City Council - Regular Meeting

Just get rid of the Oh, that one. Yeah, I don't need it.

And I'll say, well, it'll get me in and say, do you know how to do a push? And I say, do a push. And that's push. Good evening everyone.

Welcome to the city of Shannidora regular meeting of the city council for April 22nd, 2026. Everyone is here. So, we do have a quorum. We're going to stand up and say the pledge of allegiance to our flag, both the US flag and the Texas flag, followed by an invocation. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I aliance to the one state one and indivisible.

The invocation is going to be delivered by Mr. Ernest Sumro neighbors, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you today with gratitude for this community, for the freedom to gather and the responsibility placed before us. Lord, remind us that before we are officials, we are neighbors. And before we are neighbors, we are a people called to treat one another with dignity, patience, and respect. When we face differences in opinion, give us the wisdom to listen well, the humility to learn, and the strength to stand firm yet graciously. Help us, oh God, to work together, not as adversaries, but as friends, seeking understanding over division and reconciliation over pride. Let our conversations be marked by clarity, honesty, and goodwill. Father, we acknowledge that even the smallest forms of government carry real weight. The decisions made in rooms like this shape lives, families, and the future of our community. Grant us, Lord, discernment to choose what is right. Courage to act with integrity, and a steady commitment to serve the good of all. May we lead in a way that honors you, God, reflects unity, strengthens trust placed in those who lead by those of by those who serve. We ask all of this in the matchous name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Thank you. We're going to move on to item number five, citizens forum. Citizens are invited to speak for three minutes on matters related to city government that relate to agenda or non-aggenda items. Speakers are asked to approach the podium and give their name and address before sharing their comments. You have anybody signed up? No, sir. All right. No one has signed up. So, we're going to move on to item number six, presentation of the 2026 Shannondoa resident scholarship winners. Mr. Balmar,

shift over this way so I can see you all and talk back to all of you. Uh so first everybody welcome especially our uh scholarship winners who have decided to come tonight and receive their awards. Uh each year the the city actually collects the money for their scholarships and then the the civic club has the responsibility of taking all those scholarships in in judging them. So I would like to invite the folks that did assist in judging uh this year to come up. Uh they're members from our civic club. Uh we started out with only a handful and I thought it was going to be easy year for them after uh quite a few of them last year and then we ended up with a total of 14 submissions this year. That was by far the most that I think we've ever had, at least that I've been made aware of. Uh so it's fantastic that we got that much participation. Uh and I think all but maybe two of them all came from College Park and all of our winners came from College Park. So they must be doing something right up there. So um we'll do a quick introduction just so that you know we had a couple other folks that uh that helped as well. Uh but we have Marilyn Pay on the end here. We have Elie Pard here and then Miss Liam Brand here who's one of our judges. So we'll go in order. We actually were tied for second place and then we had a a first place winner. The two second place uh winners will receive $750. The first place uh winner will receive a thousand. Uh one of our uh second place tied people did not they were not able to attend this evening. So I will just go through uh the brief summary of of what he shared with us about him personally uh and then we'll move on to the folks that are here this evening. So, our one of our second place winners was Sergio Alvarez, son of Carlos and Mary, College Park High School. As I

mentioned, um Sergio's a hardworking, disciplined student who's learned the value of commitment both in and out of the classroom. A four-year member of his high school baseball program, including two years at the varsity level. Sergio mastered the art of balancing academics and athletics while staying focused on long-term goals. Beyond sports, he's always found ways to give back, whether mowing lawns for neighbors or volunteering at school football games. This fall, Sergio plans to attend the University of Oklahoma to pursue mechanical engineering with a goal of creating meaningful meaningful practical solutions through engineering. The scholarship will help ease his financial load and allow Sergio to fully focus on building the the future that he's working for. All right. So, our first person in attendee, don't be nervous. I'll invite Khloe to come to the front. Uh, Khloe is daughter of Jessica and Henry Cook, also a College Park High School senior. Khloe's a student with a long-standing curiosity for forensic science that started with books and true crime documentaries and only grew stronger over time. Fascinated by how investigators piece together cases, Khloe is especially drawn to forensic photography and the critical roles it it plays in documenting evidence and supporting justice. This fall, Khloe plans to attend Lonear College to begin uh turning that passion into a career. This scholarship represents more than a financial support. It's an important step towards making and building a future in forensic science and doing the meaningful work behind the scenes to help uncover the truth. Everybody, meet Chloe TO BE HERE. CHLOE, HERE IS your certificate. Um, if you want to hold it up real quick just to show everybody up. TADA.

And we'll pull you back up in just a second. All right. And so Khloe was uh was our other person tied for second place. And so for our first place, drum roll is Zia Kosoro Vitzki. Appearance Tony Patton, also a college park. If you'd like to come on up. Uh so Zia is a driven and community focused senior with a big heart for helping others. when Zai isn't coaching swimmers or working as a medical assistant. Um she's already planning her next step entering an EMT program right after graduation. She was born and raised in Shannondoa and she takes a lot of pride in giving back to the community that supported her the entire way with goals of becoming an ER physician and she's already accepted in the University of Houston and this scholarship will be a huge step towards the future in emergency medicine way for Z to continue serving others where it matters most. And if I can invite you to come back up, please. And then would you all mind coming down so we can get a group picture? And let me have you guys come down. One, two, three.

CONGRATULATIONS.

Thank you, Mr. Balmer. It's always a nice event to have the uh scholarship awards. Uh I'm going to move on to item number seven, presentation of CBB annual report. Mr. Mayor, thank you, Mayor, mayor and councel. Um I'm going to do this a little bit differently this year and this time than we've done before. I've got the pleasure of having Cindy Decker with me. And Cindy, I'm very grateful to y'all, as I told you, for helping fund over the last three years our data and market intelligence program that we have here. Cindy is with one of our vendors. She's with Tourism Economics. They are the largest economics company in the world. And Tourism Economics is one of their subsidiaries. They are working with 225 destinations in the world of which we are one. And so anyhow, um I'm going to go over really quick just kind of a qualitative highlights of accomplishments that we've had this year, some of the high points I think, and then I'm going to turn over the rest of the presentation to Cindy to go over and run through the numbers with y'all. And to give kind of a market analysis for y'all to know on a background of Cindy, she spent 25 years in revenue management in the hotel industry for Marriott. She also was part of the team that opened what is now the Crown Plaza when it was originally opened as far as their revenue management. And um she is she was with Visit Houston for seven years um working as their director of business intelligence and data analysis and she is now currently the director of insights for this global company. So, um, without further ado, let's go on. And Chris, can you go to the next slide for me?

Button on the right. Yeah, there you go. Pardon?

Oh, there we go. So, here's some of the highlights for the year that I just pulled together. This is our third consecutive year of increased hot collections. We've had four now consecutive years of increased travel related spending as reported through Travel Texas and the governor's office. We were in the inaugural group, as y'all are aware, of the first 10 cities to be designated as a tourism friendly community by Travel Texas. Um, we also last year as we're going through this report launched and developed our first international marketing efforts ever working with Around Houston and Travel Texas to be part of Brand USA, of which we were part of 25 cities in Texas last year. This year we are currently one of 10 cities under Texas that is doing an America 250 and America the Beautiful. And um I think that's a a pretty cool thing for us to do in advance of World Cup and FIFA coming to our area. So being in that space is really critical. Um we were able to host a group of German travel trade representatives here as part of our around Houston fam and partnership. We expanded and grew all of our programs um with our marketing this past year. here. Y'all were very kind and gracious to allow us to do that. And we did we worked with Texas Monthly and they acquired Texas Country Reporter and I wanted you to know we've got a segment coming out on May 2nd and it's going to be focusing on part of our culinary scene with Abears. So that should be a really great show. We had conversations with them. We'll be working on getting out advanced promotion next week. We just had a call with them yesterday. And I also wanted y'all to know that we worked with um Travel Texas as part of this analysis. Ron, I don't know if you remember this, but earlier this year, you may you had a question for me is how

much money really comes from travel related spending. And we've always been listed in Travel Texas's data dashboard and their travel stats, but they never applied those savings for us because we are so unique and so small and a unicorn. So I was able to reach out to them to call and work with their economic research firm Dean Ren and Associ. and we work together and with Cindy to get our numbers pulled together. And we have put together at the end of this presentation, you will see a brief um minute and 40 second advocacy video trying to explain um what it is that we do and the value of it to our residents and community. Without further ado, Cindy, you come on up and take it from here.

Thanks for remembering that, John.

All right. Uh thank you, council and Mr. Mayor. I appreciate you guys having me here today. Um, I wanted to just kind of go real quick uh through the slides for what happened in fiscal year 2020 um year end 25 and then also give you kind of just a brief recap of how well this year is going as well. It's been a good year for Shannondoa. Um last year the um market ended with 2.2 million in hot collections. So slightly up from the year before. Um one of the things that happened in this area is there was a lot of weather events, right? We started in 2024 with an eclipse that came right through Texas and hit us with um some high demand. Then there was a uh do flooding that drove a little bit of demand and then there was a hurricane in July drove a little bit more demand. Through all of that, the market saw some increased demand but also the weekends gained ground. Um and that's some of the marketing efforts that we're seeing is gaining some ground on the weekends with some sporting events in the area. As we look at the overall travel spend, um, as John mentioned, uh, Dean Renan gathers the information for you. Um, overall direct travel spend was $93.2 million just in Shannondoa for the fiscal year end last year. That's a 13.2% increase year-over-year in travel spend in the market. A lot of that is rate related um, but also in uh, occupancy as well. Um, and when you look at the travel spend generated, $2.9 million in local tax receipts, that's up from 2 uh uh 2.6 million the year before. So, how are we getting there? A lot of it is website uh social media generation, the marketing campaigns that are being run, uh the website highlights. The website reached about 93.6,000 users uh this last year. That's an increase of 31% year-over-year. And again, um, I think with your funding, um, and your support, there was a new website that was just launched like two months ago, very recently. So, we should

expect to see some better results even from that. Um, we also saw some website visitation and sessions that were increased. So, sessions increased by 31.2%. Website performance. Some of the key indicators that we look at is engagement. Are people not only going to the website, but are then they looking at your social media and engaging with you, liking it, sharing it, getting people to know the destination a little bit better? Um, there's about 5.8,000 audience members or um people on your social media um platforms. The engagement was 204,000 engagements. So, of those uh attemp people on the website, you grew about 1,900 in engagement of just people clicking, liking, sharing, and getting other people to like what they were seeing. A lot of it was the food um social media campaigns that were run and a lot of the local uh area events that were running on the social media that were driving that. The engagement rate is 4%. One thing that I want to point out is 4% engagement rate is just a percentage of the engagement overall. When I look at 225 destinations worldwide, we look at engagement rates of about 1 to 3%. When I see 4%, that's a huge engagement rate. That's much higher than what we have see on average. Um, right now, a lot of the social media platforms have new algorithms and new placement for things. And so running a 4% engagement is a pretty big feat. And so when you look at the program performance, there's a lot of OTAA marketing that John and the team have done. A lot of it is um done through several OTAA agencies. Uh last year it generated $2.5 million in rooms revenue for the market. That's an increase of 19,000 room nights. It is down from the year before. One of the marketing campaigns that you all run is run through a company called Travel Click. They do a lot of um agency through the special corporate campaigns and special corporate uh negotiator rates. And so

they saw a a slight uptick when you had the weather events the year before. So when I look at that 2.5 million and I look at 2023 as a baseline year after recovery, I would say that you're up 14.5% year-over-year and revenues that were driven from the campaigns that uh the market did. And when you break it down from the two different OTAAS, again, you're using Travel Click, which is a agency provider that works with a lot of special corporate agencies. Um and then Expedia, which all of us recognize widely. Um 70 almost 78% of the volume of the room nights came from the Expedia campaigns. They were up 8.2% year-over-year from 2023. Again, the baseline is 23 without any weather events. Um they were down about 7.9% year-over-year. And you can see in 24 where you saw a little bit more of that travel click volume and it was just driven from some of the volume that was seen through the uh weather storms and the storms the year before and um fiscal year. So three things on the hotel. So demand comparisons again when you look at 2024 the importance of seeing a growth again in hot tax is big. A lot of that again rate driven. When you look at demand from 25 to 24, it was actually down slightly, but only 1.6%. And I'm going to show you why that's important. When you look at your competitive set, when you look at that baseline again of 2023, you were actually up 9.4% in demand in the market. And when you look at revenue, you're at $35.2 million in hotel revenue in the market. That is a 25.9% increase over your baseline of 2023. That is only a 1.8% 8% drop over 24 again with just some weather derivatives through the year. And looking at this competitively, yes, we were down slightly 1.6%. You were down less than every other competitive in the market.

You had markets like Spring down 8.3%. Houston was down 7%. Addison was down 4.8%. Our neighbors across the street were down 2.5%. So, you were down half of what they were down year-over-year um for the market last year. And again, a 9.4% increase in hotel performance for the year. Just a quick note on what we what you're doing this year. Uh March, you're already at 4.1% in demand year to date. Just January through March from last year. You're up 6.8% in revenue. That's a 25.3% increase over 2023, which is your new baseline. In April, again, we just got the Iron Man results. Iron Man last year was a year uh a week later. So, there was a big increase. Now, we'll see a little bit of a drop. That's a comparison with Easter. But, if you just look at through April through last weekend, revenues up 25.4% with an 11.2% increase in April. So, this year is also coming out to be a really strong year. Really strong demand in the market. Uh really great uh rates and u market strategy.

Great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you all. I saw I saw on the monthly report that the that the average occupancy percentage is about 60 60%. It's about 65. I think April was 60. April right now it's at 65.4. You're running anywhere from 63 to 65. How does that compare with the uh the the average any place else?

Yeah. So that's high. The US is running about 63%. Um you guys are up um you know 4% I'm sorry. Yeah, 4.1% in demand. The US is up 2% in demand. So, you're double the demand that we're seeing in the US. Last year, even on your biggest drops, you were still dropping less than the US. Um Texas as well. Texas is somewhat recovering and seeing some increases, but Texas has um a couple challenges, right? You've got Austin without a convention center. You've got Dallas without a convention center. Um Houston is doing really well. Shannidoa, the Woodlands, this this Gulf Coast region is doing really well. And so it's actually carrying the weight for Texas right now with bigger increases than the average for the state. That's great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.

Awesome. Any other questions? News, John? No. Any other questions? Fantastic.

Because if not, I'm going to go really quick and we'll show Chris if you can pull up the video. We'll just show that really quick so you can watch. I bet you didn't know last year visitors spent more than $93 million in direct travel spending in Shannondoa. And that in turn generated more than $2,250 in tax savings for all of our residents. Hi, my name is John Maynner. I'm the director of the Shannondoa Convention and Visitors Bureau. Our job is to promote all the things there is to see and do in the city. And each day we do our best to promote all of our partners and local businesses through our advertising and promotional efforts. You may not think of Shannondoa as a traditional destination, but every day visitors shop in our shops, eat in our restaurants, play in our entertainment venues, and stay in our hotels. And all of that is a part of direct travel spending. regardless of their reason for traveling or their length of stay. It's our visitor spending that keeps our local businesses cash registers ringing and generates tax revenue that keeps your taxes low. For anyone looking to explore the greater northeast Houston Woodlands area, our city offers tremendous value. Additionally, its central location in the heart of it all makes Park City a great base camp for exploring nearby cities and attractions. And just last year, we were among the first 10 cities named a tourism friendly community by Travel Texas. To learn more about the work we do, check out our website and our social media channels at visitshannindoatx.com. And thank you for all you do to make our city such a wonderful and welcoming place to both live and visit. So there you go. All right. Thank you, Dan. I didn't think I was going to get a whole video on it, but that's wonderful.

And the one thing that I want to point out, and it will be noted when we do this. So, the 2200 the 2250, there were two numbers that I wanted to calculate that I thought would be interesting for y'all to know. One is per capita per household, and that number is slightly lower. that is$,550 per household, but for for single family um residents and and property owners, it's 2250. So, it's just a difference. Those two numbers will both be represented on the on our YouTube page when we go to publish it. So, we're trying to be fully transparent and let everyone know how we derived and got to our calculations. But obviously people who have a home and a residence and are doing write offs would probably want to know what that impact was for them. So it's a smaller number than the total with rental properties and all of that, but I wanted the distinction to be made so it was clear what that means to everyone.

Excellent. John, John, are you going to give autographs? Pardon? Autographs. You going to give autographs for that? Are you going to give autographs for that video? turning into a rock star. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. May. You're very welcome.

We're going to move on to item number eight, discussion and possible action to adopt the following resolution. A resolution setting a date, time, and place for a public hearing on the proposed annexation of certain property by the city of Shannondor, Texas, and authorizing and directing the mayor to publish notice of such public hearing. Mayor uh council, this is just a resolution required by our statute. Uh we will consider uh the annexation at our next meeting. Motion to adopt the resolution. We have a motion to adopt the resolution by Councilman Brock. Second,

seconded by Councilman Sullivan. Any discussion? Yes, Sam, could you walk us through the annexation process so that the audience knows how it works? Absolutely. Jackie, would you mind giving us a quick overview of that? I'm going to refer to Jackie on this. She's our expert like what the next steps and timings are. Correct.

Right. Absolutely. So, a property will petition the city for annexation, which they have done in this case. We'll set public notice, have a public hearing, and then council will take action to uh approve their petition and bring that property into city limits. From there, uh, the the property will sit in an interim zone, uh, according to our zoning ordinance where the property owner then will work with city staff to, uh, petition the city again for an application to reszone that property into its final zone for development. Um, and so again, I think like m, uh, Bill said, this is just to post the public hearing to consider that process to bring that property into city limits. Okay. And then um as we bring on new properties and new developments, if we perhaps could start normalizing revenue projections for these new developments. So the public is always interested in knowing what those revenue projections are. And so if we could start considering those.

Absolutely. Any additional comments or discussion? No. All in favor say I. I.

Opposed? Motion carries. Item number nine, discussion of possible action regarding recommendations of award for the city hall Hback phase 2 project. Who's got this? I uncover some background. Um, but we are still we're hoping to get contract negotiations hammered out, but we have not been able to. There's still some terms that uh city attorney cannot agree to. Uh, but I can go over the bid information at this point, but currently we don't have a contract to present because we got to figure get those terms worked out. Uh so on April 8th, city staff received bids uh for the upgrades of our HVAC system here at city hall and uh that was put on with city staff and Leaf Engineering who's the engineering firm who's helping us with this. Now the low bidder was American Mechanical Services of Houston at $2,296,367. and that actually ended up being really good. The other bids were were pretty close to that. So, we feel like we got a a good number uh based on the market. Um the really great news is this is the company if you recall that um we awarded the co-op for phase one when our chiller had a critical failure and we needed to accelerate that. So, they're familiar with the building, they're familiar with the area and they did the chiller project. So when they do this, that should eliminate a lot of fingerpointing that can happen when you get two contractors in on the same job. Uh so we are very happy with that. We're also very happy that their bids came in lower than estimated. So all in we actually have a projected budget underrun of just under $180,000. So that's cumulative phase one, two. Um so we we were happy with the bids. Uh but again our repeat we're not ready to

award this because we got to work out those final terms with the contract. Pete I know you don't have the final terms but have you identified any of the other possible contingencies things that could go wrong? Are you anticipating what those might be so that we don't have to after we have a final contract that we don't have to come back with another amendment?

Right. So, we have had a lot of discussions because this is going to literally tear up the inside of city hall. Uh, so there will be staff that are displaced out of their offices during it's it's broken into three phases and we tried to very carefully phase that so we can create spaces for staff to move into when their phase is under construction. Um, because it's going to be impossible in your office. The grid's going to come the ceiling grid's coming down. it's going to be an absolute mess.

Uh so we're not, you know, we have an underrun, but we're not going to request, you know, pulling that funding out. We're still looking at possibility of there may be spaces that we have to lease in particular uh for the police department because we can't mingle uh them with the rest of staff because they're discussing sensitive information. So, it it's possible that we may need to find some space for the PD in particular, but we're trying to work through those details uh before we get this project underway. Okay. So, at this point, the underage, that's your contingency. Yes. Yeah. We're not going to say pull it out. Um of course not.

Just just in case. Um there is a built-in contingency in the contract of about a quart million dollars because it's a mess up in this attic space. Um the contractors have looked at it, the engineers have looked at it and they anticipate some chang we're we're trusting the engineers on that. Okay. Um but they do expect some surprises when we get into the ceiling space because this is a very old building and much if not all Carissa from our looking up there it looks like if something was not used anymore it was abandoned in place. So it looks like spaghetti upstairs. That's contractor 101. Okay.

What's the estimated uh time for this project to to begin? What be a ballpark? Is it going to be like in the middle of summer? No. So, um based on material delays because they're going to want to order all the RTUs, the VAVS, um EDH, they're going to want to have that ready to go ducting. So, it'll probably be late September that they get started with this project. Be a little cooler then, right? and then hopefully be done by the end of March. Okay. We we tried to time that and it it actually worked out this time. It doesn't always work out the way you plan it, but looks like it's headed that direction.

So, we're not going to require a motion on this until the those items are are figured out. Is that correct, Mr. City attorney? Or do you want a motion now? Oh, you know what? Yeah. I'm so sorry. I was going to say I totally mixed up contracts in my head. Um, this contract's been I' I've approved this contract. It's the next one that's not approved. I I mixed up a gender. I apologize. Confused everybody here. Why didn't you hit me, Lisa? I was like, should it? I'm on the next project. This isn't my project.

Okay. Any questions about the contract? Happy to answer those. I apologize. So, your recommendation is to accept award the contract. Okay. Yes. Please, please award this project 2 a.m. I'll entertain a motion. I'll second. You make I'll second. Motion to to approve by Councilman Brock, seconded by Council Robinson. Any additional discussion? If not, all in favor say I. I. I. Opposed.

I'm going to abstain because I'm concerned that we're confused about our own contracts and what we're working on. So, you're abstaining on I'm abstaining. Okay. The motion passes for four to four to one obsession. We're going to move on to item number 11.

Oh, no. I'm sorry. 10. We're going to uh table uh this item until uh for a future date. Then we're going to move on to item number 11. Discussion and possible action to ratify the accounts payable for March 2026. Motion to ratify the accounts payable. Have a motion to ratify accounts payable by councilman brought. Second. Seconded by Councilman Paul. I had one question. Any discussion? Um I saw that we're still paying Jake Grevers. What What exactly is Jake doing for us still?

He's working part-time for us as he's working on all the TPCA coordination reacredititation. How how much time does he spend? How much we pay? Um he's getting paid regular officer hourly rate, but as far as hours go. Um it it varies from it's still through the the payroll process through W2 process. The item that you're asking about in the accounts payable ratification is for just a membership to TPCA. Yeah, that's that's what brought it up. So, it's like, okay, that's probably not the only thing that he's doing.

Yeah, there is it's going to be processed through the payroll W2 process. So, he's working on average how many hours? Um, I don't know, maybe six six or so hours a week. Okay. Any additional discussion? If not, all in favor say I. I. Opposed? Motion carries. Item 12, civic club updates.

Well, good evening again, gentlemen. Um, I don't have much exciting to say about things that are upcoming. So, I will just highlight the fact that when I was here last time and I have my little bunny ears on, we were approaching our Easter egg hunt in the park. Uh, we had about 600 people show up. It was a phenomenal success. We had absolutely amazing weather. uh and we actually had it was kind of neat to see because we we had more younger kids which I think is a good representation of just the families and cultures that are here uh within our city limits. So I think that kind of puts a smile on the positivity of of the future of our of our city. Um of course we love everybody even though folks have been here for whatever 50 some odd years. It's it's crazy sometimes. U but uh but anyways it was it was a fantastic turnout. Uh again, we supported our local sweet squirrel uh that day and people just devour devoured their ice cream. Uh so that's about it. Our next event isn't it's essentially two months from now. So it'll be June the 27th will be our independence uh celebration. Uh so provide more updates on that when we get to the main meeting. Charlie, I think whoever decided to move the toddlers to the other side of the sidewalk from the older kids was the best thing I've seen. The best.

Cool. Really worked well for them and for all the other kids. Yep. Well, thank you everyone. Thanks for Thank you. Item 13, city administrator updates.

Thank you, mayor. So, last um a couple of updates we have for you today. Last Saturday the in the pavilion park they had a cupcake decorating class and we had over 22 residents attend that that event. So that was a good turnout. Um last Thursday the constant contact app was launched and if you were looking at our website that had a splash page on that and so we are constantly working on content to update that. So far to date, we have 65 uh people that have registered for that. And so I encourage you all to take a look at that. It is a it's a very very neat looking uh product and it's going to be able to give updates uh via email to residents, anything going on across the city. In addition to that, on our traffic survey, we are currently at 276 participants in that as well. Um, one of the other things I wanted to discuss also was last council meeting we had some uh concerns regarding the main park. And so the three items that I identified from from those were the lighting, signage, and enforcement of the park. So we have taken a look at the lighting. There were some timer issues and we are getting those fixed as as we speak today. and some signage, extra signage has been ordered to be able to promote that throughout the park and have that extra signage. And I have talked with Chief Dunlap, they will do some u random uh patrols through there to ensure that people are adhering to the posted times in the park.

And awesome.

The last item I wanted to mention just that next Saturday, May 2nd, is election day and it'll be here at city hall from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. That's all I have for you today. Very good. Thank you. Uh you and I uh had a a short talk about uh about uh election and early voting uh earlier this evening. I'd like to see us become perhaps an early voting location. Uh see how we can accommodate that. We can get a hold of the county and and talk about that. Have that at the very least have that conversation. And I find that uh that uh that polling location up on the Woodlands side up uh Woodlands Parkway has is uh not really conducive to residents of Shannondora. It's um most people don't know that library is there and it's pretty far and inconvenient for our residents to to go up there and vote. So let's uh get together with uh with the county and see how we can work that out. Absolutely.

Yeah. All righty. I think it'll only bother one meeting. Yes, it'll be one one council meeting and I think we can we can accommodate for that. You know, I think we can we can relocate and have let them have this. Were you thinking the general election as well in November? Uh yeah, if if they're committed to having early voting at that location and not at at the Kevin Brady, which I think is is the case. Uh yeah, I'm thinking of early voting here. So maximum probably two meetings. Yeah, we could look for that.

Yeah. Mayor, as we were talking about that earlier, I know we have a a community room here as well that may serve as a good place for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. some options there. I think as well. Yeah. All right, we're going to move on to item 14. Thank you. Council inquiry. I have a couple tonight. Uh Lisa, general fund available cash 4, call it 4.3 million. How much is how much of that is encumbered by projects? Is that all free cash or is it encumbered by projects to a certain percent?

It's encumbered by projects. I don't have the um I haven't updated it since the end of the month, but I have that number. Okay. I I just think that this report needs to reflect what's encumbered because otherwise people tend to think that we have more than we really do have. Right? So, can we update this report to show what approved projects have claims on the general fund, thus showing the true available funds? Can we do that in the future? So yeah, I can look into that. Yes. Okay. These Sorry, I was trying to find that number, but I don't have it right now. You don't need it right now. This just

just makes it makes it easier for people to understand. Otherwise, they just see a blob of cash and they they go, "Oh, we can spend it on whatever we want." Tricked out the 180day to the top and then you'll see, yeah, I know you have the 180 days. I'm not worried about it's it's the other free cash. Yeah. What's really free? Uh the next are two project questions. Uh back in February, the capital improvement report noted that the wastewater treatment improvement plant was supposed to complete in March. Did that happen? We have a final walkthrough. Is it next week? Next week.

Next week to hit some final punch list items, but the most substantial items are complete.

Okay. The other one still in the same capital improvement report, the advanced metering infrastructure project. I noted in that report that the narrative for the AMI was incomplete and missing. Basically, there was no update on it and I pulled I pulled a screenshot for it so I could look at it in my notes here. And then we had an item showing AMI being 533,000 over budget. So I was disappointed that the item dropped from the agenda. It seems, but I don't know now because of the incumbrances that we have plenty of funds to fund this project, but yet I know that the MDD was being considered to loan the money, right? And MDD has 11 million worth of projects slotted in the next two years. I'm just curious how if we had enough free cash, why we wouldn't use that? Why we'd go to the MDD and have them defer projects? It was a precautionary measure due to some cash flow with impact fees towards the text development board project. So that's why we wanted to be prepared that has been remedied. So we will present that with the contract when the contract is approved by both ours legal council and MRSCO. We'll bring all that back.

Okay? Because the water and sewer fund that's an enterprise fund. They're expected to fund themselves through their revenues. And not to get too much in the weeds, but the 1.5 was a placeholder. It was an approximation based on some talks that Joseph had with contractors that we have used before. Um, we don't, you know, part of the MRSCO deal is they went in and did a whole audit of our system and they identified some things that could be fixed and repaired. So, we figured if you have the mobilization at that point, let's do it now instead of deferring it and have to pay more.

Seems our contingency on that project was set rather low. it it was just a rough estimate because you really don't know at that point. It's all based on um negotiations with different vendor, you know, meter vendors and MRSCO did a great job getting that price down. Um so we'll have more information when the contracts approved by Bill and Morrisco and we'll go through all those items. Okay. So overall the was not was not ready for presentation. It was just some contract terms couldn't be right agreed upon. Okay. Well, not through negotiations. Yeah. Council some

I I actually just had one question concern just follow up on this. When was that original bid put together?

Um May of last year and then we approved it in August. Um and that was just considering meter cost and overall labor. Um and that's an estimate. So, um once we got into the ground and we did some analytics because remember you agreed the um agreement with Amaresco to do an audit basically of all of our system um they identified some other areas that needed to be improved and repaired and at that time um that's why the price had dried up. Also, um we're doing a pool meter replacement, you know, so it's going to be some of those big commercial ones are could be 8 to 12,000 a piece, you know. And was there some contingency plumbing that was also needing for a hospital?

A bypass will be in there. Yes. So that it doesn't jeopardize anything with the hospital's operations if there's something issue with the meter. Got it. Thank good Paul. Yes. Uh Joseph, could you give us an update on Tamina? Are we uh on project on time? Are we finished by September 1st?

Yeah, I can give you some generals. Bile engineing. Here's if you want more specifics. We are still on schedule um as far as the work. So the west portion of the utilities and the northeast are done and our contractor is working on the southeast portion. The water tower is uh the water plant is ready to go. The well is drilled and the water tower is on schedule for erection. So yes, everything is is on schedule right now. We're we're fighting very hard to keep it on schedule because it is it is a tight deadline and a very hard deadline. When will that uh water tower go up?

That water tower? So, they're going to be uh starting they've got an erection crew coming in the end of this month to start some ground work and then they're going to start getting steel in earnest next month and getting that put up. Now, we What's it going to say on it? What's it going to look like? So, it has um I could do some digging and find it, but it it uh shows the historic Tamina community on it. Um, and it's it's a really pretty graphic that um, actually when we spoke with the TAM leadership group, they had an artist who who put it together and it looks very beautiful. Can hardly wait. Thank you. Mhm. Council Brock, I'm good.

Councilman Robinson, I'm fine. I don't have anything uh either. So, we're going to move on to executive session. City Council will recess the regular meeting and go into close session at 6:48 p.m. according to the Texas Open Meetings Act chapter 551 of Texas Government Code Verner's Tech Verner's Texas codes annotated uh in accordance with the authority contained in the Texas government code as follows Texas government code 551.087 087 deliberation regarding economic development negotiations. It is 6:48.

Thanks.

You're right. Oh man. Oh god. It's been

All right. We're going to reconvene the uh council meeting at uh 7:14 p.m. No final uh action, decision, or vote with regard to any matter considered in the closed meeting was made during the closed session. It is now 7:14 and we're going to adjourn this meeting of the Shannondoa City Council at 7:14.