City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to gather today in service to the residents of Shirts. Grant us wisdom as we consider the decisions before us, courage to do what is right, and humility to listen with open hearts and minds. Help us to work together with respect, integrity, and a shared commitment to the well-being of our community. May our discussions be thoughtful, our actions be guided by compassion and fairness, and our service... States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God.

Thank you for the prayer, Councilmember Dietz. Today we have five proclamations and we're gonna go ahead and start with Human Resource Professionals Day, September 26th, 2026.

Okay, National HR Professional Day, September 26, 2026. Human Resource Professional Day is celebrated every 26th of September and is designed to pay tribute to those working in human resources departments everywhere. Whereas, Governor General Sir Patrick Allen first referred Human Resources Professional Day back in October of 2013. He created this day to recognize and celebrate human resource professionals who play an integral role in ensuring the success of organizations by nurturing and developing human capital. Whereas, in the City of Shirts, the Human Resources Department consists of a director of HR and purchasing, a human resources manager, a senior HR generalist, a HR generalist, and a human resources assistant who has a combined total of over 67 years of experience in the field of human resources. Whereas in local government, human resources professionals contribute significantly to the effective delivery of public services by supporting a skilled, dedicated, and engaged workforce committed to serving the community. whereas City of Shirts human resources professionals help strengthen our organization through employee development, recruitment and retention, workplace safety, benefits administration, policy development, employees relations, and compliance with applicable laws and regulations for the 475 plus employees who work for the city. Whereas National HR Professional Day provides an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the knowledge, dedication, and important contributions of human resources professionals, and to express appreciation for the essential role they play in the success of their organizations and communities. Now, therefore, SIGN THE MAYOR OF SHIRTS MR. RALPH RODRIGUEZ FOR HUMAN RESOURCES PROFESSIONAL DAY SEPTEMBER 26TH OF 2026. SIGN MAYOR OF SHIRTS MR. RALPH RODRIGUEZ.

Thank you so much, Councilman. Thank you, Mayor and Council, for the recognition. I'm here with two of my teammates, Yolanda and Mercedes. Two more couldn't join us, Leanne and Sylvia, but I feel comfortable speaking on behalf of the department that truly I feel like we have the best job in the city. We get to work with employees in every single department at every single level. We get to interact and support. And I feel so blessed most days to do this job. It's very rewarding. So thank you so much for the recognition.

All right, take a picture.

Our next proclamation is going to be national manufacturing today, October 2nd, 2026.

All right. National manufacturing month, October, 2026 manufacturing month is a celebration of modern manufacturing that aims to inspire the next generation of the of manufacturers and increase awareness of the importance of this industry. And whereas the city of Shirts is proud to support a diverse range of over 40 manufacturing businesses that create high quality jobs, invest in local infrastructure and contribute significantly to the economic wellbeing of our community. The manufacturing industry is a vital part of our local, state and national economy, driving innovation, productivity and economic prosperity And whereas October, 2026 manufacturing month provides a dedicated time to recognize the contributions of local manufacturers, showcase career pathways in modern manufacturing and highlight the importance of workforce development and training initiatives. And whereas the shirts economic development corporation is committed to fostering a business friendly environment, supporting industrial growth and promote and promoting partnerships that strengthens the talent pipeline of our region's manufacturing sector. And whereas we recognize the continued resilience, excuse me, innovation and impact of manufacturers insurance, particularly as they adapt to evolving technologies and global challenges. Church, along with the Church Economic Development Corporation, hereby proclaims October 2026 as Manufacturing Month. And Church, to show appreciation and recognition to our local manufacturers and commend their positive contributions to our community and opportunities they create for the City of Church, let us honor and support the people and companies that build our products, our economy, and our future.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Ashley Ritchie. I'm the business engagement manager with the shirts EDC. We're really excited about manufacturing months like council members, council members shared and mentioned we have over 40 ranging from diesel engines and equipment to artists and cheese to eyeglasses and frames. So all of we have a wide variety of things being made right here in the city of shirts. And so we appreciate council giving us the opportunity to recognize them tonight.

Our next proclamation is going to be Fire Prevention Week, October 4th through the 10th, 2026.

Chief Boney, who else is coming with you? O-Team. Everybody come on up. How you doing, Chief? Pretty good, pretty good. Looking at the chief in back, God invented firefighters so that police officers would have somebody to look up to. So we're here for you, sir. You can see we're here for you. Maggie, escort me to my car tonight. Fire Prevention Week 2026 proclamation. Whereas the city of Shorts is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all those living in and visiting The city of Church, Texas, and whereas fire remains a serious public safety concern both locally and nationally, and the presence of lithium ion batteries in many household devices introduces fire risk, and whereas most of the rechargeable electronics used in homes daily, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, power tools, e-bikes, e-scooters, and toys are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which if misused, damaged, or improperly charged, can overheat, start a fire, or explode. And whereas the National Fire Protection Association reports an increase in battery-related fires underscoring the need for public education on a safe use of lithium ion batteries and devices and Whereas the way lithium ion battery devices are charged can make a difference in helping prevent home fires and whereas Safe charging includes using the cord and charger that came with your device or one approved by the manufacturer, charging on a hard, flat surface, watching for warning signs like devices that are very hot or start to swell, unplugging when fully charged, and charging larger devices like e-bikes outside and away from exits. And whereas residents are encouraged to understand that safe charging means making smart choices every time they plug in, and whereas the City of Schertz first responders remain dedicated to reducing the occurrence of fires through prevention, safety education, and community outreach, and whereas the 2026 Fire Prevention Week theme, Charge into Fire Safety, Safe Charging is a Superpower, serves to remind all residents that safe charging can help reduce the risk of fires in homes and communities. Now therefore, Ralph Rodriguez, Mayor of the City of Schertz, does hereby proclaim October 4th through October 10th, 2026, as Fire Prevention Week throughout the city of Shirts and urges all residents to learn and practice safe charging habits. Thank you.

I just want to say thank you for having us here tonight. We're excited to get out in the community to visit all the schools and also continue our annual poster contest with this theme and other fire safety themes as we work to educate the kiddos and citizens on fire safety. Thank you.

Squeeze, Army. Yeah, I'm perfect right here.

Why do you like each other?

You guys be safe. Thank you.

Our next proclamation is going to be National Community Planning Month, October 2026.

Okay. Community planning month, October 2026. Whereas change is constant and affects all cities, towns, suburbs, counties, boroughs, townships, rural areas, and other places. And whereas planners can help navigate this change with data-driven insights and expertise that provide better choices for how people work and live. Whereas community planning provides an opportunity for all residents to be meaningfully involved in making choices that determine the future of their community, and whereas the full benefits of planning requires public elected and appointed officials who understand, support, and demand excellence in planning and plan implementation, and whereas the month of October is designated as National Community Planning Month throughout the United States of America and its territories, and whereas the American Planning Association endorses National Community Planning Month as an opportunity to highlight how planning is essential to every community and how planners are uniquely positioned to identify solutions to communities' most difficult housing, transportation, and land use questions. And whereas the celebration of National Community Planning Month gives us the opportunity to publicly recognize the participation and dedication of appointed Planning Commission members, who have contributed their time and expertise to the improvement of the City of Shirts, Texas. And whereas we recognize the many valuable contributions made by the professional community and regional planners of the City of Shirts, Texas, and extend our heartfelt thanks for their continued commitment to public service by these professionals. Now, therefore, be it resolved that Ralph Rodriguez, Mayor of the City of Schertz, designates the month of October 26th Community Planning Month in the City of Schertz in conjunction with the celebration of National Community Planning Month. Please, I can be speaking.

good evening my name is Emily Delgado I'm the planning manager and on behalf of the planning division and the entire planning community development department we want to say thank you to city council for the recognition and we look forward to celebrating planning month with the city of shirts thank you

Okay, the last proclamation we have is Code Enforcement Officers and Sanitarians Appreciation Month, October 2026. Whereas code enforcement officers and sanitarians provided for safety and welfare of the citizens throughout the community through the enforcement of local codes and ordinances on a variety of issues, including building, zoning, housing, environmental health, and life safety, And whereas code enforcement officers and sanitarians often have a challenging and demanding role and often do not receive recognition for the job they do and improving living and working conditions for residents and businesses local communities. And whereas code enforcement officers and sanitarians are dedicated and highly qualified professionals who share the goals of preventing neighborhood deterioration to enhance and ensure safety of the community through knowledge and application of housing, zoning, building, nuisance codes and ordinances, as well as public and environmental health laws, codes and ordinances, and standards, and whereas code enforcement officers and sanitarians are called upon to provide quality customer service and excellence to the residents and businesses of the communities in which they serve, and whereas we recognize the many valuable contributions made by the Code Enforcement Officers and Sanitarians of the City of Schertz, Texas, and extend our heartfelt thanks for the continued commitment to the public service by these professionals. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Ralph Rodriguez, Mayor of the City of Schertz, designate the month of October 2026 Code Enforcement Officers and Sanitarians Appreciation Month in the City of Schertz. Congratulations.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm Lisa Locken, Neighborhood Services Manager. I'd like to take a second to introduce you to our team. Our health inspectors are in red. We have Justin and Ruben. Health inspectors are also known as sanitarians. And our code enforcement officers, Richard, Steven, and Miranda. Thank you very much.

okay moving on to city events and announcements announcements of upcoming city events We have Mr. Brian James.

Thank you, Mayor. This Sunday, or Sunday, September 27th, Parks is putting on the Owl Prowl. That's 8.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. at Crescent Bend Nature Park, 12805 West Schaefer Road. Then Saturday, October 3rd, is the Shirts Hometown Harvest, the farmer's market, if you will. That's from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Pickerel Park, 703 Oak Street. Another annual favorite is the Dunkin' for Pumpkins. That happens Saturday, October 3rd. That's at the Shirts Aquatic Center, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. And then Wednesday, October 7th, is the Cookie Decorating Spooky Sweets theme. That's 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the North Center, 3501 Morning Drive. Saturday, October 10th, the Nature Discovery Series comes back. That's again at Crescent Midnature Park, 7.30 a.m. to 11 a.m., 12805 Schaefer. As a reminder for folks, National Night Out is Tuesday, October 6th, so council staff will be out and about meeting neighborhoods. and neighborhood associations. City offices will be closed for Columbus Day, that's Monday, October 12th, and our next council meeting will be on Tuesday, October 13th, here at 6 p.m.

Thank you for that. Next, we'll have announcements and recognition by the city manager, Steve Williams.

Thank you, Mayor. Got several tonight, actually. We had Engineering Inspector Sam Lopez. He is now a Certified Public Infrastructure Inspector, a CPII. This is the first... He is the first city employee of the City Assureds to earn this credential, and it comes from the American Public Works Association, and it really indicates a high level of knowledge with respect to inspecting public infrastructure. You have to have a minimum of five years of relevant experience, but also, You get tested in a variety of competencies, including testing, measurement, inspection, project planning and management, project compliance and documentation. And then also candidates must abide by the APWA standards of professional conduct. So congratulations to Sam. He did this on his own. It's not required for his position. He was personally motivated to go out and get that credential. And we see that as an excellent opportunity to encourage others in the organization to do it as well. Also, We had several promotions. You know, I love doing the promotions because it shows that folks are moving up in our organization. They're committed to their craft and their profession, and we continue to promote from within. So we had Samantha Canales was promoted from deputy court clerk to administrative assistant. Blue Hill, which I think she may be here, saw her a minute ago. She went from IT support specialist to senior IT support specialist. And Vinny Nunez went from IT Support Specialist to Senior as well. And then Talia Connell, she promoted from Public Safety Communications Officer to Public Safety Communications Supervisor. Tim Dyer promoted from Firefighter to Driver Operator. And then Sawyer Marks, also from Firefighter to Driver Operator. And lastly, Phillip Moore from Firefighter to Driver Operator. We also had a couple other Promotions in the Lieutenant's rank. Dana Kellum, promoted from Driver Operator to Lieutenant. John Van Hoven, from Driver to Lieutenant. And Alex Armstrong and Craig Starr, both promoted from Lieutenant to Captain. So congratulations to all those guys for moving up. Very proud of them. And that's all I have, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Thank you for that. It's always good to see our people getting promoted like that, especially when they're internal promotions. I have no announcements of recognition, so we'll move on to the hearing of residents. This time is set aside for any person who wishes to address the city council. Each person should fill out the speaker's register prior to the meeting. Presentation should be limited to no more than three minutes. All remarks should be addressed to the council as a body and not to any individual member thereof. All handouts and or USB devices must be submitted to the city secretary no later than noon on the Monday preceding the meeting. Handouts will be provided to each council member prior to the start of the meeting by the city secretary. All USB devices will be vetted by the city IT staff to ensure city property is protected from malware. First up, we have Carlos Delacruz, if you want to come up. When you come up, if you'll please state your name and your address for the record, please.

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, City Council. My name is Carlos Dela Cruz. I live at 21502 Fox Park Lodge, San Antonio, Texas. Listen, I just want to take this opportunity to reintroduce myself to the shirts community. I was raised by a single mom. I served 20 years in the United States military. It was actually the military that gave me my shot at the American dream. And 20 years in the military where I've done multiple deployments to hostile locations after 9-11, and I've deployed down to our southern border to work side-by-side our customs agents. I retired and returned right back to the same community that trained me. And my wife and I, we built a small business right here next door in San Antonio. And then now I am running for Congress at the federal level. And so my priorities when I get to DC are going to be making sure that we do what we can to reduce the cost of living for working families. We are going to make sure that we keep are border secure. And I plan on bringing some of that military style discipline and real accountability along with some transparency and just quite frankly, some good old fashioned Texas common sense with me to DC. Just wanted to remind everybody that early voting starts October the 19th with election day being November the 3rd. And I humbly ask for your vote. Again, my name is Carlos de la Cruz. Thank you. God bless you and God bless Texas.

Thank you. Next up, we have Jordan Barnes.

Good evening, Mayor Rodriguez and members of the City Council. My name is Jordan Barnes. I live at 4616 Silverton Drive. In short, I'm a senior at Samuel Clemens High School. I'm here tonight to speak about the upcoming SCUC ISD voter approval tax rate election, the Vader, on the November 3rd ballot. I am very worried about what could happen to our students and staff if it does not pass. Two of the most important parts of my high school experience have been dance and FFA. Dance has taught me discipline, confidence, teamwork, and how I can keep going when things are hard. My teammates have given me a place where I feel supported and where I belong. Through FFA and agriculture education, I have developed leadership and communication skills, learned how to serve others, and discovered what I want to do in my future. These programs do more than fill a class period. They help students discover their strengths, build relationships, and find a reason to come to school and be involved. But those opportunities are now at risk. SUC ISD adopted a deficit budget and has already identified more than $6 million in reductions and cost savings. Even after those difficult decisions, a deficit remains. If the VADER does not pass, the district will have to make additional decisions that directly affect people, our students, and our staff. The possibilities already on the table include increasing class sizes, reducing fine arts and athletic staff, cutting travel for fine arts, cheer, dance, and athletics, decreasing instructional staff, hiring frees with unfilled openings, closing Allison Steel, and possibly closing an elementary school. Those are not just numbers on a budget spreadsheet. These mean fewer teachers, fewer opportunities, and fewer students able to participate in the programs that have helped me succeed. I'm especially worried about the larger class sizes. I'm a student who needs to build a relationship with my teachers. When I feel like my teacher knows me, I am more comfortable asking questions and getting help. In a larger class, it becomes easier for a student who is struggling to go unnoticed. For the average homeowner, the Vader will cost approximately $18 more per month after exemptions. I understand that every family has a budget and that $18 matters, but I believe I am worth that investment. My classmates are worth that investment, and so are students who will come after us. So tonight, I'm asking the parents, staff, and community members who live within SUC ISD boundaries to use your voices. Please register to vote by October 5th. Please tell others what is at stake. Please vote early between October 19th and October 30th. Or vote on election day, November 3rd. Most importantly, please support the Vader. Parents, you are the voice of your children. One day, your children may find their confidence, their future, and their place to belong through dance, fine arts, TTE, FFA, or athletics, just like I did. I may still be a teenager, but this is my community, too. Its future matters to me, and I hope it matters enough to all of us to protect these opportunities for the students who come after me. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Kristen Potick. I hope I...

Hi, everybody. I'm Kristen Fojtek. I live at 2804 Lockwood Lane here in Shirts. So I've lived in Shirts for 17 years now, and I've been proud of our little city. Recently, however, I've had some concerns. Just this past month, I've noticed new cameras up all over the city. According to mytownview.com, a website reporting city demographics, Shirts has approximately 52 flock cameras in use in the city. This does not include all the new traffic cameras I've seen at our intersections. I live in this city because the schools are good, it's mostly walkable, and it's quiet. 52 flock cameras marks us as a high surveillance city. AI powered cameras in other cities have already led to multiple wrongful stops and arrests of not just innocent citizens, but also children because the cameras misidentified some bit of information. I'm sure all of you have heard recently about the tech leaders who are now sounding the alarm on AI. They're concerned that the technology has grown too quickly without enough guardrails in place that they could have put in. I'm here tonight to voice my concern about the path our city is going down. Right now, there are traffic cameras that you do have control over, but surveillance is a slippery slope, and what happens when we no longer control those machines?

Next up, we have Maggie Tinnerton.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. 1730 Schertz Parkway. These are some Chamber of Commerce updates. Had a great luncheon today. Over 217 RSVP'd and showed to see the results besides state of education of our fundraiser. We had our chamber bowl and we had a goal and we reached our goal with the help of so many wonderful business persons and shirts in the surrounding areas. We were able to give $15,000 to the DECA students to be split between Steele and Clemens and they were ecstatic about that and so were we. Also coming up on October 7th, we are doing a meet the candidates for the The person's running for city council places in the city of Shirts. We're going to change the time and move it to 6.30. It's 6.30 to 7.30. It'll be at the Shirts Civic Center in the Blue Bonnet Ballroom. And we want to thank Shirts Bank and Trust for being the sponsor of this event yet once again. Also, we received a copy of Schurz's legislative agenda, and we are incorporating that as part of ours as the chamber along with other businesses and Selma and Cibolo's items. And we feel we'll have the complete paper to present at our October luncheon, which will be the civic leaders luncheon, which again, we have extended an invitation to the candidates running for city council places in Schurz to be present and meet our business community. We will have a county update from Sheriff Ray and then a member survey along with a small, very brief legislative update with a copy of our agenda for everyone to see for the coming legislative session. Let's see here. I want to give a very quick thank you to Councilman Sheridan, who always shows up at our ribbon cuttings lately, whether they're in the City of Schertz, Selma, Cibolo, Beyond, thank you so much for your support, representing shirts so well when you do that. And last but not least, a week from this Saturday is our Skylight Balloon Festival. It's our 10th anniversary. We have balloon pilots that are coming in, and we've changed it to where it's one day, all day, Saturday, September 26th, from 7 a.m. and in the morning, which that is free to come see the balloon launch. The actual event starts that you go through the gates at Rotoma Park at 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. We have live concerts all day, acrobatics. We have demonstrations from Kangyong Musul, about 100 vendors, food trucks. It's going to be a great event, and our headliner is the spasmatics. You can get tickets online. You can go to skylightballoonfest.com. There's a QR code, and there's some commercials running on TV right now. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up, we have Dana Eldredge.

Dana Eldridge, 2628 Gallant Fox Drive, Schertz, Texas. We're here for, what, the third or fourth time now to talk about the budget. I just wanted to thank Mr. Williams and this young man sitting down here with the, well, he still doesn't have the beads in his beard, but he's a good guy. They've done some really hard work. I'm hoping that tonight we can get that finalized and resolved. to understand where we were losing some funding because what Guadalupe County did to the appraisals. Unfortunately, here today I went out and watched as our police department set up a big tall camera close to one of our parks right across a crosswalk where the kids come home from school because of alleged possible kidnapping. But unfortunately in the budget, I see that we're gonna cut or we're not gonna be able to hire four new police officers. We wanna keep our city safe. We need to take some kind of hard cut and whether or not we can, we need to up the fee or if we don't want our city to be so safe. But I did wanna thank Mr. Williams and Mr. Walters for their hard work and hopefully we'll come up with a solution tonight and solve this problem before we get in trouble with the state. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we have Mrs. Allison Hayward.

Allison Hayward, 2628 Hansel Heights, shirts. Good evening, mayor and council and staff. I am here first of all to talk about three different items. The first item is number 11 on the agenda, which is the Texas Municipal Risk Pool, Intergovernmental Risk Pool, but we call it TMLIRP. You're going to be voting on a ballot, and I'm coming with suggestions being a former board member. Place one, I would like to recommend that you vote for J.W. Buzz Fuller, and that's the way he says his name when he says Buzz. For place one, for place two, Emily Crawford. Place three, Andy Pullen. And place four, Austin Bless. That will help keep continuity and culture within the, as the trustees. And it will help things keep going because that is our, the way the city gets their insurance and we get our workman's comp, liability, and all the cities like shirts join together in this pool. That's why it's called the risk pool to pool the money, the resources together. so that it can be beneficial for the cities and not cost so much when you're doing insurance. Second thing I'd like to talk to you about was the Texas Municipally Policy Summit. I attended it as a guest. I made sure that all of you will have a book. It will let you know the things that TML is going to be doing, whether it is going to be support or oppose, depending on what the situation is. So in your spare time, you might want to look at that. The other thing is the current president, Madam Andrea Barfield, appointed me to chair the Texas Municipal League Legislative Ad Hoc Committee I created two years ago. She wanted me to chair that. I will be chairing that. I am looking for people to join that particular board. It is trying to get a vast people around Texas with different representatives so that we can fight the legislation. It had impact two years ago. We're planning to have it have an impact this year. I already have three people within our region that have decided that they would join this committee, and that is Mayor Grider from Kirby, Council Member Ed Simmings from Live Oak and City Administrator Jay Jordan from Devine, Texas. So anybody that's interested in that, please contact me and we can get you started. The way it works is I chair it, I let everyone else decide, the members that are on it, to decide when they want to meet and how often. Because what we know is they're already filing, they're already doing testimonies in Austin. I've been to a couple of them and I'm working with other entities on making sure that we're doing the legislation and focusing on that. I am also part of the Association of Rural Cities in Texas. I am on their legislative executive committee and trying to make sure that rural cities have representation. I've met with some military veterans groups and they realize that Texas needs to fund the disabled veterans homestead. And so I'll be going up to Austin working with some of those groups so we can try to get that done. And I'm working with different entities on that so that we can hopefully get Texas to do the right thing. I have built relationships with Representative Alan Schoolcraft and Representative Carrie Isaac, and a lot of you may not particularly be fond of Senator Campbell, but I can tell you when I worked with her as the president, there were lots of times that people didn't think she was listening, but she was. So I guess I want to talk about the last.

All right, thank you. Next up, we have John Frias.

Good evening, Council Mayor. My name is John Frias, 4402 Hackerville Road, Cibolo, Texas, 78108. I'm the president of Green Valley Special Utility District, and I come before you tonight on item 23, I believe. Y'all have a workshop later on, so I apologize I can't stay that late, but I support y'all for doing what y'all do. First and foremost, I want to thank y'all's city staff. I have nothing but great comments from my staff on the working relationship between the two parties. We have heard nothing but good things, and we continue to further our partnership to the future. Our board-directed our general manager a few months ago to send y'all a letter of intent for the acquisition of the CVLGC assets. We kind of have the shell put together between our city staff and, or sorry, your city staff and my staff, and we want to kind of solidify a little bit more details. We ask that you, Mr. Mayor, and two of your council members could meet with our strategic water acquisition committee, which I do chair sometime next week so we can further dive into the details and make sure that we all end up with a win-win situation between both parties and actually deliver on an asset that's not being utilized. It does take time, many years to get water out of the ground and to our community. Obviously with more time comes more expenses. So time is of the essence. So Mr. Williams, if you could. you know, let us know and get with Mr. Gage and we'll be glad to host y'all or we can come to y'all. So thank you.

Thank you. That's going to go ahead and hearing of the residents. Moving on to consent agenda items. The consent agenda items one through nine is considered self-explanatory and will be enacted by the council with one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless they are removed from the consent agenda upon the request of the mayor or a council member. At this time, do I have any council members wanting to remove any items from the consent agenda? Having none, can I get a motion to approve consent agenda items one through nine? Make a motion, Mayor.

Second.

Okay, there's a motion made by Councilmember Westbrook, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Watson. Can I get everybody to cast the votes? May I get the votes published, please? Having seven yays, no nays, motion passes. Moving on to discussion and action items. Resolution 26-R-100, acceptance of fiscal year 27 MVCPA grant award. We have Assistant Police Chief, Mr. Phillip Waller.

Mayor, council, thank you for having me. You should see the PowerPoint up on the screens now. So this is about acceptance of the MVCPA Award, the Voter Vehicle Perfect Vision Award. This would be our third year getting the award. The funding for the past couple years have gone to our Bay LPR cameras. This was on the consent agenda. We pulled it off to have a discussion about it because we figured with it becoming a hot topic now, it would be worth it a discussion about it before we move forward. So what 26R100 is, is to accept the award. Back in May 5th of 2026, we did put in a resolution to apply for the award. That did get approved. We did get awarded it in September, and this is to accept it. The first year, well, I'll get to it. but this one for fiscal year 2027 is supposed to continue funding for our current LPR cameras and start a drone as first responder program. That's what the DFR right there. It does require 20% match, which would come from our budget. The bulk of the fiscal year 27 award would go towards the DFR program, which we haven't really started to get into any contract yet. I DON'T HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON THAT AS FAR AS VENDORS OR ANYTHING ELSE. A LITTLE BIT OF BACKGROUND ON THE MVCPA. LIKE I SAID, THIS IS OUR THIRD YEAR. FIRST YEAR WAS FISCAL YEAR 25, WHICH WENT FROM OCTOBER 24 TO SEPTEMBER 25. THAT INCLUDED 15 FLOT CAMERAS. FISCAL YEAR, SORRY, 17 FLOT CAMERAS. FISCAL YEAR 26, WE ADDED 24. RIGHT NOW WE HAVE A TOTAL OF 41 CAMERAS. For fiscal year 27, we are not adding any more cameras. It is to continue our current funding for those cameras. Also, in fiscal year 26, we bought our Skywatch tower, which I believe most of you probably saw at the Jubilee. The MVCPA award is not just for LPRs, flocks, or any other fitter. It is for anything that can help solve, prevent motor vehicle theft, any crimes relating to vehicles like catalytic converters, vehicle burglaries, or anything else. Currently, the governor put in a freeze on the hold for VLPRs. That is any VLPR, no matter what vendor. Flock has become the Kleenex version of VLPRs, but it applies to Flock, Vigilant, it applies to Vaxxon or anybody else. The TxDOT has also said that there's a freeze on putting cameras on state roads. All of ours are already installed. That does not affect us. And since we're not applying for 40 more, this really doesn't matter. With the funding being frozen, we're kind of in a standstill right now. We can't get reimbursed for anything as far as answers on when that may come up, when funding may be unfrozen. If it does get unfrozen, I don't have that answers. We are in talks with the MVCPA board and they are talking with the governor's office, trying to get those as well. And as soon as we know to get reimbursed for the previous fiscal years, we will hopefully solve that and move forward. So the BLPRs, there's a lot of misconceptions about what they are and what they can do. They are cameras and software that get the tags from cars and vehicle description only. It allows for our officers to put in a hot list. So if we have a case like a bank robbery, we have partial tag or any kind of tag we can put that in there and if it pops um here your bronfels in a totally different state it would come up with that alert that that vehicle was wanted for a bank robbery it can also say if we're trying to find that car we can see where that car may have gone in the past maybe find where where they live where they work any other information that can help us solve a crime. We only allow trained users to access that database. It is not open to the public. It is not open to anybody who has not had any training. And the database is wiped after 30 days. So after that, we can't go back and look for something that may have occurred back in March or April. What they're not, and this is some stuff that we see online, it does not take a picture of the driver's face. It is not facial recognition. We don't know who's driving the car. We can't put in male, female, and get all the drivers. It doesn't do that. We don't track cell phone data. As far as I know, is not available in ALPR, know that technology is out there, but not in this. It does not supply personal data. It does not run your tag against any DMV database. It only works with that hot list within that own ALPR vendor program. So what the officer has to do is if we get a positive hit on something, we have to take that tag and run it in our database, whether it's a DMV or NCIC database, and then we confirm it. Hits, they're not probable cause. We cannot just stop a car based off of a hit. We have to independently verify if that is the correct tag. There are many states that have the same tags, whether it's Florida, Louisiana, or anybody else, they may have a similar tag that reads ABC123, and that machine is not smart enough at times to verify that that is the correct state. So officers have to get behind that car, verify that that is the wanted car, run it in the database to confirm if it is a wanted car, stolen car, or anything else. As of right now, the courts have not ruled that failed PRs are forth and amendment violations. There were two recent cases with the Supreme Court, Carpenter v. U.S. and Chatt v. U.S. that dealt with cell phone data and geo-invincing and forth and amendment violations. Those do not apply to U.S. ALPRs at this time. Whether they may in the future, I can't tell you, but as of this time, they are ruled as constitutional. ALPRs have been a success in Shirts, Texas, and around the U.S. I'm aware there are bad reports out there about officers doing things. Unfortunately, that happens. bad cops should not be cops, and I'll put it that. These are some of our successes that we have had at SHERTS over the past year with our bail PR program. There are a lot more around the state, and we have had other hits from our cases in other cities. I unfortunately don't have access to those. These success stories are not automatic, so we rely on that department telling us that they made a case off of our hit, our hot vehicle. Where do we stand as the police? We believe in the technology. It is a tool in our toolbox. ALPRs have been around for, in the U.S. now, 15, 20 years. They're not new. The technology has advanced, it has become more widespread, but we do believe in the technology. As I said, we do support it. Current base law does say it is not, Sorry, let's not say it is a constitutional violation. We have our own policies in place to protect the public and to protect the department and the city from this use. We are in favor of additional laws, whatever else the state or the US wants to do with those. just to make the technology safe and secure and to be impressive by the public. We do recommend approval of this resolution, but unfortunately, like I said, even if we do approve it, everything's still frozen now. With that being said, I think that's it, but open for anything to ask. Questions?

We have Council Member Ben Guerrero. Yeah, a couple questions, Chief.

Just to confirm, you stated that there's 42 total cameras in our city?

41.

41?

Okay, 41. And these cameras, what they're basically doing is searching for the stolen tags. Is that correct?

Correct, so the officers can put in a hot list. So suppose we have a stolen car of ABC 123. It would also go into the state database, so where if anybody ran that tag, it would be entered stolen. However, if an officer is sitting next to that car, they may not know it unless they run that tag. If we put that beagle in the hot list, it'll spot that car and it'll tell us, hey, that car is going north on 3009. And we're able to find that and recover faster. It's an efficient tool.

So it's not reading every single tag that it sees. It's basically just searching for the hot list that you guys have.

It does read every tag, and that's how we are able to find where that is.

Yeah, it reads them, but that's not what it's looking for, right? It's only looking for the hot list is what I'm saying.

No, that's the officer that looks for that vehicle in the hot list. The camera just stores those tags. It does give an alert if it is that, so it will read that tag against the hot list if it is entered, but it is reading all the tags on the road.

Okay, but you're only picking up, of course, the hot list. Those are the ones you want.

Correct. That one, or if we have a suspect vehicle from a case and it's not that they've been on the list, we're able to run that tag and see if there's a historical data of it in the past 30 days.

Thank you. Council Member McAloosa.

Does accepting the award prevent any difficulties or struggles if we were to review the program or look at ways to modify the program at all?

Sorry, are you saying if we do accept the award?

Yeah, to accept the award. Does that restrict us from being able to make any kind of changes to the program at all in the future?

Not that I'm aware of. The funding does not dictate the program and how it's run. It only helps fund 80% of the program. We have control of the program ourself.

Okay. Council Member Dietz.

Thank you so much for the slideshow. I think this is a huge controversial topic. I see daily Facebook posts, social media. I've been getting emails, hearing from residents. And I think our public is really concerned about this. Would there be a way to possibly table this and maybe put this out to the public to kind of see what their input is on this? I just feel like some of this information that you shared would be good to share with the public, be a little more transparent, and just let some of them, the public, the community we serve, have some opinion on this because I think it needs to be shared.

I agree. And we police based on what the citizens want. So if we wanted to table it and get further information, that's up in y'all's court. We do have two town halls planned for October. They aren't public yet. We were waiting for a month out. So in a couple of days, we were putting it out to the public. October 17th, October 19th, we have two public town halls planned to talk about LPRs and the DFR program.

So would it be possible to table until after those town halls?

Well, a lot of it depends if this is time sensitive. on this grant award, on whether we're gonna be able to table it or not, because you can lose that grant. However, we can always go back and modify things after we have the town hall meetings that will be scheduled.

Yeah, about the grant, I'm not 100% sure without talking to MVCPA. I could call them tomorrow and ask, hey, if we table it and get this invoice approved, can we return the form in a month and a half, two months, or however long it takes. With funding being currently frozen, we can't do anything anyway. So with that being said, I can't submit for any drawdowns or anything else or move on fiscal year 27 anyway.

If we can go ahead and let our city manager, Steve Williams, comment on this item as well.

Just to offer one clarification, this is for the acceptance of the grant, and we do have control over the contract for the ALPRs with Florida. Correct. They're two separate things. And if I'm remembering correctly, there is an opt-out. If there was a decision ever made to get rid of the program. There's an opt out provision in the contract. But I also want to point out that the majority of this grant is for the drone as a first responder program, which is, and I know Elliot didn't really explain it, but it's where we would have fixed position drones that could respond instantly to accidents and burglaries and things like that and get there as a crow flies. and assess the situation. So it's a very valuable tool, not nearly as controversial as the flock, I would say. I haven't heard anything about it. And so I think, I don't want to step out here too far, but I think we would still want to accept that money for that program. But...

Thank you, Mayor. I do appreciate it. Whether we accept the award or we table it, if we accept it and we decide not to move forward with FLOC or any other LPR vendor, I'm sure we could work something out with MVCPA to modify that grant to focus on the DFR. Unfortunately, I don't have MVCPA here now, so I don't have 100% of those answers.

We approve Tim Watson.

I wanted to, since it is in regards to the grant award, I wanted to motion that we approve Resolution 26R100.

Okay, I also have Councilmember Sheridan that would like to comment.

Just real quick, again, I agree with Councilmember Dietz. I've been getting a lot of emails on this as well. I guess with the grant, so if later on down the line we decide to disengage the FLOC program, the grant money can be used for other items that we have in your toolbox.

Do you mean as far as the funding for the ALPRs?

Yes.

That I don't know about. Okay. Because when we applied for the grant, it was for the ALPRs and the DFRs. I'm not sure if it could be modified to put it towards anything else or if we would just have to separate those funds off.

Yeah, I'm assuming with the freeze, you know, conversations probably has just ceased from the state level. At this point. I'm assuming, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, okay. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you.

Okay. Now, is us accepting this grant, is it for the DFR program or is it for both?

It's for both. Both? It's for both because it's the fiscal year 27 is what we applied for. It was for the ALPR funding and the DFR program.

Okay, and then we have Council Member Westbrook.

So a motion was made, so maybe we should either first or second it before we further discuss it one way or the other. I guess in order to move it forward, I'll second it, and then we can have a discussion on it.

Okay, well we did have a motion made by Mayor Pro Tem Watson. We got a second by Council Member Westbrook. Can I get everybody to cast their votes? Nope, we want to discuss it. I know we got Council Member McAloosa.

Yeah, and that was why I asked that question, just to make sure that there weren't any kind of limitations put on us. And if there's not, I don't see why we wouldn't accept the grant if it's not going to affect our ability to do anything different with the program in the future. So just as Mr. Williams said, I don't see why we would not accept the money.

Any other comments? Yes. Yes, Mayor. So if there is an opt out, as the city manager said, and what I don't want to do is not accept it because that drone first responder is state of the art. It does have the ability to keep our first responders safe because it gets their situation size up. We will know what we're getting into before we actually get to the scene. So not accepting a grant. would sort of erode our ability for the drone first responder program. And so for that reason alone, I'm sort of in favor of moving forward with it.

And I apologize for not talking about the DFR. I was trying to frame this more about the ALPR thing. So if anyone has anything to ask about the DFR, I can talk about that too. I just don't have a PowerPoint.

Absolutely. And just to offer a clarification further on that, of the $371,000 of the grant, $247,000 is for the drone first responder and $124,000 is for the flock.

Correct. I believe it's about a two-third, third split.

Any other discussions? Council Member Dietz?

So if we accepted it, we're not 100% sure that we can modify it and just use the money for the drone and not the Fox.

Correct. I don't have those answers right now. I imagine if the governor goes forward and says, do more funding for the LPR programs at all, then it would be automatically taken out. But like I said, I just don't have the future.

But then that would leave us for the drones. That would leave us the money for the drones.

Council Member McAleeseff.

I would think maybe the worst case scenario is we might have to give them some of the money back if we decide not to continue with the cameras. But I think that funding for the drone is important. It's not a continued surveillance kind of issue. So to me, it seems pretty clear that we should accept it.

I would agree with that. If there are no other discussions, can I get everybody to cast their votes? Can I get the votes published, please? Having seven yeas, no nays, motion passes.

Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to item 11. DISCUSSION NATIONAL ITEM ON OFFICIAL BALLOT FOR TEXAS MUNICIPAL LEAGUE INTER-GOVERNMENTAL RISK POLL BOARD OF TRUSTEES ELECTION. AND WITH US, WE HAVE OUR CITY SECRETARY, SHEILA EDMONSON.

THANK YOU. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, COUNCIL, STAFF, AND RESIDENTS. TONIGHT, I BRING FORWARD THE OFFICIAL BALLOT FOR THE ELECTION OF PLACES ONE THROUGH FOUR of the Board of Trustees for the Texas Municipal League Intergovernmental Risk Pool. The governing body of each member of the pool is entitled to vote for members of the Board of Trustees. The officials listed on the ballot have been nominated to serve a six-year term on the TML Intergovernmental Risk Pool. in parentheses, Workers Compensation, Property and Liability, Board of Trustees. The names of the candidates in each of the places for the Board of Trustees are listed in alphabetical order. Ballots must be sent to the office of David Reagan, the secretary of the board of this particular TML IRP, no later than September 30th, 2026. Ballots received after September 30th, 2026 cannot be counted. Thank you.

Okay, so... At this time, I guess we need a vote to see who we want to represent, is correct? And so for place one, I believe we have J.W. Buzz Fulling, former mayor of Henderson. Place two, we have Emily Crawford, city manager of Abilene, currently on the board. And for place three, there was a recommendation that we support Andy Joslin, city manager for the city of Beeville, region 11. And for place four, we have Austin Bleas, city manager of Jersey Village. Is everybody good with those selections? All right, if everybody's good with those selections, can I get everybody to cast a vote? Okay, I do need a motion.

Mayor, I make a motion to accept the slate as presented. Second.

Okay, I got a motion made by Councilmember Westbrook, seconded by Councilmember McAloosa. Can I get everybody to cast the votes, please? Can I get the votes published? Having seven yeas, no nays, motion passes. Thank you all for that. Okay, moving on to item 12. Ordinance 26-T-031, Authorizing an Amendment to the Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Budget. With us, we have our Finance Director, Mr. James Walters.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is James Walters. I'm the Finance Director here for the City of Shirts. Tonight, we have the first item presented. FOR FINANCE UP TO YOU. IT IS THE FOURTH QUARTER BUDGET ADJUSTMENTS The majority of them are increasing budgets for payroll. Some of those decreased for payroll. Other notable ones are moving funds between two departments for the Clean the Creek event as they changed hands over who's managing that project mid-year, as well as moving funds from drainage to general fund as we reassigned the MS4 floodplain manager that was originally scheduled to come out of drainage to come out of the engineering department where the supervisors are. Overall, no change on that item either. The general fund adjustments would come from the additional sales taxes that we've received so far. And all of those items were included and estimated in the year in projections, as well as the five-year forecast for the budget. So if there's any questions over any particular item, I'm happy to help and answer the best I can.

This time I'll open it up for discussion. We have Council Member McAloosa.

Question for the personnel. You had sent out a message kind of giving us an idea of what vacancy rates you use to kind of anticipate when you're considering the total expenses of the personnel. Is that accurate?

Yes.

So how accurate has that been in the last five years? I mean, is it something that you're constantly reviewing and considering, or is it something that was in place 10 years ago and still being used today?

Yeah, it's updated and we've been identifying and looking at it for the past couple of years. Since we did the big last class and comp study, those rates have dropped quite a bit and we're starting to see them coming back up. So we were looking at moving them back down, but as the vacancy rates start to rise again, we're hesitant to make too many changes. And again, like we have PD is still at seven and a quarter. We're very happy. or if it's 7.5% is adjustment for PD. They actually have a lot more turnover than some of the other departments. And while we have some good news there recently, the chief in a previous meeting said, hey, this is great. For the first time, we've been fully staffed for a while, probably since we've been here. they're not on the list for adjustment. So they still had enough savings and turnover throughout the year to accomplish that. So yeah, some departments have that and some of them don't. The other adjustment question is which departments we believe, some of the larger ones are easier to adjust, some of the smaller ones with fewer people, if they don't have a turnover, then it's not gonna be about reaching that four and a quarter percent. If they do have turnover, they're gonna go way above the four and a quarter percent. So there's not enough wiggle room for that either. To kind of answer your question, yeah, we are still looking at it. It was true after the class and comp, we were seeing how that affected everybody and vacancy rates did drop quite a bit after that adjustment. And we are soon to see it come back a little bit in the other direction. So at this time, we've left it at the same level of four and a quarter going into 26, 27.

Mr. Steve Williams.

James, so even with the $400,000 adjustment or so in the general fund, we're still within 1% of our budgeted amount, right? Yes, sir. So we missed our mark a little bit, but we're still pretty close.

Well, I just, I only ask because, you know, these amounts of money end up coming up in our budget discussions. And so if we're either overestimating vacancy rate or underestimating it, it could affect us. Yes, sir.

Council Member Davis.

Yeah, this is just a finance budget related question here. I mean, why would we focus, why would we factor in anticipated vacancies? If we have a staff directory that says the city has X number of staff, why would we not just budget for that X number? And if there's no vacancies, then that's what our budget is, we're paying that anticipated amount. And if there are vacancies, then that would just mean that there's excess now left in that department that would roll up into a budget excess at the end of the year, versus we're factoring in, oh, we think there's going to be a vacancy, And then here at the 11th hour, we're saying, oh, well, there wasn't that many vacancies, and now we've got to move in $400,000. I mean, to me, this, in a budgetary sense, doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I do my personal budget. have my funds and I plan what I have to pay my bills on. And at the end of the month or the end of the year, if I have excess money left over, I can now make that decision of, well, now I can put that to something else. I've got money left over. I don't say, well, my budget for the year is going to be a hundred thousand. Let me go ahead and, or I need 120,000, but let me only put a hundred thousand dollars against it. Oh, by the way, I, I need to come up with another $20,000. So, I mean, I just don't understand why we're budgeting this way and factoring in anticipated vacancies, whether it's high in one year or low. To me, it doesn't matter. We have an approved staff of X number of people. Our personnel budget ought to be based on the assumption for me that we're at 100% manning for the year. And at the end of the year, if we weren't 100 percent man, then we ought to be getting a briefing saying, well, we didn't spend all of our personnel money. We have this extra excess money left over. That's just me from a budget assessment. I'm not a finance guy, but I don't understand why we would forecast in vacancies, because to me, that's a volatile subject.

I'll be candid with you. I've done it both ways in the 30 years of doing municipal budgets and in one organization where it tends to be the larger you get, the more that money means something. And you end up tying up, say, up to five or six or seven percent of your budget that you know you're not going to use. And so as organizations get larger, they tend to use a a budget of vacancy rate. And you do, like Councilman McAloosa said, you do have to be diligent. Because it was 8% 12 years ago, you don't just stay with 8%. You check it each year, kind of see where the trends are. We're probably to a point where we should slim it down It's just so you don't over-obligate yourself and end up with a bunch of money each year. Now, in another organization I worked in, we were a larger organization than shirts, and we budgeted the full amount, like you said. We just had to kind of make sure we understood where we were at the end of the year. I think either way, you end up having to do the same type of exercise.

That's a good explanation, but to me personally, I would feel better... at the end of the year, having a discussion that we did not use all of our personnel funds. And because when we have our budget discussions, we look at what all the departments need and we look at a cut line and we see what's below the cut line. So I know there's things out there that the departments would have liked to have gotten, but during the budget discussion, they were below the line. I would rather come into this last month or two of the year saying, hey, we did not use all of our personnel funds. We can reallocate that from here into funding some of those below the line items versus we're in middle of September and we're saying, well, by the way, we underestimated our personnel funds and now we've got to move money from someplace else back into the personnel account to pay for employees that we knew were here. So that's just my two cents on the budget line.

Okay, we got Council Member Guerrero.

As far as the budget moving funds to cover everything, what departments are being affected when you're moving these funds?

Moving funds between departments? Yes. So in this situation, we have the inspections division and the engineering, so $5,000 going from inspections over to engineering. One goes down $5,000, one goes up $5,000. No overall change to the general fund, their bottom line. On the other side, the drainage fund, we had a person identified in drainage. For personnel, they got assigned to engineering. And so in the adjustment that we'll make on the final budget document, we would lower the personnel expenses on the drainage side, increase their transfer out inter-fund charge. So overall the net bottom line on drainage wouldn't change. And then on the general fund side, we increase the engineering personnel lines and then increase the inter-fund charge transfer in the revenue side. And so drainage would see no change to the bottom line. The general fund would see an increase on the revenue and expenditures at the same amount. So the overall effect is still zero, but you'll see those numbers increase a little bit. Everywhere else on the items, the budget would just increase overall. So it'd be a larger amount.

Thank you. Any other discussion? Having none, can I entertain a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve.

Second. Okay, I got a motion to approve by Councilmember McAluso, seconded by Councilmember Dietz. Can I get everybody to cast your votes? Can I get the votes published, please? Having seven yays, no nays, motion passes. Thank you. All right, now we're gonna move on to some public hearing items. We have item 13, ordinance 26-T026, conduct a public hearing and operating in capital budget for the fiscal year 2026, 2027 annual budget. With us we have our finance director, Mr. James Walters.

All right, good evening again. Let me get this.

There we go.

I broke it. Meeting adjourned. Come back again next week.

Ah, there we go, okay, thank you.

All right, I'll run it through a couple of slides to frame up the question discussion here for council tonight. Don't worry, it's not the 100 slide presentation that we've gone through before. Just a quick look at our calendar. The budget process started back in February. We went through multiple discussions and extra additional meetings and we were at the September 15th budget adoption and the October 1st, the fiscal year would begin and the new budget and tax rate would go into effect. So a change from the previous time this was before council, we saw a total expenses budget that staff is proposing tonight of $180,086,989. It's about 26% increase over the prior year. Again, with the majority of that being in the transfers for the one-time items in the general fund to use up some of the excess fund balance we've accumulated through the one-time sales tax generation. Personnel services make up about 31% of that amount, with the transfers temporarily being the next highest at 29,016%. The changes since the last time the budget was brought forward, the original proposal was $179,353,613. Updates were removed for new patrol officers that were originally proposed in the budget from staff. We also moved $45,000 from professional services to department-specific software and information technology. That's not an overall budget change. It's just an internal change that we did. Even IT stayed the same. Then we increase the transfers out and roadway impact fees area one and two by 1.2 million and 892,000. Those are in the fund balance. We have the cash and this will help match the capital budget going forward for the Widerstein and the Rips, no, Widerstein and the Live Oak and the Maskey Road project. So the general fund is where the other conversation that we were having, the budget proposed is now $54,609,471 after we removed the four officers. Sorry, that's the revenue side. 40% comes from our property taxes. 31% comes from sales taxes. Together, 71%, over two-thirds of the revenue from the general fund is between property and sales taxes with permits, fees, and licenses making up only 8%. Municipal court, 1%. On the expense side, we have $81,868,586. So this is the number that's less than those previously brought forward to council, has removed the four patrol officers. This does still include the four dispatchers. Public safety is about 34%. Again, the transfers are higher than normal, 29%. They're not normally that big, usually 0%, which means public safety would be closer to 47%. Almost half the budget is just public safety. If you include public works, which is the streets, between public works and public safety, that's 50%. That would be about 50% of the overall budget. On the INS side, debt service, we'll touch on this one because it is affected by the tax rate that we'll talk about here in a moment. The INS rate is calculated at 1681. It does include the following debt issuances. Again, we have nothing scheduled for this year, so if there's any changes to this, staff would come before council this coming spring and beyond to... to solidify those plans and change that issuance on 27, 28, which would take into effect on probably come before council on March, June timeframe of 27 with funds arriving after the debt issuance of that fall in 27. And so that's where our staff will be looking for input for council on how we want to approach the upcoming debt issuances. Currently it's proposed at $8 million. And changing that now wouldn't affect the 1681 at this time. So that's what our debt payments would be like under that schedule if we issued that. These are our current obligations. You see as they drop overall as we go on throughout the 10-year window. And then with the new payments being added on top of that, the overall payment's relatively flat and kind of pick up as growth allows for us to issue more debt without raising taxes. The tax rates that are being proposed and discussed tonight, here is our assessed property values. You see they went through a rapid rise right after COVID, a little dip here, and were relatively flat overall for 26, This is what it looks like in actual dollar values. The 2025 taxable value is $5.5 billion. Those same properties that we taxed last year are now worth $5.4 billion. We did have some continued development and new construction. $227 million got added to the tax roll. So our total taxable value in the city of shirts is $5.6 billion. Again, overall, we did have an increase in our taxable value, but the new construction was bringing it up, not the existing property values. So before council tonight, we have the different tax rates up for consideration. We have the no new revenue tax rate, 5296. That's the rate at which staff would raise the same amount of tax revenue from properties that existed this year and next year. We have the voter approval rate, which is the highest rate council can adopt without going to the voters. So you can go higher than this. Well, you can't go higher than this because this is the rate we put on our preliminary notice. So this would be the highest rate council could adopt tonight if they so choose. Our current rate is 0.5118. Based on the last discussion, staff is still proposing a 5175 rate, and that would fund the four dispatchers and not the four patrol officers. For the voter approval rate, that $97 is about $8.12 per month increase on the average home. So that would be the maximum effect that council could have on our citizens. And these all are on annual amounts. And just for scope of reference, the one penny on this is about $560,000 of revenue or $32 annually on the average home. So this is a look at our tax rates going back from 2020, going through the years. about the 5-51-21 for a couple of years, we'd be at 5-51-75 at the current proposal from staff. And again, very short meeting or short discussion as far as the presentation goes. We have the public hearing and then if staff wishes to discuss and make any changes to the proposed budget as it stands, y'all are welcome to do so. I can walk you through some of the motion language if there are any changes or you can accept it as staff proposed with those changes I touched on earlier.

Thank you. At this time, I'll go ahead and open it up to the residents and public to speak at 728.

Maggie Titterington, 5325 Storm King. Thank you. For the presentation and the transparency, I was here when you all first began the talks. I missed some of the in-between, but as a resident, I will grouch when I get a little bit of increase in my bills like we all do. But when I see it that plainly across that we're talking about $100 more a year, it's a year. Is that correct, Mr. Williams? It's $100 more a year if we don't...

Yeah, but that's... Can we have that one slide put back up?

My whole point being is I think $100 is a very good investment if we can keep those four patrol officers, if that's what's being cut, because we are trying to cut a tax rate. I think most of us intrinsically know that we're going to have a little bit of tax increase every year. It's cost of living. It's quality of life, and I enjoy the fact that our city so many times has gotten the award for best places to live. We're on that list, safest place to live. We're always under the top 100 out of nationwide, all the states, all the cities, and this is investing in our city. Do I want to pay a little bit more? No. I mean, I'll be honest, my money is really tight, just like all of y'all's is in our wallet and everything, the inflation, the gas, the food. but when I do see this and I see where the money is and I see how tightly we have to cut and where we do, we're cutting in the wrong places, but I know how lean this budget is. I know, I sit here council meeting every month and I come in here and I feel like I'm well versed in this, but as a resident, I feel like This city is very well run. You all do such a good job in your due diligence, but $100 a year, I am willing to see my taxes be raised $100 a year if this means that we can keep or get four patrol officers and do what we need to do to keep our city going forward, keep it safe, keep it at a standard of what we all feel is acceptable and how we wanna live in our city. So just thank you for letting me voice my opinion, but just thank you for the presentation. Thank you for all the information. And as a resident, I would have no problem with $100 more a year.

Thank you, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, the no new revenue rate, which is the 0.5296, if we approve that, will allow us to bring on those four officers.

Yes, yes, ma'am.

Without any increase. Because it makes it look like there's an increase, but there's really not. You'll be paying the same amount that you paid last year, you'll be paying this year. Is that correct?

Yes, sir, just to clarify the slide again that James went through that no new revenue rate means that the estimated tax bill for the average homeowner in shirts would stay the same. And if you did the voter approval, which there's never been any real discussion about doing the voter approval, they would go up by $97 a year. And if you did the current tax rate, it would go down by $58. If you did the 5175 that was discussed, At the last meeting, it would go down by $39.44 a year.

And the only reason it makes it look like there's an increase is because there was a decrease in our property values. And so in order for us to bring in the same amount of money, we would need to adopt a no new revenue rate. Do I have any other residents wishing to come up to speak?

Allison Hayward, and I have to agree with Maggie Tidgerton. I'm willing to pay the $100, not that I really want to, but I think because the City of Church is relatively safe, why wouldn't we continue with hiring the four patrol officers? I don't want the City of Church to end up like the county. They're in a world of hurt because they were not doing the things that they should have been doing all along, and we know that everything over time goes up. I was just having a conversation with a friend this morning. Talking about my first house was $77,000. When it's time to sell, it's going to go over $200,000. That was almost 30 years ago. So things cost. They go up. And we have to expect that. I hate paying extra money. Because when I think about it, I can go do something else with my grandkids. But for safety, I don't think we skimp on safety when it comes to that. As a resident, willing to but if the no new revenue rate gets us there i'm fine with that but i have no problem going to the voter approval rate because we need to make sure that we stay safe thank you any other residents going once twice

We'll go ahead and close the hearing of residents at 7.33. This time I'll open it up for discussion amongst council members. Any discussion on the tax rate that we want to approve?

the state comes at us and says, yeah, you have to adopt the budget first and then ratify any taxes that may or may not need to be levied for that. And then you can adopt a tax rate. Okay. So now's the kind of discussion point over what council wants in the budget. And then we'll come back and fund it on the tax rate. So they're still kind of intrinsically linked. So this will be kind of a time where you can discuss that if everyone's okay with the 5175, we can go with that as the budget is presented. If we want to make any changes to the budget and keep This is the time for council to make a discussion.

Council Member McAleese.

I'm a little disappointed.

a little disappointed in the presentation because we had like specific discussion in our retreats and I don't feel like any of that was addressed. I think the majority of us wanted to at least look at what it was if it was kept at the current rate that wasn't given to us at all. And also, you know, had discussions on trying to lower the INS rate in the future. I didn't see anything involved with that either. And so I feel like I'm not getting the information that we had asked for. And I don't know if anybody else agrees with me on that. But and this this thought about if we don't fund the four police officers, we're going to be less safe. I mean, that was a specific discussion we had with the police chief, and he completely agreed that was not going to be the case. So I think I don't want to say scare tactics, but this thought that those four police officers are going to make sure it's a less safe city, it's not accurate. Police chief answered it himself. As part of the discussion, this is an additional four police officers. It's not like we're cutting police officers at all. And so I just didn't feel like we got the information that we wanted to talk about. All right.

To your point, we did not mention in this presentation, this is staff's recommendation and council can update it or ask questions and we can calculate it and do some other things here. In the presentation last week, or when we last met at the last workshop, Council wants to keep the same rate. It's staff's recommendation that we would remove the four dispatchers. That was staff's recommendation. If council wants to do something different, we have the list for that one that we can make some other adjustments in that stead, but that was how staff wanted to present that.

I don't think anybody wanted to get rid of the dispatchers. I think everybody was on board with bringing on the dispatchers, improving their pay, everything along with that. I think everybody... or at least the majority of us want to see, is there an opportunity somewhere else to save money? And that was not shown to us at all. It was just kind of completely ignored. So.

So just to clarify, it wasn't in the presentation, but it is in the packet. I went back and I asked the staff to propose 1% cuts to their budget, and then an additional half percent. That's included in the agenda item. It's about 10 pages long, so we... Can you bring it up? Yes, we could bring it up. And regarding the INS rate, because we've already issued the debt affected by this new INS rate, we don't have the ability to lower that at this point. We could do it in subsequent years.

For the future. Yeah, I understood that, but that was kind of, and that's something that we would need to discuss now.

No, I apologize. I tried to mention that in the presentation that when we're talking about the future debt issuances. I guess if we're here. I was saying, yeah, we would, if we wanted, we had talked about, yeah, if we wanted to reduce the amount of debt that we issue and use the fund balance, we would. we would target that this next budget discussion when we would start talking about, do we issue the 8 million or whatnot? That would be in about March or June of 2027. And we would make that decision there.

So James, are you able to bring up the attachment? I'm sorry. It's 23 pages of cuts that I asked the staff to go back and look at. each of their budgets and propose areas where they could cut 1%, which would generate about a half a million dollars a year in savings. And then another half percent just for good measure, which would generate another $244,000 in savings. If you go to the very end of the document, you can see the summary and all the individual cuts. We can go through them one by one if you want. But in total, those are detailed out. not knowing exactly what the discussion is because there was discussion about retaining the four dispatchers and not keeping the police officers. And then there was also discussion about potentially keeping the four dispatchers and keeping the 5118 tax rate. So there are a variety of things that seem to be on the table. What we came back with, what we believed was a consensus, what I believed was a consensus, was to propose the 51.75 tax rate, which is a reduction slightly from the no new revenue rate, and retaining the four dispatchers, and then leaving out the police officers to be evaluated later. I felt like there was a consensus at that point. That's why we brought it back as a recommendation. But this is the time to make that decision. And if there's further discussion to be had, we can have it. council member Sheridan requested this information initially to see where we could cut. And I believe you requested also councilman McBluso. So this is what we've done. We were more than happy to go through each one of these pages with you. And if you want to maybe start at the top, it's, it is a 1% reduction that would be required to add the four police officers. And, or if we wanted to, keep the dispatchers and not at the police side. There's just a bunch of different combinations. It's a matter of what you guys want, and then we can build the tax rate to that. Or we can make cuts to the current budget like what was recommended. I don't recommend these cuts because I think it cuts deep, especially when you get into the larger departments like police and fire. At the 1%, you're taking $145,000 out of the police department and $100,000 out of the fire department. And in others, you can see $30,000, $50,000 you know, 30 more thousand here and there, adding up to that amount, that money can be cut, but it is kind of a one time, one trick pony, right? We can do that one time, and then we don't have that as an available option in future years. And it also cuts into some things that there's explanations on each of these, as you guys can see. And some of these things will, it'll impact it in slight ways. But if you go to take the library, for example, if you cut the library books by $10,000, is the library gonna shut down? Is it gonna be bad? Well, no, not necessarily, but why would you wanna cut $10,000 from the book budget in the library? It's not something that I would recommend as your city manager to do. But we're here to listen and we're here, we will change it any way you guys want us to change it and we'll move forward regardless.

Council Member Guerrero.

Actually, my question was going to be that. Where is the cuts? Because I remember we had discussed that. We wanted you guys to go ahead and figure out where we can cut. That was going to be my question. So if we do these cuts, we're able to keep the four dispatchers, four police officers? Yes.

It depends on which tax rate you include in the budget. The one we were agreeing on, which is... 5175? Yes. You can include the four dispatchers at 5175 and not make any cuts.

But if we want the four police officers, then we do have to do these cuts?

Then we would need to make further cuts or raise the tax rate. Either more revenue or less expense. The no new revenue would cover all eight positions.

Including the four officers and four dispatchers. Yes.

Without these cuts?

Without the cuts. Yeah, the no new revenue rate. No cuts. Yeah, the no new revenue rate would cover the four dispatchers and four officers with no cuts. That was the budget originally proposed by staff. If you wanted to go with the 5175, that would remove the officers but keep the dispatchers. If we wanted to go to the 5118, that would remove all eight positions. And if we want to add any back in, any one of those, we could look at a column here and try to get that back. And that's what kind of question is what council feels comfortable as far as the rate and the positions. And then we can try to back into it, very different cuts or no cuts and do the no new revenue rate. So that's the question we have now.

I'm just going to add to, well, I agree with Councilman McAloosa. What are you guys going to do in the future to cut off the, how would you say, cut off what's not needed? That way we can lower the deficit.

So some of the staff was recommended when they went into these cuts, we were told we needed to make cuts as if these funds were not coming back. So each of the cuts had to be tied to a specific change in operations. You'll find a very common areas that came through for finance. That would be, we have a lot of personnel. We try not to cut any personnel. So it would be our uniform type line would be one of the lines we would cut. And so we have one shirt embroidered kind of polo for everybody once a year. If we had to do the one and a half percent cut the full for both items, we may only get one shirt a year, kind of rotate who gets it or if a new hire comes in, they would get the shirt and no one else get a shirt. Those are the kind of things we were talking about. Generally, it's the easiest way for us to make adjustments, let's say, for finance without affecting our day-to-day operations as much. But many of the cuts here, you talk about morale or different things that could be affected by some of these. And some of them are much more substantial than a shirt.

So I'm looking at things like police and fire. What are you going to be cutting there?

Go to that page, James.

Can I clarify one thing? We don't have a deficit situation that we're trying to make up. If we add the positions, these are new positions to the city, new positions to the budget that are being proposed. So they're not existing that we're taking away.

Let's see, is this still the general fund?

Yep. So for police, $31,570 for uniforms. Reduced funding may lead to inability to replace damaged or worn equipment uniforms and reduce the professional image maintained by the department. Worn or damaged uniforms undermine department credibility and officer morale. $6,000 for employee morale, so reduced funding would reduce opportunities for recognition at annual awards, promotions, retirements, and other morale-boosting activities. Employee recognition programs are critical retention and motivation tools, particularly in high-stress professions. Loss of morale initiatives directly coordinates with increased turnover, requiring costly recruitment and training for replacements. $25,000 for training, reduced funding would reduce opportunities for recognition at annual rewards. Oh, this was also the... So less training, so staff may be responsible for some of their own certification training. There'll be less ammo for practice for those certifications. They kind of come out. This is generally the same kind of stuff they had there. Meeting expenses, $2,000, reduced ability to provide accommodations, professional meetings and trainings, both regionally and with other stakeholders. $7,500 for medical services, reduce the capacity of animal services to provide continued level of medical care desired by the city. Services may be reduced. So this is the veterinarian that some of the animal services, this is not a full cut, but this would be reduced ability to send animals that we have in our shelter and to look at it by a veterinarian. $13,739 in operating supplies, reduce capacity for normal daily operations, may affect all sections of the department negatively, such as being able to purchase supplies or properly securing evidence. 3,500 for office supplies, reduce the ability to supply personnel with supplies for daily activities such as note-taking calls, fulfilling FOIA requests, or completing normal operating tasks. 3,275 for child safety, reduce the ability to provide safety supplies for crossing guards and other public outreach supplies. 5,000 med-chem lab supplies, reduce the ability of animal services to provide continued level of care desired by the city. Services may be reduced to be less ability to handle any sick pets. 6,000 for furniture, reduce the ability for department personnel to maintain broken furniture, do normal wear and tear during the year. 5,000 for peripherals, reduce the ability for department to maintain broken furniture, wear and tear. So this is their peripherals, mice, keyboards, less ability to replace those. They get broken, they use them a little bit longer. 5,000 for the abatement, remove that line item, remove the ability for the department to respond to any animal service issues as mitigation efforts. So this would, we would not be able to go in and actually abate or make a changes to the animal service for a sexual situation in a home for animal services. 4,500 advertising reduce the ability of department to actively recruit and provide professional materials to entice well qualified applicants. 10,000, so advertising recruiting efforts. 10,000 city insurance commercial staff need a contingency if the rates continue to rise higher than the expected liability. 5,100 community outreach reduces the mission Community-based policing and developing community contracts and resources. 4,300 printing and binding reduce the capability department to provide required forms, victim booklets, professional documents, such as annual reports. 800, cremation services, reduce the ability of animal services to provide properly disposed of deceased animals, all dependent on the number of animals that come in. 800 for contractual services, reduce the limits on animal shelters' ability to communicate services that cannot provide internally. So anything we can't do and we can't contract out. 825, other maintenance agreements, completely remove the budget line or forces funds to be paid from somewhere else.

Sorry to interrupt. I really am. But I think we can all read here. I think the question here, Mayor, I'm sorry, we can all read, but the question before the council right now is if the council wants the four additional police officers. And if we want the four additional police officers either through cuts or through the no new rate. That's where we're at right now because we all agreed on the 5175 that gets us the four dispatchers. So we're at the 4175. So what the council has to decide right now is if we want the four additional officers and if we're willing to go to the no new rate or if we're going to do it through cuts. I mean, the cuts will get us there, but it's not recommended by the city manager. So that's where I'm trying to sort of guide this discussion, Mayor.

I would not. Seeing all these cuts in the areas that they're going to be cutting, that's not good practice, not for us. I feel that we'll be losing employees by doing that. And then you're also looking at trying to cut services in the library and things like that, and that's not good. So, I mean, I personally do not feel, right now is not the time to try and make like budget cuts and trying to, lower the tax rate because the property values have already been lowered. And I feel that our residents, it'll be a win for them by just not even getting a tax increase at all. And we're able to get the four dispatchers and four police officers just by going with a no new revenue rate, which is what I would highly recommend. because I feel like we would be taking a step backwards otherwise, and it's gonna just call for a larger increase as we continue down the road.

That's why last time I recommended that we gotta figure out a way to increase our revenue. I know that if Gracia holds all these tournaments, we can definitely bring in some money. we gotta find a way to increase our revenue. These are a lot of cuts, and I agree with what's being said here. But then again, I also agree with everybody else. We need to keep our city safe.

Mayor, if I could, I wanna go ahead and start the process. Go ahead. Oh, you have one more discussion? Okay, okay, go ahead.

Council Member McAloosa?

Yeah. The state feels cities have bloated budgets. They're gonna continue to work at trying to lessen the revenue that cities have. And so our answer is, well, let's just continue to go back and increase the property taxes, increase the property tax. We're gonna do that every single year. That's the only way you're gonna do that is to increase the property tax unless your sales tax increases a lot. So I think it's bad practice for us to continue to jump the tax rate. I mean, at some point in time, our spending has to slow, and that doesn't mean giving up any safety. I don't think anyone up here wants to have shirts be less safe. I think all of us care about the quality of life in shirts. And so the thought that, oh, because we wanna keep, we don't wanna jack up the tax rate means we wanna, you know, shirts is gonna be less safe, I think that's hogwash. I think that that doesn't actually compute into reality. We had this discussion, we had discussed it, and I think everybody was on board, at least it seemed like, with the dispatchers. We had a lot of discussion with the police chief on the additional officers. City staff also said that if there's anything that we don't wanna do, it's gonna be a recurring expense, which was the four additional police officers. Seemed like we had consensus, but now we go in today like, oh, we're gonna be a less safe city if we don't move our tax rate up. It's like, no, you're telling citizens an untrue story Okay, we're not gonna be a less safe city if we keep the tax rate where the feeling is you're not gonna see a tax increase. No, that's not true either. If your property value increased, you're gonna see a tax increase. Okay, someone whose property value did not, well, you're gonna pay the same. So, tough for you, you don't get to ever enjoy any kind of drop in your taxes. I mean, how does that benefit the residents? I don't see that at all. And, you know, maybe I have a view of, you know, caring about the people's pocketbooks. You know, oh, $100 isn't a lot for me or $150. Well, it might be for somebody else. And when you add in their water increase, you add in their sewer increase, you add in their gas increase that they're paying. You know, $600, $700 a year for someone who lives on a fixed budget is a lot of money. Okay? So we can't just look at... people that might be more comfortable, oh, that's not going to bother me. We have to think about the individuals who it is going to bother. And I feel like we're not doing that at all by just neglecting any kind of thought or concern about them. So, okay, I'll get off my horse.

Well, it's my understanding, and the city manager can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that Once you hit the age of 65, it doesn't matter what you increase to, everything's locked in.

Well, I'm not just talking about senior citizens. I'm talking about disabled individuals. I mean, there's a lot of people that are on fixed incomes. Single moms, I mean, if you've lived in that life before, you know how tight $50 a month is. So I think you have to give those people consideration as well.

Council Member Sheridan?

I think initially when I requested the, I just wanted us to look at efficiencies to see what we have. Have we looked at, have we gone through the drill to look at areas that we can potentially reallocate, et cetera. So today, when I asked for the vacancy report, one of the things I see that we have 34 vacants. And then I look at some of the dates that they've been vacant, it appears that some departments have been operating SOUNDS LIKE SUFFICIENTLY, YOU KNOW, WITH THOSE VACANCIES. SO, I DON'T KNOW IF WE EVEN LOOKED AT THAT OR CONSIDERED THOSE

The vacancies, we do look at the vacancy rate. I get that report on a monthly basis from the HR director. I don't advise cutting those positions that have been vacant because they tend to reflect the areas in which we struggle. Engineering had vacancies for a long time, but yet we have a lot of development going on and we get often criticized for not necessarily moving fast enough because we are in a market that's highly competitive for engineers right now. Now, thank God we've been able to staff that department up, but that's an area where we struggled. So if you cut that position that had been vacant for a while, an engineer, then that's a double whammy. You're not only not gonna be able to fill that position, you're gonna slow down development even further with engineering review and design and all those types of things. Other areas where we struggled are public works. And those positions have remained, we've had more than just the length of the vacancies there, we've had high turnover. And a lot of that has to do with the rate that we pay, we're not quite competitive in the market, but it's also a really tough job to fill and keep filled. So if you cut that position, you would exacerbate a problem where we're not able to keep up with street maintenance. We're not able to keep up with those things Quite frankly, when we get requests from residents that you guys pass to me, we're able to address those things as quickly as we can. But if we're able to fill those positions, we'll do it pretty quickly. Now, one thing I will say about that report that I do wanna qualify is that if there's a department that has multiple positions in that, uh if if there's say four of that position and there's been vacancies they put the one that was the longest uh time period of it being open so it may not be reflective of the other three that were vacant if that makes sense i'd also state if uh if we start reducing the overall personnel counting but the vacancy rates here

because we have a staff of here. And if we, a short term, if we were like, oh, just not hire these folks, and this is our new normal, this is great for the short term, but until turnover starts happening again, and then now our new standard of service is down here, now we've actually- I think you would lower the level of- But we're not hiring them.

I mean, I see vacancies here back from April of 26.

Yeah, and Jessica maybe can explain that.

Good evening. I just wanted to say, to your point, I understand the optics of that, but I will tell you that one of the things that staff is really good about is getting creative when we are down people so i know for instance engineering and i know also planning community development also have in the past increased contractual services right when we don't have the manpower in-house we outsource it and so we use those salary savings to pay somebody else right to help us out and to fill in the holes um we've we see that in many departments and those two specifically come to mind and we're talking about engineering who's now fully staffed for the first time in I don't know how many years. So I feel like staff has done a great job. And so when you look at that report, I think it can be misleading in terms of we're operating efficient and efficiently with less manpower than what we're authorized for. But like I said, I think it's because staff's been creative in finding ways that we could fill in the holes.

Okay. So I think that's the part that I'm missing because I'm not seeing that, you know, apparently we've been contracting out using that salary to support not having what we don't have internally.

Well, in addition, you... It's not reflected on that report, but there are other areas like overtime. So in your larger departments like police and fire, where you have a significant amount of overtime when you have a high vacancy rate. So you can offset those savings by reducing those positions by having to increase your overtime.

Yeah, because the only thing I'm seeing is 34 bodies that you know, that looks like they haven't been filled in quite some time. And so to me, I'm like, well, did we look at that? Did we go through the drill and say, well, could we support bringing these officers in, reallocating, bring these officers in to support the current rate that we have now with, you know, with the, but now that I know that with the, that we're filling those gaps through contracts of some sort, to, you know, to... And also to have staff as well.

Okay.

I think the other thing I would say, right, is part of it with staff, and I've had this conversation with the department heads of report to me, is council has very high expectations of the level of performance you expect from our staff. And I've had those conversations with many of you about timeliness, accuracy, customer service level, right not making mistakes and so i think you have some that very much understand to make a bad hire in in this environment where we're very busy expectations are so high is hugely problematic and so frankly for some departments it's been a choice not to settle but to try to find that employee who's a good fit the other thing i'll say is i don't think we always see the impact we have on our people who run short staffed, who have to do the extra work, who have to attend additional meetings, who have to do all of that stuff that wears them down. But again, many of them would say, we would rather grind through it than make a bad hire. But yeah, we need to fill these positions. And you'll see that with some of the presentations tonight.

Yeah. And I agree with you because, you know, I actually spoke with an officer the other night, uh, who's on the night shift and, uh, You know, now that we're 100% manned, you know, and we got more officers in the evening shift or the night shift, he was so happy about that because it took a lot of toll on him, you know, just trying to provide that coverage. And now that we're 100% manned, he's got those additional officers that really opened. So that's the reason why I'm, you know, really... more of trying to find a way to bring these four additional officers because we have a lot of growth coming up this year. And we have a lot of events that happened because our report that came out recently wasn't the best report for us in regards to our police report. So I wanna make sure that our, again, the four officers that we get somehow, we get that.

I think that is public safety, right? But again, Larry, how many folks did you have working out on the waterline break where we had to shut the road down today? Yeah, I mean, so again, it's that. We had a water line break, shut a road down. Everybody's out there trying to work on it. We've got zoning cases tonight for you, running short staff, going to be even more chef's store.

And again, the communication is, you know, I've been in there, and I know we really need those communication folks into that dispatcher room.

Okay, we also have Council Member Davis.

Yeah, I'm on the bubble on this. I mean, I can understand... some of the discussions that we have about our tax rate and maybe raising it. Mr. Mayor, I think you're a little bit incorrect. As I understand it, when you hit a certain age, your property value is frozen, but that doesn't mean you don't pay more in taxes. It means your property value is frozen, but if the city keeps on raising their tax rate, what you pay in taxes keeps on going up. So you may be 70 years old and your property may have been frozen for the past five years, but if we keep on raising, You're saying no?

No, sir. When you reach 65, your levy is frozen, the dollar amount you pay. Okay. Well, even better. It's frozen for good.

But, you know, I think one of the, I have to agree with Councilman Macaluso. I think we have some hard discussions coming up. I think Mr. James did a great job in our budget process talking about the incredible wisdom that we have to deal with from the state of Texas. with the restrictions that they're putting on local municipalities. And again, correct me if I'm wrong, but in 2022 and 2023, with the lost revenue to the city of Texas, or I mean to the city of Schurz on our appraised values because of a state policy, the state was kind enough to reimburse us 47 and 48% of that lost revenue. Last year, they reimbursed us to 12%. And to me, this is unsustainable. And I don't see a correction from the state of Texas coming anytime soon. The fund that they reimburse us out of in 2022 had eight and a half million dollars in it. And since then, they've increased it to nine and a half million dollars. And in 2022, six communities, this is from the state of Texas website, in 2022, six communities applied for reimbursement out of that fund of eight and a half million. This past year, 16 cities and counties applied for reimbursement out of that pool of $9.5 million. We are in a incredibly poor prospect for our tax revenue. And it's due to the state of Texas. It is not due to the city council. It's not due to the Guadalupe County Appraisal District. It's because of the state of Texas and the way they established that program, straight up. And we are on a path where we can keep on adding some sales tax, we can keep on adding some property tax, but if they're not getting assessed or taxed and they're not contributing to the pool, then we're in a sad shape. If the state would have pulled up, would have reimbursed us this past year at 47% like they did in 2022, we wouldn't be having any of these discussions. Matter of fact, we'd be probably talking about having a tax rate for the city of not 51, but probably 41. But that's not the case. So I'm on the bubble. I mean, I understand we're in a state of flux right now. I understand that we've got to turn around and we have to look at public safety and we have to pay the bills. But as I said during the budget meetings, I do believe there are areas in the city where we can start scaling back and saving some money. I'm not sure I see it all in this report right here, to be honest with you. You know, we're putting up there just uniforms and membership professionals and publications. I think there's other areas in the city where we can save some money. And whether that's like we've done with the HVAC systems, you know, you turn around and put in an approved environmental system that is more energy efficient, then the bills go down. So, I mean, I'm on the bubble. I don't mind looking at a penny increase, but I think it's disingenuous to sit up here and think that, well, our solution going forward is, well, it's only a penny. We'll add a penny next year and we'll add a penny and a half the next year and a penny and a half the next year. because that's not going to fix this underlying major problem. And this is a major problem. I don't foresee the state of Texas fixing this anytime soon. So again, my input is, Okay, if we have to make a slight increase to cover the must pays, then I'll consider it. But we have to be serious and we have to start looking at other things that we can cut or stop doing that are not the must pays because there are things in the city of Schertz where we go above and beyond that we have to be honest with ourselves. That probably is not the standard that we will be able to maintain indefinitely.

Mayor, before she makes a motion, can I, may I make a couple of comments?

Yes, and then I have Council Member Westbrook that would like to say something.

I can fully appreciate Mayor Pro Tem Davis's, no, I'm sorry, Councilman Davis and Mayor Pro Tem Watson. His words are spot on and his assessment is spot on. And even to Councilman McAloosa's assessment, You're right, we are in, the way it looks going forward is an unsustainable future, but I think Brian did a fantastic job of getting up here and articulating, we are moving into a new normal. We are not going to be able to maintain the level of service that is expected at the current rate and with the restrictions that are put on our ability to raise revenue by the state. That being said, I believe the dispatchers are a critical function that we need to add. At this point, I think in terms of adjusting to that new normal, the police officers don't need to be added right now. We can normal today, including new bodies.

And I think we're in the future.

I don't know, as a and somebody who looks long-term, my preference would be to make those adjustments, like I've talked about steering the ship and riding the ship a little bit. It's little adjustments here and there that keep you apart. You can do that over time. But I think at this point, my recommendation is To do the 5175, I realize it's more than last year's tax rate, but technically it is a slight decrease from the no new revenue rate. I think it's a fair compromise, a fair way to move forward with the budget as it's proposed. And then going into next spring, if there's no appetite to increase beyond that, and we feel like the council believes that that's the ceiling that we need to set it at, we'll approach our new budget process with that in mind. And you won't see a budget that goes above the current 51-75. You'll see a budget that's built around that for the general fund. And we'll bring it forward with that. And then options of what's moving forward. You're going to continue to see the list of supplemental requests that we put forward this year, which we were able to fund a good chunk of it with one-time revenue on one-time expenditures. But if you look at the ongoing stuff, we talked a lot about ongoing revenues and ongoing expenditures. If you look at the ongoing expenditures, it's essentially baseline things like fuel and software increases and things like that. And there's one position in there, it's a school resource officer, that is almost completely paid for by the school district. So my recommendation is that you move forward as proposed and we refocus our efforts and we take the position that we're gonna adjust to the new normal, we're gonna lower our expectations of what the service levels are so we can stay within our means long term.

so just for clarity if we go with the proposed that means no cuts and it adds the four dispatchers but it is not the police officer right yes sir yes sir and the new revenue rate will add the four police officers so that's the decision between the two yes sir okay council member westbrook did you have a discussion on that

Right there. Too many buttons up here. No, Mayor, I sort of agree with... I think we had all found some consensus at 5175. I personally could sort of see it going to the no new revenue. I don't know if it's there one way or the other, depending on the motion that may or may not be made. But I'm pretty sure, Mayor, no matter what we do... We're not going to be able to get there through cuts. I don't think there's that appetite up here in council. So efficiencies, cuts, you decide, but you make all of those cuts. We'll be dealing with morale and other issues in the city of Schertz. The other portion with this is almost certainly every one of us will be asking for something over the next year, whether it's sidewalks or street maintenance or emergency incidents next summer with some more rain. We're going to be asking for something, but right now we're saying, Cut, cut, cut. But we're all going to be asking for more, for us to do more with less sometime in the next year. And you can't have it both ways. Absolutely.

Mayor Pro Tem Watson.

I agree with council member Davis 100%, but I wanted to start the process after we've discussed a little bit more, obviously, and then go down. So I wanted to motion that we approve the no new revenue at 0.5296.

So if you make a motion to adopt the budget with the addition of four police officers, and then we can approach.

Yes.

I have a second.

Have a no second. Second. Second, we have a second. So we have a motion made by Mayor Pro Tem Watson, a second made by Council Member Davis. Can I get everybody to cast the votes? Can I get the votes published please? Having four yeas, three nays, motion passes. Can I have two thirds? No, not on that because...

Majority on the budget, right? Yeah, it's a majority on the budget. It'll be majority on both because it's the no new revenue rate, so we won't need the super majority since we're not going over it.

Okay, motion passes.

I gotta...

Okay, discussion and action item on item 14, resolution 26-R-099, ratifying the property tax increase reflected in the adopted budget for fiscal year 2026, 2027. We have our finance director, Mr. Walters.

Cool. So the state says, hey, if you do this budget that... Any more taxes? We have to ratify any of the taxes listed in the budget since the proposal would be funded at the no new revenue tax rate. I'm not quite sure if this item is necessary, but it'd be safe just to kind of adopt it anyway. I just need to make a change to section one based on the discussion. So if you'll give me one moment, I'll recalculate that. So with the budget, the budget would be funded at the 0.5296, which is the no new revenue rate. We'll check, make sure we get all the things, we don't wanna come back. 5296, which is the no new revenue rate, which will raise more total property taxes from last year's budget by $1,207,415 And of that amount, $1,203,307 is raised from new property added to the tax roll. That would be the change to this item if it was adopted as proposed with the budget. You probably don't have to repeat all of that, but know that that would be the motion going forward. I can restate it. I don't think I can edit it just now.

Any discussion on this item? Having none, can I entertain a motion?

So moved.

So moved. Okay, you're making a motion to adopt tax rate.

Perfect. This will make a motion to ratify the taxes adopted in the budget, I know it's a weird kind of deal, Council of City-States pretty much going, hey, you're adopting this budget. Are you sure you want to do that sort of thing? Make sure you really know what you're going on. So the motion is that they're ratifying the budget will raise more on total property taxes last year than $1,207,415. And of that amount, $1,203,307 will be raised from new property added to the tax roll this year. So that would be the update to the resolution ratifying the property taxes listed in the budget document.

I don't have it in front of me other than it was worded different.

Yes. The item listed was anticipating or matched the proposed budget document, which was funded at the 5175 document. So this would be the resolution if we adopted the 5175 document.

I MOTION THAT WE ACCEPT THE BUDGET BY 529.

SO I THINK YOU CAN READ THE MOTION AS IT IS WITH JAMES'S NEW NUMBERS.

BECAUSE I'VE ALREADY SAID THAT. I'VE ALREADY SAID YES THREE TIMES ALREADY.

OKAY, I THINK WE'RE GOOD.

BUT I DON'T KNOW IF YOU WANT ME TO SPECIFICALLY SAY SOMETHING.

SO MAYOR PROTEIN WATSON MADE THE MOTION. DO I HAVE A SECOND?

Second.

Okay, I have a motion made by Mayor Pro Tem Watson, seconded by Council Member Westbrook. Can I get everybody to cast their votes? Wait, I need to discuss it.

Just read it. Can you just read it? Sure.

The City Council hereby ratifies the budget will raise more in total property taxes than last year's budget by $1,207,415, or 4.2%, And of that amount, $1,203,307 are to be raised from new property added to the tax roll this year. So it's basically saying we're going to bring in more in property taxes, but it's all from new development.

It's all new growth.

That's how it matches up on the list.

So the rate is the same. The rate is the no new NNR, no new rate.

Because we added new property to the tax roll, we'll apparently have additional funds. So it's saying, like this is saying that if we lower the tax rates under the no new revenue, so we're bringing in $500,000 additional money, but 1.1 million of that is from new property. So we're essentially... giving back $600,000 of revenue. If we go with a new revenue rate, those two numbers will be almost exactly equal. So all money is being generated from new property.

James, if I can just add in real quick. There's three items that the state requires you all to adopt. The first is the budget, which was done before. This is ratifying the tax rate. And the next item after this is where you actually set the tax rate number. So it's a certain process that the state requires that you follow. So the budget was adopted at the 5296 rate. This is ratifying that, this is showing what it's gonna do as far as the increase, and then the next item will be setting the tax rate to fund the items in the budget.

And so even though the tax rate, okay, I think that's a question for the next one. I'm ready for this one. But no new rate, we have additional revenue, But theoretically, my taxes should not increase.

It's just due to growth. The new revenue comes from the growth, the additional properties on the tax roll.

Yeah, the overall tax bills that we sent out in aggregate will remain the same. We'll raise the same amount of money that we did last year on properties that were taxed last year. And then we get a little bit more money because we have new development.

Okay. You can see how that can be confusing. Tax rates would increase, but... my property taxes aren't going up. The rate goes up, but maybe when I'm paying.

So in theory, when your property value went down, the tax rate goes up, your tax bill remains the same.

Exactly, I think that's the hurdle we're trying to get over.

So I think the states, the reason why the state includes this is so you can illustrate the difference between what is being raised from your properties that are on both tax rolls, 26 and 27, or 25 and 26, and then also what revenue is being raised from that new development, right? Things that came on the tax roll after January 1st of 2026. I mean, I'm sorry, as of January 2026, as of new stuff.

So just for clarity, once we ratify the budget, then it will raise more total property taxes than last year. And then we'll move on to setting the tax rates. Is that correct?

Correct.

All right. So we do have a second by Council Member Westbrook. Can I get everybody to cast their votes? Can I get the votes published? Having six yeas, one nay, motion passes. All right, now you're talking about item 15, correct?

Item 15. All right. Now, council's actually asked to set the property tax rate in this item.

So before we do that, we'll move it on to a public hearing. And so item 15, ordinance 26-T-027, conduct a public hearing and approve an ordinance approving the appraisal role, setting the tax rate, levying and assessing general and special ad valorem taxes for the use and support of the municipal government of the city of Church, Texas. We have our finance director, Mr. James Walters.

Yes, sir. The agenda item before you and in the packet lists the proposed at 5175. Currently with the adoption of the budget, the budget would be funded at the no new revenue rate 0.5296. Staff is asking council set the no new revenue or set the tax rate at the 5296 level. Since you're not going over that amount, that is the no new revenue rate. There is no special motion that is required on that. So you can say, I propose we adopt the rate of 5296 as the motion. We do have a public hearing, so I can step back.

That's correct. So at this time, I'll go ahead and open it up for a public hearing at 825. Anybody wishing to come up to talk or discuss about tax rate? Going once, going twice. Having done, we'll close the public hearing at 825. Is there any other discussion items on setting the tax rate? Having done, may I entertain a motion?

I motion that we approve Resolution 26R099.

And setting the tax rate at zero point.

Setting the tax rate at 0.5296. That's to be the. Oh, so 115.

Ordinance 26T027.

Ordinance 26T027.

So I have a motion made by Council Member Watson. Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay, I have a second made by Council Member Davis. Can I get everybody to cast your votes? Can I get the votes published, please? Having four yeas, three nays, motion passes. Okay, moving on to ordinance 26-A-021, conduct a public hearing, consider a request for the voluntary annexation of approximately 10.7 acres of land located approximately 900 feet northwest of the intersection of FM 482 and Swab Road, more specifically known as Comel County, property identification number 56613, Comel County, Texas. With us, we have our senior planner, Daisy Marquez.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. Ordinance 26825, annexation for 10.7 acres in Comal County, Daisy Marquez, Senior Planner. So this property is familiar. It was purchased by the city in 2023 for the Dry Camel Creek Nature Park, and it's 10.7 acres. On August 18th, you approved the resolution to start the annexation process. Again, we received the voluntary annexation petition, and the zone change ordinance is accompanied by this annexation you'll be hearing later on. And again, staff finds that surrounding any area, but not including that area within city limits is in the public's interest. So staff recommends approval of ordinance 26A21.

Okay, at this time, I'll go ahead and open it up to a public hearing at 827. Anybody wishing to come up to speak on the ordinance 26-A-021? Going once, going twice. Close the public hearing at 8.28. Any other discussion items on ordinance 26A-021? Having none, can I entertain a motion?

I'll make a motion that we approve ordinance 26A-021. Second.

All right, I have a motion made by Councilmember Sheridan, seconded by Councilmember Davis. Can I get everyone to cast their votes? May I get the votes published, please? Having seven yeas, no nays, motion passes. All right, moving on to Ordinance 26-A-022. Conduct a public hearing and consider a request for the voluntary annexation of approximately 0.19 acres of land known as 12235 Aztec Way, more specifically known as portions of Bexar County, property identification number 308309, Bexar County, Texas. And with us, we still have our senior planner, Daisy Marquez.

Good evening once again ordinance 26 a 22 again another annexation 4.19 acres in Bexar County to mark a senior planner. Again this property looks familiar it was purchased in 2026 and it's a portion of Barry D 308 309 and again the resolution was approved on August 18 to start this annexation process and the zone change application is accompanying this as well. And again, per the LGC staff finding rounding area, but not including that area within the city limits through this annexation is in the public's interest. So staff recommends approval of ordinance 26, eight 22. Thank you.

Okay. This time I'll open it up to residents of the public to be able to speak at eight 30. Anybody want to come and speak on. on ordinance 26-A-022. Going once, going twice. We'll go ahead and close the public hearing at 8.30 on ordinance 26-A-022. Any discussion by council? Having none, can I entertain a motion?

I motion that we approve ordinance 26A022. Second.

I have a motion made by Mayor Pro Tem Watson, seconded by Council Member Sheridan. Can I get everybody to cast your votes? Can I get the votes published, please? Having seven yays, no nays, motion passes. All right, moving on to ordinance 26-S-023, conduct a public hearing, consider a request to rezone approximately 10.7 acres of land to public use district, also known as P-U-B. Northwest of F-482, Schwab Road, North Pacific County identification number 5613, Melville County, Texas.

so here's that property that was just annexed in the city of um within

Comal County. Again, it's city-owned property. We sent out public notices. We did not receive, we did receive four responses in opposition, but those are outside of city limits. We noticed in the paper, we posted a sign and this did go to the September 15th. It's going to tonight. Again, these are those oppositions, but they're outside of city limits. And again, this is for the Dry Comal Creek Nature Park. It was just annexed. It's city-owned property. This is a conceptual plan from the Parks Master Plan and from speaking with the Director of Parks and Recreation, Lauren Shrum. This is the closest conceptual plan that they have. And again, some of the uses allowed within public use district. And just going through the criteria for approval. Again, this was outside of city limits, but as we annex it, this is intended for public uses. And again, already formally approved Dry Camel Creek Nature Park. This promotes the health, safety, and general welfare of the city because we're providing services to residents. And again, this proposed zone change is consistent and appropriate because it's shown in the master parks plan for the Dry Kamal Creek Park. And the change does meet the CDC requirements. It was reviewed by fire, police, and EMS for review and objections were provided. The zoning commission public hearing concerns Planning Commission held a public hearing for this September and they made a recommendation of a to City Council to be able to speak a

Have anybody wanted to come up and speak on ordinance 26-S-023? Going once, going twice. Go ahead and close hearing of residents at 8.33. Is there any other discussions on this item? Haven't done. Can I get somebody to entertain a motion?

I make a motion, Mayor.

Okay, I have a motion made by Council Member Westbrook, seconded by Council Member Dietz. Can I get everybody to cast your votes? May I get the votes published? Having seven yays, no nays, motion passes. Moving on to item 19, ordinance 26-S-024. back to public consider a request to zone approximately 019 because of land use district also known as P.U.B. 1-2-3-5-A way to be known as a portion of Barrett property identification number 308309 Barrett County Texas Senior Planner Daisy Marquez

Good evening once again. Ordinance 26S24. A zone change to PUB on 0.19 acres. This is a portion of the property within Bexar County. Again, this is part of a larger tract. The larger tract is outlined in blue and what's in discussion for tonight is yellow. We sent out 14 public notices on August 21st. We did not receive any responses for it. Again, this property was just annexed by the city. We're requesting it to be public use district. Again, here are some of the permitted uses within PUB and the dimensional requirements. And then the criteria for approval of 21-54D. So this area is designated as local corridor, but it's supposed to be in development with scale intensity compatible with the surrounding development. Again, the proposed public use district is compatible with the comp plan because it allows for land uses that serve the community. It's surrounded by open space and floodplain, and it's shown on the park's master plan to be part of that larger trail system. And again, that also helps promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the city so we can maintain this natural area. And then just pointing out that this is consistent and appropriate with existing uses because this is adjacent to a small undeveloped city park, Cibolo Creek. floodplain, floodway, and residential uses. So any of the uses permitted in the public use district are compatible. The zone change meets all UDC requirements and it was sent to fire police and EMS for review and no objections are provided. And the planning and zoning commission did hold a public hearing for this item on September 2nd. Staff recommends approval of ordinance 26 S 24. And again, the PNZ did hold a public hearing for this item on September 2nd and made a recommendation of approval to city council with a unanimous vote.

Okay, this time I'll open it up for residents and the public to be able to speak at 837. Anyone want to come up and speak on ordinance 26-S-024? Going once, going twice. We'll close residents to be heard at 837. Is there any council member who wanted to discuss item 19 further? Having none, can I entertain a motion?

I motion that we approve ordinance 26S024. Second.

Okay, I have a motion made by Mayor Pro Tem Watson. Second motion made by Council Member Sheridan. Can I get everybody to cast your votes, please? May I get the votes published? Having seven yeas, no nays, motion passes. Moving on to Item 20, Ordinance 26-S-030, conduct a public hearing, consider a zone change request from General Business District GB to General Business District on approximately five acres of land, generally located approximately 1,555 feet east of the intersection of FM 2252 and I-35 North Access Road, more specifically known as a portion of Comelk County property, identification number 73267, City of Church, Comelk County, Texas. With this, we have our Senior Planner, Peter Marquez.

Good evening. Once again, Ordinance 26S3, a purple zone change from General Business District to General Business District 2, approximately five acres. So here's the subject property outlined in yellow. It is part of the larger tract outlined in blue, but we're only talking about the portion in yellow tonight. It's currently zoned General Business District, and then the remainder of it is zoned Manufacturing District Light. To the south, we have I-35, And then to the east, we do have general business district with an approved specific use permit, which we'll discuss later on. That allows for heavy equipment self-service rentals for the RDO equipment company. And then to the west, we have undeveloped property that's owned general business district. We did send out four public notices on August 21st. We did not receive any responses. We did post a notice in the paper on August 26th and a notification sign was placed by the applicant. And this was heard at the September 2nd P&Z meeting. So again, this property in question tonight is five acres where they're proposing to go from GB to GB2, but it's part of a larger track that's unplotted. The applicant is proposing to have heavy equipment self-service or rental, but the main reason they're here for tonight is outdoor storage, which requires that GB2 zoning. And again, just showing you the difference between GB and GB2, those permitted uses. The main difference is that GB2 is intended for light industrial, and it starts allowing requests for specific use permits that are more industrial. yellow are part of the and general business district. the applicant is proposing an expansion of the rdo equipment code that's here to the right and they need the gb2 because they need that outdoor storage for the storage of their equipment and some background on the situation so essentially in 2000 approved property that's equipment cell service so that established the use and back then specific use permits approved the site plans as you can see kind of just showing you the site plan was approved and equipment storage was to remain at the rear of the building. And again and that was only for the 8 acre site to the right of the subject zone change. The subject 5 acres for tonight have been used as an extension of this 8 acre site development purpose and zone changes towards compliance. So looking at UDC section 21-54D for the criteria of approval, this area is designated as regional corridor. So it's that red color, you can see it all around and all along I-35. This is intended for commercial and entertainment along major thoroughfares. Again, this is typical big box retail, regional shopping centers, supermarkets, office space, and larger multi-family. But it also includes accommodating existing limited and logistical uses. The proposed GB2 is not compatible and does not align with the intents of the Regional Corridor Future Land Use Designation. It allows for a long . M1 to the property that can support the proposed use with access along FM 482. So again, GB2N's permitted uses do not promote the comprehensive land use plan and do not promote the general welfare of the city. Any new development is required to meet all of the city's shared code and building requirements. So even as the site is today, it cannot be used as . Each engineer did provide a memo on the traffic impact, and there would be no adverse impact on the city's transportation system. But I do want to point out that evaluation was based only on the proposed use of outdoor storage for heavy machinery, not all GB2 allowed uses. And kind of just going back to GB2's intent is for non-residential and light uses, so it should not emit dust, smoke, odor, gas, or fumes past their property boundary. And even though this is for an expansion of an existing business, if the zone change is approved, all uses within GB2 must be allowed and all potential specific use permit requests. So again, the proposed zone change and the uses permitted within GB2 are not consistent or appropriate with existing uses in the area or the goals of the comp plan. And here you can see I-35 in the outline in yellow is all the GB in the surrounding area. This purple in the corner is our short station development that's currently growing. And again, this is not what we have envisioned with the comp plan and it doesn't align. And these are just some of the permitted uses within GB2 would be allowed at the site. Again, we know that this is an extension, a proposed extension of an existing business, but we must allow all these uses within that zoning district at this site if the zone change is approved. So the zone change does meet the UDC requirements. It was sent to fire, police and EMS for review and no objections were provided. And again, although this proposed zone change is for an expansion of the existing business, staff must evaluate all their permitted uses within that zoning district and the potential specific use permits that can be requested. If this GB2 is approved, there's no way to restrict the uses permitted at this site or the specific use permits that can be requested. The expansion was done AT THIS SITE WITHOUT THE PROPER DEVELOPMENT PERMITS. AND IN PREVIOUS CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS, STAFF HAS RECEIVED THE DIRECTION FROM CITY COUNCIL TO PROTECT EXISTING GENERAL BUSINESS DISTRICT ALONG I-35 AND I-10 TO PROMOTE COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT COMPATIBLE WITH THE COMM PLAN WITH THE VISION OF THE CITY. AND THE PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION DID HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING FOR THIS ITEM ON SEPTEMBER 2ND. AND THEY HELD A DISCUSSION ON THE ITEM REGARDING THE FOLLOWING. the uses permitted within GB2 not being compatible on I-35, the specific use permit process not being an option for this site, and concerns with history of other sites with outdoor storage. So staff recommends denial of ordinance 26S030. because although this is a request for proposed expansion, GB2 and its permitted uses are not compatible with the comp plan future land use map and does not support the general welfare of the committee. And again, the PNZ held a public hearing for this item at the September 2nd PNZ meeting and made a recommendation of denial to city council with a six one vote with Commissioner Laredo-Reyes with an A vote. And I do want to note that during commissioner announcements, Commissioner Laredo-Reyes stated they voted nay on accident. And then the applicant is here if you have any specific questions for them as well.

Okay, at this time, I'll go ahead and open it up to residents and the public to be able to speak at 846. Yes.

I see the big plan. I'm representing RD Offit Company, the parent company of RDO Equipment Company. We're John Deere's largest worldwide dealer. We're not focused on all the permitted uses. We need that for our brand new equipment that sits there, that promotes the revenue, promotes the sales tax of the city. If we can't store equipment out there, we're limited to that seven acres. I think 20 years ago, We would have been happy saying this would be a $30 million revenue site. I believe we exceeded that. And we need 12 or 15 acres. The creek has got us landlocked. So 12 acres, we've got it full. currently, unpermitted, so I will apologize for that. But again, I want to reinforce, we do need that for outdoor storage. We're not a flea market, and we never will be, and we don't sell. So I would like you guys to consider our expansion, both revenue and property to allow your city to grow as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else wishing to come up to speak? Going once, going twice. We'll go ahead and close residents and the public to speak at 8.47. Any discussions on item ordinance 26-S-030?

this were to get approved um that area now is a dirt area where they've been storing equipment without proper development correct can you so that area where they're that we're talking about that five acres is currently used for storage of equipment and it's it's not developed because there was never a permit pulled for correct correct sir and if this were to get approved they would have to pull the permits and and develop that so it's compliant, paved surface and all the other improvements?

Correct. They would be required to do screening all along I-35 to enclose it. They would have to include all the landscaping. And as part of that process, they would have to plant and site plan to make sure it meets all of our requirements.

Thank you.

Council Member McAloosa.

yeah staff was accurate in terms of what their recommendation was i think we've been pretty consistent with trying to keep that uh in as gb because you know again we're not just looking at today we're looking at 10 15 20 years from now and uh we only have so that that gives us opportunity for good retail sales tax i think this is an unfortunate one because we do have a good business there that uh you know has been a fairly long time resident of the area. But I think when you consider all the options that GB2 allows, I just, to me, wouldn't be able to support that. So I support the recommendation of the staff.

Okay. Any other discussion? Can I get anyone to entertain a motion?

I'll make a recommendation of denial, or I'll make a motion.

You'll make a motion? Of denial. Of denial? Second. Okay, so I have a motion made by Councilmember McAloosa for denial. I have a second motion by Mayor Pro Tem Watson. Can I get everybody to cast your vote? Okay, so the yes vote means you're denying it, correct? All right.

Can I get the votes published?

All right, so we have six votes to deny the permit and one vote to approve the permit. So, Ordinance 26-S030 will be denied. Will be not approved. Okay, moving on to workshop. All right, we're gonna go ahead and move on to workshop on item 21. Workshop providing an update on unpaved surfaces. We have our senior planner, Daisy Marquez.

Good evening once again. We're here to provide an update and get a discussion on unpaved surfaces and impervious coverage. I'm Daisy Marquez, senior planner. So kind of providing a background on why we're here and what we're doing here. In September of 2023, our neighborhood services division provided a presentation on unapproved parking surfaces. And at the June 3rd, 2025 city council meeting staff came forward and presented on storm water management protections for the city and the city's municipal separate storm sewer system permit, also known as the MS4 permit and the vision for the city aesthetic. So kind of going through those slides that we reviewed last time in June, again, showing you some sites that have put that investment and put that financial commitment into the city to meet our community aesthetic and meet the UDC standards. So these people have gone through the development process. They made the effort and put in the time. But then also some images of the legal expansions that people have done things without permit. They're parking items outside on base material, and they're in violation of this unified development code. and some other images of sites. So as a result of that June workshop, staff got together and we quite literally went property by property throughout the whole city. And we evaluated all commercial uses with commercial zoning. And as a result of that, we came out with a total of 70 code enforcement cases. We split them up in between sections. So 27 of those were in the Northern Shirts area. So I-35 and up. 28 of those were in the Central Shirts area, south of I-35 and north of FM 78, and 15 of those were in the Southern Shirts area, so everything south of FM 78. As a result of our work, 68 out of those 70 properties and businesses have discussed their violations in a path forward with us. So that's 97% of those properties. 53 of those 68 actually came to City Hall for a meeting. So with all those 53 people, we met with them in person, we sat down with them, someone from engineering, someone from planning, and someone from neighborhood services talked through each violation with them. Two out of those 70 or 3% did not come in, meet with us or did not contact Neighborhood Services to discuss a path forward. And then kind of a final result of all those numbers so far, we have 17 cases completely closed, so 24%, 29 or 41% working on a development process or resolution, for a total of 46 properties or 65% total in compliance or working in compliance. So this has been a really large effort from the whole team. And just giving you some example violations that people received is work without a permit, outdoor storage on an unimproved surface, parking on an unimproved surface, and not having a certificate of occupancy. So a business not having a certificate of occupancy means we cannot verify that that building or that business meets life safety requirements. Some ways people have been coming into compliance is receiving retroactive building permits. We'll work with them. We let them know what they need to provide to us to get that building permit. Receiving a certificate of occupancy so we can ensure that that business meets the life safety requirements it needs. But also getting flat work permits or expansions of impervious coverage. So this includes a quick site plan, a quick building permit. We've had people apply for those. And parking lot expansions with the site plan and building permit. Some things we've also had people do is literally move the vehicles and storage from the grass and dirt and allow the area to re-vegetate. A lot of people took advantage of the abnormal rain we had during the summer. So that's how we were able to allow a lot of these cases to close. We have come into a challenge when meeting with these people. UDC Section 21-416E does have a section that specifically states that no building permit shall be issued on a property that is not a lot of records. And that means if the property is not plotted, it has not gone through the subdivision process with us, it cannot receive a building permit. And that means if you look here at this flow chart below, this is a flow chart a lot of people receive during the development process when they're discussing what they need to do to develop a site. And you can see it starts with plotting here, so preliminary plot, final plot, and it goes all the way to site plan and building permit. If a lot is not platted, they would have to start here in this yellow portion instead of starting over here with site plan and building permit if it's platted. And I do want to note that adding concrete or flat work requires a building permit, which consequently requires the property to be platted. Something with this plotting process is that it does take at least six to nine months. People need to get a surveyor out. They need to hire an engineer. So there are costs associated with that. And then there are some infrastructure costs associated with planning. So if they need to connect to sewer, connect to public water and whatnot, that needs to be evaluated and those plans need to be drafted during the plotting process. And again, this can be six to nine months before they even get to a building permit. I do want to reiterate that compliance is our main goal. We have been meeting with all these people. We have discussed lots of options with them. If they've requested time, you know, to let the grass grow back, we have given them time. We check up with them continuously. A lot of people are being open and honest and communicating with us throughout this process. But we believe we can work on bringing more sites into compliance and meet city standards with council's permission. So again, these are those 70 cases specifically listed. This is how we identify those violations by their code enforcement case number. And the grayed out portions are the cases that are resolved or working on compliance. willing to permit 70 tracks or 70 cases identified from our work on unimproved surfaces. BY BYPASSING THE PLOTTING REQUIREMENT FOR BUILDING PERMITS TO COMPLIANCE. I DO WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR THIS WOULD ONLY BE APPLICABLE TO 70 CASES HERE. NO NEW ONES. IT'S ONLY THESE PEOPLE THAT WE HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH THAT HAVE COMMUNICATED WITH US. ONLY PERMITTED USES WITHIN APPROPRIATE ZONING DISTRICTS. IF THAT USE IS NOT PERMITTED WITHIN THAT ZONING DISTRICT WE WOULD NOT ALLOW IT. paving work or fence permits. If they just need to add some parking, they need to add asphalt or pavement for outdoor storage and it's permitted within their zoning district, then we would allow them to get building permits for that work and do site plan building permit. This monopoly applicable to inappropriate zoning district uses expansions of nonconforming uses and building expansions or new uses. So this is just for things that they've been doing. We want to bring them into compliance. We have been talking with a lot of people and an example I can give is we have a property that has been operating as a business. They were annexed into the city as a business. They've had some growth throughout the years. They added less than a tenth of an acre of impervious coverage, so it wouldn't even require a stormwater management plan. They quite literally need to add about 1,000 or 2,000 square feet of asphalt concrete to meet our code requirements to bring them into compliance. But what's stopping them and what's kind of bringing them to a halt is that the property is not platted. So they have the proper zoning. They have a use that's permitted on the site. They only need to add about 2000 square feet of asphalt or pavement, but then planning would require them to put anything on hold or put compliance on hold for about six to nine months. put the money towards an engineer to plot this property, they would have to connect to sewer and water, they would have to hire an engineer to look at right-of-way dedication, look at any easements and whatnot that would be required of any new development, when in reality they're just adding 2,000 square feet of concrete or asphalt for their business that has grown, that we're just happy they're in the city and they comply with everything else. So that's just an example of essentially who this would be applicable to. And staff is looking for direction if you're willing to be open to this essentially, and we can come back with a resolution listing all these properties, seeing specifically that you would allow them to bypass the planning or subdivision requirement just for the cases listed and as listed here. So we would come back with that, but essentially we're coming with direction asking if you're okay with that, if you're not okay with that, do you want us to come back with a resolution permitting that?

mayor pro tim watson i wish this was kind of presented um a couple months back on all the the problems with all the businesses because for me we're citing them constantly sending them letters and then they start being compliant and then we halt all business and the management and the maintenance on everything, then they have to go through the process and delay it more. So I'm definitely for it because I wish we would have had this sooner and maybe a little bit more forthcoming in deciding that they have to have these options. It has to be said somewhere because at no time did I even read it or come across it. So I would like that in addition to that.

Council Member McAloosa.

Yeah, I was going to say that just the whole time you were doing the presentation, I was thinking of how can we help them? How can we make it easier for them? So I was glad that you did have that as part of the recommendation. I think anywhere and everywhere we can find a way to make it easier, less expensive to help them. I think that we should look at that, at least from my side.

Council Member Davis.

I think this is a great path forward and I'm all for it. I just wanna make sure that we are communicating for the example that you gave, you have a property that is out of compliance and they need 2,000 square feet of concrete or asphalt. I wanna make sure that they understand and it's documented that by them fixing that 2,000 square feet of concrete or asphalt, doesn't give them an opportunity to say, oh, we're gonna park on the next 2,000 feet and we can skip and speed through the whole process to add the second 2,000 square feet. As long as we have something that's communicated to them and documented that they have in the legal world signed and acknowledged that there's no, This is their fast pass to correction, but it's not an ever-growing option for them.

Yeah, I think, fair enough, Councilman. I think, you know, I stepped out so I didn't hear what Daisy said, but I think, you know, based on the direction from Council, staff has done a lot of work to basically try to get everybody in compliance. And then the key is when we get that is we just have to stay on it, right? We have to stay on it to not find ourselves in this situation again. And then again, need to keep working on things to find solutions for people that make sense, with our codes and things like that to have the quality of community we want, yet we're working with the folks to be able to pay for the kind of community that we want.

And we, like the example I provided, they're very willing to pull a building permit to bring the site into compliance, but we can document it and make it very clear to them that, you know, we're happy if they need another 10,000 square feet, but then they would have to go through the platting process because that is new development and anything that's new would have to come into our code requirements.

Council Member Westbrook. Yes, Mayor, so Over a period of time over the last three years, every now and then we hear the city of Church is difficult to work with. I think this is our opportunity, city council's opportunity to sort of decrease that sort of criticism and sort of provide you an opportunity to provide some more customer service to those 70. So I'm in support of it.

I kind of concur with everything that's been said by council because I too have been approached by a lot of the businesses and some of them are mom and pops and they simply cannot afford to make these changes that we're requiring them to make and then the length of time that it takes for them to be able to make it as well. But I do think because those businesses have been established, I would be in support of that. But I also think that we should give them notification that any improvements that they make, they would have to comply, you know, so that way they have that understanding up front that anything that I do here going forward, and then I know I'm going to be held to these standards. So for sure.

Council Member Guerrero. Yeah, and Daisy, I just want to say, yeah, I do support the program. Anything that we can do to better shirts, to better the residents, I'm for it.

Yeah, at the end of the day, these residents, they're providing jobs for people that live in our community, and they're also providing sales tax, which benefits our city greatly. So I'm in support of it.

If there's no more direction, I'll come back with a resolution within a certain time. within a certain timeframe, we'll just need legal to review it. And then you'll see that coming soon.

Thank you. Item 22 on our workshop, workshop of the quarterly financials, third quarter, 2025, 2026. We have finance director, Mr. Walters.

All right. Good evening, mayor and council. You thought you got off with less PowerPoint slides from me than normal. So I'm here to fix that. Yeah, there it is full screen. All right, so we're gonna look over the third quarter of our fiscal year, which ends on, ended on June, 2026. So here's the general fund revenue forecast. As you see, we normally have a big spike over in the December, January timeframe. It usually trails off if you see the non-blue colors over here. This is usually because we have the property taxes usually come in big in January and December and then flexes back out. And you'll see that this year we had, in addition to the property taxes, we also had nice sales taxes. I'll touch on that in a moment. But preview, we're starting to flatten out a little bit. The expenses, expenses usually are very flat. We had a little spike here in June. Usually comes in August. Those are big expenses. Capital items usually get purchased, and you'll see that jump. This is just looking at the ad valorem taxes for the general fund. You'll see, again, big jump in the early months, really flattened out in the later months. You talked about... Real quick, part of the DVHS discussion was like, we were seeing some property taxes being refunded due to retroactive activation of those exemptions. You'll see like September last year, we had 26,000, or two years ago, we had $26,000 refunded, so negative on their property taxes due to those refunds. Sales taxes, what everyone loves to hear about. You'll see the blue is this year, big spikes, big growth due to the one time. You'll see this last year we had about May is when they started coming in above our normal, which was down here. This light blue is kind of our normal area. Last year we're still elevated through this time period. And then you'll see that we spiked it in June. We had a nice one in June. A little preview, the next two months are going to be back down to normal it looks like. So I believe that our one-time sales tax generation may actually be over. We'll see in the next couple of months to be sure, but the last two months were in line with where we were at two years ago. Permit side, new permits. So again, permits can be fairly volatile whenever they come in. Developers want to do big and to move fast. Commercial side, usually large expenses for them, requiring big revenue on the permit side for us. But if you look at the permit numbers we included, 25, 26, residential, new residential, 347 to date. Whereas last year, permits to date, 327. So about 20 permits higher. We're still kind of in that range, about 350. And the commercial side, we're a little bit, we had 20 new commercial permits. And then this time last year, we had 24. So we're still kind of trucking along around that same area. Franchises, they're tied to... The utility bills, these are the amounts that we get that's tacked on utility bills that utilities get to use our right-of-way next to our roads. So the power lines, the water lines, depending on who's running them, GVC, CPS, they pay us a little bit of their gross revenue to use our right-of-way. Usually as they're fairly flat, but we'll have some spikes quarterly as they pay us quarterly. Our city assures investments. We keep about 92% right now in our investment pools. That's very liquid. We can get all the funds next day, and we're getting fairly comparable rates on those. We're starting to branch out. You'll see more and more CDs have grown quite substantially if you looked at the previous years. Now we're about almost 11 million on CDs, kind of lock in a longer maturity. So we can't get access to those funds as quickly, but we're getting a little, we're locking in a better interest rate, rate of return on those. And then Hancock Whitney, we were actually buying down Hancock Whitney a little bit and moving that over to our CDs, kind of managing those longer-term investments in-house rather than using an advisor. So the investment rates, you see the 25, 26 portfolio. This is the combined average of our return is in the green as well as a three-month T-bill. So we were hitting quite a bit. We're above the three-month T-bill. Just in June, it flipped a little bit. So we started, we earned a little bit less. This looks quite big, but it's 3.87 was the three-month T-bill and we were earning 3.76. So some of the flip side on... going a little bit more out on the CDs, locking in a little bit longer maturity. We were locking in a good interest rate. But if the T-bills spike, because this is a big spike, those are the short-term federal funds rates. Basically, the Fed thought they were going to raise rates, and so everyone wanted to buy them real quick. The sell-off, these spiked, and you'll notice that our portfolio yield's been fairly stable. And so we're trying to keep it stable, but it looks like we're only not quite reaching our target just because of what the federal funds rate was doing or what everyone anticipated the federal funds rate to do back in June. On the water and sewer revenue, again, this is fairly flat, regular bills. I usually see a little bit lower in the winter months when people stop watering their yards as much, but insurance, we're seeing a lot of people still kind of use that feature for the year-to-date actual, actually slightly down because we had a big wet period early in the summer. So we're at 23.5 million as opposed to last year, 24.9 million. But we're keeping an eye on that. So the revenue is very much tied to how much rain we get. So we should look at the water sewer revenue. Specifically, we have water, sewer, and garbage. As well as the garbage is another contributing factor when we start outsourcing the commercial billing and collection to our new waste provider. You'll see our water is in black and blue. So... This is where we were at last year, pretty much in line. Black was last year. So you see our water did drop a little bit in June due to just how rainy it was during that time period. EMS side, EMS year to date for 25-26 was 14.2. 24-25 is 11.3. Those are bills out. So we're doing a little bit better on our billing. We're just working on, as the EMS director will bring it to you all in a couple months, ways we can increase the overall collection on those bills. Drainage REV is another one. It's fairly standard and flat. You'll see that we did increase the drainage fee around December last year. That's where that increase in the revenue. We're still collecting a little bit under where we're budgeted every year, but we're collecting more with the rate increase. So the 25-26 year-to-date actual is $1.5 million, whereas last year at this time we were just over $1 million. And we only have three more months to go in the fiscal year. The EDC, they're very much tied to the sales tax. That's the biggest portion of their revenue. Again, we had a large showing in the one-time sales taxes, so their 25-26 actual revenue current to date is $20.2 million. Last year, they were about 8.8. So that's the additional funding that they were receiving from that one-time sales tax amount that we do see has started to die off. See, it drops down here. And then just a little preview of the next couple months when I come back for the final quarter, fourth quarter, they are back down to our normal rates. Okay, I went through a little quick because I know it's been a long meeting, but if you have any questions specifically over how the revenues shake out or on the expenses, just let me know.

Any questions on the third quarter of quarterly financials?

Mayor, so just to be clear, all of your actions concerning these financials are governed by a policy that's already in place, and there's a committee, right? There's an investment committee?

The investment committee for other... Yes, we have an investment committee. We have investment policy that outlines an investment strategy with a maximum maturity and a weighted average maximum maturity that we follow. And then we'll actually be scheduling an investment committee meeting here in the next couple months. So those of you that are on the committee, Mr. Guerrero, Ms. Dietz, and the mayor will be sending those invites out to try to plan that meeting here shortly.

Thank you. Have we no other questions? Thank you. Excuse me. We just had one more question.

The committee, how many times do they meet?

We'll be meeting per year. So we'll have the whole schedule. Probably the second one in December, but if not,

Thank you. So moving on to item 23, workshop on future water demand and supply. With us, we have our deputy city manager, Mr. Brian Jaynes.

Thank you, Mayor. So this is a sort of a follow up to some discussions we've had, some emails, some communications you receive from folks in the community. We've talked about before about our future water needs, where we want to go. Again, this is probably not the final conversation, but hopefully this sort of starts and gets us moving in that direction. So just for folks out there, I'll cover some basic stuff you may not know. We deal with water CCNs, certificates of convenience and necessity, and they stipulate who has both the right and the obligation to provide service for water or sewer, as the case may be. And so you can see from the graphic, City Assured has the bulk of that CCN in our community, NBU New Braunfels provides a bit of it. SAWS provides a bit down in the southern section. And then Green Valley SUD provides it as well. So those entities are the ones both responsible and obligated to provide water to those areas. And so really what we're talking about here is with the CCN, this discussion really is going to focus on where SHRTS is obligated to provide service. Will let SAWS deal with their thing? Will let NBU deal with their area? We do have a little bit of overlap with Green Valley SUD because as was mentioned earlier tonight, you've received a proposal from them. where they are interested in essentially partnering or purchasing some water rights that that we have in a different format and i'll cover that in a minute um but again where do we get most of our water from to serve the areas and most of the water that we need comes from sslgc the shirts again local government corporation council member westbrook serves on that board um to help guide it. It's a five-member board. It's really comprised of City of Church, City of Seguin, as the name would imply. That's where the vast majority of it comes from. We have a couple of Edwards Wells and some other minor things, but the vast bulk of it comes from SSLGC. So I want to talk about the Cibolo Valley Local Government Corporation. I believe Councilwoman Watson is the ad hoc liaison to that board. CBLGC, a little bit of history, was founded in 2011. And again, it started of Cibolo, Converse, Seguin, and Palma. Eventually then Converse, Seguin, and Selma withdrew, leaving it to just Schertz and Cibolo with that corporation. So again, it's a member board. You get two appointments. Cibolo gets two appointments. But part of what happened is after they withdrew is one of the things when you get water rights and you want to start producing water, you need to get it on the region plan, the sort of plan that says, hey, potentially water is going to be taken out. So these water districts in the state and the communities can help plan. And then what really happened is between 2017, 2019, CVLGC went out and acquired about roughly a little bit less, 11,000 acre feet of water rights and started looking at potentially identifying well sites. So the idea was at the time is that Schertz and Cibolo would need more water in the future. And we would come together with these communities and create another entity that would produce water for our future needs. As you see, some of those communities subsequently dropped out. Now, as I hear it, kind of what got us going on the route in 2011 with CVLGC is, at the time, we were working with SSLGC, but Seguin wasn't growing as much. They didn't really have a need to grow SSLGC. They kind of came initially on CVLGC, but then pulled out. And so those shirts kind of said, hey, well, why don't we work with some of the communities that we know need water and we'll create this other corporation. What's kind of happened subsequently, though, is Seguin has started to experience a significant amount of growth, as you've seen in the news. And then even some of the entities that provide water in their community have struggled to obtain those water rights. And so Seguin is worried about residents, their business centers, and so again SSLGC has worked with some agreements on entities like Springs Hill to provide some water there kind of going forward. But generally I think the mindset with SSLG has a bit changed of we need to grow this entity because Schertz and Seguin likely will need more water in the future. And so we've moved forward with an eye to that. which brings us back to CBLGC. And I think one of the things that we sort of get into, right, is, and I'll back up, A little bit, let me back up to SSLGC is, so SSLGC in looking at that need to provide additional water as Schertz and Seguin both grew, in 2025 had a study conducted to look at future water needs. And again, the objective was try to figure out where they need to be. It evaluated current water supplies. allocated to shirts and considered future demand, and the same thing for Seguin. And ultimately what it found is that it looks like we're going to need a bit of water. Now, that may change if we don't grow as much or we grow more. It also has to do with how much water we start using with efficiencies and things like that. But that water need, and again, it's important, but it starts to come up really, and you can see, you know, either scenario you look at, but if we look at the typical expected growth demand, it's roughly 2070 is when we start needing the water. Now, we can't wait till 2069 and say, okay, well, what do we do? We've got to plan early. But the point is we don't need additional water for a while. And this gets into a little bit of the issue with CBLGC. And so getting back to CBLGC, the leases were obtained with about 89, 90 different landowners, about 158 tracts. Again, as I mentioned, Six preliminary well sites were obtained. Our annual lease payments now, or CVLGC's annual lease payments, are about $275,000. And so generally, with our budget, we kick in about $200,000. Cibolo kicks in about $200,000. And that covers those lease payments and other operational costs. So we have a director. We have an admin assistant. They have an attorney that they hire. They have various expenses and things like that. So we're kicking in about $200,000 a year as is Cibolo for that, for our share of lease payments. The initial term of those leases was 15 years. And it automatically renews and goes year to year as long as CVLGC makes lease payments. So these things go beyond that. So it's a supply out there. But a couple of things with it. So the amount paid for the water lease is approximately doubles when a permit is issued to produce water, right? So that 275 goes up to 550 upon issuance of the permit. And then there's a bit of a formula to it, but it generally kind of quadruples once full production occurs. So we pay the lease, the property owners less right now, When we go to permitting, we pay them more. And when we go to production, we pay them even more. And there's a provision to increase as the CPI increases. Because in theory, these could go on forever. The leases include a provision that CVLGC will diligently pursue needed approvals. So the idea was, we'll give you these leases. You guys need to work toward getting those approvals. And I think it's obvious the motivation of those property owners for that is they want the additional revenue. They don't want to keep making the amount they're making now. They want to get to those higher amounts. And so, as I said, it's problematic for the leases not to pursue permitting production even if the cities don't need water. And it certainly becomes a problem when we hit the end of those 15-year leases. because then it sort of begs this question, have you been diligently pursuing? What are you doing? Why has it taken so long? This, that, and the other. And that is a bit of the crux of the problem that we have where we would say, well, why don't we just hold these leases because they're a value. It's a finite supply of water, right? They're getting harder to obtain. until we need them. It's a sunk cost on the front end, or we could even partner with somebody in theory to start producing the water perhaps for somebody else who needs it until we need it. And that's where the issue comes into. So the study that CVLGC did a number of years ago estimated the cost to produce this water themselves to be at $162 million. So it's not an inexpensive undertaking and you've got about $15 million of operating costs. Now that includes the lease payments, but that includes electricity, staff, things like that to produce if they were to do it on their own. So the challenge with this is while we have this really valuable asset, we have the clock ticking on us to say you need to do something with it. We don't really need the water right now, and it's really expensive to get it there. So we can't just keep doing what we're doing. We have to figure out something to do. And we've been having those conversations, right? Because I think shirts sort of kind of started leaning. Given these costs, it would seem much more cost-effective, whatever form it would be in, to get all our water from SSLGC where we already have that infrastructure, right? We already have the pipes in place. We already have the facilities. We have the staff in place. They've been doing this. We get some economies of scale, right? Why do we want to replicate both sets of overhead and infrastructure for this theoretically? And that could take a couple of different forms. But again, part of that goes back to SSLGC. They're different plants. We're still paying on the one that Seguin's not paying on. So we kind of, again, have plenty of water at this point. And I think those discussions, we were kind of waiting for Cibolo to figure out what they were doing. I believe they are having similar meetings here this month and they have had similar meetings about what to do as well. Again, my impression is, they have future water needs they are not necessarily inclined and they haven't said in the meetings we want to power forward and move forward with cblgc producing the water generally for the same reasons that we have it's really really expensive don't need the water yet what do we do well those discussions have you know have led cblgc to receive a couple of offers one from a private company that wanted to essentially create a public facilities corporation, right, to essentially produce water for industrial users that's not treated. And then the other we received was GVSUD's request. And GVSUD has made clear that they need water and need it sooner and are trying to pick up those rights. GVSUD, if you'll remember, also, has to provide water in a portion of our community and so again much like seguin is dealing with the springs hill issue we we care about making sure that all our residents business owners regardless of who the water provider is have have that ability to do um and and so that's essentially um where it it kind of gets us is i think in staff looking at this The dilemma we face is we have this really valuable asset that it's tough to say why would we give this up, yet the flip side is to hold that asset we have to spend more money essentially and not an insignificant amount of money to really move forward with production. And so there are a number of options that are available to us, but there are also a number of factors. So as you read in the news, water is in increasing demand across the state. You see what Corpus Christi is dealing with. You hear about AI data centers and some of the concerns there of water use. And you just see everybody sort of scrambling to try to get water where they can. The other issue is that water conservation districts, which are sort of these entities created to kind of manage the water in their region, they're becoming increasingly concerned about allowing water to leave their district, right? Their concern is, yeah, I get the big cities that are growing over here need water. but eventually we're going to start growing, and what do we do if we've allowed that all to leave, and now we don't have water in our region? Now, again, the dilemma is you've got... The state's getting more focused on the issue as competition increases. You saw that, I think, last year at TML. There was a big presentation from some... You'll see that coming. At some point, what does the state have to see to try to manage this issue? And then the other part is just partnerships with rights to access water. We have partnerships with SAWS to try to benefit both of us, the line out here to move water back and forth as we need it, things like that. So there are options out there. The other part of it, again, as I said, the lack of clarity as to what these districts are not allowed to be murky. It's not clear, for example, how much of that water we would be able to get out of the district for those leases that we have. That's part of that permitting process. There's an unknown. But there's some of that unknown even with the water rights we have in SSLGC trying to increase permitting capacity. And so I think clearly everybody seems to agree we need to ensure adequate water for our future because it's really problematic to find ourselves in this situation where we don't have enough water and it's becoming impactful. But the reality of that is we need to be able to afford that water. If that water is so, so expensive, that it's out of reach of the community, how much good is that doing us and how long do we pay for that resource? I think one of the questions is, do we want to be part of and pay for more than one water supplier? What's the value, the benefit of getting a bunch of our water from one entity, CVLGC and a bunch of our water from SSLGC and having those dual overheads as opposed to from one entity, one set of pipes, one set of production, things like that, right? And there's value to have more than one, right? You get a little bit of a fallback. If you have a problem over here, you've got this. So there are pros and cons to that. And it's balancing all of those factors in a time of uncertainty is really the issue. And so that's kind of where we've gotten to. Again, I don't think we necessarily wanted any kind of decision at that point, because there's a lot to think about and talk about. But I think what is really looking is how much interest is there in continuing down this path with CBLGC to have CBLGC remain as an entity and push with producing water. And again, It's not a final decision. It's a lot of different factors. I think staff's recommendation is it doesn't make sense to move forward in this fashion. Now, if we make that kind of initial tentative decision, then it begs this question, what do we do with those water leases? Because we've sunk a fair amount of money into them. They're a valuable resource. What do we want to do with those, right? And it's a couple things that we need to think about. Do we want to, you know, a couple of options are either in partnership with Cibolo, or if we can't agree with Cibolo, we try to bifurcate those leases. Do we want to try to recoup some of our investment, the investment that we've made, and really focus on making those LGs and directing them pursue actually a different water lease that makes sense so that we have it start now we've got you know however many years to work together and go that route that we're not continuing to pay this thing over time right we kind of get out of it we change course we start spending that money over here instead of over here and we get leases that are better suited to when we would need that water, right? And or do we look at whomever it might be trying to who we would partner with those leases. And there are a couple of different things that we could do, right? We've talked about one is to just sort of sell those leases for as much as we can get and go a different route. The other is to try to work a deal with somebody and we'd get less for it, but to say, well, we'll give you the bulk of that, but we'd like to retain some of that, right? So for example, we think we need about 2,500 acre feet We have rights to about half of that 11,000, 10,500, if you will, is actually probably closer to what it is. We could make a deal with somebody and say, look, I don't need our full 2,500, but let me get 1,000 acre feet of that rights from you. You can have the difference, essentially, you know, 4,500 or so. And our deal with you would be done at a discounted price because I want the rights to the water with it. that's an option that sort of makes sense, right? It allows us to say, let's get some value from this, but let's move to this other path that I think makes a lot more sense from the long-term perspective. And I'll say this really, one of the things that you know with Green Valley, as I said, is I think the general feeling of staff is that we would rather partner with somebody who's gonna provide a benefit to our community even if maybe the price is a bit less, then I'm doing a deal with some entity that gets water to say Kerrville that we derive no value from, right? So if we can maybe obtain some of that water right, I can do it with an entity that will dictate it goes to our community, our city, right? That makes perfect sense. I will say this, I think what you saw in Green Valley's offer is because they also provide sewer, they have rights in the plant down south, we have some ways to maybe expand a pie, if you will, if we're negotiating this thing, that allows us to get things of value that is better for them than a cash payment, right? And that we're able to throw in the sewer because we have a lease agreement with them where we're paying not an insubstantial amount of money to utilize their capacity in the plant. And so they've offered that up as the deal, I think, And my impression is what they submitted us was not the final be all end all. It was, hey, here's something from the conversations we've had that we think makes sense. But as a point of starting, which is I think what you saw tonight. But I think what we're really looking for in direction is if council thinks there's value to saying it doesn't seem to make sense funding to water providers and CBLGC as it was envisioned and SSLGC, And so let's look for a more cost effective way to do it. But that gives us time to plan with SSLGC and ideally maybe gets us a little bit of the water rights here to kind of close that gap. We may have a little more comfort with it to try to do a deal. I think that's really what we wanted to just hear a reaction to so that we can come back with you with more information going forward. But I think the idea is to just see if there's merit to yeah, it doesn't make sense to necessarily ignore everything and sell everything else, no, and barrel ahead with CDLGSE as it was envisioned, that I'm not sure anybody really sees going that direction now.

Okay. Well, so with that, just for clarity, would SSLGVC, the Schertz-Sagin Local Government Corporation, would they be able back like in 2070, like 2070, 2080, would they be able to like reach out into Wilson County to do like do more wells if we needed more water?

No. So, so the issue we've got right with these leases, right. And as I would say, if, if the leases were not structured the way they were structured, which is pushing us to permitting and production, then I might very well say, here's the cost to just hold those leases over that period of time. This is what you pay to keep it. This is what you might pay for new leases, right? Give you some ideas there. But the problem, I think, is that you need to go to permitting and production per those leases that we don't need to do yet. And so the problem is, if we can't sit on them that long, and then how does SLGC just pick up the leases?

No.

I think he was, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, so I don't, I'm not saying let's set on the CCVLGC lease rights or anything like that. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm asking is, is the Scherzegin, yeah, local government corporation, are they able to expand to drill more wells as we need more water?

Yeah, I think, so I will say this, right? The first is water resources. underground getting the leases in a location where it's as cost-effective as possible to get it into our system district won't have created a bunch of regulatory and cost hurdles for us but yeah I mean I think the idea is that part of what as we've had conversations with SSL GC staff is to say look not going to go this route with SLGC or with CVLGC. We're going to only have access to some of that or none of that. We need you to start now going out and getting those leases for us. Start now, but get them with a long hold window.

This slide actually comes from a study that was done by SSLGC. And just to break it down a little bit, the blue that you see at the bottom is our current Gonzales wellfield, et cetera, from there. And then the solid green above that is the Guadalupe. That's the newer wellfield and treatment plant that was put into place, pipes, et cetera. So between that, we're pretty far out there, right? Because see, we're at 20, call it 2026. We're running 7,000 acre feet. Last year was a higher number, smaller number this year. But as you move out that blue, you can see the blue on top of both of those, those are two Edwards Aquifer wells that we have that we can get about 1,000 acre feet from. So if you follow the track of the line, really we don't, under what we have now and we can get from firm yield, we're looking at 2042 to 2043 when we'll actually need more water, right? So we're 14 years out, 15 years out, 16 years out, somewhere in that range of where, so we need to be planning for that. What they've proposed here in their long range plan is to maximize what you have. That's that kind of diagonal blue hash mark, what we have in the Gonzales well field So we already have a well field, we already have a treatment plant, and we already have transmission pipes in the Gonzales well field. So expand that, gain more permits, build onto that. So that gains us more and pushes us out to 2052 And then you can see the blue on that that's straight up and down. That's increasing the actual permits in the Gonzalez Welfare. So that's why you gain those economies of scale in that efficiency because we already own the wells. We already have leases and or own the property. And we already have the pipes. And we already have a treatment plant. That's why it's way more cost effective to expand within that area. realm and then beyond that you see the the diagonal hashed uh green marks that's maximizing the guadalupe field same thing we already own the guadalupe well field we already own all the infrastructure it's all being paid for now by our rate payers that pushes out to 2050 though on the expect and a little bit the uh the high growth expected demand you would have to look at alternative strategies. So alternative strategy goes to what the mayor was saying, where we would reach a point where we need to do something, or SSLGC needs to do something. And there's a couple options out there that are realistic. One is to, in the Gonzales Wellfield, go into the Wilcox Aquifer, right? It's a little less restricted, a little more briny, requires a little more treatment, but still cost-effective because you already have the land, the leases, the infrastructure, everything's in place. So further expansion pushes us up to about 15 and a half thousand acre feet a year and really kind of moves the line out to 2068. And then what do you do at 2068? Well, you start looking at, okay, are we maxing out that Wilcox? So another logical move would be to move into Wilson County and SSLG could acquire its own leases at that point in time and get its own and or purchase land, build its own infrastructure, which is relatively close to the Gonzales Treatment Plant, as well as the Guadalupe Treatment Plant. So for a lower investment than it would cost as CVLGC, SSLGC could expand into Wilson County. Now granted, this is 2070, so we're 45 years away, 44 years away from that. So there's a lot that can happen in that amount of time. so in that amount of time it may not be feasible to go into wilson county like i'm saying you have these groundwater uh districts that are protective about importing you may have to push out into another county in another direction from staff's perspective logical that we do all the planning and process IN TERMS OF THE ORGANIZATION ITSELF HAS GOT 25 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE AS OPERATING AS AN ORGANIZATION AND AS A WATER PRODUCING ENTITY. CVLGC WOULD BE STARTING GROUND UP FROM DAY ONE. SO THIS KIND OF LAYS OUT THEIR KIND OF STRATEGIC PLAN AND THIS IS THE SCENARIO THAT KIND OF DRIVES US IN THE DIRECTION TO SAY, we probably should move these leases and get what we can and then follow this line of development and get the water all from SSLGC. Sorry to jump in there with that long comment, but I think this chart tells me a lot.

Yeah, and thank you for explaining that. So we have Council Member Sheridan.

All right. I ain't going to say I told you so, but I'm going to say I told you so. We needed the water. Again, just my comment is that I'm not a fan of selling the water, period. Selling the water leases, personally, I would not approve them if it were me. Secondly, have we talked to Cibolo? Have we discussed some of our plans? Because I know they're actively working a plan on their side. So I don't know if we've engaged with them or we working in cohes with them. And I think that might be the first step to do is get with them and say, hey, because I think they have some solutions that I think are... not bad in a sense to where, you know, it's not going to take away a lot of our budget, a lot of our money. I know there's a plan where the private investor is going to come in and pretty much invest the funds into to where we don't have to put anything into it. So that's, again,

THAT'S KIND OF SO WE HAVE HAD SEVERAL MEETINGS WITH CIVILO AND OFFICIALS FROM CIVILO. BUT BEAR IN MIND THE TIP OF THE SPEAR IS CBLGC. RIGHT. THIS IS CBLGC. WHICH CIVILO IS A PART OF THAT. THEY OWN HALF OF IT AND WE OWN HALF OF IT. SO AT THE END OF THE DAY WE HAVE TO AGREE TO WHATEVER DEAL IS MADE.

EXACTLY. AND THE OTHER PIECE TOO, AND I'LL SHUT UP, IS THAT, YOU KNOW, maybe we need to consider, do we want to put all our eggs in one basket? I know with SSLGC, again, the reason why maybe this model, I don't know how old this model is, if it's a recent model, but again, there's going to be more water demands over there at SSLGC with the data center that's going to come over there with Guadalupe? Cibolo's putting up a data center, apparently, or the one that's in question or the one that's being talked about. So I'm not sure, but I know there's talks with it, right?

Just to be clear, this is the water we have rights to. They can't sell it to somebody.

Well, I know, but what I'm saying is that I'm sure that's probably going to affect, with the water that's over there in Guadalupe County, that may affect SLGC because I'm assuming some of that water is probably going to be that supports Seguin, because that data center is in Guadalupe County, it's going to be near Seguin, right? In the border of that? So the water that Cibolo gets, they get it from a variety of sources. I'm talking about SLGC.

Well, SSLGC gets its water from Guadalupe County. There's a wellfield there. And then the main one, the bigger one, is in Gonzales County.

So what I'm trying to point out is that there's going to be a higher demand here within the next 10 years for that. So I'm just saying, and I'll shut up, is that we would put all our eggs in one basket. And I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, we could. And again, let me say this. We certainly could, as was the original plan. We can move forward with the permitting and production of this water. That's certainly an option.

And I know one of the options was, you know, is basically pulling the water out of the ground, not putting a, you know, a, you know, a, treatment facility was basically pulling the water out of the ground. I know that's what one of the recommendations were, you know, once they get the water out of the ground and send it to a treatment center, then, you know, I know that was part of the company. Which one? It says CCLGC. CVLGC.

Yeah, we could, right? So we could, I mean, that's, the original plan was for CVLGC, you know, one of them was to build its own treatment center and pipes, and the estimate at the time was $162 million to do that. So yeah, that's, again, part of this was if the direction of council is we want to move forward with CVLGC as proposed, we can do that, there's a significant cost to doing that that we have to pay for.

Right. And I think if we share that cost, you know, the burden wouldn't be on us for so much. So, you know, if we find partners that we can share that cost with, then it might be in our best, you know, advantage for us.

In terms of Cibolo, you mean?

With anyone, whoever it may be.

So, right. But just to be clear, the proposal that came in wasn't to use their money it was to create a pfc a public facility to have cblgc create a public facilities corporation and they would issue the debt that pfc would to create it

Yeah, I don't know how much we wanna get into the proposals that are on the table or the complexities of it because they're very different and they're both equally complex, I think. One that is from a private entity that would produce raw water and sell it to industrial customers. and then another is the GV-SUD proposal.

We would make some control and where we can, you know, if we need more water, we can get more water. We have a baseline. If we need to put more water, we can do that. So, you know, we need to have that flexibility.

I mean, we can structure a deal, right? If we want to structure a deal that says, look, we always want to retain the rights... to the acre feet of water, we can do that. Understand though, that that is significantly going to impact the structure of the deal, because one of the concerns that everybody talks about in water is how you cut someone off, right? So even if you make a deal with say Kyle or Buda and say, you have this water for 30 years, but then it stops, There's some question as to whether or not you can actually turn the faucet off. And they're going, no, I've got a community without water. So again, everything's possible. That certainly is an option.

I'm assuming there's going to be a workshop between the parties. And I would like to see options. I want to see multiple options of what direction that we can take, not just one option. I want to see multiple options. That's just my thought. Thank you.

Yeah, and I think that was the idea of this. So if the feedback I got from you is don't want to let go of these water leases, want to retain them, but are interested in exploring different ways to retain them in terms of partnerships or structures, that's feedback that we're looking for. And that's been heard.

Yeah, and I'm not going to say the problem. It's more like the challenge is with the current rights, lease rights, we have to do something with them like now. So that's the problem. We cannot sit on it and wait until later until we need it. We need to move forward with doing something now. So that's the challenge.

And we sat on it too long, you know? And now we need to do something now. Now we've come to a point where we gotta do something now.

So the only thing I would say, right, this is a little bit of our dilemma. Why, if you say, well, why didn't we do anything? Why did we wait this long? Because we don't need the water, right? So again, one of the items you would have talked about in the last couple months is how much you increase the rate payers. to pay for this water that we don't need, that there would be a concern entering into any substantial lease with someone to drive revenue for, because can we, can we cut it off?

So yeah, but fair point. And the longer that we wait, the higher the cost is going to be. So if we're going to do something, we need to do it now.

Yeah, we can, we can, again, we can move forward now. We can pay on that for a longer period. Yeah.

And I guess it's important to understand, too, that this is, if we're talking about making a deal or selling, right, if we're effectively talking about selling, this is a fair market transaction, right? It's an arm's length. So we'll take any proposers. We'll take any options that are out there. And we're willing to listen to anything. So far, we've only had two people respond to that. Two instances, not people.

But there's been discussion, I will say, at CBLGC, and this will likely come up at their next meeting, of do we not want to put the word out more broadly that we are entertaining offers of sorts to see how many more we get, right? Because it's only folks who are, I get the impression, either right in the area and kind of hear what's going on or maybe have been reached out to by folks. specifically that would know.

I have a question to backtrack on the comment of the complexity and not being brought to our attention. Is that just we're not able to understand it and then we're never going to be given that information? Or I'm just trying to understand your comments. No, no, no.

We're happy to explain it now. I just didn't know how much longer you wanted to stay because it'll take a while to explain both of the deals. You're more than capable of understanding it.

Trust me. I think the initial here was to get kind of an initial read because if the idea is council's not interested in potentially selling off any or all of this water, that's kind of the first thing that we need to know, right? And so either partner may say, yeah, I'm willing to do a deal with you for 20 years or 25 years. They may not. They may say, no, I need to go find a longer term solution. But I think that was really what we wanted to get out of this to then understand what the questions and concerns were. Because, you know, you could have come back and said, why are we not just proceeding with CVLGC? Let's just move forward with that. And I think that was kind of breaking it down into chunks, if that makes sense.

I have Council Member Davis that's been waiting to speak. No, I'm fine.

No, I understand the logic of not. going with two entities and not having two sets of overhead. The leases that are jointly owned or that are owned by CVLGC, us and Cibolo, are located where?

In Wilson County.

Wilson County. And does SSLGC currently pump any water from Wilson County?

I don't think they pump any water out of Wilson County.

Currently, we have a well field in Gonzales County and one in Guadalupe. Okay. but the proximity of where those leases are, it's not too far from SSLGC's facilities.

So it's reasonable to drag it up there. So we could, in theory, if we're looking at increasing or securing our water rights, we could take our portion from Wilson County and transfer, sell it, whatever, to SSLGC and ultimately develop those wells and send it to one of the SSLGC treatment facilities and into that existing pipeline that we've got.

Yeah, that's one of the options, right? Yeah, one of the options is to work a deal, try to bifurcate in whatever format.

I mean, so again, I agree. We need to make sure we're secure on water rights, but if we're looking at that current table of what we already have, and it takes us out to 2070 or so, and On top of that, you've got the potential for what's existing in CVLGC. We've got approximately 5,000 acre feet, and we say that we'd be comfortable with 1,000 or 2,000. To me, we could potentially sell our portion of rights for 3,000 acre feet, and that would help fund the... costs that we would need to take our 2,000 acre feet that we retain and get it pumped into the SSLGC environment.

Yeah, I mean, there are a number of options. One would be to try to, again, bifurcate from Cibolo's, right, and then bifurcate ours further or send the whole thing over to SSLGC with us retaining part and then seeing if SSLGC can sell the other 3,000.

And they do that now. I mean, SSLGC is selling excess water to San Antonio and a few other locations, so.

Yeah, that's an option for it as well, right? And part of it is, you know, again, do we want to put something out more broadly or CVLGC to see what offers they get, right? One of the analysis is, does SSLGC think it is more cost effective to do that, versus, nah, let us pick up on leases that we're not paying as much on on the front end, and we're not paying the overhead of the infrastructure to get it to us, right? Because that's the big thing, right? When we look at our water rates, the bulk of that is what we pay to SSLGC to produce the water that we get. You know, I mean, there are a number of options, right? You could theoretically direct to go back and try to renegotiate the leases.

But on the same token, if an agreement is reached for our portion with Green Valley SUD, Green Valley SUD is providing some water to the southern part of Schertz.

Yeah, I think Green Valley, and I think Green Valley had committed that they would be willing to provide, to use that water in Schertz Residence. And then whatever's not needed, they could use elsewhere, right? But that would be one option.

Same as SSLGC.

Same as SSLGC, right.

But we wouldn't have the overhead associated with Green Valley.

That's right.

Versus having a separate overhead to administer CVLGC like we do with SSLGC.

And everything's subject to negotiation, right? We could, we would. one opportunity might be to negotiate an at-cost purchase of, say, 1,000 acres or, you know, because it's coming. If it's piped and they have a delivery point in the pipe, what we call the pipe piece in Southern Shirts, it's not difficult to take it from there somewhere else into our system. So if we have access to their system, it's a cheap way to get water, is what I'm saying.

I mean, to me, if we don't need the full 5,000 acre feet, give or take, plus or minus, whatever it is, I mean, to me, the more logical sense is not have the secondary overhead and partner with those rights with someone we're already connected with that's providing a service, whether that's Green Valley or SSLDC.

Yeah. I mean, and that's right. And that all goes to how we structure the deal, right? And so, again, it's one thing to say, well, transfer those rights. Here's what we pay you for it. And then we agree. they agreed to sell us a certain amount of money at cost. And again, the hope is that their cost is not significantly higher than somebody else's. but that's a way to retain some of those water rights to not give them up. And yet we're not having to make that big investment today. And which is, I think the concern that, you know, to be clear that staff has is we're just making huge investments that have to- Well, and I think a case for Green Valley would be, I mean, if we just secured a certain amount of water, call it a thousand acre feet period,

regardless of what their source is, right? Because they have multiple sources. I mean, that's a little bit more flexible than some of the other options.

Right. And I believe there's a third option coming down the road, but I'm not going to discuss that because that's at the very top of the surface right now. So I don't want to get any rumors started. But two of the options, though, does not put us at risk. I feel like one of the options that's currently on the table does somewhat still put us at risk because it we need to create a pfs you know because they need to go for bonds which and so we'll be representing them to be able to do that and so if all that falls through and i feel like that's a risk that we take you know on our credit rating so

Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is, yeah, how much, right, and this is kind of how you approach any deal. How much risk, how much reward versus how much do you value certainty even if it means, yeah, it's maybe a smaller deal to begin with or something like that. I think there's something to be said there.

Mr. James, I think if you do give us different options, that way we can make a better decision on which way we're gonna go.

Fair enough. So if what I'm hearing then is we're not married to CVLGC. Nobody says, yeah, we definitely wanna go that route. But what I'm hearing generally is we would like to see if we can, we don't wanna give up all of these water rights. It seems to make sense to, in some form or fashion, make up some of this gap from, as part of this deal, that that seems to be what I'm hearing? And that's all of them, or that's?

Whatever deal, all of them, yeah, to me.

Yeah, no. Just to clarify.

I don't know what everyone else is thinking, but the water leases, excuse me, the water leases.

So.

Maintain the water leases.

Okay, I guess that would mean that we proceeded with the original CVLGC plan.

And maybe just to be clear, and I apologize, is it the leases that are important or is it making sure that I get water rights or a certain amount of water for the leases? Does that make sense or I'm asking poorly?

For me, I think if we can maintain 100% of the water right leases that we currently have.

Okay.

I want to, you know.

Okay. Okay. And not so much.

Yeah.

I'm not locked into I have a lease and I have to maintain that lease. Right. I'm focused on we have a right now a source a potential source for an amount of water if i can get that same amount of water from a different agreement from a different lease from something else it doesn't matter if i'm getting it from this lease or this understood i'm worried about the amount of water that's where that's from okay so i mean if there's some kind of an agreement that we can have where where we're getting Like I said, under these leases now with CVLGC, we have the potential for around plus or minus 5,000 acres. If we can get some agreement that's getting us that water or relatively close to it without having the overhead of trying to get a second overhead to get that same amount of water, I mean, to me, it's a win to eliminate the overhead, eliminate that extra cost. As long as I'm getting relatively the same amount of water, I'm not losing it.

Okay.

Yeah, for me, it's exactly that. It's just for us to be able to, like, at least have rights to some of that water. So that way we can cover, you know, our needs. You know, as we continue to go down the road. Because regardless, I understand we have those lease rights. But, I mean, really the pie's cut in half with us in Cibola right now. And so we'll never have it all. So for me, as long as we're able to negotiate with someone to give us some water when we need it, I'm good with that.

Okay. For me, it's like this. I would prefer to have something and not need it than to need something and not have it.

And understood, right? And the only caveat I would say to that is but to have it and not need it may mean you are having to pay for it and that would be the issue, right? So the issue would be is we would have to go up on our rates to have this thing we don't need, right? There's always a little bit of balancing of the risk with that and how much surety, right, do you want to kind of pay for I think is the balance. But I think the point's understood.

And just to add on, you know, again, it's for our future needs, right? I recall earlier this year that we were talking about that, hey, we got more than plenty of water. That's what the comment was made to me earlier this year. We have plenty of water. You know, we were thinking about selling the water rights. Now, today, we're gonna run out of water, or we're projected to, in 2060 or whatever. 2070. 2070, that we're gonna need water. So to me, keep the water, maybe. But with all these different infrastructures coming in and the growth are coming in.

Yeah, we can do that, right? I mean, again, we have the ability to do that. The issue with these leases, just caveat, we'll come back, right? Is there is a not insignificant cost to have these leases But right, it's a value. If I would rather not worry about it and I would rather just pay this now, that's a valid perspective. It's just knowing that there's a cost to it.

I would like to comment though, in 50 years, when we're confronted with this issue of needing to potentially go into Wilson County, a lot can change in 50 years in Texas in terms of water. it may not even be a viable option to go into Wilson County 50 years from now. You may not be able to get that water, and you may have invested a lot in retaining something that you can't use. So I think in terms of planning and long-term planning, you have something in mind that you want to do, but over a 50-year period, you need to maintain some flexibility so you're not locked in. or you don't have too much sunk cost really is the reality of it.

Right.

But I think the feedback's helpful, right? It lets us know kind of the range of things that are open, that are not open, how you value it, and let us kind of look at what those are to then come back in a few weeks.

So if the partnership is maybe, hypothetically, if it would be just SSLGC, or would it still maybe be Green Valley?

It could be any of those, right? What I'm hearing from council is because of how in demand water rights are, there's a real reluctance to give up all of this or possibly any of this at all. And so we are open to exploring partnerships to try to, or options that try to reduce our cost as opposed to what our fallback is, which is essentially just go to production, go to permitting a production with CVLGC, which we kind of have a benchmark for what that cost, but understanding that there will be a cost, right? There is likely, however, The more we wanna retain, the more we wanna have control over, we will pay more for that than the less we control and the less certainty in how we structure it. But we can come back with options for you. Because again, part of our job is to help you make an informed decision. Part of it for staff, it's an iterative process to sort of feel you out, to see what you value things at, and move forward from that regard. Because again, what we haven't talked about at all is what does this do to our rates, right? Because at some point, I think for everybody on the dais, the rates go up that much, you're all like, well, I'll pull back off that position, right? It just becomes not cost effective. So yeah, let us come back in a couple meetings, and we'll keep going with the discussion.

All right, there are no further discussions on this item. We'll go ahead and go into closed session on item 24. The City Council will meet in closed session pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551-087, deliberation regarding economic development negotiations to deliberate the offer of a financial or other incentive to a business prospect. Item one, I mean, number one being last piece, shirts operations. Number two being Project Holly. We'll be going into closed session at 10-11. One last just in case. Okay, we're going to go ahead and come out of closed session, reconvene at 1025 p.m. Moving on to item 25, following deliberation in closed session, the city council may take action on the following items discussed in closed session. So let me go. So we have 25A, resolution 26-R-103, discussion and possible action on a resolution authorizing a financial or other incentive to lost piece shirts operations. Resolution 26-R-103, A resolution by the City Council of the City of Church, Texas, authorizing an expenditure as reflected in the Second Amendment to the Economic Development Performance Agreement between the City of Church Economic Development Corporation and the Lost Peace Church Operations LLC, admitting the total incentive funding amount in the department terms and other matters in connection therewith. Is there anyone, any council member have any other discussion on this item? Have I no other discussion? Can I entertain a motion?

I want to make a motion that we cover the last piece shirts operations, Delta, whatever that may be a hundred. Do I need to say the whole dollar amount?

I believe it's approved in Resolution 26-R-103. We should be able to cover, if you want to make that motion.

Yes, I want to make that motion to cover that cost.

Okay.

Second.

All right, have a motion made by Councilmember Sheridan, second by Councilmember Davis. Can I get everybody to cast your votes? Can I get the votes published, please? Having seven yays, no nays, motion passes. Moving on to item 25B, resolution 26-R-105. And that's gonna be authorized, a resolution by the City Council of the City of Church, Texas authorizing an expenditure as reflected in an economic development performance agreement between the City of Church Economic Development Corporation and Hollingsworth Logistics Group LLC and other matters in connection therewith. There are no other discussions on that item. Can I get someone to entertain a motion?

A motion to approve.

Second.

Okay, I have a motion made by Councilman Guerrero to approve Resolution 26-R-105. And I have a second by Mayor Pro Tem Watson. Can I get everybody to cast your votes? Can I get the votes published, please? Okay, having seven yeas, no nays, motion passes. Items 26 and 27 is included in your packet. No discussion to occur. We'll move on to requests and announcements. Requests by mayor and council members for updates or information from staff. Do we have any? Have none. We'll move on to request by mayor and council members that items or presentations be placed on any future city council agendas. Is there any items on that? Having none, we'll move to council agenda, city and community events attended or to be attended by council.

Nothing at this time.

Nothing tonight, sir. Nothing.

ATTENDED THE KANGJON MUSU EVENT, RIBBON CUTTING, ATTENDED THE HISTORICAL PRESERVATION COMMITTEE MEETING, ATTENDED THE RGE RIBBON CUTTING, AND THE 9-11 CEREMONY AT CLEMONS HIGH SCHOOL.

ATTENDED THE SHURTS HISTORICAL PRESERVATION COMMITTEE MEETING, NORTHEAST PARTNERSHIP, THE CLEMONS 9-11 COMMEMORATION, AND THE CHAMBER LUNCHEON TODAY.

the NEP lunch last week and the chamber luncheon today.

Attended the NEP luncheon, the chamber luncheon, and attended the 9-11 commemoration morning event. And again, I want to say thank you to the city council for a great job today. It was a long night. To the city, city staff, continue to do an outstanding job. Again, thank y'all for all what you do and appreciate you. To our first responders, thank y'all.

And again, much appreciation to our city staff and the city council for tonight's meeting. And other than that, I have nothing to report. This will end our city council meeting at 1030.

Thank you, Mayor, for your leadership.