City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, next up is public comments. I'm gonna have, so if we're here, if people are here about 5-8, 5-9, or 5-10, we're gonna have public comments during those sections and allow people to speak in regards to it. I do have, staff is gonna do a quick presentation to kind of explain how the process is working on 5-8, 5-9, and 5-10. We're gonna do that, then we'll go to public comments.

Hi, Mayor, City Council, Wendy Delgado, Director of Operations. Just going to go over a quick overview related to the planning for the Convention Center renovation and annex project related to some of the three items that are on your agenda for today. The decisions today establish direction and not construction. They're designed to provide clear direction to the owner's representative slash project manager for the project. This step will enable them to start the formal discussions regarding the project parameters with the design team, which is GENACT, and the construction manager at risk, which is Fulton Construction. Today's actions do not authorize the start of construction for the convention center renovation and annex project. Finalizing concept estimates with key partners. Following the direction provided by the council, immediate next steps will be initiated. Broad and associates will schedule a coordination meeting with the project architect and the construction manager at risk. The primary objective of this collaboration is to start working on final estimates and cost savings for a specific concept that you all want to move forward with. Comprehensive project financial package structure. Once the concept estimate is finalized by the project team, a complete project financial package will be presented to the entire city council. This comprehensive package will outline all funding mechanisms. We hope to include the sources of the money and the uses of the funds, the debt service options that'll be available to the city, the projection of expenses, the income projections, and a projected P&L. There will also be some public engagement and presentations related to Steps Forward prior to any construction authorization. There will be a formal review with the CVB Advisory Board. There will be a public open house. There will be continued channels for public comments to gather broader feedback via online survey. And then there will be a formal presentation to Cameron County Commissioner's Court to get their support and approval before moving forward. The path to construction authorization. Construction authorization would be the final step in the structured planning phase after all scheduled public and stakeholder presentations are completed and following the official Cameron County Commissioner's Court approval, a council meeting will be held. At this specific meeting, the council will review all finalized data to possibly authorize the start of construction. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, now is anyone here today in the public wish to speak at the public comments section?

My name's Clayton Brashear. When I was coming up the steps, I looked at the mirrors on the wall there, all the pictures. And I think my earliest one was Glenn McGee. And that tells you I've been here probably most as much as anybody else. This is the second meeting where I've come in the middle of the day. And there's roughly 800 voters out here. And we vote pretty much all the time. And when you start scheduling meetings like this in the middle of the day, it doesn't look good and this is the second one in 10 days and you know we still have to work it's still summertime our businesses are still going and and you know i don't want to use this word but i'm going to it sounds like there's shenanigans going on around here And when there's shenanigans going around here, you start waking up these 800 voters. They don't like it. I included, I don't like it. It doesn't sound good. And you know, guys, we need to. We need to put some of this. You start talking $50 million. You start talking, oh, let's have an ordinance that you can't communicate with each other. You can't have public debate. You can't have debate within each other. Our Constitution is based on debate. I don't know what you guys are doing here, but this is shenanigans. That's all.

Thank you. Okay, are there any other public comments? All right, any public comments from staff? Any public comments from council? All right, then we'll move on to approve consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve consent agenda 4.1 through 4.10?

Motion to approve.

Is there a second? Second. Okay. All in favor, please raise your hands. Opposed?

Still looking. This was a very stacked agenda, so I hardly even looked at the consent agenda.

Okay, so is that a mistake?

So I need a second, Mayor, please.

Okay.

Aye.

Okay, next up, we'll move on to item number 5.1, which is discussion and possible action to approve resolution number 2016-18, adopting rules, procedures, conduct, and decorum for city council, city staff, and members of the public. All right, so this item's on here not to limit anyone's public comment or debate, it was just really to add of how we run city council meetings, putting in place, we've had all of these rules, but if you go down and look through the rule book, Some are there, some aren't there, whatever. And so anyway, this was just a draft of it. As you can see, there's a red line version in there in the packet to where it goes through all the articles. And all of this was just pulled together from what all these other cities do in the back of it. There's a bibliography in Source Consulted. which it consulted our, of course, our charter and our code of ethics, and then it went into College Station, Bryan, Pflugerville, Fort Worth, Dallas, Forney, Odessa, Cottonwood Shores, I don't know where that is, Alpine, Bells, don't know where Bells, Texas is, Borger, Manor, McKinney, and then we went into Municipal League, TML, some Attorney General findings of Texas Open Meeting Act made easy, codes of canons, and the Texas Government Code, Chapter 51, various sections of Chapter 51, Chapter 52, 552, sorry, 551 and 552. And since this is a draft and a working draft so that we can all work together in a transparent moment and we can talk about what we like, what we don't like, well, that's what it's here for because we can't talk about this behind the scenes. So this is a draft here for everybody to go through. And we can eliminate stuff. We can not approve stuff. We can just not do the whole thing. It's up to the council as what they would like to proceed with it. Um, and I know Aaron has brought up some stuff. The judge Aaron wasn't scheduled to be here today and that's part of the reason why some meetings got moved besides the fact I can't be here tomorrow as well. Um, and so anyway, um, I guess we'll, we'll start with judge if you want to add some stuff and then Aaron and we can work our way through it. Just let's start with like page one and then we can, move through it, talk about it, and if we need to make draft changes, which I'm expecting, then we can bring it back to the next meeting, or if we can just not do anything with it.

I was going to mention Ms. Hartwell's comments, but since she's here.

That's okay. I'd like for you to go ahead and mention them. We've had several different emails. Okay.

I'll do that. First of all, I'll... state that it's very common for municipalities to have such a code. We had before this just rules of procedure regarding public comments by past the resolution of 2020 regarding being polite, respectful, no profanity. Periods of time limits the public Open Meetings Act allows the city to propose reasonable rules regarding meetings and the running of meetings, including time limits and limiting repetitious public comments and things like that. So, what I guess I'll start with, this, some of the new things, this policy provides that if someone wants to present, if a presenter wants to use some sort of digital presentation videos or some sort of other digital type method that needs to be submitted 48 hours before the meeting to allow IET to review it and to allow the staff and the mayor to review it, make sure it's appropriate. The mayor would have the discretion to allow it or not allow it. That's on page four. I think that's good, because we want things to be reviewed before someone just starts showing videos or digital presentations. Scanning. Yeah. Page five, Ms. Hartwell had a question about this. We discussed this once before about City council members should not attend committee meetings and try to persuade them on how to vote. They should be considered independent boards. And unless it involves a personal matter, like your own personal zoning or something like that, eventually the city council will be voting on these matters anyway. That's on 5-7. And again, all this is subject to removal or approval or whatever you all want to do. but this was discussed a few years ago, and kind of no action was taken at that time, so it was a good time to bring it up again. This will not prohibit someone from, as Ms. Hartwell mentioned, she's on the film commission or something like that, to present ideas, but I think the idea was to not to get up there and try to intimidate committee members, like you need to vote this way for some reason, because we would like those committee members to be independent But again, that's 5-7, subject to whatever you all want to do. The city now allows the Texas Open Meeting Acts regarding public decorum allows public comments that are mandatory to be allowed. Again, reasonable time limits and other rules can be placed on public comments. The public comments under the Texas Open Meetings Act can be made at the beginning of the meeting or during the discussion of the agenda item in particular. I think a lot of cities will sometimes do it at the beginning of the meeting, so someone who wants to speak about an agenda item doesn't have to wait two hours till that agenda item comes up. We currently, the city does, allows public comments on an agenda item during public comments and during the agenda item, so both times. This, I believe, restricts it to one. You could either make it during the public comment or, and again, this is just to expedite the meeting and to avoid repetition, but again, if you wanna keep it the same, which I don't have a problem with, you can do that. Time limits, we've always had about three minutes for, Public comments, this is again regarding the public's conduct. The mayor has a discretion to expand that and he very often does. The mayor also has a discretion under these rules to limit the amount of people for expedition if they're being repetitious. That's 6.3, that again could also be removed. All comments must be made in a respectful, orderly, lawful manner. No profanity, shouting, threatening. That's pretty much what our resolution says. Violation can then result in termination of the public comments. And of course, if someone gets disruptive, there's also other remedies under the law. There's a whole procedure which is We never really formally adopted the Roberts Rules of Order. And even though this doesn't officially adopt them, there are matters here in Article 7, 8, 9 about points of order. A council member may interrupt another speaker only to raise a point of order by stating point of order, point of privilege, call for the orders, call for a vote. Those are all parliamentary. provisions that I am asking that the city council members review and Let us know what you want to include or not include There's also censorship for council members or publics Conduct during a meeting Either being disrespectful harassing profanity and things like that censor of a council member is a procedure on page Then again, you could have a vote on censorship if a council member, and we hope that this never really occurs, but if a council member whose conduct is at issue may request a public hearing and not a discussion in closed executive session about a possible censorship. Again, I would ask that you all review Sections 9 and 10 for the opportunity to lead or change the council. Article 12 goes into council staff relations, and it basically follows the charter regarding city council members really prohibited from interfering in the day-to-day operation, contacting department heads. All inquiries should go through the city manager. I mean, that's been common for forever. That's in chapter 12. Article 13 is conduct in public and outside of the meetings by a council member. Councilwoman Hartwell had a question about that that I answered. It's very common for cities to have rules regarding conduct outside or off-duty conduct. I mean, for example, Congress is constantly censoring people for conduct that has nothing to do with their sitting in Congress. I think just recently the city council in San Antonio censored a council member for being arrested for driving while intoxicated and another member for being arrested for, I believe, a drug offense. There are constitutional boundaries, though, on that. You can't remove someone from office. You can't silence a member. You can't strip them for any type of right to vote. But you could publicly reprimand them or censor them. We've had some recent discussion about what a council member is appropriate for doing during a campaign. This involves their First Amendment right to political speech. So Section 137 talks about personal political advocacy. Obviously, a council member may not use their formal title in a way that implies that the entire city government is endorsing a particular candidate. You're always free from using your own personal opinion and making sure it's clear that this is your personal opinion on who you endorse and not endorse. Of course, a council member cannot use a city employee for their campaign. Any type of city resources, like the logo, city letterhead, any type of city resources. A good example, even though kind of a small example, is you can put a bumper sticker on your car, but you can't put one on a city vehicle. Council member may endorse a political candidate only if it's clear, that is the council member's personal view, personal opinion, and their personal endorsement, and does not in any way imply that the city government or the city council as a whole is making an endorsement. Those are some of the highlights, and again, this is, I believe that's the draft that I revised, I didn't prepare, and that you all should review and discuss any changes that you want, or not even do anything if you don't wish. Councilwoman Hartwell had a couple of questions that I thought are relevant regarding Section 3-6, which requires two members to sign an agenda before it gets placed on an agenda. That is also pretty common in a lot of cities. to prevent one council person from putting numerous items on that may not be relevant or important or a waste of time. So this requires two council members to sign an agenda request. That would be new for this city. They had a question about the mayor's authority to approve a council member's documents for backup when a council person requests in the JETA item be placed. I think we do currently have some rules about the backup information, what are the financial implications, what is the background information that's needed for the city council to consider it. Her question was regarding the mayor's authority to approve a council member's documents, what standards govern the mayor's approval, basically what needs to be included in the backup, I think, Should probably be specified. I talked about conduct outside of the city. The two signatures required. I'm just going over a number of emails that Ms. Hartwell sent that I tried to respond to. I believe she had something about, and you could please correct me, Councilwoman, about... A staff member could file a complaint against a council member, but can a council member file a complaint against a staff member? And I believe that may be under the human resources and the personnel policy, but I could yield to Wendy on that one. I think that's, I may have covered everything. Ms. Harwell, if I missed something, just let me know or you could.

Can you please read the suggested revisions that you have suggested from some of the questions that I've had?

I'm not sure if I'd phrase them as suggestions. I just did track what you requested. There was the one about, okay. Your request was that sections 12.5 to 12.7 be revised by adding the language, nothing in this article shall be construed to prohibit a council member from respectfully criticizing, challenging, or disagreeing with the actions, recommendations, performance, or decisions by city staff. when such communication concerns legitimate city business and does not constitute harassment, retaliation, or personal attack. If the city manager or department head receives a complaint alleging that a council member's conduct towards staff violates this article, the current concern shall be documented and the council member shall be provided notice of the allegation and an opportunity to respond before any referral for a censure or ethics review. I know the Board of Ethics clearly have an opportunity to respond and They do. No referral or censor or ethics review should be made solely on the basis of unsubstantiated allegation. I believe that's what you were asking and requesting. You asked about the definition of harassment, and generally, if it's not a legal term, then ordinary meaning applies. Generally defined as unwelcome, repetitive, and intentional behavior, such as verbal abuse, threats, or unwanted contact that demeans, humiliates, or distresses a person. In workplace context, it means behavior that creates a hostile, intimidating, and offensive environment. You had some questions, and I wasn't really sure and clear on this about, or comments about the social media provisions in 13.6 and 13.7, and I don't think I had a chance to get back with you on that. Is that what you're referring to, Ms.?

You had sent back some revisions to some of the policy sections in here that were in italics that you had suggested for the council to review. That's what I was asking you to do. That's what I just read, yeah.

Those were your requests, basically, right? Right. Yes, that was sections 12.5, 12.7, the italics on. This email was sent to everybody, so the city council should have it. This was yesterday or Sunday afternoon when I was working on this. I think that's pretty much my comments, Mayor. And again, we're open for discussion. Whatever the city council wants to do on this policy is up to them. I'll make any revisions or deletions that you all desire. And I think it's good to have a discussion, open discussion before any type of vote. if you want to go forward.

And that italics phrase, can you read it again and give me your thoughts on it? Since we don't have it here in front of us.

Requested by Councilwoman Hartwell that sections 12.5 and 12.7 be revised. I could resend it by adding the following language. Nothing in this article shall be construed to prohibit a council member from respectfully criticizing, challenging, or disagreeing with actions, recommendations, performance, or decisions of city staff when such communication concerns legitimate city business and does not constitute harassment, retaliation, or personal attack.

Can we look at that and see how it aligns with the employee handbook?

Well, that and also the charter.

Okay. Yes. So we can do that, like do kind of an analysis to see how it aligns with the charter and aligns with the employee handbook. Because we've got to make sure they all align together. I mean, the charter we can't change. That has to change by vote. But if we're going to do something in this, then we've got to make sure it aligns with the employee handbook on those pages regarding it.

May I speak, Mayor? Yep, yep. The point of that provision is not really something that should occur in the Code of Conduct or the ethics. It's more of a blanket statement that allows freedom of a council member to still have First Amendment rights and be able to not be criticized or ridiculed or accused of harassment by asking legitimate questions, even if there are numerous emails or questions to be had. Isn't that correct, Ed?

Is what correct?

I'm sorry. The italics that we are attempting to add, it's not really a policy addition that needs to be referenced over a couple of other documents. It's a blanket statement saying that you can't just assume that because there is questioning of a staff member's opinion via an email, that it is not considered harassment, which is also broadly defined. Even if it's not defined within here, it is a very broad term that is subjective and can be used.

We could add a definition of harassment. Normally, if there's no legal definition and there is somewhat for harassment, you use your ordinary definition. a normal definition.

But the ordinary...

I mean, if you adopt this, it's going to be part of the policy with the italics wording. That's why I think we need to check on how it conflicts or doesn't conflict with the personnel policies or the charter because I think the point may be that any criticism should go through the city manager. Any contact with city staff as providing the charter should... talked to Randy and he gets with the staff member about criticizing or challenging a staff member, but that's why I think the mayor is saying that let's look at the personnel policies, let's look at the charter to see how this coexists with it. But if the italics section that you were requesting gets adopted, it does become part of the charter. I mean, it does become part of the policy.

It becomes part of the policy, not the charter. No, the policy. And that's where we gotta make sure there's no conflicts in there because a charter overrules, you know, how this thing is set up is it's set up with the Constitution and then state laws and then city charter, and this is the lowest one on the totem pole of all of the authority ranking.

May I?

Yeah, sorry.

The italics again, is not pointing to specificity of the policy in which a council member can only direct authority to the city manager. That's not at all what it is. This is a blanket statement that should be included that says nothing in this article shall be construed to prohibit a council member from respectively criticizing, challenging, or disagreeing with the actions, recommendations, performance, or decisions of city staff when such communication concerns legitimate city business and does not constitute harassment, retaliation, or personal attacks. So this is an addition to the policy to make sure that we are still allowed to properly communicate with staff members without being then accused of harassment for things like multiple emails and questioning or just asking questions on what it is of the information that I'm receiving. There's also something within this policy that says that you cannot fish for answers, well, I'm sorry, when I have a question to somebody and they're not able to deliver the proper policy and procedure because it doesn't exist, I am going to send that exact question to the legal, to our city attorney, so that I can get his perspective on that. And then when I adjust, when I reference that against statutes and Texas government code at all, I might have more questions surrounding that. And I don't feel like I should be, I feel like within this policy, it certainly says that that could be considered harassment by definition of harassment in the Webster's Dictionary. And so this is a blanket statement protecting my rights, our rights, I'm sorry.

We just need to make sure they align with the Charter. and with the employee handbook because if an employee feels like they're being harassed or ridiculed, then that becomes a hostile work environment, and then they have rights. And so we have to dig into this and make sure that we've got the right mechanism in the process to cover everybody, the city council member as well as the city staff as well as the city, the public, or whatever it might be. We just need to pull that all in together to make sure that they align. I think that was my question was just let's look at what the employee handbook says. Let's look at what the charter says. And that way we can make sure that the statement isn't contradictory to something in one of the two items there. I've got the charter now, but it's...

If this... If this is in conflict with our charter or code of ethics, then we are unconstitutional. We have something wrong with our code of conduct and charter. because this is what First Amendment rights are. And that's why I wanted that in there. The other part of this in the italics that he was reading also speaks about the city manager department that had received the complaint. that a council member's conduct towards staff violates this article. And the reason that I suggested that is because there was no provision in these sections that allowed for a council member to receive notice beforehand. And so this is an addendum that asks that the council member is allowed to be provided notice of the allegation.

Oh, I agree with that. And I most definitely, if there's a, if some employee has made a complaint or whatever, official complaint, then I agree that, and we've done that before in the past when we've had employee complaints regarding behavior of council members. So yes, I definitely agree that there should be a notice provision in there.

The backup information, should I continue or?

No, more ahead, yeah, go.

The backup information that Ed was talking about that I had brought up, my question was what rules govern the mayor's decision for deciding and ruling on the backup materials that can and cannot be selected? I do understand that there are many, and articles within this policy that are standard within other municipal governments. And I have... suggested that there was some sort of procedure and policies because I have asked as a newly elected official for several policies and procedures that I've learned do not exist in our city. So I am in no way against the entirety of this. There are several things that I feel have been pulled from various bibliographies and articles from municipalities in which I didn't have that document to reference until last night, very late, and then city secretary sent it to everybody today, this afternoon, just an hour before the meeting. But when you look at those, when you look at everything, you've piecemealed a lot of these different sections together into this document, which left out really important information when you're doing that. Because in some cities, there are things that are specifically defined and they have definitions within their policy, but we did not pull those. So there are several instances within these sections that don't work because it's not a complete procedure, and it leaves a lot of subjectivity and open-ended questions. And in saying that, going back to what rules govern the mayor's decision for backup, It is in our charter that the presiding officer has the overall jurisdiction to put things on the agenda and pull things off of the agenda and things like this. When I sent an email asking for the exact policy and procedure for putting items on an agenda, the email that I referenced just today said that no backup, that all items that all of the areas within the recommended agenda item request form should be submitted, including backup information. On today's agenda, there's several items that have zero backup information. And in that particular email says that they will not be submitted without backup information. So there's very conflicting things happening here where some people are available to put agenda items on with no backup, and others are not allowed because of that ruling. And then there have been several instances where where agenda items somehow made it past the review process that was also explained to me that were illegitimate items to be placed on the agenda, yet those council members were then made only aware that this couldn't be voted on only when we were on the dais, meaning that they weren't pulled from the agenda when that review process occurred. And that is very concerning.

We've also had it where things get added to the agenda after the agenda review. So that's why we're trying to create these rules. And, you know, that's a whole, you know, once we have some finite rules in place, then we can all check the boxes and make sure they're all in place. And that was kind of the... But, yes, also the point was is to have open discussion about trying to figure out how we put 25 or 35 or 40 years of history of how the island's been operating from a hand down from Joyce Adams to Nikki to Susan Hill. And that process, a lot of this stuff is just like, hey, here you go. This is it. Because we don't have these resources. rules and you know you brought that up which is what kind of started this and again this document i you know i don't have time to to create a 25 page document so i just funded all this stuff through claude and said hey claude can you try to make a working document out of this so we can all discuss it and start you know having some some good discussions out of it

Mayor, there is a provision that requires that if you feel that an agenda request is insufficient, that you promptly notify the council members so that it could be corrected.

And that wasn't done when Ken Metters was here. It was allowed on the agenda.

I'm just saying what this policy requires now that he has to notify council members what the deficiency is and give them an opportunity to correct it.

It also happened to me as well. And agenda items were changed because there was no backup information, but somehow they were rewritten in the process before then being put on the agenda. And what was said was because there was no backup information, it was inferred to rewrite another council person's agenda item, which then made it inadequate for So there's, again, just going back to that one question, we still don't have policies around what it is that is not going to be, I would like to see policies in which you are looking at a rubric saying this checks this box, this checks this box, not I don't think that I like this and therefore I'm not going to allow this because that is subjectivity. And when you said that you went through all of these different municipalities codes of conducts. There are articles within this bibliography that I reviewed and I find it really interesting what you chose not to include. And those were things like I am speaking, point of order. I think that there were things like, namely, the exclusion of policies pertaining to conflict of interest, which happened to be at the top of almost all of these bibliographies. But that provision was not added. And I thought that was very interesting.

Okay, so the conflict of interest, the reason that's not in there is because that's in the Code of Ethics. And it was originally in there, but then it got removed because it's in the Code of Ethics and it's clearly defined in the Code of Ethics. And again, I... I took all this information and plugged it into a computer program called Claude, and Claude generated this document. So I didn't tell Claude, don't use this article, don't do this, don't do that. I just used the tools of artificial intelligence to cut down some time and help create a working document that we could all review and go through and discuss. Rather than hitting a stack of 800 different pages from different cities, I just tried to add a PDF and throw it in the file, and that's how the bibliography list got produced is because they were all just thrown into Claude, and Claude did whatever Claude wanted to do. And then we had the city attorney look over it to see what conflicts there would be. And then we have a discussion here so we can add or whatever to it. But there's not a single sentence in this thing that I drafted on my own.

Well, how did the Article 13 specifically pointing to social media conduct in relation to, let's see, social media conduct regarding agenda items?

That was Bryan, Texas that had that, I believe. But again, they consolidated a whole bunch of, I listed the cities that they consolidated, or it consolidated, I don't know if it's a it, a she, a he, or whatever, I'm assuming it's an it.

There's no pronouns for Claude.

Okay, well, we'll just call Claude Claude, okay. And Claude put it all together. I can't ask Claude how he put it together.

Well, when I used AI to compare these against the other bibliographies that you sent me, it said that that particular provision was not found in any of these bibliographies. And I find it really interesting that I am the only council member that posts agenda items, yet this particular section points to social media conduct regarding agenda items. Now, there's also things in here that says a council member should not use social media to make a personal attack on a staff member, fellow council member, applicant, or other person connected to an agenda item. Sounds like our gibber issue. It seems there are things in here that are just normal public decorum, and that totally makes sense and willing to comply. But again, these were not highlighted in red, which would signal that it was edited or added by our city attorney. And so that is concerning to me. 13.7 was the personal political advocacy. This was also included in another bibliography. I found it really strange after my post with the state representative and governor to find that in there as well. There is First Amendment sensitivity of regulating an elected official's speech as well that we need to be thinking about when we're going through some of these sections as well.

If I may add, the reason that got in there was actually from you when you wanted the neutrality deal. So I uploaded your neutrality thing into it to try to get to a neutrality level. This was done way before your post with Janie and the governor. So that's how, because I was trying to incorporate your thoughts on the neutrality side of things into it.

Thank you. I think that there's not a lot wrong with this. I think that there are some really great things that we can use as guidelines moving forward. Again, not using your official capacity to endorse candidates was one of those provisions. We all have a right for our own personal view. And on our own personal social media page, we can endorse whomever we would like. And on an official capacity page, your intergovernmental relationships and whatever that may be, you also have a right to have those relationships. It doesn't necessarily imply that you're endorsing those candidates. We do have to build those relationships. So there wasn't really actually much in there that I would object to. and that particular one. I mean, this could be an entire workshop There is so much in here. And I have spent days, and unfortunately, the hours that I spent drafting an email to Ed, I lost the entirety of that, which is incredibly frustrating in the middle of studying other agenda items. But to be able to cover every single one of those things here, I think, would be difficult for me.

So how would you like? There's no hurry on this. I mean, everyone should just take your time, review it, and when you all want to take, reconsider it, just bring it back or give me some direction on what you want included or not, but I don't see any, I don't see any hurry to. I wouldn't assume.

Be the best document that it can, sorry, best document it can be.

I think it's a great start. There's a lot of good things in here on,

I think that within the areas of censorship, Some of those rule, just the procedures within here, these are standard parliamentary procedures for the most part, but there's, again, not a full analysis of these. It's been pulled from different documents that it doesn't allow for the complete procedure to take place. So, we need to have that complete process understanding. If we're going to go through with things like this, then maybe we need to consider actually operating and functioning under Robert's Rules of Order. because we're piecemealing what it is that we can do up here on the dais, and considering we have a four-one council, it makes it incredibly difficult for somebody to actually have debate or disagreement or conflicting views up here. And I could use background information, for example, that you might not want to hear in a discussion, and a point of order could be raised and I wouldn't be able to finish my point because you know where I was going with it and you didn't want that to be aired. And I have a problem with that. That is censoring my ability to do my job by providing background information to get to a point.

But that's kind of how Robert's Rules works. And so that's kind of why we're here. And again, for the last four or 50 years, whenever the South Potter Islands first, when Glenn McGee became mayor, we never incorporated. Robert's rules orders and we never have and so we've kind of had this hodgepodge of Of how we want to treat things and so we're just trying to pull all this stuff together to have an actual working document so again, I think that to Ed's point is if we have more opportunity to add, subtract, or whatever it might be, just to make this document a better document. That's my whole goal is not to pass it today, is just to have a better document and keep working it to come up with a really good blueprint roadmap for how the council meetings operate and work.

I think within this document, it also says that we are only allowed to speak one time on a subject.

And I think that that was for the public, I believe. I'm sorry, but yes. Sorry.

I actually don't believe that is what I read, but I don't have it highlighted in front of me. I'm pretty sure that it said that we were only able to speak one time during the debate process, and that each council member would be able to speak one time on each subject. And that was what I was referring to. That would prohibit debate. practical debate or discussion. There's also another rule in here that says that all questions must address the presiding officer, Mayor, and that also is concerning considering that Other council people might have a concern or a question, and I would like to address that question, yet I'm now addressing somebody entirely different about that. It's kind of like now I need to go to the CM to talk to the staff. I understand that. But now I have to go through you to have debate on the dais.

I think that's just like get rules of order in there, but the public comment, it was just the section six, it's just for the public for, you know, like we currently have a three minute per presentation or that type of thing. And it's always been that anybody who comes and addresses the council addresses the council as a whole and not individuals because that's also, you don't want someone from the audience or someone trying to call out and you don't want like some back and forth fighting to go in there on the on the DS and so you want someone to kind of be the referee and kind of direct that back and forth so there is a level of decorum because you know it's not just the the citizens that watch meetings like this there's vendors there's people who look to move to South Padre Island you know with all of our meetings being public it's just trying to keep a level of order to it and to where it makes everybody at least be nice to everybody because it gets reviewed. Like I remember when United tried to move to Dallas, Texas, or looked at moving to Dallas, Texas, one of the deals where United decided to move to Chicago was because of the fact of how disjointed and how unfunctional the City of Dallas Council was. And there was all this bickering and fighting and yelling and screaming. I mean, it was actually, you know, it made the news every night. And so, you know, it's just that part of that process of just trying to be a a referee and not have people talking over each other and yelling at each other at the same time and that sort of thing. There's nothing in here trying to limit anyone's rights. It's just the fact that you're allowed, everyone's allowed to have a comment, but we also don't want someone to come up to the council deal and talk for from the public for two hours reading the phone book or doing whatever and then come up with another agenda item and start doing the exact same thing just to draw out because they don't like something. I agree everybody has a right to express their opinion but eventually we can't have 12 hour meetings or meetings that go into three or four days just because someone wants to use the mic, and I think I've always tried to do my best, most 90% of the time is just say, hey, look, if we're making points or whatever and we're winning, then that's great, meaning that they're making good points about the item, but then when we've had people where we have them start comparing you know xyz and this and that and it's off subject and we have to limit it and get it back on to the right subject and not go off into the stratosphere talking about the moon colliding with mars or something you know i mean i mean go ahead no i mean that's fine if

That does happen. It can happen. But I would just be weary of limiting council or public comments, commentary, even if they are repetitive. Brenda wants to come up and say something and make a point, and Harley wants to come up right after that and make the point in a different way. They're two different people aligned on a vision, and I believe that we should hear from both of them. I don't think that we should object that Harley can't speak because Brenda already made the point.

I don't think that was the intent. I think what it was is like if you had a line of 100 people and every one of them said, we're against this, what we've done in the past is said, hey, everyone, if you have this opinion, please raise your hand and then let the record state that everybody in the room raised their hand on this opinion versus saying it over and over and over again just to, because if you give 100 people three minutes of time, that's 300 minutes. And that's five hours. And so, you know, we don't want to have the meetings ending at 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock in the morning and starting again at 9 a.m. Because I guess we can carry over through public commons or whatever. But then the staff has to drive home for 30 minutes to an hour or wherever it might be. And so we're just trying to...

The section in question on public comments or public time limits states also that we need to use our common sense at times. The presiding officer may extend either the limit where a large or an unusual number of speakers or the complexity of the item warrants it. I mean, there's a lot of discretion given to the presiding officer to... to allow when there's a number of large speakers or complexity. And I did not see anything about a council member just being allowed to discuss an item once and it's regarding the public. And you may wanna just keep the original or our current session where you could speak about an agenda item at the public comments and during the agenda item.

I would prefer that.

I mean, I don't think that's been abused at all, and we do more than the law allows, actually. But again, it's section 3-2, three minutes per presentation. Of course, the presiding officer has discretion to enlarge it. 20 minutes per agenda item, and he has a discretion to extend it when there's a large number of speakers, and complexity of the time warrants it. I mean, you gotta give, you just use your common sense and discretion at times, But I don't see there's anything about limiting a council member's right to debate an item.

Time. For the record, the Texas government code, section 551-007, states a governmental body may not prohibit criticism of the governmental body, including criticism of acts, omissions, policies, procedures, programs, or services. That is your public right.

One of the first things I remember telling you is like you got to have a thick skin sometimes and sit up here.

Well, I'm growing one, but I don't have it yet.

You know, it just comes with the territory.

Yeah, like what we've tried to do in the past is if someone wants to get up here and starts attacking or calling out some business or we've had, you know, someone wanting to discuss LBGQ and all that stuff. We've had that before, which that's just not, this is not what public forum is for. If they wanna go do that, they can go do it out on the street, but not at a city council.

Being critical is quite different than being harassing or threatening or abusing profanity and being unruly, which are present resolution mandates. city council members are subject to being criticized and that just goes with the territory.

It sure does. I will also, to your point, is there anything in here that prohibits somebody from the public speaking about something that is not on the agenda? Okay. So if you have a concern that is not on the agenda and you would like to address the city council, you may still address the city council about that subject. That would have to be a public comment. In public comments. Right.

They couldn't do it on an agenda item because it has to be on an agenda. But again, we allow that. Like when we have the Friends of Animal Rescue come up here in public comments and they talk about you know, how many dogs, cats, and birds that they save, you know, each quarter or whatever it might be when they decide to do it. You know, that's not an agenda item, but they come out or we have, when we have an opening of a park or opening of a business, we've allowed, you know, we allow people to come out and make that announcement because it's public comments and announcements.

Well right now in section 6.2 it does say that members of the public may be allowed to make comments on an agenda item at the initial time for public comments and announcements nearing the beginning of the meeting or during the discussion of the specific agenda but not at both times and I would like that removed. I think that we should be able to have the public speak on both items if possible. It also suggests that we have a citizen comment request form, which that is actually a normal process in many other municipalities where if you would like to speak on public comments, there's typically a request form that is sitting over, in our case, probably at that table over there, that you would have to come up and sign your name, say, I want to do that. And then only the people that have their names on that list are able to speak. I'm not sure if that's something that we want to do. But I don't mind that. I think that it actually creates some structure and organization. And we have an idea how much time we're going to be spending on public comments. And that paper could be given to the presiding officer. And you can see how many people are speaking. And then you could deliberate on how many people potentially are speaking on the same item. I think a lot of these things, like the public comment decorum, are things that we're going to need to also communicate with our constituents on what that looks like instead of addressing council members individually. You may not do that no longer. It is to the council in its entirety. There's also decorum in the chamber at this. It does pretty much institute a sergeant at arms, which would be Claudine, or who would be that person?

It has it as a city secretary, but I think that, yeah, you would have it as the police chief or chief of police, I would think, because I don't think Nikki wants to do that.

You might be surprised.

You might be surprised? Well, maybe Nikki does want to do it.

I think the progressive enforcement procedure in Article 8, the verbal warning, final warning, and counsel action, those are things that really need to be considered. We're not the only council that has conflicting views. And in our case of... I even hate to say 401 Council because I don't agree, I don't disagree on everything and we align on a lot of things. There are specific things like the convention center project that I have outstanding questions on and for the record, I am not against a convention center expansion. I am against the procedure and the way that this has gone about.

Can we hold that to the item 5.8? Yes, we can.

The conduct in public and outside meetings, I do understand that this is something that's standard. And I believe every council member understands that we are held to a different standard in public. But again, we need to be able to make sure that we are able to speak freely about questions or concerns regarding the government policy. And in here, it says, do not overstate authority. Contact with the media. Contact with the media is something that we pretty much already have in our charter. social media conduct, interactions with constituents in the community, cannot engage in personal attacks, name calling, or ridicule directed at an individual rather than an issue. So now you're saying in conversation, you're now limiting what that person is available to say about another person as a person, if you're not referencing that person in official capacity, and that can be misconstrued, I believe. So yes, there is lots of work to do on this. I think it's very interesting that after seven years of mayorship, only now are we bringing up these types of procedures, policies, potential censure, and concerns like this. But here we are.

Just to clarify, there was no document ever in the history of the city. What? You said in seven years, but we've never had this document ever.

She's saying over 50 years. But now is the time to start talking about how we can cut people off and debate and censor and what rules we're going to regulate on social media. That is my point.

Anybody else have anything?

I think, sorry, I'll take time to review this document. I think we need to try to set a date for when we want to bring it back on the agenda. And then everybody review it, put your comments in, see if we can come up with something that we all mostly agree on, and then vote on it then.

Okay. You want to do it in four weeks?

Does everybody feel like four weeks would be enough?

Mm-hmm, yes.

I mean, I want to make sure there's enough time.

Yeah. No, I agree.

It's a lot of work. And for four weeks, yeah. I mean, I've done a lot of work on this. So yeah, I think I could probably do that. But every Thursday is another 500 to 700 page agenda that we look at and study and have no life outside of reviewing that agenda.

I think our biggest agenda is like 1,600 pages. yes so I can have this tentatively scheduled for Wednesday September 16th okay the second city council meeting in September is it in two weeks and see how it's going do people feel like they need another two weeks another four weeks we can just bring an item back and that's one just discussion and just say if how's everybody doing on it do you think we still want it on the four weeks or we can punt it or whatever and go to six weeks to reference the employee handbook as well i would just respect the request that don't send me all your comments the day before the meeting oh yeah i finally got around to it probably a good one all right so i guess we'll just mutually all decide i don't think we need a motion for that we'll just okay cool all right next up we'll move to 5.2 which is a public hearing regarding the 2026 2030 capital improvement plan

Mayor, City Council, Wendy Delgado, Director of Operations. This is, Just an opportunity for you to open up a public hearing to the public if they would like to discuss or make public comments on the CIP that is posted in the packet. We started this process back in April. We've had a couple presentations on it. It was published, Valley Morning Star publication on the website. And following this would be on September the 2nd. It would come back to you as a resolution adopting the five-year plan at the same time as the fiscal year budget according to the home rule charter so basically you just need to open up a public comment and take any comments related to the document okay well we're opening the public hearing is there anybody here who would like to speak regarding the 2026 to 2030 or 2025 2030 capital improvement plan

All right, hearing no one in the public wishing to speak, we will close the public hearing. Then we'll move to item number 5.3, which is a public hearing to discuss the proposed 2026-2027 fiscal year budget for the City of South Padre Island.

Good afternoon, everyone. This is the public hearing for the budget. It was advertised, so you would just need to open the public hearing for comments.

Okay, the meeting is officially open for comments. Is there anyone here who would wish to make any public comments or public comments regarding the proposed 2026-2027 fiscal year budget for the city of South Padre Island? Going once, twice. All right, we're going to close that public hearing. Next up, we'll move to 5.4, which is discussion and action to approve the first reading of ordinance number 26-16, amending chapter two of the Code of Ordinances of the City of South Water Island by providing for the change or establishment of all fees imposed for services by the City.

Good afternoon once again. During the budget process, we discussed the fee schedule. There were some fees that are going to be changed because they were made obsolete by the Texas legislature. And there are some fees from the convention center that they're realigning to go ahead and they're increasing to realign that to meet what they're expending there to provide those services.

Anybody here who has any comments on it? Anybody at council? Would someone like to make a motion?

Motion to approve.

All right. I'll get my caption form out here. All right. That's the wrong caption form. All right, we're voting on ordinance number 26-16, an ordinance of the City of South Padre Island amending Section 2-75 of Chapter 2 of the Code of Ordinance of the City of South Potter Island pertaining to administration services, police department, environmental health services, and convention center providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances, providing for severability, and providing for publication in caption form. All in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Next up is item number 5.5, which is discussion and action to approve ordinance number 26-19, making the appropriations for each department, project, program, and accounts for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2026 and ending September 30th, 2026.

This is the official approving of our budget. This does have to be a roll call vote.

Yeah, there's a typo on the agenda, but it's ending September 30th, 2020.

But it's good on the form.

Yeah, okay. All right, is there a motion and a second?

Is this for the ordinance 5.5-2619? Are you going to speak more on this or?

If you have any questions, yes, I would. We reviewed the budget. We've had several budget presentations on there on the budget. I'll give you some budget highlights. The proposed tax rate is going to be the same as it is right now. We are going to be doing a COLA, 6% for certified police officers and firefighters, 5% for non-exempt, 4% for exempt. There's a reclassification of a part-time deputy at municipal court to full-time to assist with short-term rentals. We're going to be unfreezing a dispatch position and funding that position for the police department. There's going to be a maintenance tech in transit and maintenance tech in shoreline, two maintenance technicians for the convention center, one social media person for the convention center. There was an increase in the marketing budget for the Convention Center of $735,000. That's pretty much the highlights of the budget. All the budget, the fund balances are attached there to the ordinance, but I don't know if you have any other questions.

There were several new positions that were proposed. Are all of those going to be seen through or which ones are missing?

The positions that I named, which is the maintenance tech for transit shoreline, the two maintenance techs for the convention center, and the one social media for the convention center, those are all the new positions.

So we're missing like three or four that were added on, that were suggested.

That were suggested, that didn't make it to the final cut of the budget.

Do you remember which positions those were?

I don't unfortunately remember off the top of my head, but I will be more than glad to get that information to you after the meeting. I do apologize. I just did a highlight of what was in the budget. I'm sorry about that.

That's okay, no, it's not your fault, Sandra. I was just curious because it would be nice to have all of those positions. I will send that out to you, yes ma'am.

So to recap for the general fund, we have an operating revenue, expectation of $17,314,786, and we have expenditures of $17,218,653, and that leaves roughly around $95,000 in rainy day reserve funds. Increase the reserve, the fund balance, yes. Without having to raise taxes. Correct, yes, sir.

What's the general fund reserves?

Well, we're required by the charter to have six months of general fund reserves, and I believe the general fund reserves are around... We have six months. Excess reserves are around three or four million. Yes, we have six months. And so we have to keep, basically we have to keep $8.5 million in required reserves, and then we have some excess reserves, but... We can't use the excess reserves for like operation shortfalls. That's state law. So if you budget a certain amount for operations, you have to collect that amount in taxes. Or reduce operations. Yeah. Or you have to reduce the operations. Yes, sir.

Did you?

Go ahead.

You say that we have to have 8.5 million in reserves? Yeah, six months. And you said we only have three to four million?

Excess reserves.

Excess, above the six months requirement.

Very good, thank you for that explanation.

Yes, our charter requires six months of reserves. And that number changes every year based on how much your operating expenditures are.

It's just when you make a budget amendment, so we do have a worksheet that has a running balance with that, yes.

Okay, I don't have any more questions. Yes, ma'am.

Do we have a motion and a second?

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. I thought we'd already done that.

We're double checking. All right, so it's a roll call vote, but I have to read the... the caption, which we're going to have a roll call vote on ordinance number 26-19, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of South Pottery Island, making appropriations for each department, project, program, and accounts for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2026, and ending September 30th, 2027, providing for severability and providing for an effective date. If we could start from right to left.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Next up is 5.6, which is discussion of possible action to approve a budget amendment from the CVB excess reserves in the amount of $132,738.73 to be used for information technology and security systems for the South Water Island Convention Center, South Water Island Museum for $87,863.73, and maintenance for the South Butter Island Convention Center for $44,875. Kelly.

Good afternoon, council. Delighted to be here with you. And I'll share now that I have the microphone that we are installing our HVACs, brand new systems today with a crane and a cooling tower. So we survived the hottest months of the summer without Murphy getting a hold of us in the convention center. We are back though to ask for your support of three items. Several of these go into the convention center. We need to upgrade our internet to be able to hold the security system. Then we're asking to put fobs or automatic devices on six doors in the convention center. We're still using keys to get in and out. which hinders, quite frankly, emergency response should we need it. And then we've been working with IT, who's identified 16 cameras that we'd like to put outside and inside the building, just make sure we've got some better eyes on what's going around. We did competitively bid this, and I want to give a shout out to Victor and the IT department If we were going to contract this out of house, it was going to be double the cost. He and his team are going to install the cameras ourselves. We like that too, so as we need to go moving them around, should you approve the expansion, then our own team put them in, and so they can move them around. We're here today asking for that money and for some additional money for the cameras and the museum as well to keep an eye on those goods. Happy to answer any questions, otherwise I'm looking for approval on the 144,000.

Okay, the way this is reading was confusing to me, so I wanna understand the 87,008, that is for the convention center and the museum, not just the museum.

Correct, and out of that, $78,581 are for our cameras, and 9,200 are for the cameras. Yeah, I did see that invoice for the 9,000, so I just wanted to make sure I understood.

So in other words, it's not 132 plus 87 plus 44, it's the breakdown of the two. Right.

132,738,000 is made up of cameras for the convention center, 78,000, 9,000 for the museum. And then one of the things that I didn't mention is that we're asking for four external doors. As you all would know, doors in this environment have a tendency to corrode pretty quickly, and we need to maintain the seals on them. Some of those have gone, and these are all external doors.

Okay, and this is, as of now, this is a one-time cost until 10 years when they start resting and need to be replaced.

That's what we anticipate, Councilwoman.

The building never had cameras, right? Or does it have cameras?

I've only been with you five months, so I'm going to say in the time I've been here, I haven't seen a camera up there. I would hate to say that we've never had cameras.

Right, but we don't have any current cameras right now.

We currently have no security outside the wonderful security that Chief Claudine and her team provides to us, but we do have some really high-dollar equipment and high-dollar items over there when we have folks coming through.

So who will be monitoring them?

It comes with a system that comes into the reception area with a camera. We'll have as well one of those doorbells to get into the system. And I suspect they'll be connected up to yours here at City Hall as well.

Motion to approve.

Anybody else have any questions?

total amount of the CVB excess reserves that we're pulling a total of $265,477 from? Somewhere around 17 million, I believe, in excess reserves. You said 265, isn't it? Isn't the total 132? Yeah, the total is $132,738. Correct.

And 73 cents. Right. Then we have somewhere around 17 million and we're making...

Hi, and you approved earlier this year about $450,000 for the air conditioning units. This is the last. capital improvement we're asking for this year. We do have a capital improvement study, though, so you should expect that we're back next year. Sandra did include in your budget for this year, I thought was very prudent, a $250,000 capital reserve specifically for these kind of items as we move forward, so we make sure we've got enough funding for it outside of whatever you're going to do with the convention center.

Sandra, do you wanna answer her question with the exact, well, close to the exact dollar of excess reserves since we haven't collected this year, this month's taxes yet?

Okay, the CDB has, actually it's closer to 20. It's 25.6 million. That's a total reserve. Total reserve. Total reserve, yes.

And we're required statutory to have?

Six.

Six months. It's 9,555,045 divided by two, right? Because it's your expenditures, well, on the hotel fund.

Yes.

I guess if you want to get to the convention center fund, then that's another two, so it gets 11. 11. Yeah.

Yeah, I see now where I was adding the 132 to the other twos. I see that says an amount up to 132. So thank you for that clarification. My mistake.

Okay.

These expenses, the IT, the maintenance, and things like this, were these at all vetted in the new convention center projects, the information technology security systems? I think that's really what I'm asking about.

She mentioned that we're installing the cameras so we can move them wherever we need to go to.

But my question is, we have a consultant.

Furniture, fixtures, and other items that once the convention center is built, then we'll have other budgets to equip the convention center. I have not seen those other budgets.

I wish we did. But I can see that this will work from this budget. Thank you.

Okay. Do we have a motion and a second? Yes. Okay. Any other comments? All in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. Next up is 5.7, which is a discussion of possible action regarding the Palm Street boat ramp redevelopment. I put this on the agenda for discussion because I've gotten lots of phone calls from people loving our new boat ramp but complaining about the Palm Street boat ramp having a big hole on the outside of it and oysters cutting up people's boats. And we have a plan for the renovation of the Palm Street boat ramp, but we had to put that on hold in order to get the money from Restore, and since we have finished the boat ramp project on the Restore side of things, do we want to try to reopen the Palm Street boat ramp plans and ask for updates and we currently still have a GLO lease, but we do not have a Army Corps permit, and so I'm asking council today if we wanna ask Shoreline to get an updated proposal from the engineer on the existing plans for the boat ramp renovation, and if we want to start authorize them to start the application with the army corps regarding that boat ramp we'll make that motion and i will second it just a question how much longer is our glo lease i think they're five-year leases but they just renew on their own uh i think we we have to be renewing it because we have um We have the boat ramp there. The plans had called for like an 80-foot pier to run along the north side of the boat ramp, and we probably want to look at maybe tailoring that back a little bit. And then, of course, we have to get Hanson to update plans. Hanson was the original designer a season or so ago to update plans if need to be. I think there's a request from Public Works that there's some drainage that needs to be added to it. And so we get a price from that, see if it fits into our matrix of things that we, because we don't want to have to go out and do a whole RFQ again and pay somebody else to redesign the boat ramp that's already been designed for the renovation there. And so this would get them a chance to get some pricing from hansen and uh talk to the army corps and figure out exactly how long they want that that pier to be there's been some developments on both sides that they've that weren't there since 2019 when 18 19 20 when they were working on these plans um and the the the The topography has changed because there's been additional docks and some other stuff that's been added there. So maybe we can shorten that pier down, make sure that pier's not interfering with any neighboring business, but still have a pier to where people can pull up to tie off and move their car or truck or whatever. That ramp was originally designed as a... kayak slash jet ski ramp i think the the new design will have it to where you can you can do some some smaller 20 foot boats or whatever into it um yeah there's a lot of boats i mean i got by there every morning oh yeah no the whole the whole street there uh along palm street is boat trailers and trucks and stuff in the morning uh and you know the the guy who mark who does the fireworks out of there he told me a whole long story about all the troubles that he has with uh pulling his boat through there and everything and You know, we had to put stuff on hold because of doing the, to work with restore, but now that we've accomplished that, it's time that we need to probably improve that boat ramp. I think we need to improve it. I guess it's up to council to decide.

I think it's a great idea, more boat ramps.

Why is it that we're, this item has no backup. I've never seen the Hanson designs before. And I don't exactly understand what it is that we're approving, if it's the designs or just moving forward with the idea, because it says the Palm Street boat ramp redevelopment. And that's all the information that I have besides what was provided to me just now. Why is it that we would choose to fix Palm Street boat ramp over Polaris, where there's More adequate parking definitely needs to be looked at and redeveloped and is for sure the most popular boat ramp that's being used right now.

Okay, so Palm Street, I just put it on here because I've gotten phone calls regarding it and didn't know how we wanted to proceed with it. And then Polaris, we actually had a grant to renovate that boat ramp and several neighbors from the adjacent building contacted Texas Parks and Wildlife and got our grant rescinded because they didn't want us to renovate that boat ramp.

And how, can you expound on what that looks like when constituents complained and the reasoning for not having, it is a public boat ramp, so... you would have to ask tex texas parks and wildlife why they rescinded the grant so are we just not going to do anything with polaris boat ramp because some residents opposed that it is they took the funding mechanism away so we have to find the funding for it well can't we go to restore for this the same way that we would go to palm street they want new

new stuff not old stuff and palm street's not a restore where we put we put this on hold because of the restore request we couldn't be doing a boat ramp right next to a boat ramp but that's what we're doing right but we've already we've already received the money but we've already received the money from restore and we already have the plans for the most part for palm street

Do we not have plans that you, for Polaris?

No, so, hi, Christina Baburka, Shoreline Director. So this, the city had picked this project, I think actually back in like 2016 or 2017, so it was previous staff, previous administration had selected this. I don't know why, but when I began, I know that this, they were kind of wrapping that up and they had finalized the plans and that's when Restore was kind of moving forward. So we had put this on hold for at that time. And so we've had the final stamped sealed plans. And so they've just kind of been sitting there. We've never had final engineering plans to improve the Polaris. As Mary said, we had requested some funding but received a lot of pushback from adjacent property owners for that one. And so we just kind of had left that one alone. There was requests for that one to actually close down the street and not make it a public street or public boat ramp anymore. And that's why we had we.

That's right. El Castillo and Sunset petitioned in a way to shut that street down, similar to how they shut the street down at Kingfish for Sandcastle.

That's very interesting considering that we've invested heavily in the availability for parking in that area considering that we have a public boat access and considering that we only have three three altogether. So it would be interesting to review what the complaints were and the basis for them. I don't want to speak out of order and, of course, love to hear from our constituents and reasonings. Do you have any ballpark what this is going to cost Shoreline or what you could potentially get out of the restore grant for this type of project?

So the restore funding wouldn't be an option at this time. There's certain buckets and a lot of that funding has already been dedicated to other projects. Funding for that, opportunities through that grant program won't be available until a couple of years when they allocate additional money. Regarding cost for this, I'm not sure. I'm sure that previous staff have some sort of estimate, but that again, that was from six, seven years ago at this point. So working with the engineer moving forward, they would be able to once we. The plans would need to be updated. One, because Public Works has requested an increase in the drainage line there, I think is what it is. And then making sure everything else is still would fit in there, as Mayor had said earlier. And so the firm would be able to provide us with an estimated cost of construction after that.

And if we had a cost from 2017-18, it probably wouldn't be valid anymore. Or it would be double or whatever. Yeah.

In comparison of the two, which is in worse disarray?

They're both bad. I think I get more complaints about this one than the other one.

There's a lot more long daily traffic down at Palm Street and then with the businesses there, I know there's a lot of jets, the businesses that operate out of there, it's a constant problem and it's just, I drive through there almost every morning at 7 a.m. and I see it and I think it's a, it looks worse than I've heard. Back when there was the

sand debacle or cement debacle that was and uh anyways i just think it's shape i talk to the fishing community a lot because i fish a lot and i've used all these boat ramps all both these boat ramps i will say palm street's worse but regardless what really needs to happen is with only three boat ramps available I think the city really should be focusing on fixing all of them. I know there is an end to money. It's not like we can just throw money at anything. But fishing is a big, huge component. And I know a lot of people talk about, well, we don't have the parking. But the thing is, is people are still going to use the boat ramp. They're still going to find parking. And they're still going to take... their trailers back to their respective residents or wherever they have to go. They're still gonna continue to use these three boat ramps. And I can tell you that I'm glad to have a boat that stays in the water now because the primary reason I did that is the boat ramp was stressful for me. I really had to decide whether I wanted to fish the stress of the boat ramp because it was stressful to get in and out, and many days I would have to take off some time on a Tuesday to go get my boat out, because Sunday just wasn't gonna happen. The boat ramp was too tied up with lines of people, and both these boat ramps need some attention, and I understand we have to work through the community as we do these, because neighbors are gonna oppose it, and I was around when they opposed it, so I remember it, but I think that My suggestion is that the council try and focus on how we fix all the boat ramps, not sit there and go, well, let's just do this one and not worry about that one. So if Palm Street's up, I would encourage the council to look at what it takes to fix that. It doesn't mean we won't go to Polaris and fix that too, in my opinion, but ultimately, y'all make those decisions. But I'm just gonna tell you, from getting the phone calls and talking to the fishing community and the people that use them, we really need them all.

And I just knew that this one was 90% plan ready, and we didn't have plans on Polaris, so it was kind of like, let's attack the first one that we have plans for, and then we can bring up another item down the road to look for RFQs for the Polaris boat ramp. That makes sense to me.

IT, can you pull up the screen, please? I do have the plans on the computer. And no, they might not have been in your backup. But just for you all to view, we'd extend it out and, I think, widen. So the proposed boat ramp would be 80 feet long by 26 feet wide. And there was proposed finger piers on either side of the boat ramp. And those are what we'd want to make sure align with the current businesses that are there.

That's what you're calling the piers? Yes, on those sides. The extension of the, almost like a seawall that goes up alongside both sides of it?

They'd be wooden. The north one would be 53 feet long by 3 1⁄2 feet wide, and the southern one was 55 feet long by 5 feet wide. And so those were...

wooden docks almost as how they were proposed the dark the gray area is the ramp and then the hash or the the 45 degree marks are the piers have were there this is your agenda item patrick so i'll ask you were you able to get any feedback from the two business owners surrounding this boat ramp

I've got from people who attend their places, they've asked for it to be repaired. I haven't heard something from Barry or from Buddy or from John about getting it repaired. But I do know whatever we do there, we need to make sure that it doesn't interfere with what they have done since these plans were designed. But I would think that they would want their customers to have better access. We had Brandy here a few minutes ago.

He texted me some stuff a second ago.

Okay, I mean, I would think that he was here for supporting improvement next to his business. It's a great idea. I'm sorry, I can't see very well with the lights right in my face.

Yeah.

Council. This was proposed before when Dennis Stahl was mayor, and I think that's when these plans were actually brought up. There has been a few changes since then, but as of yesterday, I just texted Randy. There have been five tires popped of people pulling out, so we actually invested and brought bags of of asphalt in and fixed all the potholes there. But when you guys do do the boat ramp, you need to take into consideration that the dredging has to take place because it needs to be completely dredged out. Then also maybe do some measurements because like Patrick said, There's two piers on either side that have been built since this proposal. But the ramp definitely needs fixed, the parking needs fixed, and people are actually getting hurt on that boat ramp. And the last time they tried to fix it, they actually put the concrete bags in the water, I told Lisa about that, and all the paper floated down the channel. I'm like, that's not the way to fix it. But no, I think it'd be a great idea to fix the boat ramp. But it'd be nice to talk to the, the neighbors on either side to see what they're doing and what's going on down there, because we're there every single day. And I just texted Randy the pictures of us fixing the potholes for all the fishermen that are using that boat ramp. Thank you. Thank you.

So are we voting on these specific plans being? No. Are we.

Direction to reach out and try to find an estimate to renovate or to modify the plans and to look at getting a cost to file a Army Corps permit. Sorry, go ahead.

I'm Gail Hood, and I'm a resident at Sunset, right where the Polaris boat ramp is. And the reason for Sunset wanting to close that street is because of all the traffic. You know, this is a residential area as opposed to commercial where the other two are. And they did that at Sandcastle. It worked really well for them. But the street is deteriorating, and we get blocked with trailers and boats trying to launch and can't get in the garage. People that are over across the street can't get in their parking places either. And that's why. That's why they wanted to close that street. But I also saw the plans whenever they proposed those to revamp the Polaris boat ramp. And there was more of a little park area there. And I think Ken even mentioned before that what we experience and what we see down at that boat ramp You wouldn't want your family to look at sometimes. So we have to be careful what we put down there. That's all I had to say. Thanks. Okay.

We had Ms. Bagley wanted to speak here real quick.

Can I ask Gail a question before? I'm so sorry. Okay. Are there entrances to the Sunset Garage on both sides of the building?

Yes, but it's one way. So there's two garages, and you go in on one side where the boat ramp is, and then you go out on the other side. There's no way to make it two way.

I see. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Susan Bagley, and I live on Mesquite Street. I just had a quick question on redoing these ramps. Do they have to be ADA accessible? And the reason I ask that is because we had a ramp at the end of our street that was used by everybody around for putting their kayaks in the waters, their paddle boards. And everybody really enjoyed it, except for one person that did not want it there. which that's beside the point. So when the city took that out, then they said if we redid it and they drew up plans that it had to be wheelchair accessible and had to go one way and the other way. So I just wondered if when you're redoing these, do they have to be ADA accessible since they took ours away?

If it makes sense, if we were doing sidewalks and getting pedestrian paths to it, that would have to be ADA accessible. But if it's a car driving into the water, that gets out of the ADA thing because the driver of the car has the tools inside the car to drive if he's handicapped or whatever. To back in and to back out. And so it's kind of a weird thing. But if you do sidewalks to allow the public to kind of – like your ramp was a little – your floating thing was a little barge, let's say, or whatever. It was a little floating ramp that was very good. I agree with you that there was some very weird stuff that happened on that street. Yeah. And it became, it's a different animal than a car backing or a truck backing a boat in. And I thought that we had some plans that we were working with, and I don't know where it went. It was supposed to be we were working with Green Rubiano and Associates, I thought, on some designs of that. But that kind of gets to a whole other.

I was going to take up a lot of time on this, but I was just wondering, because there's no sidewalks down there and no cars pull up, why it had to have all the bells and whistles when it provided a service for several people and had been there for like 30 or 40 years. But anyway, I don't want to take up your time. I agree with you.

That was a very weird deal.

Yeah, very weird. And I was just wanting some clarification on why others had to be paid the exit. and ours, you know.

Since it's not on the agenda, I think that I would have a sidebar with Christina and maybe Randy afterwards. And they will be able to kind of walk through the process because I agree.

Well, that answers some of my questions. I don't want to take up time because I know it's not an agenda item, but. since it was brought up talking about ramps, I was just curious about the ADA accessible.

Some of the issues with ramps and ADA accessibles is that's why we have to dig in so deep on the devil and the details on grants that we try to go for, because some of them may specify that we have to have certain ADA availabilities, and that may make that grant not work in our conditions here. That's why everything that sparkles in gold, we don't just grab every grant that's out there. And some people may say, well, we know y'all missed a couple of grants, but we have to explain to them that when we looked at it, what was required of us, we weren't able to do within the footprint that we have.

Thank you so much.

And it helps with the Palm Street one is the ramp right next door that we just completed does have ADA access to get down to the peer level.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Okay, anybody else have any comments? All right, we have a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? All right, motion carries. All right, next up is 5.8, which is discussion of possible action to select an option for the Convention Center renovation and annex project. We have our project manager, Broadus, here, and Wendy's gonna do an introduction, and then we'll go from there.

Yes, Mayor, City Council, Wendy Delgado. We have Oscar Garcia here from Broadus & Associates, who's the project manager, owner representative for this project. They were here on August 10th to do a workshop with City Council. They do have, we do have three options that were reviewed during that workshop I brought up your past presentation just in case we need to reference them here, but they are here. They can definitely talk it through with you, and we'll go from there.

So if anyone is here for the public that wishes to speak on this item here, we're going to let Oscar do his presentation, and then when he's finished with his presentation, if you want to line up over here, we'll hold up public comments where people can ask council questions, and then then we can step back and Oscar or Council can answer or however it might be.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. So at our last meeting, we discussed in detail the various different options that have been presented by the design team, JNAC. We have the, what you're seeing on the screen right now is really the full complement, option C, that it contains the exhibit hall expansion, what is called the ballroom expansion in the top right, as well as the additional meeting rooms to meet the recommended ratio of exhibit hall square footage to meeting room square footage. Is that better?

Yes.

Okay. I'm pretty good at projecting, so anyway. So as you can see in the comparison that we have here is the existing versus the expanded square footage relative to, and then the back of house support as well. And again, this is a good example of the different options that were laid out. Option one, as you can see in the drawings, or option A rather, is the exhibit hall expansion only. Option B is the addition of the ballroom you'll see in the west side of the facility. And option C includes the additional meeting space on the west side as well. The design options that were presented all fit within the red footprint, that then are fit within the footprint that do not impact the environmentally sensitive areas, the old growth areas. And so the new designs being presented, both option A, B, and C, all fit within that constraint. And so those concerns were heard, and the design has been modified, and the new options being proposed are within that constraint. Again, we went through some of the budget overviews and payment schedules and whatnot. That is outside of my realm of focus. Yeah. Some of the options that, and just going back here real quick, some of the budget overview, payment schedule, reporting requirements, those are all things that still need to be determined. Once the direction is given as to what design option to pursue, we as your OPM will then drive down that direction and get you all the best pricing that we can working with both with the design team as well as with Fulton as the CMAR. Lastly, this is a slide that kind of breaks down. It's really small, I apologize, but it breaks down the Estimates were provided by Fulton at the 60% DD, and I know this can be a little confusing, but as you go through the CMAR process, as you go through the design process, there's three phases of design. It's a schematic design, design development, and construction documents, right? So when you have and you hire a CMAR, construction manager at risk, they run through estimating processes along with design. So it's actually a really preferred process because instead of doing other delivery methods like a design build bid, you won't know that you're over budget until It's already done. You've already designed the entire building, you throw it out to bid, and it comes back to you and you realize, my goodness, this is too expensive, we can't afford it. We have to then revise drawings, right? The good thing about doing the CMAR delivery is that you have the constructor on the team at the same time. So if you have a firm budget as you're going through the process of design, you can adjust that through periods. So going back to one of the confusion points or one of the clarification points that we've had during DDs or design development phase is that Fulton came in to provide estimates at the 60% design development phase. And what that really means is as design is going through the process, they hit a point where they're almost complete with that design phase. They take it, they allow the construction manager at risk to come in and estimate against it. And then at that point, the two firms are working in conjunction to be able to now balance the equation, right? So the pricing that came at that point was higher than desired. And so then there was a value engineering process that they went through to be able to bring it back more in balance before the design firm then delivered the 100% DDs for approval by city council. So the same thing would happen at 50% CDs and then at 100%. CDs as well. So you go through a process, kind of a hand-in-glove process with your constructor to be able to make sure that you're hitting your budget. If you're not hitting your budget, you're driving it. So our role as your OPM is ensuring that the owner gets as much as they can in the programming phase. So if we're told, you know, pursue with option C and you only have this amount of money to work with, then we work to get them everything they can for that price, right? And it's That's that simple. And again, you hit certain points where you go, okay, we can't afford this, right? The certain pieces that we can't make fit within that budget. And so it allows us to now then say, okay, well, this is going to fit, this isn't going to fit. And we present that then to the owners. They make the decision as to what's a must have, what's going to be a wish, hits the wish list. And as you go through the process, you do that with eyes wide open. So it's just an iterative process that you go through, design, with budget as that's set to then finally get to what is called a guaranteed maximum price. You do it at 50% CD, and then you do it again, once again, at 100% CD. So you get a GMP that's then voted on by the city council or the owners, and then you proceed from there to construction, where then the, by contract, then the The CMAR has 90 days to buy out that project. That 90 days is actually a great guarantee for the owner because they buy out that project completely after 90 days. Prices aren't going to swing. It doesn't matter what happens with steel or wood or tariffs from Canada. It doesn't matter. That project is completely bought out. At ninety days and you're done move forward you build it and that's that's it so it protects that this delivery method actually does a lot to protect the owner from fluctuation prices and so forth and so. And again as as anybody knows anything about construction is construction costs are always creeping up north you normally do so on an annual basis about five percent. And so the sooner that you can make these decisions, the sooner we can get direction from the owners on both design options and kind of target budget, then we can really drive the project to that end. That's it. Hope I explained that well. On the sheet here is the example of, and I should have pulled up this. I'm sorry, I went through that whole process and I had this slide. So this is the review that was done at 60% DD, and this is what I'm talking about. So they had the 60% DD design. Fulton came in and did a review. They priced it out. They actually had to remove some items off that to go from a higher number down to 98,427. And then this gets into the weeds, it's again, really into the weeds at the division level. And then this is a full list of the VE items that were pulled out to get down to that 98,4. Again, this gets into more of the timeline, the milestones, some of the critical paths that we're moving forward over the next several months to get this project done. We anticipate a three-year delivery to be able to get this thing completely designed or finished design within the next six months and then begin construction and completion of that. Part of what we've had, we've had some great discussions with the CVB and the finance folks to really start talking about affordability, funding sources, revenues, P&Ls and the like as part of the conversations that we had out of our first public meeting. So part of this again is an opportunity for us as your owner's representative to start hearing what's coming in from the community and the public, questions that the owners have, and then getting answers as we go through that process.

unless anybody else has any any questions from the owners table or could we do an option D where you just do the renovation the exhibit hall and the additional meeting space because the additional meeting space is out there and just leave conduit you know the west meeting space and then because we're being told that the meeting space is needed by the exhibit hall expansion. But the ballroom,

isn't so much needed. The ballroom is both ballroom, it's a kind of multi-function building, or a space. It functions at both as a ballroom and additional meeting space. So it can be subdivided into that. So it serves as a multi-function space, right? So it buys you that additional square footage to get you up to that ratio. And again, there was another slide that details option A, option B, and option C, as far as the, I wanna say the preferred ratio. The preferred ratio is around 50% of exhibit hall space. So the meeting room space should be about 50% of what, I wanna say the target, the preferred industry ratio, it should be about 50%. So as long as you're between 30 and 50, you should be good. But the ideal scenario is what they recommend is 50%. And you look at the Hyundai and you look at Johnson, those are the numbers that they throw out. And that's not mine. What is really is detailed is what you have at With option A, you fall significantly short. When you add in the ballroom, it gets you about 46% to 46%. And then once you add option C, it gets you a little over that. It gets you right at the 50% mark. So you just buy that little square footage. Now, the cost of that square footage, we've gone through this. Again, this is pricing that was delivered. It's just estimates at DD. but the cost for the option A was at 86, the option for option B was at 88, and then the option C was at 92. And that's including like a $7 or $8 million contingency?

It's a 12% contingency. Well, 12% contingency. The only reason I've mentioned is where 5A is, which is the ballroom, is that's where That's where our generators and mechanical and all that stuff is. So I know it complicates the project by that location. I don't know by how much or whatever, but I just know that it complicates it. So that's why I was asking.

And again, there are opportunities for us to be able to go back through and say, look, what we really are looking for is Our ideal scenario would say, whatever that ideal scenario is, whether it be option B or C, figure out the best way to get us there at the best bang for the buck, frankly. And so we've looked at different options with the number of bathrooms that you have in that concourse area. We looked at different ways of material choices as you go through that. So we'll look at every single dollar that's spent to achieve that end. Okay, go ahead.

Oscar, I have a question. My understanding is that these three plans are what went to Cameron County for approval and then followed by our internal workshop for building our relationship with the project manager, which has brought us in ourselves. Correct me if I'm wrong, but have these plans gone before the community at any point for questions or concerns?

I believe so. That was done back in...

It also had one back in April.

There was a workshop done back in April at the convention center where they had the different options laid out for everybody to see.

And that had option B and C. Originally, we had approved as council just kind of option A and B, let's say, and then C got added because of needing to meet. this meeting room. The square footage ratio. Square footage ratio.

And then part of it was also just understanding the cost. How much would it cost to hit that point? Just to get a ballpark on that. And so, you know, be able to provide.

I mean, at that workshop, all of these, all of these illustrations had numbers associated with them so that constituents could ask questions about the numbers as well?

Not in April. In April, that was one of the questions that was posed, and so we went back to the... Is that when you handed out a QR code for people to give back their feedback? I didn't hand out a QR code. We weren't in charge of that.

At what point, how did the feedback from constituents, how was it aggregated?

The last, and I apologize, I don't have the date in front of me, but the last open house that was held regarding the convention center expansion was at the convention center. March? I believe it was the beginning of March. Basically, staff. put together that workshop. Broadus had nothing to do, they weren't the owner's representative or project manager at the time, so they did not assist at all in that. And so the QR code was actually created by staff and the results were collected from staff. And it's been live, I believe, this entire time, correct me if I'm wrong? For over a year. For about a year we've had that survey active. Yes.

We did the open house in July of 2025 initially. And then we came back and we did another one, I believe, in March of 2026. And that survey and online website has been rolling for well over a year.

So that QR code, we have the survey results and all the comments from the public related to that as well.

And I had an email to staff this morning with concerns from constituents that have explained that the survey is very one-sided. There's nowhere in the survey that offers concerns regarding budget or fiduciary concerns or availability to give feedback on specific parts of this project. All three, A, B, and C, enclose the north part of the whaling wall. And I don't know that that has been a topic of discussion for all of us. There's several other things that are added into the first exhibit that we're not really talking about. We keep saying that there's meeting rooms and there's exhibit halls, but that's not actually true. There's a lobby that's, again, being included. There's multiple bathrooms. There's storage areas. There's renovations of bathrooms, there's concourses. So there is a lot of additional things that we're kind of not mentioning to everyone to understand the full scope of work. I think that we should. and i do believe that we still should allow the community to opine on this it is uh is concerning to me that we have put these options in front of the council to make a decision before we have a true picture of what these options could do for us financially. I think it's, again, just putting the cart before the horse. I see these prices next to it, but I will tell you that in my calculations, running not a complete P&L, but taking into consideration what we can afford with cash reserves and potential bond capacity We are short $50 million to $67 million. And the only option that we have to potentially make that up is to raise property taxes. We've maxed out our venue tax. We've maxed out our hot tax. We would drain every single one of our coffers. Not completely. We would have a little in hot, a little in venue. We have multiple venue tax projects to complete. And that's highly concerning that we don't have a bigger cushion and that we're not discussing those fiduciary options before we're choosing this. Even at 80, you've raised it to 86, I thought it was 82. At that level, I don't see how we can reach that, and I don't feel comfortable making a decision to reach any of these options without having a complete understanding of how we would even get to the option A number.

Can you help me? I'm sorry. Can you read those numbers off again that you were talking about?

Which numbers, the option 886?

No, no, no, no, no, your numbers that you were saying about, that are shortfall numbers. Plus, you said that there was a number of cash reserves.

It's 50 million to 67 million is what the potential shortfall estimates would be for any of these.

So you're saying there's 50 million to 67 million on top of the 44 million in excess reserves that we have, and on top of a 30 to $40 million bond, so you're saying that this is 70 plus 67, $137 million project?

no well you just said actually i'm trying to ask you i'm sorry that's all right but we had it i i had forwarded i had asked you this question in an email to try to understand the numbers that we have um on which funds we're going to be able to be pulling from we have the hot we have the venue and we have the con the convention center fund

is that correct or are we using other funds that i am unaware of because we haven't had this discussion yet but that's but that's kind of for the next discussion but um i guess we can kind of merge all three items together so we can kind of have this this all very you know big discussion i'm just trying to get at is okay we have 44 million in excess reserves go out and bond 30 million on a 20 on a 30 year cycle that would be about two million dollars in debt service a year but that gets you to 74 million which that's that's too rich for what i would be talking about uh in in my head but um what i'm trying to do is then you're saying that You said on top of the reserves and just the excess reserves, because we don't want to get into the required reserves, and then let's just say a $30 million bond, you said that's 74 million, and then you're saying that there's a shortfall of 50 to 65, 67 million. I'm just trying to figure out how to get to 137 million. And then the second thing is, I don't think there's anyone on this council that if you can't make this work within a debt number that everybody agrees with and an excess reserve number spend that everybody agrees with, then we're not doing the project. And there is nowhere, anywhere in any information that has ever been dictated to anybody in the city or anything outside of the city that we would ever make this a hot tax project. I mean, I'm sorry, a general fund property tax project. There is nowhere in any of, at least I've never had that discussion and I've never had that discussion with even in my own head to ever, ever say that this would be a project that would be funded with property tax and or sales tax, which is 95% of our general fund money. and if this was proposed right now that said we need to raise a $50 million bond using property tax, I would vote right now, motion to kill this, and we all walk out the room and we do motion to adjourn and everything, well, we have an executive session item, but I would be completely out of the conversation to anywhere, discuss anywhere that we would be using property tax to pledge for the construction of the convention center. I'll let anybody else speak on that matter. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. But anyway, Joe, you motioned your hand that you wanted to say something that looked like, I thought.

No, I just have never heard that conversation either or know how that could come to play. This has got nothing to do with property taxes for the residents, nothing. You're not liable, this is a hot tax project done with venue tax money. This is one of the five venue tax projects that you all voted on. What we're doing here today is we want to get, see which one of these, if it's A, B, or C that we wanna move forward with and find out if we can afford it. Or they can tighten up the pricing and find, you know, value engineering, get the contingency money out of the way and find out what the actual dollar amount is. This is the next step. We need to know if we can afford it or not. So this isn't a vote to go forward with any of these. We have to figure out which one we think will best serve the community and then we gotta find out what it costs. This is just the next step.

I would like, if I can ask, Kelly, what would you like to see? What benefits the Convention Center the most? And the other question is, how much lost revenue and opportunities do you think we've had over, say, the last three to five years because we have not been able, our Convention Center is limited right now?

As I've said, thank you for the question. As I've said several times to you already, you're doing business in the convention center. It's just that you're limited in what you're able to do. We're pulling right now the information that was presented to you as part of the Hunden report. It had various years in there which explained lost business. So I've pulled those up, and I'm prepared at the next meeting to show you exactly what is the business that we lost. And some people would say, how do you lose business if you're going after business? Right. One of the reasons is that we, for example, we have information on our website. So we get solicitations through the website. We engage with them. They come down, and then they discover it's not big enough. We buy subscriptions in big meeting planner databases. When we see that there's a meeting of a certain size, we engage with them, we reach out to them, and sometimes that business works and sometimes it doesn't. And I can qualify for you what kind of business that is, and it goes across the board. One of the things that we've talked about behind closed doors and we haven't talked about here in public I think is important to recognize is that we're not the only ones doing business. If I wanted that convention center to make money for you all, I would put it in direct competition with the restaurants, the decorators, and the AV companies that are here on the island. We currently take a 15% commission on any food and beverage that's coming through the convention center. Over the last four years, that's generated for you between rentals, because we do rent the space. It's not true that we give it away. between 450 and $350,000 a year just on those revenues that we're generating, which are commissions and rentals on business that other people are doing in the center. So for me to make $100,000 or $150,000 on services like food and beverage, that means somebody billed a million dollars in the convention center on food and beverage. And that's not hard to believe. And I'm just going to say to you, we've got a Christmas party coming up that's going to do 900 people. all food for 900 people. You can imagine a nighttime party, what that's gonna look like. The Army Corps of Engineers booked last week for a conference at the end of October where they're bringing in 1,000 people and somebody's doing breakfast for them in the morning and in the lunch. And we're making a 15% commission on that, but somebody's making profit on that food and beverage Same thing for AV and same thing for decorators. I needed to explain to you for just a minute how the business works in order to say what could we do going forward. In my discussions with your chief financial officer, I believe that if we double the size of the exhibit hall, double the size of the meetings, I can go after larger meetings, of course, which are going to book more rooms, but they're going to book more food. They're going to do more decor. and we're going to have more usage days out of there. I believe I can get those revenues in the convention center itself doubled up to $800,000 to $1 million a year. That doesn't pay your note. What hopefully is going to pay your note is right now you're generating about $12 million a year in hotel tax that is paying for the marketing, the sales, admin, the beaches, and some other things. I believe that we can hold that $12 million a year while you're in construction. And once you're out in the first couple of years, we can raise that to $14. But by five years out, I want to be at $16 million from the 12 that were out. We're working based on the request by Council Member Hartwell to produce another pro forma. There's been two done for you already, but this will be the first one that we did internally for you. It's something else for a consultant to say this is what your pro forma is. All due respect. It's something else for us who's supposed to run the house to say this is what we think we'll generate and this is what we know it's going to cost you to do. So I think I can double your revenues in the convention center, and if I'm doubling your revenues in convention center and I'm only making taxes and incentives, we are significantly improving the business that everyone else is doing, which means your sales tax, your beverage tax, which you really like, are also going up in addition to the hot tax going up to be able to cover the debt. and any of the additional expenses that we've got. The mayor gave us a date and we're moving towards September 15th to have a completely vetted out pro forma for you to see what those will look like over the next decade.

Okay, thank you.

But you need a space design to get that done first, correct?

Yeah. You didn't know which one. Yeah, I mean, really, we're at a handicap right now. You know, we're booking it, but it's not the quality of groups that I would want to bring if I had the technology in-house and some of the amenities that I had in-house as well. And I do have a vision that that convention center is not just for visitors. We can make it work for the locals as well to have a lot of public areas around it that are enjoyable when there's not people there.

I went back and watched the Hunden presentation, and one of their big pros for us is that our competitive advantage is that we are a destination. They want to come here. They don't want to go to the cities. They don't want to go to Fort Worth for these conventions. They even talk to locals. who's, you know, her husband's a judge. And she says, we used to have friends that came down for these conventions. Well, it's too small. And so Hundon did say that, you know, the destination is there, but people want to come, but we can't accommodate them. So we lose them.

When we finally lose a piece of business, because it's a sales thing. You've had a salesperson after you. When we finally give that piece of business up, we register it in the database why we lost it. And if size was a part of it, it'll be on that criteria for you. And I think Councilwoman Hartwell, she does bring a good point, is that I know that you've brought up Conroe several times. We are a different animal than Conroe because we are a tourism destination. And so when people book here, they know that their conventioneers are going to come. not just because it's a great place to have a meeting, but because they'll bring their family, they'll make it into a vacation, and it serves more than one purpose for them.

And when the port is exploding, LNG, Saronic, everything else that there, SpaceX, what will that bring in for their conventions, the drilling?

You all have spent some time talking about sports, and sports is interesting. Corporate is going to be a really nice piece of business for us with our relationship with San Antonio, a lot of corporate headquarters up there. In addition to the oil and gas that we're bringing in and the space technology, we call that backyard marketing. We go in and we look at those people and we say, out of all of those thousands of employees, who sits on a board? Who sits on an association? What groups are they in? How do we pull those down? They're going to want to bring those groups down here because it gives them an opportunity to showcase what they're doing as opposed to going to California and talking about what they're doing. They can do it here, and they can have auxiliary site visits, so corporate's going to be important for us. Government is a piece of business that you guys are doing already and have been doing for a long time. You've got good rates on that. Association business, like I talked about the last time, every group in the sun has an association, and those are beautiful pieces of business, and we do a lot of that, and we're putting a salesperson in Austin and San Antonio where a lot of those And then the last one is SMURF, and it's not Little Blue Men. It's social, military, fraternal groups, and we can be doing balls and socials.

Well, the Coast Guard station, they're getting a $280 million renovation. I mean, there's just a lot. There's a lot of growth there. A lot of business.

And when I came to you all, we had one salesperson, and they were already booking the convention center. So I've got a great team in there. We're gonna work on it. We're gonna be strategic in what we're doing. We're looking for partnerships with those businesses and the chambers that are around us going further as well, and I have no doubt that we'll be able to fill this convention center. First off, because you guys are a great destination anyway, but there's a lot of business going on right now, and you've got a good product around it. We do need an upgrade, though. There's no doubt about it.

I just want to comment. Kelly, thank you for that. I know you said we don't give the Convention Center away, and maybe not since you have been here. But we certainly have in the past. And to even double the revenues that we have in our last fiscal budget would bring us up to somewhere around $600,000. So producing 380,000 and expensing 1.6 in staff, anybody can look at that as not a very good business model. And while I do appreciate that you could potentially double, potentially even triple, even with those numbers, I still cannot understand, without draining all of our coffers, how we would get to these numbers. So thank you. I don't have any more questions for you, but I still have questions for Patrick.

OK.

Instead of trying to back into the numbers that I gave you, can we finally have a conversation about the numbers that do exist? Are we pulling from the hot tax, venue tax, and the convention center fund?

Well, okay, if we're gonna talk about, I'm assuming this is okay if we combine 5.8, 5.9, and 5.10, or at least 5.8 and 5.9 to the same conversation so that we can talk about dollars and talk about the options A, B, and C, or do we need to?

You would only be able to do one motion.

For both?

Or one for each? For both. If you want to combine both, that's not a problem.

So someone would have to make a motion and say, I'll do option Z for a budget number of $1.

But Patrick, a budgetary discussion on this is completely relevant. So why can't we just have a conversation about financials while we're choosing an option since we are technically choosing a pricing and a plan next to it?

I'm just concerned about making sure that we follow how the agenda is defined and not wanting to step out of line. That's all I'm asking about. I don't have a problem having the discussion about either. But, you know, I mean, for me, how I look at it, and I'll ask Sandra and or Kelly this question, you know, we collect about $12, $12.5 million a year in... in hot money hot money for the CB for funds two and six correct which is hot which is the hotel motel fund and the convention center fund that doesn't include the 350 to 450 thousand that we collect in the offer the use of the Convention Center or whatever it might be yes but let's just go with a twelve and a half million every year for since I've been here while we've been collecting twelve twelve and a half million somewhere in that neighborhood we've only been really budgeting about ten million dollars worth of use correct and so in my head Rodrigo has always kind of been keeping two million dollars a year out for debt service correct for a convention center expansion using hot money okay not venue we're not talking about venue at this point in time and in today's rates unfortunately the interest rate is this 30-year T bill is at five point two five our rating is somewhere right around the US actually I think we might have a better rating than than the US government bonds do right now Anyway, so if you use 5.5% for your interest factor, you can borrow somewhere around $30 million for the $2 million a year using hot money.

Correct, yes. So there is excess reserves. We are going to be pulling from some of those excess reserves to combine with a bond issuance.

to be able correct the two million will cover a 30 million dollar bond and then so that that's what we could get for a bond level and that would leave about 10 to 10 and a half million for the marketing the operations all the other stuff which is kind of how we've been operating exactly yes so we have in the past yes sir So that's my first number is 30. That seems like a very reasonable bond number that we can afford. It gives us a six plus times debt coverage ratio, which is very good. And it just touches that number. Then we can talk about our excess reserves. In our hotel motel fund projected that's projected this year, we have $24 million in it. Correct. And we have about, I'm just going to, for easy numbers, we have 24-7, and for easy numbers, we have $5 million that is required by the charter for reserves. So that leaves $19.7 million in that. And then you have in fund six, you have basically seven million in there, which we're probably gonna, we just spent 133 of it, and I don't know if the 300,000 remaining for the HVACs in there, but let's just say 6.5 in there. course that's you know that's reserves that we've saved up to renovate and repair and and all that fun stuff for the convention center which we're talking about and then you get to the venue tax where we've got 18 million 18.6 and we have a required reserve in there of 320,000 so that gets you to 18.2 let's just say for around that up to 400,000 Really, if I wanted to round up, I'd say 18.7 and do a million three, but we'll still go with a million 18.2. So if I say I got 19.7, we got 18.2, and then 6.5. 44.4. Thank you. 44.4. We're collecting about two and a half million a year in our venue fund, but we need to keep doing that because we have venue projects that we need to do and we need to be responsible with that money. And we have 44 million in excess reserves, but I agree that we can't get rid of our city coffers. So I would say you gotta keep at least a million in excess reserves in the convention center fund. So let's drop that number down to one by two million, so that gets you five, okay? Then I would say that in my personal opinion, this can be used by anybody else or whatever, but in the hotel motel fund, besides our reserves required, I would love to see like $3 million sitting in there just to cover if we get hit by a hurricane and we need to do a massive marketing purchase or something like that. When you take $3 million off that, that gets you to $16 million. So we said 16 and we said 5. That gets you to 21. And then with the 18 that we've got in – Which one gets you to 21? Well, if you take the 19.7 that I said we had an hotel-motel fund and we keep $3 million in excess reserves, that gets you to 16.7. And then we talked about leaving another million in excess reserves in the convention center fund. That gets you to five. So five plus 16.7 is 21.7. And then I agree, you gotta have money in the venue project fund down the road for additional venue projects. I mean, a parking garage could cost $15 million or more for 300 parking spaces, which that's kind of all we got left in the venue fund would be the parking garage and an amphitheater theater if we want to choose to combine those words or whatever and get an attorney general's approval of it. But I think for sure you've got to have at least $5 million to $7 million staying in your venue funds for future projects, plus the $2 million you're getting every year.

No, no, no. Debt service is different.

Debt service, we've already discussed that because we had the $30 million bond discussion. So we've already talked about debt service, okay? So that's the $30 million that we talked about first. And then I said we got 16.7 if we want to be conservative. We want to leave more money in the excess reserves. We're more than welcome to. Less money if we're more than welcome to. Same thing on the commission. That gets you to 21.7. And then I'm like, well, hey, you know, I think that we should at least have seven, $8 million remaining in the venue fund balance. That leaves about 10. So you're at 61.7 is a number that leaves us three million in excess reserves on top of the five million. So it leaves us $8 million in the hotel motel fund. It leaves us $2 million in our convention center fund, including reserves and excess reserves, and that would leave somewhere around eight million or so in our venue project fund, plus the two and a half million a year that we're adding to the venue tax fund each year.

And we're hoping to grow that. It's like, to add on what Kelly was saying, as you build the convention center, people are gonna come. You expand it, you're gonna get more business, people are gonna be staying in our hotels, spending, we're gonna be collecting more hotel taxes, we're gonna be collecting more hopefully sales tax, We're going to be collecting more alcohol, a mixed beverage tax. So there is going to be an expansion. It's not like we're going to spend all this money, and we're going to deplete it, and it's never going to come back. We were very prudent throughout these years, and we were able to have all this money in reserves. And we saved it so that we could do a project of this nature now that we're here. you're gonna do this project and we're gonna, what are we gonna turn around and do? We're gonna turn around and save to continue to do other projects for the city and for the citizens.

because I'm definitely not one for leveraging everything, using everything, and I think that we do have good projects down the road that we need to do, and we need to be very fiscally conservative on that. So, you know, that gets me to ride around, you know, hopefully a $60 million for construction and...

And I also wanted to add, once we issue the debt, if that is the council's decision to move forward in issuing a $30 million bond, we're not just going to have the money sitting in our bank account without earning interest. We're going to have a pay schedule. We're going to anticipate how much money is needed at what periods of time, and we're going to tie that money so that that money can work for us also and use those interest proceeds to be able to continue in funding the project as well.

Which we have been doing. I mean, I would say that a large portion of our, in the hotel-motel fund, not a large portion, I'd say 25% of it, and in the venue fund, has been the interest that we've been saving over the last five years or so at 4% interest, 4.5% interest rates that we've been lucky enough to get because we have this almost 60 plus million dollars just in those funds that we're earning, you know, 5% interest on 60 million is... three million a year in interest um and so that that's you know and that's our current position if we leave it to where we have roughly you know 15 million or so in the bank or 18 with with the reserves uh required reserves then you know that that gets you to another 20 let's just round it to 20 for easy math at four percent that's another you know

And I know Council Member, yes sir, we're gonna be working, we are working right now. I know it's very hard to imagine all these numbers that are going floating around the room right now. We are working in getting this more solidified in writing for you for the September, for all Council, not just for the September 15th meeting. That is our goal. Right.

It's not just for Council, that's for a public workshop, for Cameron County. for the CBA, everybody, but we're trying to get this package put together. But one thing that they need to know, like Kelly needs to know, okay, build your pro forma based off of which design?

Correct. We kind of need to have a gauge of what this project overall is going to cost us, to know how much debt we're going to have to issue to build in the debt service into the performer, into the model, to be able to know is this going to be something that the city can afford long term.

Sandra, why has that not been done is my question.

I can't answer that.

Well, that's my question is why that hasn't been done. And I, again, think that this is very much relevant to this discussion in having those costs of what it is that we can afford coming from what account how much we're gonna have left in those accounts. I have ran numbers based on the fiscal budget that was presented to me. I've heard numbers presented today that I am unaware of. But even with that being said, and we have 31.7 million in cash, basically, is what he's talking about pulling out of these I have questions like, are we leaving enough money for the five venue tax projects? Do we know what the maximum that we're allowed to spend on each venue tax project looks like, and why aren't we looking at that? You say that this doesn't affect the taxpayers, but if for some reason we're not able to pay our debt obligation, then it very much affects all of the taxpayers. bringing our coffers down so low that potentially a hurricane or natural disaster comes and we have to look to those means that we are not able to market businesses in a very crucial time to establish or regain business here. I think that you are also still not talking about things like what the drag would be once we are up and running. It's going to take time to establish the sales team and sell it. We're not factoring in the 40% that... We're expanding 40%. So we're going to grow 40%. And that's expensive. So we don't have those numbers built into that pro forma yet. And we're looking at potentially a $3 billion debt payment. So the money that's coming into these accounts are actually already being spent. And so the funnel does not make sense that we are actually making money. until we are further down the line on accumulating some of that money.

On the numbers that you haven't seen, what you look in the budget is just the income statement side of it, revenue and expenditures. You want to see excess and cash, you've got to look at the balance sheet side. That's not part of the budget. All you're looking when you see the budget is just revenues and expenditures. Balance sheet numbers, cash, excess and cash, That's a different financial statement. Now, the bond is not going to cost $3 million. I had our financial advisors run a scenario on a $26 million bond issuance for 30 years. The payment is going to be around $1,960,000. It's a little bit over 5% of interest rate. I don't have that here. 25 or a 30? I think it was a 30, sir. But I will double check. Million bond and. 26 million, ma'am, 26 million. Is it 26 or million, or 30? I ran it for 26.

She's just talking about, you said three million a year in debt service. I talked about a $2 million a year debt service number. She's talking about a $2 million debt service number. And the bonds is. But you threw the three out.

And you didn't understand my question.

I'm so sorry. To clarify, I was not aware of the $30 million number that was floated around.

So the 1.7 is the $26 million bond. It's 1.96.

the average payment that you're gonna be making. It's not gonna be. Yes.

And six million is what we are bringing in. So that would wipe out any, because where would you take the, what would you take the bond out against? Because these are dedicated taxes.

You would put it to your hot funds.

So I mean we're bringing in two million in revenue for venue tax services. Correct. So wouldn't that cancel out that new revenue?

That's venue fund, not hot fund.

I have a question to Sandra about the venue tax specifically and what that looks like to borrow against that dedicated tax.

We're not going to be using the venue tax to pay down on this debt. We are going to be using the hot tax to pay down on this debt. We're going to model... That's why we need to know what we're looking at. We're gonna model that debt service payment into that budget, and we're gonna see can the budget sustain it with the projected revenues. Obviously, you will see an increase in your hot funds.

Will we?

You should.

I mean, after how many years? Because you have to be able to create those scenarios, and it feels like in any other business scenario, a logical business person would have built out these scenarios before entering into construction or agreements or any of these things so that you know what your ceiling is.

But my understanding is that we're not entering into a construction. We're entering into a discussion to see what of the project we can afford. And if what we can afford isn't what we want for us. We saw all these presentations there, and at the end of the day, we may be able to afford something that we feel is not worth our money.

So may I ask which fund you're borrowing, you're bonding against hot taxes and the entirety of that fund is?

The annual collection. I'm asking Sandra. I don't know what you're asking. Are you asking the annual collection or are you asking the amount of the fund?

I'm asking the amount of the fund that would be used to build a bond capacity upon.

Right now, that fund has $23 million in it.

Great. So $23 million. Yes. And so of that $23 million, how much? Patrick just said we're taking $16.7 million out of it for? To put together. To put together our cash.

Yes.

Right? And this doesn't include, this is excess to our expenditures. Yes. Okay. Yes. So we're looking at roughly seven million remaining in that fund. We're looking at five million For what, ma'am? Oh, for the CC fund. We have 6.5 in there. He said we're going to be using 5 million of that in cash, which would leave 1.5 in the CC fund.

Yeah, that would be the convention center.

That would be, yes. Okay. And then for the venue tax, we're not borrowing against that, but we have... We would be leaving approximately from 18.6 is the total, which is a different number, again, than I was presented, but minus 10, so we're leaving 8.6 potentially in there. Again, with a $2 million bond payment, but we're not taking from the venue tax. We're not gonna use proceeds from the venue. So we will be accruing money into the venue tax account. Great, thank you for that explanation. And the hot tax will only have $7 million cash left in that fund after taking our cash out.

You're still going to be getting money in.

You're saying that, but you can't really say that when that is coming from a different account. Our expenditures are already expensed.

Unless people stop coming to the island altogether, the hotel revenue is going to be coming in.

But your fiscal budget is very steady. Correct. Right. And you were actually even conservative on that. Yes, ma'am. So an assumption that somehow during construction we're going to be gaining or making more money is... My assumption is not during construction.

I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. My assumption is after the construction, once the building has been... constructed and is there for marketing. The assumption of staff is that yes, we will see a potential growth. Kelly just got up here and told you what her expectations are. We are working, if you would allow us to give us, I know it's been frustrating, but if you would allow us to give us some time to get you a written performance statement to pull all these numbers together in a written format for your review and the council, the citizens and the county to look at. That way you can see it and it is a tangible item that you'll have and then we can have this discussion and then you can say, well, I think that this is not conservative enough, and we can go back and pencil whip those numbers. I am a conservative person in nature. I've spoken to Kelly about my concerns of over-projecting revenues and over-selling, because if we don't hit those benchmarks, then there will be some kind of shortfall, but we are working through that internally. We have the deadline, and we've started working on that.

I understand that you said, and thank you for all of your work. You are new here, and I know that you have been doing a wonderful job, so thank you so much for that. You did say to give you some time, and although you are new, I have been asking for this since the start of this project. It's been, as far as my council ship being here for seven months, this is what I wanted to start with so that we can build from there, which I believe is very important And so, you know, as these questions are answered and we are borrowing against a certain amount of money, we have to also consider the years in which we are not making money, the convention center drag, which we end inclusive of also the bond payment. Yes, ma'am. and so i think that that is the information that i would like our community and myself to have completely spelled out and now that we've done this in a somewhat of a verbal way let's put that to paper yes ma'am we i will guarantee you that by the meeting in september

15th?

16th, 15th. We will have a presentation there for you and you will see that in black and white and paper. Yes, ma'am.

When is that?

September 15th.

September, okay. That is what we're working towards internally to get all that done before that.

The goal is for them to build a pro forma and cash and sources and uses like the slide had earlier on at the very beginning of the meeting and then present it by September 15th we kind of can collide on tracks of telling our project manager, this is what our amount that we want to budget at. And can you get us there? And then at the same point in time, they run their numbers to say, well, this is what our projections are. This is where we get. And hopefully, Oscar, hopefully, they align. But if they don't align, then we got to say, well, guess what? We can't make this work because we don't have the fortitude or the whatever to do this. If Oscar comes back and says, man, we tried our best. And today we said, hey, we want to shoot for a $60 million budget. And Oscar comes back and says, man, I can't get this thing down below $200 million. Then we got to sit there and go, hold on. you know, it'd be like me talking to my son when he says, Hey, Dad, I want that Range Rover. And I said, Well, that little pickup truck over there looks really cool. It's about 10 years old. You know, um, you know, that's, that's kind of the discussion that we have to have. I hope he wasn't watching this meeting. But anyway, surprise. But anyway, the but you know, that's, that's where and then they need to have their numbers so that they can say, Okay, we say 60 million, and we say we'll spend 30 here and we'll get We'll borrow 30 because we've been saving 2 million a year for 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25, and 26. $2 million a year for what we have been adding to the excess reserve so that we could do this debt service payment, prove to ourselves that $2 million a year, we can do this debt service payment. We've done that out of hot, leaving the venue alone, letting the venue grow at $2.5 million a year as it grows, leaving our required reserves, which is six months, which by the way, Not many cities carry a six-month reserve. I don't know if your last city, what was it?

Three months.

okay, where you came from, they carried a three-month reserve, but we carry a six-month because we know we're in a hurricane environment, and we could potentially have, or we've seen it when a causeway went down, and we saw, thank God, that happened in September and not July, you know, so we could have these massive impacts on some stuff, and we're trying to be very, but we have to tell somebody, like, to build a pro forma, we have to say, hey, Let's just do the expansion of the exhibit hall.

If I may, just to add on what the mayor just said and drive that point home, every year we have been already saving $2 million. So every year in our minds, we're already having that debt service payment. But how is that? That money is not being spent. We are saving that money. We've saved it. So we can operate. without those two million dollars we have proven to ourselves that we are sustainable that we can carry a two million dollar debt service payment operational wise without cutting service okay thank you but it also means that we don't have any new revenue coming in

to that account once we have those two million. We have done it in the past, and we have saved, as you say, but that also means that we've neglected maintenance, is what that really is, and we have accrued this large amount of money. Once we start paying a debt service, we will have no new revenue above what it is that our debt services and our expenditures for hot tax. which is scary we're going to agree to disagree here because i feel that your rev your hot tax will grow but that's going to take time and so when you build out your performa please also add the operating expenses that need to come in and the p l that kelly is going to build for us And we also haven't considered in any of these factors that Oscar has brought us potentially having an owner's contingency, which we talked about in there, adding another potential 11% to 12% for that, which is going to be a big number. Yes, that could come back. But, you know, as it goes, it typically doesn't because it gets spent.

Okay, I'm sorry. He was waving at me, so I was just trying to tell him. You can wait.

Thank you. So yes, that is kind of what I would like to see in this next pro forma as it's built out, and modeling what the bond percentage of that is going to be, along with a construction drag. Oscar said that we're going to be able to operate during construction. What is that going to look like? How is that going to affect the business? If we end up in a situation like Conroe, and yes, I said Conroe one more time, because it is relevant to this conversation, because if you can default on your loan payments and you have a lowered bond capacity, that will put us in severe jeopardy. And so that's where the comparison to Conroe is. They took very similar steps that we have taken, and that's where they ended up. And it is eye-openingly comparable in the way that they maneuvered their situation and the way that we continue to maneuver ours. Again, putting all of this... All of the designs and schematic designs and things in front of a ceiling of what it is that we can afford. And very simply put, in seven months not having pen to the paper to have those numbers in front of us to start with a budget like any normal person would if you're building a home or business really concerns me. And so now we're pushing this off to more months. We're spending $100,000 for a consultant to get us there, along with financial advisors and legal. And we're drawing this out, making decisions without having those very critical numbers in front of us. Very much concerns me.

say thank you for your feedback. We will take into consideration everything that you've mentioned today. I have taken into consideration what you've mentioned in other meetings when I was here when you had the roundtable discussion. We are working. That's what prompted a meeting last week on Friday. We met with Broadus on Friday. We started already the discussion of the financials. We are going to be working towards that. September 15th is the goal to have that information before you.

Thank you. Joe, one quick link. Conroe included $137 million Hyatt Regency that the city bonded, and we're not building a $137 million Hyatt Regency with taxpayer money.

Go ahead. And they over-projected the revenues.

Right, they projected 80% sellout, $60 a night, ADR, all sorts of crazy stuff on that one hotel. Yes, sir, yes. Go ahead, Joe, I'm sorry.

Kelly, you recommended option B, correct? Okay, well I wanna find out where we are with the P&L and the price, so I wanna make a motion to approve option B.

B as in boy?

B as in boy.

Okay, is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay, again, this is not for construction. This is just to give the project manager the opportunity to work with the CMAR and the designer to focus in on this design, and that would be option B. All right.

Patrick, since I'm not able to address another council member, Why is it that Councilman Joe, Councilman Rico suggests option B? I just would like to hear, I mean, there's never any discussion. Well, it's staff's recommendation. I'm so sorry?

It's staff's recommendation. That gets us to 46% of what the designer is recommending for breakout meeting space, having the ballroom. That's how I got there. I would just like the hall, but I'm gonna go with the industry professionals who said we need that meeting space percentage.

We didn't talk about this ahead of time, but that's the exact thought that I had. It's like, okay, well, we can spend another $4 million and have some more meeting space, but option B, we are right in the area that the professionals suggest that we should be. And we don't get there if we just expand the exhibit hall.

And we can add to it down the line. Because in a couple years is if we can expand because it's going to be structurally available. So it's a better starting base point than just a small expansion. It's a little bit bigger. Gets us at a more competitive advantage to grow. And then we grow from there, we can add on.

And gives Kelly a roadmap to put her P&L together for the 15th.

With no new revenue, you can't grow. There you go. There's no phasing into anything when you have empty coffers. And there is no new revenue after this debt service, et cetera. So we have to think about that. We are also investing large amounts of our funds and coffers into one project. So if any of you had ideas for a wonderful project, a thing to do, or amenities that we're going to actually develop a non-assumptive return on investment, forget it. And I also still would like the answer to the question if anybody knows what the limits are for each of the venue tax projects because why wouldn't a designated tax put limits on how much you can pull out of this 2% that we gather from Our residents and you keep you also keep saying that taxpayers don't pay into this. I'm sorry. I own a a rental and I pay into that tax and So does a lot of our community. So the fact that you keep saying that taxpayers don't pay into this you're you're not only completely right in that and i am still talking point of order i uh so but please mayor i would love to know what the um what what the cap is for each venue tax amount or if you know that okay okay hold on you you throw out a whole bunch of stuff and it's hard to keep it back and like to correct it all at once but so like

You must be the one person who I know that runs a short-term rental differently than the hotel, or how I run my short-term rental in Oxford, Mississippi, or how anyone runs a restaurant except for mixed beverage tax. Because usually like when I pay a bill at a hotel and I walk in there and my rate's $200 and I go to the city of San Antonio and I have to pay a 17% tax on the $200 and then I have to pay a $3.50 recovery fee for something and a $2.50 for this and whatever. a 2% venue tax fee and whatever it might be on my bill. I pay that to the hotel, but that's not the hotel's money. That is, no, hold on, just let me finish. That is me going to city of San Antonio, I'm making this up because I haven't paid for a hotel room in San Antonio because I haven't been there in quite a while. But that's me paying that tax to the hotel, and then the hotel is obligated, they're a custodian of that tax, and they have to remit it to the city of San Antonio and the state of Texas by the following month on the 15th of the month. Just like when you go to a restaurant and you're not drinking, because drinking gets it complicated, When you go to a restaurant and you order a $10 burger and you pay $10.82 or 83 cents because they rounded it up, The restaurant collects that 82 cents, 83 cents, and then they're a custodian of that money, and then they have to deliver that to the state by the 15th or the 20th of the month. And so if I rent a hotel room on South Padre Island, you're right, yes, I am paying into the hot fund. I didn't say that. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. You said that you're a taxpayer.

Yes.

You're a tax collector is what you are on your short-term rental. you're not a payer, you're a collector and you're a custodian and then you are doing your good job as a custodian to return that money that's due to the city and to the state of Texas, the great state of Texas, what you have collected on their behalf. Second of all, the venue tax when it was passed was it did not have any dollar amount or percentages associated to it. Councilman Mariko, you were holding, I'm sorry.

There's only five projects. That's the good news. We've already, we've got the medians were done. The water sport park will be done this fall. That's two. Convention center's three. Parking garage is four. Amphitheater, outdoor theater, community theater, five. That's it. So this is number three. There's only two more after this. Once we complete these, if they want to go back out for a vote and come up with some new projects, which is a great idea to have down the road after these are done, keep that venue tax going for generations. But those are the projects. There's nothing else. We can't come up with a new list. We have to finish those projects. If we don't finish those projects, we're on loan to the state. We're liable for the funds we've spent. So those are the projects, there are no more right now until those are completed. That's what Scott Joslin, he was president of the Hotel Moto Association, he was here two weeks, two meetings ago, he explained that. So we have to find the best way to complete those projects that we think are gonna suit the needs of the community and that's where we're at today. So we need, picking option B gives Kelly, she can go and work on a pro forma, come back with that on the 15th and we'll see where we're at, Oscar. Value engineer. Thank you.

Nobody was arguing what projects we have or what new projects would be that wasn't even relative to the question or relevant to the question at all. What I'm saying is we have, at this point, we know we're gonna spend 1.8 on the wind and water. That's only the first phase. If we want a real world-class facility there, we need to spend two to three times that there. if possible. Talking about a parking garage, let's just not get into that. But going back to what you were saying, Patrick, that was not my point at all. Yes, you are a custodian of those hot tax dollars, and then you remit those tax. So you're essentially collecting that tax, and I am a taxpayer here, that then turns over and turns around that money to the state. That's what I'm talking about. So yes, it is something that is a little bit different, and it's not comparable to a hotel, so I don't know why you went that direction, but it's fine.

All right, we have a motion and a second. Anybody from the audience wanna say anything? We'll go to the next item, okay? All in favor, please raise your hand. Okay, now we'll move on to 5.9, which is discussion of possible action to approve a target budget in the amount not less than 50 million for the South Pottery Island Convention Center renovation and annex project as requested by Broadus and Associates. Okay, so Broadus, well, Oscar, if you could. When you get a notice to proceed, I guess, you know, you'll actually start making some money, but.

So, I mean, really what we were looking for more than anything else is the direction of design and really a target budget is what we're really going for. So now that we have the direction, our goal is now to work with Kelly and and Sandra and the rest of the team to really hit that target budget and identify not only what the city can afford, but how much we can shoehorn in that, how much of option B we can get into that project. So how much of option B we can actually get into budget. So that's where we are. Okay. In a nutshell. Right now, you've seen the early pricing and estimating from Fulton. We're going to do what we do to value engineer and get that pricing down as tight as we can.

And you need us to tell you where our threshold, where our mind is at this point.

Well, and again, right now, I mean, there's a difference between construction costs and total project costs. So as we go through that process, we'll continue to help you all define the total project costs, the FF&E that's going to be associated with that as we really get into it. Our first day on the job was last Tuesday as we had our kickoff meeting. So we're just getting into this. And then we had our finance meeting on Friday. So we're getting into this neck deep. Our team is jumping all over this. So again, We'll continue to accelerate this process and get you the information that you all are requesting.

So you said you had a finance meeting on Friday. On Friday. But that was just internally with staff. Correct, correct. There was no council members.

No, no, no. We were just trying to figure out, okay, we're trying to get to the point of how much can we afford getting to that point because, again, the goal is to not overextend the city, not over-encumber the city. The goal is trying to, what is that sweet spot number that you're trying to hit so that we can figure out what kind of facility you can get for that dollar amount. So we're trying to help establish the budget for the project as well as the facility that you're desirous of so that we can then try to figure out a way to make a match.

What is the basis for the amount that was being selected? Why did you request that we have a limit of no less than $50 million as this agenda item suggests?

I did not. They asked, OK, Wendy, if you could help out with this.

Question was to Broadus because this says requested by Broadus and Associates. So why does Wendy have to answer a question if it was requested by Broadus?

Because I'm asking her to help explain the agenda item.

Mayor, City Council, Wendy Delgado, Director of Operations. Broadus, at the workshop on the 10th, went through all of the options and different things like that. I was asked specifically by Broadus that we need to figure out what the target budget is and which option you all want to move forward with because they're kind of in a holding pattern because they need to know what to go back and speak with Janak and Fulton. They need a goal. We basically need some sort of goal to where they can come back and say, hey, we know y'all want option B. We know y'all's target budget is this amount. We can do it, but we're going to have to cut A, B, and C, or there's no way you can get option B. We can consider option A. We just need something for Broadus and for Sandra and Kelly to start working on. They asked for the direction. I am the one that put it on the agenda, me and the city secretary. We put it on there. We knew, I'm just gonna say based on all the discussions that probably you would not even be able to get option A at the 50 million mark, but it was gonna be, and obviously the estimates are 82, or I'm sorry, 84 to 92. So we were basically showing the estimates and showing probably that the budget would come in over 50 is what we assumed from a staff perspective. So that number was provided by staff, not Broadus.

OK, well, again, it was written as requested by Broaddus and Associates. And I heard over and over again in that workshop Grady to ask us for a budget. He asked us for the numbers. He asked us to see. He asked us for a target budget. But a target budget is no less than $50 million. Not less.

Not less.

Not less than 50, yes, exactly, which is a very strange way to word an agenda item.

Legal said that we need to put a number in the agenda item. And so you could either have said not to exceed, which then what number you put into not to exceed or do you put in no less because it shows hey this is our fortitude at this level and we don't really have a not to exceed a hundred million dollars but at least i don't but maybe the rest of council does uh and so it was it was decided that we because we had to put a number in it we didn't want to put one dollar and you didn't want to put $1 trillion in there, and so it was just a roundabout number that got somewhere close to, not even close, got to 50% of option A.

Yes, and in speaking with legal, I know Ed's not here at the moment, but it would be great to just be able to say to approve a target, a budget, but you have to put, it's better and best to put a number in there, and I think from a staff perspective, we've had conversations with all of you about this project, and we know all of you are not gonna approve the $92 million, so we didn't wanna put up to 92, and I'm just gonna say give the perception to the community that an amount of that magnitude would be considered, which is why we wrote it that way. It's probably not the best way, and we did go back and forth on how to work that agenda item, to make it legal and compliant, and that's the number that came out. By all means, learning lesson, I think next time we'll put a range and just say 50 to 80 or something like that. Again, we're just, without knowing you all's target budget, we just tried to put a number in there that we felt was the most transparent without, and not to give any, negative perceptions that you all were gonna consider something in the $90 million range.

Joe, did you have something?

No.

Did anyone from the public have anything that they would like to add? You're walking up here. Again, I want to, no, go ahead. I just want to remind everybody that we're not spending this money. We're not authorizing to spend this money. This is just to give a preliminary projected goal to get our project manager to work towards. Go ahead, Larry.

Patrick. Council, thank you. This just seems like physically irresponsible language. And generally speaking, you know, I think that... Can we speak up? Municipal budgets, generally speaking, enforce a not to exceed limit instead of a blank check of not less than. I mean, not less than means you're going to spend at least $50 million. you know, but without a ceiling, then that opens up consideration and eventual discussion and approval, you know, possibly under different circumstances than what we have today, you know, in terms of representative government. I mean, there's an election coming up. There's open seats that will be chosen, you know, and... In the next 90 to 120 days, it could be a completely different decision-making process. So this just seems somewhat physically irresponsible to say, we're going to spend this much, but then maybe we're going to spend this much. So I would ask you to consider that and possibly change the wording or change the statement in general, not to put a limit on the research that brought us and the construction companies are gonna do and the material that's gonna be presented in September, but it just seems irresponsible.

And I think that what we're missing here is that we just had to put a place number in there. This motion that's going to be today is going to be a motion. It could be that we approve a target budget in the amount not less, or not less, not to exceed $50 million, we could also do a motion that says we do a target budget, we're not gonna do a target budget at all, or we could do a target budget to not exceed 60 million, because we're just letting the public know that we're considering spending somewhere around, setting, I'm sorry, not spending, setting a target budget around $50 million. And that's it. But if we decide that we don't even want to do it today, we can make a motion to kill it. I personally, my opinion is I want to stick to a $60 million number and see what we can get out of it, and that's our target. But that's just my opinion and what really makes it hard is when someone's trying to set up a budget or set up a line item like this, Wendy couldn't poll each individual council person to find out what their target number is because that would have been a violation of the Texas Open Meeting Act. So we had to just throw a number, a placeholder number in there, and that's why it started out this. But the motion, I would not vote for a motion that said a target budget in the amount of not less than X dollars, because I agree with you. That sets an open ceiling. I think that the motion needs to be a target budget of this number, and that's that. And I agree with that.

Could that target number... be a not to exceed number instead of?

Yes, that's what I just said, yes. That would be how the motion should be worded, in my opinion.

Well, I think you should take that into consideration. Because at this point, if what you say is accurate, this is just for planning and decision-making process.

That's correct, yes. In terms of financing the project. This is in terms of allowing the project manager to work with the construction manager at risk and the designer to come up with a plan in order to reach our target number, if it's possible.

And your target number is not to exceed $60 million.

In my head, I'm plus or minus, maybe, you know, whatever, a little bit of a construction cost.

Well, we've already, I mean, the three options are, I mean, the lesser of the three options is $82 million.

Right, right. So he's got a lot of work to do behind you.

So in order for them to, it would benefit their process if somehow you close that gap a little bit. and get a realistic number that the city can afford and make that a do not exceed number.

DAVID BURRAGE.

Oscar? So just to his point actually in many ways is by giving us direction on option B, we can actually continue to work with Kelly and Wendy and Sandra as we go forth and identify then that number. So it may be a bit premature and actually come back at that September meeting and be able to provide a target budget. It allows us the opportunity to work with the design team, the rest of the project team, work with the finance group to be able to kind of come up with those numbers and then be able to come back and present a target budget for UILs to operate off of.

Let me understand. Now you're saying that we don't need 5.9 today.

What we needed more than anything, what we needed, Mr. Mayor, is really the option, the design option that you all wanted, because we already have the estimated kind of numbers from there. We can continue to work with the finance committee group and work with the design team to really work to that number, bring that number back to you all when we have this discussion. either next week or whatever as we continue that process to kind of refine that number. So you're not obligate, I mean, again, we were just asking, what we really need from you all is a decision on what option you all desire and what your target budget is. So really that was our goal at the end of the day.

So now you've got the option design and your goal, you can work the target budget by working with the finance committee there and then you can bring a target budget back up to us. Correct, yes sir. with a better idea of now what is affordable and the like, and so you present both of those at the same time. We have Wendy behind you, so I'm hoping you don't get overruled, because that would be easier.

No, I just want to say that when we put the agenda item together, Broadus had not yet met with Kelly and Sandra. And from my understanding, their meeting on Friday was very informative for both parties. And so I think that's why Oscar has been talking to me a little bit through the meeting. They feel a little bit more aware of what budget we can afford as a city. When this was put on there, this was several days before that. So I just wanted to clarify.

Because we have filing requirements. Yes. Okay. So we want to just let 5.9 die? Yes. Okay. All right, then we'll move to 5.10, which is discussion and action to approve the written notice to proceed letter in accordance with the professional services consulting agreement executed by and between the City of Sal Padre Island and Broaddus & Associates for project management and owner representative services related to the Sal Padre Island Convention Center renovation and annex menu tax project.

City Council Wendy Delgado, Director of Operations. This is part of their professional services agreement with the city. It is standard, like when we do a street project or anything like that on a major contract, we always issue a notice to proceed. This one specifically, due to the nature and magnitude of the project, we just wanted to bring it to City Council for approval. basically a secondary vote issuing the notice to proceed letter to Broaddus and Companies for project management and owner representative services for the convention center project.

Motion to approve.

So they've been kind of working for free the last couple weeks.

they have not received the official letter because we did execute the professional services agreement um as approved by city council but this was just a secondary notice that um it's just the official you know proceed and again we uh i told oscar i would get it to him more than a week ago but um Mayor and Ed Saganowicz both thought it was the best idea to put it back on the agenda, just for official action.

We agreed to contract, but we really need to have council say, you're good to go. Start. Correct. Working and charging.

Correct. So this is, of course, for the project management agreement that we have. Broaddus also presented to Cameron County. I've waited all meeting for somebody to bring forward the fact that Eddie Trevino sent us another letter And I have said on record that I would like all communication that comes through Cameron County or that is budgetary related to this to be given to everyone on this council. For some reason, that letter was not distributed. It does say that we are not contingent. We are not allowed to break ground on this project without consent. their approval right and so again we those communications need to come through to all of us you also mentioned wendy that you were aware of a budget on friday that was discussed with kelly when you all came to those numbers it would have been nice i spent probably more than 60 hours and in three days working on you know my versions of uh scenarios that we can that we can put down

and it would have saved me a lot of time to have had that kind of communication so um correction i was not in the meeting on friday i was not involved at all in that meeting as what i've been communicated from kelly and sandra is that the meeting uh and randy was there at a portion of the meeting as well as that they had a great meeting with broadest and that they were working on a pnl and Performa for the future, and that they were gonna prepare what they basically said today, the September 15th meeting, is what I was referencing is that I think Broadus has a better understanding of the city's finances based on that meeting, which is why I think they know now 92 million is not an option. They know now that 89 million is not an option for us. And I think that's what I was mostly talking about there. And in reference to the Cameron County letter, I was under the impression it went to all of the city council direct from Cameron County.

I have it here where Alice Reyes sent it. And it says Patrick R. Smith. Jay Rico, R Langston, and L Graves, and I'm just now looking at it because I saw it really quickly. They misspelled your name.

They did.

Alice sent it to you. She has you as Hardwell, not Hartwell. So I just saw it quickly on the list, so I wouldn't have thought that you didn't get it because I didn't.

And I don't even think I got that either. I think I ended up with a forwarded copy.

Yeah, you didn't get a copy of it because you're not on the list. Exactly. And then there's also Eddie, Pete, Anthony.

I don't believe in coincidence, but I do think that, you know, that is interesting. I'm just looking at it right here. I see. Well, I think that it's still interesting that that wasn't brought up at all, and it's pretty pertinent information to this type of discussion, considering that we have been having conversations about breaking ground as soon as possible. So... It'd be nice if the landlords knew that we can afford to start and finish the project too.

And my response to the judge's secretary, I guess, was thank you, please relate to the judge that we understand our obligation to keep the county informed and we'll be presenting a final package once estimates of construction, future expenses, income, as well as the final design to the commissioner's court for approval before construction is due to begin. And I got back, thank you. So, okay. Yes, sir. I have to, we kind of have to do that. Send out an email to every city council person except Aaron Hartwell? No, that's not what I said at all.

What did you say?

What I said was is that the secretary of Judge Trevino sent out an email to all of city council. And I'm just now discovering that she misspelled council person Hartwell's name. I'm assuming Alice is a girl, could be a guy. But this did not internally come from the city. It came from the county and the county senate.

What does this letter say? It says exactly. Who's it to? It's to.

Mayor and the council. To me, but it was.

It's to you and what?

Says to member, to Mayor Patrick McNulty and members of the city commission.

So do you not have to distribute it or her distribute it?

Well, when the letter says that it's going to city council members. That means that she, our judge, is transmitting it to city council members, so I, Made an ass out of myself, I guess, because I assumed that when he was emailing it to all the city council members, that they spelled the city council members' email addresses correctly, because they didn't ask me for the email addresses or any of that nature. So I'm sorry. When I see a letter that says to the mayor and city council, it usually goes to the city council, and I was not there with Alice to correct her on the spelling of Aaron's name.

But when you got it, you didn't redistribute it, or Randy or Nikki or somebody?

No, because it looked like everybody else's name.

We could see every councilman's name on there. When it came to me, I clicked it open to see who all it was sent to, and it was sent to everybody. It was sent to Patrick, Joey. There was one misspelling. We missed it. Nobody here ever misses a spelling?

Yeah, interesting.

Well, I don't know what to say other than talk to Alice and ask her why she misspelled the name.

I don't know why we even find it. It's a mistake.

Yeah, so I've never met Alice Reyes.

It's really, the point is that it was never brought up in this meeting, and I've asked for, you know, why is it that that's not something that we're discussing when we're discussing the convention center project, and we have new communication from our landlords. I think it's highly relevant information.

I just thought it was reiterating exactly what they said in their first letter.

Mm-hmm.

because they said it says the project advances into the final phase the commissioner courts has has established conditions of its approval specifically that the and area to remain and we need to and we have to work with the four horsemen and bring it all back to them that's what i thought so i just kind of thought that's how it worked so i didn't think it was new so

It is very new. If you compare the two letters, the first one says that we have approval. It says that as long as the plans don't override the habitat, that they're good with us going forward. He's reiterated in this letter that these approvals are contingent on presenting the plans, the new scope of work, and the pricing and approval from Cameron County. It's not what the first letter said.

Okay and so then you're not using the word reiterated correctly and then he's not using the word reiterated because reiterated means is I am reminding you and restating what I previously said. So he is using, you're using the word reiterated, he's using the word reiterated.

My apologies, I did not mean to say reiterated in the first letter. I can own mistakes. That's called accountability. So, yes, they are very different letters.

Okay. Okay. He just says to remove any doubt. But anyway, all right. Okay, well, we have a motion and a second. Okay. Is there any other discussion? Okay, none. All in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? Motion carries. All right, I'll move to 5.1. Pull? You want me to make the motion? Yeah, make it. I'm going to make a motion to pull.

It's come to our attention that some people that wanted to serve on these committees were not aware that they needed to resubmit an application. So I make a motion to table this until the next meeting.

Is there a second?

Likewise, there was no backup information. But I am aware that there were applicants that have applied. So if those applications, why weren't Next time, let's make sure that all applications are available. I have no idea if we had multiple applications that could have been filled by these applications, or if you've just decided that we would rather reappoint the people that exist on these committees as they stand. And I know for a fact that there were applications for these two.

Yes, and I apologize, Council Member Hartwell, that was me. So I did send the applications in the tally sheet, but you had stated you were not going to be here at today's special meeting.

You did not provide backup to me that you think that I would not have?

The blind vote. So if you're not here, I didn't send, the applications were not included in the backup. No, they were not. Correct, and that's a mistake, so I can accept that.

That's a mistake. Okay, great.

Thank you for owning that. We're human. Not all of us spell check. Or, you know, hit that green save button. And then, of course, I sent the blind tally vote for those that were going to be present. And you stated you were not available today, and I had not heard any other communication that was relayed to me.

That's because I got here, and I'm glad that I'm thankful that I'm here. Yes. But regardless, just for clarification purposes, the tally sheet would then have included all applications, or is it just the tally sheet?

Well, it's the tally sheet and the applications. Okay, that was my question. Thank you very much.

All right, we'll move to item number six. Oh, I'm sorry. All on the table, all in favor to table, raise your hands. Okay, we'll move to item number six, which is executive session 551.071, consultation with the attorney 551072. deliberation about real property. A closed session will be held to discuss real property. Is there a motion to move into executive session?

Make a motion to move into executive session.

Second. All in favor, please raise your hand.

Thank you.

All right, it's 335. We're going to move into executive session. There is no action on this agenda item after, so all we will be doing is coming in here to adjourning. Everybody else, have a great day. Thank you. It's 4.01. We are back from executive session seeing that there is no more items on our agenda. We are adjourned and everybody have a great day.