City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone and welcome to our St. Patrick's Day meeting for Tuesday, March 17th, 2026. Uh, Miss Hillbert, will you please call roll? Yes, sir. Councilman Kder here. Councilwoman Butler, present. Councilwoman Scott, here. Councilman Lofrren here. And Mayor Crocker here. If you would please rise, join me for the pledges followed by a moment of silence.

To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for alliance to the one state and indivisible. I think you please be seated. All right. Again, welcome everyone. Uh we will jump right into our business of the day and we'll start with announcements and reminders. Mr. Garza, good evening.

Good evening, mayor and council. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Hope you're enjoying your greenly day. Uh I have several announcements for you this evening. Uh holistically, we want to remind the public that all non-emergency city offices will be closed on Friday, April 3rd in observance of Good Friday and will reopen at 8 a.m. on Monday, April 6th. Trash, recycling, and yard waste will be picked up as scheduled. The Victoria Public Library will be closed Friday and Saturday, April 3rd and 4th, and Riverside Golf Course will operate as normal. Um, on behalf of the communications department, uh, we want to convey that a full video recording of last week's Growing Victoria Summit will be posted Wednesday afternoon on the city's YouTube channel, Victoria Texas Videos, and will be broadcast on TV15, local cable channels 15 and 115, and online at Victoriax.govtv15. The recording will feature all of the panelists and speakers from this half-day summit. The slideshow presentations for the event will be posted on the city's website as well. In addition, communication and public affairs has a new town talk podcast episode about the summit available now on YouTube and Spotify. In this episode, staff share their impressions of the summit and discuss important takeaways for residents. We hope that residents will tune in to to the full summit recording and the podcast episode to learn why growth is important and how they can get involved. On behalf of municipal court, municipal court will have limited services available on Tuesday, March 24th, with online payments, records, and detailed case information temporarily unavailable. Online services will be down beginning at 5:30 p.m. Monday, March 23rd through the end of the day, Tuesday, March 24th, for upgrades to improve service access. Staff will still be available by phone and email for general questions. For more information, you may contact the municipal court at 361-4853050 or email court clerk@vtorx.gov. And finally, on behalf of environmental

services, sponsorships and tickets are available for Keep Victoria Beautiful's Earth Day picnic fundraiser to be held Wednesday, April 22nd from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. at K's Grove on the campus of Texas A&M University Victoria. Last year's event raised $17,000 to support KBB's beautifification grant program and public art initiatives. For more information, visit keep victoria beautiful.org. All right. Thank you, Mr. Garza. We'll move then to public and employee recognitions. And I know we have one. Um item 2 A is Victoria Christian Assistance Ministry Day Proclamation. Miss Hilbert.

Yes, sir. Whereas Victoria Christian Ministry M Christian Assistance Ministry was founded in 1986 and received its charter on March 26, 1986. And whereas BCAM is dedicated to combating hunger, providing essential necessities and clothing to those in need and offering a helping hand to the brothers and sisters of our community. And whereas Victoria Christian Assistance Ministry provides services and assistance to the individuals and families while working in partnership with churches, agencies, and organizations. Whereas supported entirely by the generosity of the local community and powered by the dedication of staff and volunteers, BCAM has faithfully served the community for 40 years while remaining true to its mission, providing hope when things seem hopeless. And whereas later this year, Victoria Christian Assistance Ministry will celebrate this milestone with an open house and recognition event commemorating its long-standing commitment to those it serves. And now therefore, I, Dwayne Crocker, mayor of the city of Victoria, proclaim March 26, 2026 as Victoria Christian Assist Assistance Ministry Day in Victoria, Texas, and encourage all citizens to join in recognizing and celebrating the important work and lasting impact of VCAM in our community. Thank you. I'll keep it.

Uh on behalf of the BCAM organization, I think the proclamation said it all as to what we do and what our duty is or what it has been for the last 40 years. Um cast of characters have changed, the locations have changed, but the ministry of providing hope when things seem hopeless stays the same. So on behalf of uh my board members that are here, staff and the volunteers because it is a volunteer-run organization. Thank you all so much, City of Victoria. And maybe I'll see you in the next 40. I don't know.

Well, Mark, thanks to you and your board for all that y'all do in the community. Much much much deserved accolades. So, thank you'all. All right. Uh Mr. Garza, do you have any other uh public or employee recognitions this evening?

Uh I do have one, mayor. Uh I'm sure you all saw the news that broke the internet today. Uh but I am pleased to announce the official promotion um effective immediately of Klay Feders to serve as our next chief of police. Uh Chief Feders has been with our department since 2008 and has served in a variety of different roles. uh prior to serving interim as interim chief, he served as deputy chief and in and in the capacity of interim chief since October 2025, he has led the department through much needed change in such a short period of time. His command philosophy has positively impacted the department culture and employee morale. His decisive leadership led to operational changes that diverted the excuse me that diverted ancillary units to patrol shifts, enabling us to respond quickly while always being mindful of officer safety. recruitment and retention has improved significantly and vacancies are steadily being filled under his leadership and moving into the new public safety headquarter was no easy task but I joke that he certainly made it look easy. Um and lastly, his leadership philosophy, communication approach, vision, and mindfulness towards professionally developing officers uh is definitely top-notch. And uh that's the formal remarks, right? But it it I hope it goes without saying that Clay has definitely shown uh great leadership over the last few months. Um it's difficult to put into words the positive impact that his leadership has had on the department, the impact that the new facility has had on the department, and so the the future is bright for our police department. And so I'm excited that Chief Feders will be uh at the head of that over the next many years to come hopefully. And so Chief Feders, congratulations. Um and I'll put you on the spot now.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I want to thank Mr. Garza and the council and all the PD employees and citizens who have supported me so much through the last six months. Uh we've had so many great things happen over the last six months or so and um it's an honor to be able to represent the employees of the police department and all the good things that we have to come. There's so many great things going on in the city and uh the future is bright and so thank you. Appreciate it.

Thanks Chief. We we are in uh the final stages of finalizing sort an official swearing in ceremony that'll take place the last week of March and so be on the lookout for those details. We hope to have that out by the end of this week. All right, very good. Congratulations, Chief Eders. All right, moving on then. Uh items from council. Anybody have anything this evening? Seeing none, we will jump into our citizens communication. I have two cards. We'll start with Rick Kohley. Collie. Collie. I'm sorry. Rick Collie. Good evening, sir. Welcome.

Good evening. Thank you. Yeah, you probably had trouble reading my my penmanship there. Well, between your penmanship, my eyes, we were in trouble. No doubt.

It's getting bad. My name is Rick Collie. I'm Thank you for this opportunity. A uh two things I wanted to do. Uh represent our Kowanas Club in Victoria. club has been here since 1946 and I wanted to update educate the council and and the public on what our Kuanas club has been up to for the last five years. It kind of amazed me what we have done or small club but we've we've had an had an impact. Um and I want to invite the council and and the public to an event that we're having uh this Saturday. It's our annual kids fest and the bike ride which we've been doing for the last several years. We're handing that over to the Dailyon Club. So, we're helping them kind of pushing that on to them. This this all this is happening this Saturday, the 21st. Daleon Club is going to do the bike ride. Now, from now on, we're going to stick with the kids fest for um our Kuanas Club. But what we've done in the last five years, I was amazed that our our club has distributed a total of $748,000 to causes here in the city. And some of those I just summarize some of those in the foster parents of Victoria, $86,000. Salvation Army Victoria, 22,000. uh Lighthouse, 911, Toys for Tots, Writing Therapy Center, uh that's in the youth services, the other community service group, uh Promise Point, uh $50,000 for a microenterprise uh building, and a couple other things. That's Promise Point, VISD Kids Connection, uh $44,000. That's for semihomeless and homeless kids uh here in in the Victoria uh school school uh system. That's a very important u project. Pain to Purpose

$36,000. Roland Elementary School uh playground set for 31,830 and then res Restoration House Ministries. These are some of the organizations that we've uh helped. There's there's more than this, but those are the primary ones. The other thing I wanted to invite everybody to is our kids fest. That's this Saturday from 10 to 2 pm at the park uh the parking lot um Riverside Stadium. It's the event center just off of that parking lot. You know the the Red River and Memorial Drive. You can see it. It's that expanse. We've got this brochure. You may have seen these around town. Uh it's the kids fest and the things that are going to be going on. It's totally free for for kids. This is not our fundraiser. This is just a project we do for the community. Uh events are going to be handling there for the kids. Uh free barbecue, uh free popcorn, snow cones, so forth. Everything's free. No charge for anything. Bounce house, foam party, arts and crafts. Uh there's something called bull riding. I don't know what that's going to look like, but it's it's there. It's for the kids, I assume. uh inflatables, scavenger hunt, interactive booths, performances, demonstrations, and local author book reads, talent show, uh food trucks if you want to if you want something else. Look like they're going to be snake handling there. This is young girls probably a petting zoo or something like that. Anyway, a lot of fun from 10 to 2 this Saturday. So, just wanted to update everybody on what our Kuanas Club has been up to and I'm proud of proud of what we've done. So just uh that's I guess that's everything I need to

want to say. Thank you, sir. And thank you to Kuanas. You guys do great work in the community. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. The second card, uh is Michael Vonro.

Good evening, Mr. Vonra.

Good evening, uh council mayor. I'm Michael Vandro. I live at 21107 North Bin Jordan. Uh the phone number if you get bit by a dog is 578-3564. You call animal care services before the police. Unless you have a whole bunch attacking you and they're killing you, then you call 911, you know. And if you call animal care services and they don't come for our then you can call the non-emergency police and that's uh 573 3221. And uh also if you want to file a dangerous dog affidavit, you no longer uh file it with animal care services. You do it with the municipal court and you do it with the appropriate JP court in the area where you were bid. And uh Jose Flores was the one that made that ruling. He was the chief animal control officer. He's no longer with them. And there was a city councilman that came to Dodge City and uh did an auction for one of my friends. His name is Paul who had cancer and I I appreciate him. JD Power ranked him the number one auctioneer at Dodge City for that day and I appreciate it. And he he made a lot of money for Paul and uh to fight his cancer and they sold some barbecue plates and stuff like that. And also I'd like to thank uh Jesus Garza, the city manager for helping with u the Grove Apartments. Uh it was like a pigsty there. There was trash all over and the tenant had to call KAVU 25 and report it just to get help. I hope the management didn't find out and a victim over that. But um Julie Fulgum and u um Mr. Raina got involved and I appreciate and all the code enforcement and building instruct u uh inspectors and I checked it today and there's still furniture all around the dumpsters and I I wish they could do a

better job and I think those tenants need to get a a $100 rebate for you know what they live through and everything. There's more to it but I can't cover it in three minutes so I'll just uh leave it at that. But I would like to see uh management held accountable and the owner that bought uh Grove Apartments u be accountable. They've done a very poor job of um running it. And you know uh Endeavors uh is the ones that get the uh veterans discount rent to get there. And you know if they can't uh improve their performance I'd like endeavors just to uh approve them to another apartment and stuff. But uh I would like to get them to get all that furniture uh that's still there as I'm speaking. Thanks and have a good afternoon. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Vander. With that, then we will close citizens communication. We have no items with public hearings this evening. So, we'll move into our consent agenda. Miss Hilbert.

Yes, sir. Adoption. Uh item D1 is the adoption of minutes of the regular meeting held on March 3rd, 2026 and the special work session held on March 6, 2026. Item D2 is a resolution approving this and approving a sus and suspending the April 18, 2026 effective date of the proposal by Centerpoint Energy Resources Corporation DBA, Centerpoint Energy Intex and Centerpoint Energy Texas Gas Houston, Texas coast, South Texas, and Bumont East Texas geographic rate areas to implement interim grip rate adjustments for gas utility investment in 2025. Item D3 is a resolution approving a professional services agreement with Texas Land and Ride ofway Company LLC in the amount of 271,800 for easement acquisition services for paving, drainage, utility, and sidewalk improvements to North Street from Ben Jordan to Ben Wilson Street. Item D4 is a resolution approving a change order to increase the contract amount with Motorola Solutions Incorporated for the relocation of the P25 Public Safety Radio Network as part of the public safety headquarters project in amount of $4,669 for a total amount not to exceed $892,979. And item D5 is a resolution recognizing the Victoria Fire Association Local 3679 as the designated bargaining agent for collective bargaining with the City of Victoria pursuant to local government code section 174 uh101.

Thank you, Miss Hilbert. Do I have a motion on the consent agenda? I move we adopt the consent agenda as read. I second. Got a motion and a second. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? and the consent agenda is passed. We'll move into section E, which is known as the city engineer section tonight. I think they have all three of these. We'll start with action item E1. Item E1 is a resolution awarding the Northeast Water Street Waterline Replacement Project to Mercer Construction Company in amount of 1,135,7. Good evening, Mr. Chevick. Welcome.

Good evening. Um tonight we are going to ask council to award contract for the northeast water street waterline replacement project. Um this project consists of approximately 3150 linear feet of 8 and 12 inch water line along water street from Cameron up to Juan Lynn. Uh we're going to tie in the servers water services replace the meters and uh replace fire hydrants. Also, we will have a boar under the railroad at Water and Hand Street. This project was part of the 2025 CIP, but because of that railroad bore and the permit that we had to obtain that caused delays to it. So, that's why we're now just awarding this contract uh for construction. Three bids were received from one from Mercer Construction Company of Edna. uh their base bid, alternate one and alternate two bids totaled up to1,135,07. J&R Contracting Services of Victoria, their base bid, alternate one and alternate 2 total to1,317,275. and Lester Contracting of Port Lvaka. Their base bid alternate one and alternate two total up to $1,690,45. After reviewing the bids and and ranking and scoring them, uh staff recommends that the base bid, alternate one and alternate two uh all be awarded to Mercer Construction Company. Any questions?

Any questions for Mr. Shipbook? No. Okay. Then I will entertain any motions with respect to item E1. Motion to approve item E1. Okay. Second. I've got a motion. Second on item E1. Any discussion other than I can't imagine it took this long for uh we for for UP to get us that permit, but apparently it did. Fair enough. All right. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? All right, item E1 passes. We'll move then to item E2.

Item E2 is a resolution awarding the 2026 residential street maintenance project to Clark Construction of Texas Incorporated in amount of 3,28,436.40. We've had a lot of discussion recently regarding the 2026 residential street program and now we are coming to council to ask you to award a contract to Clark Construction uh for the work in town. Our original budget on this project was 4,100,000. The project areas are as listed here on this slide and shown on the map. Three bids were received for this project. Clark Construction of San Antonio uh submitted base bid and alternate one uh alternate one was to was the portion to uh put hot mix asphalt on North Side Road from Neo to city limits. Um some comments regarding that since citizens would like to have that done. So we put that in as an alternate. The prices came in reasonable and we're looking to award that too. Anyway, Clark's bid was $3,28,436.40. Lester Contracting uh for both their base bid and alternates was um 4,2,175. And CK Newberry of K City, their base and alternate bid totaled 3,944,846. Um, after reviewing the bids and scoring them, staff recommends that the base bid and alter one be awarded to Clark Construction. Here's some additional information. At our March council uh workshop March 6th, um there was the discussion about

removing uh Terrave Vista seal coating from this project. We could not do that as part of the award. we have to award the project first, then come back to you with a change order reducing the scope. There's also um over a million dollars worth of additional funds. We came in under budget and we discussed with you at the workshop regarding some additional streets we'd like to see work done on. Rather than try and change order into this contract, we'll start to encroach the uh maximum limit of 25% over the original awarded amount. We're going to package this up into a new project for bid and we will uh advertise that and receive bids in early April. I think April the 8th is the date we're looking at. Any questions? It's great to hear that we're able to get some more streets done based on our bid. So yeah, that's great. Or our estimates rather. So all right, thank you for the information. Um, do I have any motions with direct item E2?

Move to adopt. Second. Got a motion, a second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. Any opposed? And item E2 passes. All right, we'll move then to item E3.

Item E3 is a resolution awarding the 2026 thoroughfare maintenance project to Clark Construction of Texas Incorporated in the amount of $4,154,923.15. Okay. Um for our fiscal year 2026 thirst street program um the scope of this project or the streets that are listed here on this slide as shown on the map. Also we put in some alternate bid items which were were for some fillin of sidewalk in some on some of the streets where we've got sidewalk somewhere then no sidewalk then sidewalks again. We're going to try and connect those. Uh we do not have enough funds to put sidewalks on all the streets, but we thought we could possibly do some infill on the sidewalks. Um two bids were received on this uh Clark Construction, their bid, base bid and both alternates uh was totaled to $4,154,923.15. CK Newberry of K City. Their bids, base bid and alternates total $4,699,940 cents. Uh, a third bid was submitted but was disqualified due to errors in her bid. Um, not all the documents that they were supposed to submit were submitted. So, we had to u disqualify them. Um, based upon the review of the bids and the scoring between the contractors, staff recommends that we award this contract to Clark Construction, uh, San Anton.

What was the budget for this particular project? This particular project, the budget was $6,130,000. Um, so we are under budget on this one. Um, but I was told I can't have that money to work on streets. It's It's been Who told you that? So, go go go go to the next slide.

Um, because David was going to mention about this addition that was discussed at the March 6th workshop um to continue Edinburg all the way to NEO. Um, that will take up some of that roughly $2 million in quote unquote savings. Um but what David is referring to in terms of us not wanting to allocate um any more of that is because of the source. So thoroughare projects are sourced through the V through VSTDC and so we thought it would be prudent to not right off the bat just utilize that entire 2 million um in light of recent conversations we've had on things such as the gap with the community center as an example. Um that's probably the leading driver of that. Um as well as just other conversations about um infrastructure improvements uh regarding economic development, some of which I'll actually speak to you about an exe in exe in executive session. Um but that was the re the reason behind not wanting to just take up that entire amount at this time.

Could you go back to the prior slide for Okay. You mentioned north side in the previous presentation and I don't remember whether it was drawn there but it's on this one. Um so I was just a little bit confused and I know I was thinking that that was an alternate on the residential street but maybe that was on the thoroughfare project as an alternate. Okay. So, it's being taken care of on that one way or the other. Yes. Thank you. Any other questions on this?

I have a question. I just have a comment because I know that you routinely hear questions from the community or from council. I've I've asked in the past and I'm fully aware of how it works now, but I would be remiss if I didn't bring up that you have a very very extensive scoring system and so individuals that in the community will say, "Well, it just goes to the lowest bidder." That's not the case. Correct.

That is correct. The uh the bid price is a large factor in the scoring, but we have other factors that play come into play. um reputation of the contractor, safety record, um ability to perform the work, do they have the proper equipment, there's various things that all come in to this scoring system. And legally, it's referred to as best value. Yes. Um that that's the part in of uh local government code or state statue that we subscribe to when we uh follow that approach. I just thought it was important to reiterate that with these projects that that this is not something that's arbitrarily decided. There's a whole scoring process that goes Sure. Yeah.

But it certainly doesn't hurt, you know, to uh have a very affordable price. Any other questions? No. All right. Thank you for the information. Then I will need a motion with respect to item E3. I move we adopt E3. I second that. All right. A motion is a second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? E3 passes. Okay. Lots of street work and more to come. So, we will move then to um section F, city manager reports. Mr. Garza, what do you have for us this evening?

We have a couple of uh updates for you this evening. Uh first is an overview from Chief Gomez around an annual adjustment of the EMS rate um in alignment with Texas Department of Insurance guidelines. Um, council actually last last received a very similar update back in 2019. Um, I believe it was. Um, this is something that that doesn't have to be a council action. Um, which is why it's under city manager report and it was also under city manager report back in 2019. Um, and so anyway, I'm sure Chief Gas will provide the context and and overview on it.

Good evening, Chief. Welcome as always. Good evening, mayor and council. So, I'm here to present to you uh basically uh Texas Department of Insurance uh who they are, what they're doing, and our EMS billing and how it reflect how it affects us. Okay. So, the Texas Department of Insurance uh regulates insurers and other companies that conduct uh business in the state of Texas and assists Texas-based insurance consumers. Now the agency is responsible for in enforcing the uh Texas insurance code, regulates the insurance business, protects the consumers, it ensures that there's fairness uh competition among the companies and it fosters uh the stability of the insurance market. this uh TDI has been around for a while, but this new process was established in 2024 to uh help with the state to control its Medicaid costs by capping yearly increases. So what TDI does is they collect um the reports from EMS billing rates established by agencies. And so Emergicon, which is our billing agency, uh they report the EMS procedure codes. Uh they also report the billing for resident versus non-resident uh billing rates. And it's uh what they do is submit it annually. So if an agency doesn't report rates for a given year and does not submit the updated rates in the subsequent year, the most recently reported rate remains in effect. Additionally, if the submitted rate exceeds the limits on allowable increases, TDI adjusts the rate on the maximum compliant amount.

So, in 2025, the increase was 2.4%. Uh, this coming year, the allowable increase is 2%. Uh, Victoria Fire has not had a rate increase in EMS since 2019. Uh so what we are proposing is that we adjust our EMS rates to annually reflect TDI's allowable increase. Uh it's important that we do that because if we don't do that and say next year it's an allowable increase of 2% and say the year after that it's another 2% over 3 years time it's 6%. If we don't increase we can only increase by the allowable the percent. So if the next following year is 2% that's all we can do is 2%. So it's important that we kind of stay with what is allowed. So this uh adjustment again it maintains compliance with the state's requirements. It prevents revenue erosion due to inflation. It supports EMS operations and service delivery. It assists with the equipment uh replacement needed to provide EMS service and supports training and personal personnel costs. And uh here is kind of just a sample of of the current rate and the proposed rate for 2026. This which is a 2% increase. So as you can see uh you know for oxygen it's 135. So a 2% 137 a an ALS transport of 1500 would be would increase to 1530 a um BLS transport you know 1,200 would increase to 1224 so the uh deadline to increase all this is March 23rd and so I will entertain any questions that you have. I I'll only briefly add that per uh

code, the authority to sign off on these increases falls on me as the city manager, which is why it's not an action item for council. Um and it's anformational. And so to Chief's point, you know, our intention moving forward is to make this adjustment on an annual basis so that we do a better job of keeping up with that rate change um as opposed to waiting, you know, six years or so to to do it. Okay. Any questions anyone has on that? No, I think certainly we want to be in compliance with what the state is putting out there and so we appreciate the effort to get us in compliance and keep us that way. So

thank you for the information. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Chief. I'll leave it up to the mayor. Um, yes, our next presenter is running a few minutes late. They're coming from out of town. Okay. They were supposed They said I spoke to them a few minutes ago. They said they're about two or three minutes out. So, we can just hang out or take a break. What? It's up to you guys. Why don't we just take a short short break then? Thank you. Okay, we'll take a break at 5:35. Thank you.

Are we back on? All right, we are back in session now after a short break and we will move on then to our last city manager report uh which is a collective bargaining overview and I will turn over to Allison for this one.

Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council. So, as all of you know, in November of 2025, a proposition was approved by our voters adopting chapter 174 of the Texas Local Government Code, Al for our firefighters, also known as collective bargaining. As part of the collective bargaining process, we have hired LOL Denton and Clarissa Rodriguez, of Denton, Navaro, Rodriguez, Bernal, Santi, and Ze to assist in the process. They will be representing the city as we work our way through bargaining with uh the firefighters association who was formally recognized in the consent agenda of this meeting. Mr. Denton is a partner in his firm and specializes as a litigator in defense of municipalities, counties, and other local governments and is a and as a lead negotiator in labor contracts. He served as the city attorney for College Station and San Antonio prior to establishing the firm. Mr. Rodriguez is also a partner with extensive experience representing municipalities and housing authorities as city city attorney and general counsel. She has experience in both police and fire civil service issues and has served as lead negotiator for fire and police in collective bargaining. I've asked him here this evening to as an opportunity to not only introduce them to you um but to have them give you a brief refresh on chapter 174, what it entails and what we can expect going forward in the coming months. And so now I will turn the microphone over to Mr. Denton. Thank you, sir, for being here.

Thank you, Alison. Good evening, sir. Welcome.

Thank you, your honor. Members of the council, I'm going to see if I can figure out how to make this go. Great. All right. So, I want to tell y'all, first of all, what a privilege it is for Cladisa and I to be here uh to work with y'all and to serve your public in this process. So, I'll give you a little bit of background about who I am and who she is. Um, I learned my early stages of bargaining with police fire police officers and firefighters in their local employee associations in San Antonio where I was a city attorney back in ' 84 uh for about two and a half years. San Antonio is one of the cities where this statute chapter 174 the local government code was first implemented. uh it was actually the place where the first lawsuit over the terms of that statute where every went to the courthouse although we didn't learn much in that case and one of the problems that you will see in this briefing uh and in the the later attorney client briefing is that there's not a whole lot of court developed law in connection with this statute. So a lot of what we do is based on an understanding of the law but also the practicalities of the way this has worked throughout the state. I've been fortunate after working uh with the deputy city manager um in San Antonio to begin with uh to represent cities all over the state of Texas uh in Houston and El Paso and Fort Worth and work that we've done for Dallas even though I was not the lead negotiator there, San Antonio and Austin, Corpus Christi, Laredo anyway many cities all around the state of Texas. uh the relationships that we have been able to build with the lawyers and the public officials and the local employee officers of the firefighter associations throughout Texas, uh the police officer associations around the state of Texas have really facilitated our ability to

do a good job for you and your citizens when we get into this statutory process for making labor agreements with these essential public safety groups. So, here's the background for negotiations. Uh, Miss Rodriguez has been a member of our firm for longer than I can even remember. She's been a wonderful protetéé. Uh, and now sometimes I'm her protege. Um, because that's just the way it works. When you have really passionate, dedicated, competent professionals, they always learn from each other and from their colleagues. She really enjoys doing this. Um, and she's extremely good at it. The firefighters association, as you see from the material in front of you, uh submitted their petition for collective bargaining, your citizens adopted that. Um and so you will be recognizing the Victoria Fire Association as their representative under the statute. Uh when bargaining starts, there is a statutory period that's kind of confusing because almost nobody does a one-year contract. We have some clients that actually do one-year labor agreements with these associations. Typically, a city is going to decide that we'd rather have a multi-year agreement, especially if you are using now and in this cycle and maybe in future cycles outside vendors like us that are don't come cheap. Uh because you don't want to do that every year if you can have a multi-year labor agreement that is in the best interest of your employees and the city. uh the statute was really written for an annual bargaining process because it's based on your budget cycle. So you have this 120day period that you see there to where we get a notice from them. We have 60 days to start the bargaining process. We have a statutory 60 days to make a deal and then that plugs into your budget cycle. Most cities, especially the major cities, have such complexity in their

collective bargaining agreements that it sometimes takes over a year to make a deal or to replace the last deal that they have had. Uh we're optimistic here that we're going to be looking at a considerably shorter period of time. We did the first firefighter agreement for the city of Irving last year. Uh it went quite well. Uh it was quick. It wasn't done in 60 days, but it was done in a fairly short time period. I think that that's probably a pretty good target for Victoria to shoot for once we get to the table. Um whether or not we make it with a final deal for your budget. What typically happens with a multi-year agreement is is that you have a firstear level of compensation and benefits that's affordable based on the budget that is shaping up and going into effect, even if your contract's not done yet. And then future years fit into your long-term master plan. So, and by the way, at any point when I'm talking about this, if you have a question or I say something that doesn't make sense, uh, just talk, tell me to stop and I want to make sure you understand where I'm going with this. Good faith bargaining is the next question. There are two types of bargaining in Texas. There's meet and confer bargaining where the statute says you can choose to sit down with your employees and to talk about making a contract and decide whether you want to do it or not. neither party under is under a responsibility to do so. This petition under chapter 174 is for what's known as a little NLRB. That's the National Labor Relations Act. Um that's the basis for union unionization of private sector workplaces all over the United States. The model under the Texas law is a number of aspects of the National Labor Relations Act. This part here, the duty to bargain in good faith, meet at reasonable times, confer regarding compensation hours and other conditions of employment, and do a written contract as needed. That comes right straight out

of the federal standard for uh unionization of private sector workplaces. And on the other hand, since this is public sector bargaining, neither party is required to agree to a proposal or make concessions. These are open deliberations, so the public can come and watch. They rarely do. I've always been surprised that uh there's as little public attendance and frankly media attendance as there is in these sessions only in the places that we have, you know, controversial issues that we're talking about like citizen oversight in the police department in Austin, which you've probably seen in the media here, you know, when we've been bargaining in the city of Austin. We had a very contentious police contract last year in Austin. Uh most of the time this goes under the radar. We're doing day-to-day pretty mundane business talking about health care and benefits and contributions and co-pays. We're talking about disciplinary procedures and notices, you know, when somebody gets in trouble and gets investigated and maybe get disciplined by the chief. Uh we set up an negotiator for uh the city and the association. And we'll get to ground rules later on where ground rules lay out this process so everybody's on the same page. We schedule these meetings in advance. We get our data together. We come up with a budget. Typically, both sides rely on existing labor agreements for other cities that we find to be comparable or at least compatible with the philosophies and the objectives that you have for the city of Victoria. And we use those so that we're not reinventing the wheel. You don't need to be paying lawyers to spend time writing a new article every time you want to sit down and talk about what your health benefits article says and the a new article every time you write a disciplinary provision. Um, one of the things that um the statute talks about is impass. This is the more complicated aspect of the statute and how it works. Uh I'm hoping and praying that you don't

ever get to learn all about this because impass just means that you weren't able to make a deal and then there's a statutory set of solutions for that. Mediation is one that would you know if we have some issues it would I promise you that it won't be all the issues. It typically will be a few of the thorny issues that we have that we can't resolve and we end up with what are known as tentative agreements. So you'll have an article and you'll say okay we have agreed on this article and we're going to call it a tenative agreement and set it aside and when we have a final agreement where everything is done it will be in it but we still have nine other things that we haven't resolved yet and those are open. So typically you're going to mediation over one or two or three of those things almost always obviously it's going to be the pay raise is going to be one of those things. Uh but that's typically the way that process works. Um the arbitration is a statutory option. There are some cities in the state for which arbitration is mandatory either because their voters have chosen it by charter change or because some of the statutes provide for those. Houston for instance that I represented for years and I was in litigation over these issues on behalf of the city of Houston for a very long time. They now have a statute that requires compulsory arbitration to resolve impass in bargaining, but that part of the statute doesn't apply to Victoria. So, you can choose to go to arbitration if you think it's a good idea, or you can say no. If you say no and the association is unsatisfied and we don't make a deal, then they can go to the courthouse and they can ask a court to apply the standard uh that is required. This shows how the voluntary arbitration uh is one of the things that you get to choose. If you go to arbitration, that means that from some people's perspective, you're surrendering your

prerogatives to set the budget for the city of Victoria. Arbitration is always unpredictable, although it is common enough in both public and private sector standards and locations. Um, that you can make an educated choice about whether or not arbitration would be good or bad for you and your citizens in the particular framework of what your controversy is. And they're never the same. You're not going to have arbitration year after year after year over the same things. Um the statutory standard is a private sector standard and you see uh that's from a case that case the city of Houston that's called the Prop B case. The other case with the same name that was heard by the Supreme Court at the same time is the case that I handled for a number of years where we contended that this provision in the statute was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court disagreed with that, found that the private sector standard for fire and police pay was constitutional. In the other case that's listed there, the Prop B case, voters in Houston had decided that they wanted firefighters to be paid uh on a par with police officers so that they would get the same pay as police officers. And the Supreme Court said, "Nope, you can't do that because the statute says that the standard for firefighter pay is comparable pay to private sector firefighters." and not to public sector police officers. So that case defined a lot of what would be the impass model should you choose to go to arbitration or if the association decided to take you to court because you weren't able to make a deal. The list there shows the things that the arbitrator should consider or that the court would consider if you had a private sector case. Now, um, one of the things that's important here is that this private sector standard is almost never used. That's really weird. It's the law. It's

been the law for like 30 years now. Nobody does that. Everybody that bargains around the state, with a couple of exceptions that I'll tell you about, looks at comparable firefighter compensation for the other cities like Victoria and the labor market that you're in. And what is everybody paying their firefighters in cities that you think are where you're hiring your employees? Can I ask one question about that? Please do. So in this precedent you cited there when it talks about compensation does that include the total compensation packet the whole thing. So that's exactly right.

So it' be I guess municipality employee uh retirement for example as compared to private sector retirement which we know are very different.

Absolutely is. And and a perfect example of that because I said it almost never happens. We spent many years, we were interrupted by the pandemic in the Houston case that I was handling over the constitutionality where we both had private sector labor expert witnesses that had developed opinions about what the pay should be for Houston firefighters. Okay. Um, and I'll tell you, you know, and maybe I'm not objective about this, but I always felt like we tried to figure out what the actual private sector labor market was, and the firefighters always tried to cherrypick the ones that were the highest and use those as their comparisons. But in any event, that's what we felt like was going on in that Houston case. That aspect of the case was never tried because of this litigation that I talked about. Austin so far uh is the only city in the state of Texas that has ever actually had a third-party determination of pay and benefits under the private sector standard. And there were experts again on both sides in that case. Dwight Stewart testified in the Austin case. He was our expert in the Houston case as well relying on Bureau of Labor Statistics documents and Texas Workforce Commission documents for private sector firefighters. And one of the things in the Austin case is the testimony about pension plans and retirement contributions and how those work in the public sector versus the private sector because our expert Dwight Stewart who testified for Austin demonstrated that there is no such thing in the private sector as the kind of a pension plan that Austin firefighters have. So I mean you pretty much nailed the exact kinds of dynamics that happen in that private sector model. As a practical matter, what we do is we talk to the lead negotiators or the the association representatives on the other side in Texas. That's always a local agency of the International Association of Firefighters. Somebody from the Texas Association, it's probably going to be people that we've dealt with before.

Same thing is true on the police side. if you had police in this context and you do not with TMPA or CLET or the FOP or somebody else. So, we asked them, are we going to bargain this case over public comparisons or we going to bargain it over private comparisons? And most of the time, everybody's going to bargain it over public comparisons. I'm just bringing this up because that's one of the bridges it will cost to cross at the beginning. I think that your firefighters are probably already in their mindset, they probably are already comparing themselves to other firefighters and they're not trying to figure out how much they make at the Exxon refinery when they have a fire crew there. They're not trying to figure out what the firefighters make at the Tesla plant in Austin, which was part of the testimony that I thought was silly in the Austin proceeding that I've referred to. So that's my best way to give you in a nutshell the legal theory about how this is supposed to work and almost never does and the practicality about how it actually does work and does work pretty effectively with frankly not a lot of disputes that don't get resolved in the context of your community, your politics, your people that are trying to do the right thing for each other. And I just want to briefly add just to to add a point there that Austin and Houston aren't TMRS. Um and so Austin has their own pension plan that's basically just city of Austin and Houston has their pension plan that's just

city of Houston. And so separate statutes. That's right.

Right. So I just want to point that out um that they do have different pension structures than we would have. That's not to say that, you know, obviously Tam RS is still better than private sector pension plans, but I just don't want us thinking that Austin and Houston are team RS because they're not. So, uh, the agreement process again results in most of the time the association members are going to be coming to the table as a result of the colleagues they've had in their statewide association and that's where they've learned these things and they've been to the conferences and they've seen these presentations and they know people from Fort Worth for instance. Um, I can't remember the current union president there but the former union president who's now a national board member is Michael Glenn. He's from San Antonio. Known him for a long time. Um, the Fort Worth contract is a mature contract. And this is really the point that I wanted to make on this slide. You're going to have a brand new contract. Okay? We're going to start from scratch. We're going to be using some materials from elsewhere. We're going to cobble together agreement. It's going to have some stuff we write here that's just for Victoria. It's going to have some other things that we've cut and pasted and tweaked a little bit from elsewhere. The firefighters will be asking us for things that it took Fort Worth 15 years to get. Okay. And so that's part of what we're hoping that we'll be able to come to terms with. We understand your expectations. We're going to ask you to temper your expectations in round one because this is a process and your labor relationship develops over time. And so the contract that you will have in 20 years is not going to look like the first contract that we make here. And a mature contract like Fort Worth may have a number of advantages for firefighters that they like and they want and they want it all at once at the same time. It may not, you know, and they may not have that perspective. U frankly, I was really proud of the team that came to the table for the firefighters in Irving. They had

realistic expectations. They said, "We have a good organization. We have a this is a great place to work. We love it. We're glad we're here. We want to keep what we've got and make sure that we have those asurances and make incremental progress going forward. And so I'm hoping that that's the way your local group here is going to see this because it worked really effectively. Um for associations that have accomplished other things by contract that give them that are above and beyond other associations, there typically been offsets there. You know, what are the things that we can accomplish on behalf of the public? Cost savings in different areas. uh prerogatives for the chief in terms of managing the department that are offsets to the things that firefighters may want in terms of compensation and benefits because it's a trade. It's a horse trade. That's what we're looking for. What's the value to the city? What's the value to the community? And on the other hand, what's the value to the employees that work in this department? That's the overview and I hope that was helpful. And if there's any other questions, I'll try to respond to those. Any questions?

Was just reminding me that u later on of course on the agenda tonight you have an attorney client privilege discussion uh which is for the purpose of receiving legal advice. This briefing is for the public because I've not been telling you things that are attorney client privilege communications. Uh we'll have an opportunity to have that dialogue later on. Okay. Very good. No, thank you for the information. Very helpful. All right, Mr. Garza. Anything else this evening?

No, sir. Okay. I understand that we will have an executive session as was mentioned and so we will take a 10-minute break and uh it is 6:03. We will be back at 6:13. The city council recess for executive session on the 17th day of March, 2026 at 6:03 p.m. Subject matter is as follows. Executive uh session deliberation, Texas government code 551.087,551.072 and 551.071.