City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning.

We're very punctual here. Good morning. Some of us are punctual, some of us are not.

Love you. Welcome to the June 10th of 2026 City Council meeting. We're going to begin with the invocation from Council Member Haney, followed by the pledge. If you'll please stand.

Please pray with me. Lord, we're thankful for another day in your presence. Be with us as we conduct our city business. And Lord, I just pray that we carry out your will and not our individual wills. Lord, be with our first responders and our military. Keep them out of harm's way. Protect them and allow them to return home safely. In your name we pray. Amen.

All right, we're going to begin with the minutes from April 22nd, 2026. Move to approve the minutes.

Second.

Got a motion by Nichols, second by Hawkins. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. All right, we're going to come down for a presentation on P1.

We'll do the picture first and then they'll do the presentation after y'all come back up for the picture.

Thank you.

You do it too often.

Good morning. Good morning. My name is Casey. I'm the Keep Tyler Beautiful coordinator. Excuse me. So for over 30 years, Keep Tyler Beautiful has actively contributed to the well-being of our community. Each year, we encourage citizens, engage citizens, educate them, and encourage active participation in enhancing Tyler's sustainability. Keep Tyler Beautiful proudly receives support as an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful and Keep Texas Beautiful. Today, we are here to ask the council to accept the 20th consecutive Gold Star Affiliate Award, recognizing our commitment to beautification, litter reduction, and recycling. To achieve Gold Star affiliate status with Keep Texas Beautiful, organizations must meet key requirements and reporting obligations, community engagement, support and recognition, and professional development. I have prepared a presentation highlighting Keep Tyler Beautiful's accomplishments throughout 2025 and demonstrating the impact of our programs and initiatives in each of these areas. In 2025, Keep Tyler Beautiful continued prioritizing community involvement and education in litter abatement. The Great Tyler Cleanup hosted 300 volunteers who removed nearly 2,800 pounds of trash from various locations across the city. The adopt-a-spot program engaged nearly 2,000 volunteers, removing more than 10,000 pounds of litter from an estimated 432 miles of roadway, 852 acres of green space. This included our three Tyler College campuses, 18 parks, 37 streets, adopted by local businesses, organizations, and groups. We also continued our partnership with Andrews Diversified to remove litter from 116 miles of roadway on a bi-monthly schedule. The program helps clean high traffic areas and provides job training opportunities for individuals with specialized needs. The eighth annual Park Service Day brought together 175 volunteers at Fun Forest Pool. Volunteers painted the exterior pool facility, reception area, steps, and railings, and added murals and bright colors to create a fun summer atmosphere. A paint-by-number mural was completed on the concession stand building and volunteers also refresh the flower garden out out front and give it a tropical feel by adding palm trees which were donated by urban forestry in addition volunteers cleaned up tree limbs and helped make the park more inviting overall the project daffodil Yeah. Project daffodil sold nearly 1400 or 14,000 daffodil bulbs to be planted across Smith County and surrounding areas. We also can continue to offer Texas native wildflowers, wildflower seeds to support pollinator friendly planting in the community. Keep Tyler beautiful, recognize local businesses that take pride in maintaining attractive, welcoming properties and contribute to the overall appearance of our community. This year's beauty and business award recipients include First Watch, Southern Classic Chicken, Taqueria El Lugar, and Eye Care Associates of East Texas. Through their commitment to property maintenance, landscaping, and curb appeal, these businesses help make Tyler a cleaner, more beautiful place to work and live and visit. Keep Tyler Beautiful's mural program has grown to 23 murals since 2019. In 2025, we added two new murals, the pollinator-themed mural at the newly renovated W.E. Winters Park and the community mural at Fun Forest Pool. In November, we celebrated America Recycles Day by hosting a combined... Sorry about that. Combined Tyler Recycles Day and Paint Recycles Day event. Through partnerships with Solid Waste, Arklatex Shredding, and Interstate Batteries, we collected more than 8,000 pounds of recycled materials in just four hours. With Clean Earth's help, we also safely recycled over 5,000 pounds of household paint, helping divert waste from local landfills and promoting responsible disposal practices. Our Christmas tree recycling program allowed local fishermen and wildlife groups to reuse trees, and our partnership with Caldwell Zoo continued as we collected old lights for the Lights for Lions program that supports African lion conservation in their natural habitat. Okay, now I'm ready to talk. I'm just excited about bees. It's coming up bee week, bee day in the garden, pollinator week, so I got it on my brain. Okay, so as a Bee City USA affiliate since 2019, Keep Taller Beautiful educates the community about the importance of pollinators. We kicked off pollinator week during the week last week of June with virtual events and a bees and brews trivia night at East Texas Brewing. The week concluded with Bee Day in the Garden at the Goodman-LeGrand Museum. The event featured local vendors, interactive activities with volunteers and attendees enjoying the new setup among the beautiful trees while learning about native plants, trees, and pollinators. in 2025 keep tyler beautiful celebrated 30 years as an affiliate with a milestone gala honoring the community members and organizations that have supported our work over the years the celebration welcomed past keep tyler beautiful coordinators and former board members recognizing their leadership and lasting contributions to the organization's growth and impact during the event Legacy Partner Awards were presented to Solid Waste and Andrews Diversified Industries for their longstanding support of Keep Tyler Beautiful's mission. Additional honors included the Mission Ambassador Award, presented to Stacey Eller-Smith, Sherry Woods, and in recognition of Dick Counts for his dedicated service. The Jim Tuning Volunteer of the Year Award was presented to Carol Sorenski and Jim Cousineau. The milestone highlighted the strong community partnerships that have been essential to our success and reflected three decades of environmental stewardship and community engagement. Through our Keep All Saints Beautiful campus affiliate, students partnered with the city's solid waste department to remove and properly dispose of more than 60 illegally dumped tires that had been left on the property for many years. This project not only improved the campus's appearance, but also eliminated potential environmental and public health concerns. Additionally, we hosted several tours of the Downtown Recycle Center, allowing students and adults to learn about our recycling processes and develop lasting recycling habits. We also connected with residents through educational booths, community outreach events, and speaking engagements that promoted recycling, litter prevention, beautification, and environmental stewardship throughout Tyler. Keep Tyler Beautiful partnered with TxDOT on the Roses and Weed podcast to discuss the anniversary of the Adopt-A-Highway program that started right here in Tyler 40 years ago, 41 now. The episode highlighted ways the community can participate in litter cleanups, Keep Tyler Beautiful's Adopt-A-Spot program, and other opportunities for residents to help keep not just Tyler clean, but Texas as well. In 2025, Our Keep Tyler Beautiful volunteers logged over 11,250 hours valued at over 391,000. Gosh, I can't say it. 391,000? I don't know. It's a lot, okay. The achievements we celebrate today would not be possible without support and dedication of our sponsors city leaders board members and volunteers i would also like to extend a special thank you to mayor don warren for his continued support of keep tyler beautiful and parks and recreation throughout his service into our community We also want to recognize former council member James Wynn, whose support and advocacy for Keep Tyler Beautiful has helped advance our mission over the years. Thank you all for your continued support and for considering acceptance of our 20th consecutive Gold Star Affiliate Award. We look forward to building on this success and continuing to keep Tyler clean, green, and beautiful for generations to come.

Great presentation. And you guys, what you do is phenomenal. And the volunteers and your board, that's probably one of the more popular boards to get on, is the Keep Tyler Beautiful board. So thank you guys for what you do. It's phenomenal. So anyone have any comments for Casey? All right, great job. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right, P2, Heather.

good morning mayor and council we are bringing this presentation to you today to bring awareness to the ada transition plan and most importantly some special visitors that we'll be having in tyler over the the coming weeks we have the dax bots they're robots that will do some data collection for us and they're brought to us by our consultants kimberley horn This has been a great collaboration between our ADA coordinator, engineering, communications, with Peyton Weidman, who helped us bring a great event last night with the library summer reading, and we featured the robots, and you'll hear more about that from Michael Howell, our ADA coordinator.

So is Daxbot here?

They're not here. They were here last night.

Good enough for the library but not for council.

Well, we do have a special treat for you because this morning about 10 o'clock they will be in the downtown area. So drive around and you'll get to see some of them. So anyway, with that.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Again, Michael Howell. I'm the Director of the Tyler Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, but I also serve as the City of Tyler's Americans with Disabilities Act ADA Coordinator. And the project that we are doing right now is part of the city's, what is called the ADA Self Assessment and Transition Plan. So it's really kind of doing a benchmark of kind of where we are on our journey towards making the city more inclusive for all people with disabilities and kind of will let us track as we go over time and try to say, all right, here's the improvements we're making and how do we keep focusing on what are the next needs? So I won't go through all the bullets on the slide, but in general, that's really the purpose of the transition plan. Right now, we are about partially through the actual development of the plan. We're still in what's called the self-assessment, which is really doing the analysis of facilities. Our consultants have already reviewed the parks and have already looked at some of the actual buildings that are around the area, and here's where they're transitioning to looking at the sidewalks that are in the public right-of-way. And that's where we are at this point, which is going to be very interesting because the way that that data is going to be collected is through a sub-consultant called Daxbot that has these robots that go out and they are able to go do a scan of the sidewalks. Really, like back in the day, which was just a few years ago, it would always have a person have to go out to the field who would have a level who would go out and would look at the sidewalk. And now they have these robots that actually can go out and roll on it and take that data in real time and can do it. Well, typically would take a job that would take four to five weeks can be done in about two to three weeks now. So we're very impressed that we were able to have this opportunity. They are saying for the scope of our contract, there's gonna be roughly six robots that should be operating in Tyler at any given time. So they'll be on different sidewalks going all throughout the city. Again, they're thinking it should be about two to three weeks for the full data collection and they should be rolling out starting today. So everybody should be seeing that very soon. Then they'll have some QC and some data processing. But yeah, they're saying it should be about 12 miles a day with the six robots is what they should be able to get with the area. And some of the pictures you can see up on the screen were actually taken last night at the library summer kickoff event. So just to give a little information about how the robots are deployed, the actual company, Daxbot, does have a van, so you may see that going around, and they have the little trailer in the back where they actually are housing the robots, and they'll use that to set them up, move them around wherever that they need to go for the different areas. And also in case there are any issue something that pops up that they can always go and check it. They say that there will always be at least a Daxbot employee that will be at least within a 20 minute drive of it. So if anything is to come up, they can check it out and resolve any issues that may come up immediately. From a safety standpoint, I wanted to just kind of do the overview of it, that the robots actually are overseen by somebody in the field. So it's not just something that's completely autonomous that's going to be going out there. They will be crossing at streets, at crosswalks, things like that. So they will have safety lights that will be going whenever they do those crossings, and they'll actually have the little safety vests that will be going out there. So it's not just a cute addition on there. It really does help with the visibility that happens. But what really kind of makes it special is that, well, you know, the main function is to go ahead and do that analysis of the sidewalks that they will not approach anybody who is walking down the street, but if somebody does approach the robots themselves, they will take a moment and they are able to kind of have like some little, The eyes can kind of go, they can make some, just kind of like some basic kind of emotions, little reactions, things like that. And they have some little R2D2 beeps that they can do. And they can wiggle their heads from side to side. And that's what all the kids at the library event were seeing last night. And they all loved it. So Daxbot says everywhere that they've used this in other communities, they say it's fairly typical that you'll have some of the kids from the community come out. And they even encourage the kids to come out and take a picture and post it if they want. But kind of getting into that, just looking at the privacy of it, so Daxbot, so there is some video that they record whenever they are going around to monitor, but they just want to make sure everybody knows that they're not constantly saving this so that there's nothing that's going to be recorded, that if anybody's kids do come up, it's not going to be like some video that's saved with them that's going to be posted on their website without parents' permissions or anything like that. Really, the only thing that the video is there for is just to kind of save. It does have, by default, it has a five minute loop on it, so unless they actually, one of the operators says to, hey, save a clip that happened, then anything that happened five minutes ago has already been lost. And it's really if there was just an issue that something had come up and they need to be able to look at that later, but that's all the recording that's happening. They are going to stay on the public right-of-way, so they're not going to be going on to private property. So really it's just going to be focused on just that public right-of-way, and any of the data that they do is going to be stored on a secured server. So they have assured the utmost privacy with anything that is being collected with the data. So what we're doing today is part of the public outreach just to let everybody know that this is coming and they will be rolling out literally and figuratively today. We had the kickoff last night with the library summer kickoff event and we still have a few pictures from that up on the screen. Also, what they have done is they have created a customized sticker, which you can see actually up on the screen right now. And if you can see the picture in the top right, you can see one of the robots and pretty much you can see the side of it right now. You can almost see where that sticker is going to be going. So if anybody comes up on the street and says, hey, what is going this? And they're not familiar with the project. They can snap this QR code right there and it will take them to a website that will tell them about the project. It will give them more details. That's part of the coordination that's been happening with the city staff patent. I have to give another shout out to has been phenomenal about getting all of the information set up. And also we've been doing a lot of social media posts that has been coming through with this. So I know a lot of it's already been shared and we anticipate there will probably be more that will be shared over the next two to three weeks as the data is collected and people will be out in the field and seeing the robots moving around. Probably the biggest question I think most people say is, so where are we going to be seeing it? Our contract with Kimley Horn outlines that they will analyze up to 90 miles of sidewalk. So the staff looked at it and selected based off of what we say is going to be the major routes that's going to be along your arterial streets and your main collector streets, the places where you're probably going to see the people walking the most. It really focused on those corridors that already have a continuous sidewalk. Tried to not really focus on too many that have large gaps in it because most likely it's already not going to be ADA compliance. We really wanted to see those facilities that already had it there and we could really try to see where those improvements needed to be made. And I went ahead, the pie chart up on the right hand side really shows the breakdown. So whenever I said the 90 miles, the numbers that you're seeing there is the amount of mileage that is gonna be within each council district. So just wanted to really highlight that they really will be all throughout the entire city. So everybody can expect to be seeing them in your area at some point, probably within again, the next two to three weeks. And that is all that we have for the presentation today. If there are any questions that we have, I'll be happy to answer. So what's the cost associated with this? The entire cost is part of the overall ADA contract, which was about $350,000 for the entire assessment and transition plan. So that's not even just the robots. This is just a portion that's in it. And I don't remember exactly what portion this is of that entire contract. And all of this is being paid out of the half-cent sales tax funds.

And this is fairly required as far as for the ADA assessment and transition plan. And so this is just something that you're required to do anyway.

And it's less expensive than hiring real people.

Correct. It actually is less expensive and it is more efficient to actually get the data even quicker with that.

I saw on one of the slides it mentioned that private buildings would be measured also. So privately owned buildings?

Not with the robots. Nothing that is private is being done as part of this. This is solely what is...

I thought it was to entryways to private buildings from public to private.

No, it did not go from public to private. This is only going to be what's going to be located in the city right-of-way. So it would be along there, and that's solely what's looked at. Okay, thank you.

All right, any other questions from Michael? Thank you for your presentation. Thank you so much.

Good job.

R1, Chief.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Good morning. David Coble, Fire Chief, Emergency Management Coordinator.

Good morning. Don't be so enthusiastic this morning. Okay, you want a little more lively?

Okay, I will do that. All right, this is a request that the City Council consider authorizing the City Manager to sign a resolution to adopt the Smith County 2026 Hazardous Mitigation Action Plan in accordance with the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000. Adoption of the plan by resolution reflects the City of Tyler's commitment to hazard mitigation and continued coordination with regional partners. Adoption further supports eligibility for participation in federal grant funding opportunities associated with mitigation projects identified within the plan. What this is, the plan is a strategic framework designed to reduce long-term risk to life, property, and local economy from natural and man-made hazards. It aligns with the federal FEMA guidelines and state requirements, ensuring that the city remains eligible for federal disaster mitigation funding. The goal is to protect lives and property by minimizing the impact of disasters through proactive measures, strengthen infrastructure by improving resilience of critical facilities, utilities, and transportation networks, preserve economic stability by reducing disaster-related business disruptions and recovery costs. Promote community preparedness by increasing public awareness and readiness for emergencies. The hazards that were addressed are severe weather, flooding and dam failure, wildfires, extreme heat and drought, hazardous material incidents, and public health emergencies. The key strategies were risk assessments, there was mapping throughout the city, actually it's a county plan, but they included the city in the plan, so mapping of hazardous prone areas and vulnerable populations. Mitigation projects including drainage improvement, safe room construction, wildfire fuel reduction, and utility hardening. policy updates by strengthening building codes, zoning, land use planning to reduce hazardous exposure, and of course public engagement, ongoing outreach to residents, businesses, and schools to encourage preparedness. The benefits to the community are reduction of loss of life and property from damage, lower disaster recovery costs, improve emergency response capabilities, and enhances the ability for federal and state mitigation grants. It is recommended that the City Council consider authorizing city managers to sign a resolution to adopt the Smith County 2026 Hazardous Mitigation Action Plan in accordance with Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000. Yeah, 2000. I'm doing the same thing on the money thing. The Smith County Commissioner's Court adopted this plan on May 5th of this year.

Any questions for Chief Coble? Yes, Chief. In the measuring of the potential hazards in the community, we have a lot of private lakes that are neighborhood lakes in our city. Yes, sir. Since they're not public lakes, does this plan also look at them because they have a If they fail, they will impact the public further downstream. Right.

They would be key if they fail and they affect the public, then they would be part of that plan.

They'll be looked at also?

This plan has already been put in place. Smith County actually contracted out with a company to do it. They've been working on it for... year and a half, maybe almost two years. And so they finished it. This just allows us to be able to be part of any type of mitigation if something happens. But whether or not it will go in there and fix a private lake ahead of time, that's gonna be up to whoever owns the lake. As far as damming it and so forth, yes.

Just looking at how sometimes development upstream can affect those lakes downstream in a negative way. way and how we can maybe mitigate that over time with a plan like this.

No doubt. Uh, we can look into that. I can look further into seeing whether or not that late.

And so for this one, probably flooding isn't probably as critical on this one as the county looked at it as much as, um, really more relationship as you can. So with the fire chief here and just the fire disaster type of situations that you could occur as well. Uh, so, um, you know, as far as really probably wildland management, those types of projects, uh, as well as the other piece of it is what type of equipment to have kind of is recommended. Correct. Recommended to have on hand, uh, both for local fire departments, as well as, uh, Smith county to, as far as to aid and to work during disasters.

Thank you. All right. Any other questions over chief coble?

So new.

Did you make a motion?

Yep.

Second. All right. Got a motion by Hawkins, second by Haney. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Chief. M1. Cameron.

Good morning, Mayor, Council. We've got flooding now.

Is this going to be more thrilling than cheap cobbles?

Absolutely not. He's going to talk about flooding.

Mr. Nichols was excited about that.

Good morning. Cameron Williams, Director of Engineering Services. So here we have a reconciliation change order and release of retainage for our 2025 structure flooding project. So quick overview. This gives you a map. This project addressed six different locations throughout the city of Tyler, spread kind of all over. I'm going to hit on a couple of these just because we give you some after photos of the work that was done. But again, this gives you a snapshot of where the projects took place. First project here is Persimmon Drive. It's located off of Rhodes Quarter between Shiloh and Grande. You can see all the concrete work that was done here and the drains. What you can't see is also the underground. So there was a pipe that was replaced and increased in size that went between these two houses to address the flooding that was taking place within these structures. This next location, Haverhill Drive. So Haverhill is kind of northeast of UT Tyler area. It's off of Old Henderson Highway. Old Henderson is the roadway on the left. Haverhill is kind of running kind of to the north right of this screen. There was not really much of a ditch on the south side of this roadway on the picture, and so adding that curb and gutter, some inlets, and then reconstructing that channel to provide the flow of water in this area. Prince Dale. So Prince Dale is kind of on the southern end of Holly Tree off of Dueling Oaks. So this is a situation where there's water flowing down the street kind of to the end of this. It's not a cul-de-sac but looks like a cul-de-sac and then the water gathers and goes through a pipe and then discharges. Well we installed some curb inlets up street to catch that water further before it got down into that area and then the pipe didn't get it out so it wasn't overtopping the curb and getting into the houses at this location. This is 9th Street, so they're at Old Jacksonville and Old Bullard. This is a situation where the water ran down 9th Street and kind of around the corner down Old Bullard Road. There were no inlets in that area, and so overtopping the curb, so this is a situation where they installed some additional inlets and additional pipe to capture that so it wasn't overtopping that curb and getting into those structures at that location. This last one is Golden Road, which is up near where Golden Road intersects Old Henderson Highway, a situation where I think we had some silt build up in the channel, and so being able to clean that out and add the rip rock there to stabilize and eliminate any potential erosion and just keep that channel open and flowing in this location. This gives you a summary of the funding, the original contract price, and the increase because of the reconciliation change order and field orders that occurred. This was funded through two different sources, the stormwater account and the half-cent sales tax, so it's split. The increases are being funded from the half-cent sales tax, and that gives you the total contract amount. kind of for do the recommendation i do want to definitely acknowledge our project manager jason adair who handled this project so he's here with us this morning and it is recommended that the city council authorize the city manager to approve the reconciliation change order an amount of one hundred and sixty thousand three hundred seventy nine dollars and nine cents and approved the release of retainage in the amount of $71,877.25 to Reynolds and Kay for the 2025 Structured Flooding Drainage Improvement Project.

All right, any questions for Cameron?

Move to approve.

I second. That motion by Nichols, second by Marsh. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Cameron. All right, we're down to the consent agenda. Anything need to be pulled or approved is written.

Second.

Got a motion by Haney, second by Hawkins. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. City Manager's Report.

Mayor Warren and council, new items of note. So as they mentioned earlier, when we were talking about little robots, submarine kickoff was last night over at the conference center. And that turned out to be a great event. It was filled with kids running around in air conditioning instead of parking lot. And they were having a great time getting signed up for the summer reading program and just all the opportunities and activities. Legal was there with hammers so they could smash things because many of the different departments came out with booths as well to support and encourage our young, as far as children, to stay active in their reading in the summer. And so we were very just appreciative of all the work the library did, all different departments participating in making sure that it was just such a fun activity to encourage kids. Because summer is one of those times where there is that lag that occurs. If you're like me as a kid, you'll probably also just love the fact that when your summer reading program came along, the opportunity to go to the library, you get enough stickers for a box of Cracker Jacks. That's in Winnie, Texas, that's how it works. We didn't have much of it. And so I'm excited that we're able to keep that tradition alive for our youth of today. Downtown opened, as you've seen the mayor driving around over there. And so with that, we're very thrilled with as far as the opening there at that corner of College and Irwin. and having that then open two-way and traffic is moving quite well through there. Only one time have I ever seen a car and it was in front of me in the wrong lane and you're behind them trying to instruct them, but they don't care. They think that they're in the right lane. Anyway, it all corrected itself. but in the meantime though we are just as far as monitoring that make sure it works we're looking at seeing the conditions and just what needs to change what needs to adjust to encourage kind of parking to continue to rotate instead of sometimes what we see is employees going out there and using that as employee parking at the different businesses and so figuring out ways to encourage that so that's some things you'll be hearing and coming back to you One of the things that also our downtown staff is currently working with are the different business owners. Now that that new, as far as area has been opened up over there on Irwin, of how then we can then help accommodate for them to be able to put tables and chairs and really be able to kind of fully utilize that area publicly as is intended. And so Amber Verona and her staff have right-of-way permits to provide outdoor seating and valet services that they're working with different businesses on to try to figure out and make sure that that's encouraged as best that those businesses can do that. And one of the things we made then finally mention of yesterday to our HACCP board, and Cameron a minute ago was just up here, so we'll brag a bit on Cameron and all of our engineering staff as well as our street staff, is Cameron made an announcement about the fact about our pavement condition index update. So the City of Tyler conducts a comprehensive pavement condition assessment approximately every four years to evaluate the quality of our streets using the pavement condition index, or PCI for short. The preliminary results from the 2026 survey indicate encouraging progress. The overall PCI has increased from 72 in 2021 to 76 in 2026, suggesting the previous downward trends has begun to reverse. Several factors likely contribute to this improvement. Over the past five years, new development has added lane miles to the city's roadway network, which can positively influence the overall PCI. Additionally, in 2023, the city provided a one-time funding increase to fully reconstruct several streets that were in poor or failing condition. This targeted investment in some of our most deteriorated roadways has likely played a meaningful role in raising the citywide average. In the coming months, staff will develop recommendations for future funding levels and maintenance schedules to continue improving and protecting the city's paving infrastructure. Our goal is to support a reliable, safe, and efficient roadway system for residents, businesses, and visitors as Tyler continues to grow. So just our appreciation to Cameron, as I mentioned, to all the engineering staff. I see Darren back there. Jason was one of our newest engineers that's kind of been brought on. And then, of course, all the work that's been done with streets, the half-cent to board the city council, Mayor Warren, and to just continue to encourage this and to see this encouraging as far as factor. And so, with that, Mayor.

Mayor Abbott. Any questions or comments for the city manager before we adjourn? We've got a comment. Okay.

So, Saturday, I got a call from the... a constituent who's been out of the city for a month or two and hadn't driven downtown for three or four months and he drove downtown. And he's finally caught the vision. And he couldn't believe the width of the sidewalks, the parking, the two-way, and how it's all looking good. And he could see it going all the way around the square now just because of that corner and how excited he was. And he's no longer a naysayer. He's on board. And he's probably the same once he hears this report on the roads and the condition of the roads and how they have improved. He's someone that has been a naysayer on that. So thank you for those reports. They're really, really encouraging. Thank you, sir. All right, any other comments?

Yeah, I have a comment. Someone had complained about the streets being too narrow, but we were at Culture last Friday, and I think there were like four fire trucks that were on College and that, and they went through just fine, safe. Other cars were able to pass. They were backing up. Chief Colbert, I don't know if they were in training or whatever. Do you know why they were downtown? If you had a uniform on that they could get free ice cream, I thought they were in training.

They're training on eating ice cream.

Yeah, so I said all that to say that the streets are safe. People were complaining that they were too narrow. That's untrue. I've seen fire trucks and cars pass simultaneously. All right. That's it.

That's all. Sounds like a good time to adjourn. I'll entertain.