to injure someone. And we have a parks board. And I'm part of it because I was on the parks board before. We don't go out there and look at that equipment and say, hey, man, this is inoperable. This is going to hurt somebody. Me and you did. And then we took it down. We shouldn't get in that kind of, we shouldn't get there.

So I think what I'm hearing from you, Councilman, there's a couple things. Board training is number one.

Number one, board training and know how to conduct a meeting.

We do have somewhat of a SOP in the council policy and procedures of how council should operate, and it says in there that this applies to all the boards, too. And then on the application process, just making sure that they understand that they can check multiple committees. Well, I want to invite two. I think it should be incumbent upon council when we do get the applications in the e-mails from Natalie that we call. I mean, every one of us council members ought to be calling each of the candidates and interviewing them.

you know and and and then tell them i'd like to i'd like to have a time when they came up here like if we could have a time to interview them and just meet them well we could but it would have to be uh it would have to be like well i mean individually individually or whatever oh yeah you know individually anytime you want to i don't like seeing blind appointments uh and like i said i see i see things that uh i watch the meetings i mean all you gotta do is watch a meeting uh i just want everything refined i want it trimmed down i want things more uh concise get there's a lot of stuff talked about you know that shouldn't be talked about especially in the edc meetings yeah well we can certainly work on that with some board training and i know a couple of years ago i went and

Offered it, and I think I did it to one committee or one of our boards. I came in and did like a Robert's Rules of Order training to kind of teach them.

Well, we were going to do it for us. We were going to do it for us two years ago when we started this. And we had one training for everybody and they came out here and everybody thought it was pretty good. And then we went through city manager change and I understand all that. We never got to it. It never got to us. Uh, but now we have new representation and I'd like to see some sort of training just to help. I mean, it helps the people on the board and it helps the directors to know, you know, what they're doing and to do it properly, it looks good.

And I agree with that, but I think we're starting to step away from what the actual agenda item says, because the agenda item is just about the application and the appointment. And I agree with you a lot on a bunch of that, Rusty, but I don't want to get us in trouble by not sticking to the agenda item.

Thank you, Councilman. All right. Any other discussion on that?

Who would be the one to go over the application? Would that be you, Natalie? City Secretary.

What do you mean go over it?

Like to revamp the applications.

Yeah, I can.

Okay. If you could like streamline or show us like a streamlined copy or something. I know we had some debate before too about like who should be included on the boards or does that have to be an actual voting item for another meeting?

In what, in regards to what? Oh, like whether people outside of the city? Yes, yes, yes. I think that probably has to be voted on. Okay. All right. Yeah.

And part of that process, let's say they're going for the parks board. what did what would they do that you know makes them want to be on the park sport what are their qualifications to be on the park sport what are their main qualifications to be on the edc you know what are their main qualifications for pnc do they have any background in any of those areas i think some of those questions a lot of questions that could be yeah i mean you just say it that i mean specifically what do you bring to the parks board specifically what do you bring to economic development so we should break it out where the applications are separate for each board because i think the problem is now we did try to streamline it i

before my time here where we you could click and hit all every board that you probably just you know it's the same questions for each of it it's not specific to that board so a lot of the times most of our applications they just type on every board i had a gentleman the other night and i'm not gonna name who it was but he said i've been trying to get on a board for two years so i've just clicked every board till i got online um so i think that if we make it more specific to the board that may be a way to to get around that that we get true interest uh for each of the boards i mean that that may

questions because what we see sometimes is we have somebody that doesn't get on the board twice on specific boards and then we put them on another board and they're not happy they get on that board just because they want to be on the board and they're not happy on that and then you get a call about well what do you think about being on this board I'd really like to be on this and it's been multiple times

it's not I mean it's a it's a volunteer role but you're working on it so there's a lot to it and I'm glad we've got a lot of great dedicated board members now that do work and we're really appreciative for them they help the city big time but a lot of our roles I think when people think it's a board it's not like serving on maybe a non-profit board or something like that where you can have a you just are voting to make decisions you're having to work along with it

All you have to do is look on the front page of the Parks Board and what their goals are and their ambitions are. We need to get back to that. We strayed from it. That's my main point.

Does it make sense, for example, for council to pull that application and for us to mark it up for Natalie so she knows what we would like to see? You bet.

That's what I was going to say. I could always just send you guys samples.

Yeah. Send your recommendations.

Unless you would rather mark it up.

I was just trying to make it easy for you. It does not matter to me. I don't have enough to do the way it is.

It's my job. One more thing I'll say about this before we wrap it up is I do know that state law allows for EDC directors that are not within the city limits but within the county to be appointed. Now, our EDC bylaws don't allow that. but that's something that could be changed it's something that I pushed for A year or two years ago. And that's the only thing. I think we have some business owners that don't live in Santa Fe, but they operate businesses in the city of Santa Fe. Let's face it, they spend more time in the city than a lot of our residents do who go to work outside of the city that I think could bring a lot of insight. So I certainly would like to see us look at that for the EDC and open it up. And it doesn't even have to be to the county. Maybe it's the school district. yeah maybe we say they at least have to live in sfisd or maybe we open it up to the county that we can discuss that some future agenda item doesn't need to be on august but uh you know maybe january or february so i know we're probably pushing things all the way to there with the workload that we have so Okay. All right. Do we have a request for future agenda items? The one that I have is the capital improvement plan. If we can bring that back up at the next. You can't hear us.

If this is an agenda item, we can speak on it, right? Number four?

Yes.

Okay. Sure.

But you have to come up here. State your name for the record.

I may not be able to speak on what I want to speak on.

Okay. Because he brought it all up, and he was saying that that's not what the agenda was about, the department board itself.

Yeah, so we're talking about qualifications, selection criteria, and appointment process for city boards and commission members.

Okay, I'm glad I came tonight. talk about all kinds of things. So I really want to talk about the board, the park board, but since that's not the actual agenda, then y'all can bring that up on another agenda another night where we can talk about what our expectations should be of our park board and what the citizens want from our parks.

Yes, I'd love to hear that.

So I don't want to do that tonight because that's not what y'all were speaking about, right?

Can we encourage you to come to a Parks Board meeting because you're open to speak?

I've tried to get on the Parks Board several times, so has my wife. But you can come to a Parks Board meeting, get a citizen comment, and you can address that directly.

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. so uh yeah so i would like to have the the capital improvement plan put back on next month's agenda please anything else council any other agenda items y'all want for next month any announcements all the announcement i have is this is the third saturday we have the picket fence marketplace as usual uh tomorrow

uh peach creek market jeff pavlock is coming down here from the wharton area east bernard area and he'll have fresh peaches black diamond watermelons and he'll be there from five to seven at the picket fence there on highway six next to hometown rentals and some between cemetery road the liquor store there uh and i do want to i want to say something about july 4th and our staff and our volunteers it was it was a very it was a tremendous success i believe you know you got out there and you saw families it was like a big horseshoe and you had the fireworks in the middle and everybody had kids out there playing we had over 2100 people uh and everybody was positive about it it was a positive experience and everybody liked it but i want to i want to especially thank our staff uh because i know y'all put a lot of stuff together at the end and i mean y'all worked hard and you put a lot of time in it and uh you know everybody i just want to thank the staff they did a great job absolutely

What you got?

Quick announcement.

On Saturday, August the 8th, Dayspring Church and Bounce Above Inflatable Rentals is going to be hosting a community summer fun day at the church. August the 8th from 10 to 2. Everything is free. Bounce Above is bringing their inflatables, their rubber slides. We're going to have hot dogs and And snow cones and everything you can imagine kind of wrap up the summer before kids get ready to go back to school. So that'll be Dayspring Church, 2215 FM 646 North, August the 8th, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Saturday. That's a Saturday. Yep, that's a Saturday.

All right. Thank you. I just want to get one thing. So the next meeting, we're going to talk about capital improvements in the budget like we usually talk about in a budget meeting?

The next meeting, we are going to be adopting a tax rate that could result in an increase, and we're going to be talking about the capital improvement plan. Amongst other things.

Just like we talked about. And the budget. We've got to approve the budget.

We're going to have to approve the budget. We're going to have to set a tax rate. It could be a rate tax increase. And we're going to have to re-take another look at the capital improvement plan.

So we're going to put the graph up there of everything we spent? We're going to go through it line by line.

No, it'd be seven o'clock meeting.

We can do a budget workshop ahead of time, but either way that the budget will be already prepared for adoption. You'll just make an amendment to that budget for any changes and then it'll be incorporated into the final.

Do y'all want to do a six o'clock budget workshop before the next meeting or y'all want to go at seven?

I'm indifferent.

Public if we set up here about stuff on a graph Two council members requested it we'll do a six o'clock budget workshop.

I think it's great idea.

I'm in support of the only other announcement I've guided Billy and his crew and the library this morning went through a some safety training, stop the bleed, CPR, AEDs, and from what I understand, it was very successful and we're gonna schedule another class to catch the rest of the crew.

Did they all pass? Yes. We have to have some folks retake it.

Well, Billy's gonna be in the next class as well. Oh, okay. I don't wanna say he failed, but he's gonna be another participant.

The last announcement that I have, I don't know if y'all saw it or not, but Sandy June just had her number one, her third number one in a row on the Texas country music charts. I'm so proud of Sandy and her music career. She's putting Santa Fe on the map again. So we're going to have to put her next to, oh, what's his name? The other guy that was from Mount Saloma. Johnny Lee. We're going to have to put Johnny Lee on one side of the water tower and Sandy June on the other.

I do have one more thing. The Citizens Police Academy graduated people the other day. Congratulations. Chief Shores and the new whatever their candidates are.

Alumni?

Whatever they're called. Yeah. It's good to see it was a full house. It was good to see a lot of people there.

All right, council member. Jeanette, you had something. Second. Seconded. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you.