City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to our regular meeting for Tuesday, August the 4th.

Ms. Hilbrick, will you please call roll?

Yes, sir. Councilman De La Garza? I am present. Councilman Kitter?

Here.

Councilwoman Scott? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Young?

Here.

Councilman Lofgren?

Here.

And Mayor Crocker?

Here. If you would, please rise and join me for the pledges, followed by a moment of silence. Thank you, please be seated. Again, welcome everyone. We have, as usual, a busy agenda tonight, so we'll jump right in and we'll start with announcements and reminders. Mr. Garza, good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I have a few announcements for you this evening. I'll start off on behalf of our Economic Development Department. We wanna invite current and prospective small business owners to attend the Victoria Small Business Resource Fair hosted by the Texas A&M University Victoria Small Business Development Center, the Victoria Chamber of Commerce, and the City of Victoria. The Come and Go event will take place on Thursday, August 6th from 12 to 6 p.m. at the A&M Victoria Northwest Center. Attendees will be able to learn about resources and services available to small businesses, and at 3 p.m., our very own Mayor Dwayne Crocker will host a panel discussion featuring local small business owners. To learn more and to RSVP to the event, please visit growingvictoriatx.com. On behalf of Municipal Court, applications for the City of Victoria's Child Safety Grants for the 2026-2027 funding period will close on Friday, August 14th at 5 p.m. For more information or to apply, visit victoriatx.gov slash childsafetyprogram or contact Municipal Court Administrator Tiffany Tota at 361-485-3050. On behalf of CBB and Main Street, we'd like to invite the community to grab their lawn chairs, bring their friends, and head to De Leon Plaza for another free evening of live music and great food in downtown Victoria on Friday, August 14th from 7 to 10 p.m. This is another Night Tunes event that will host hometown bands The Retro Currents and Coolin' Together, who will put the fun in funk. Didn't, yeah. I write these. I write these. On behalf of our mayor, we'd like to invite high school students with an interest in civic involvement. We're encouraging them to apply and serve on the Mayor's Youth Council for the upcoming school year. The program is open to high school juniors and seniors who live or attend school in Victoria County, including homeschool students. Applications for the 2026-2027 school year are open and must be received with a letter of recommendation by August 31st. For more information or to apply, please visit victoratx.gov slash youth council or contact special projects manager Keisha Smith at 361-485-3030. Lastly, on behalf of our police department, we'd like to invite the public to a free lunch and learn program that'll take place on Wednesday, August 19th from 1130 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the community center annex. The topic will be the Silver and Safe Senior Driving Education Program presented by Pamela Edwards with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. Lunch is included. Attendees are asked to register in advance at victoriatx.gov slash lunch and learn. And I lied, there's one more on behalf of our police department as well, which is that they've begun planning for a national night out kickoff party and community safety fair, which is scheduled for Saturday, September 26th from 5 to 8 p.m. at De Leon Plaza. For questions or to sign your organization up for a booth, please contact the community engagement unit, at policeceu at victoriatx.gov or contact them via phone at 361-485-3808. And now that is all the announcements I have for this evening.

All right, thank you, Mr. Garza. So we'll jump then to public and employee recognitions. I know we have a few this evening, so we'll start with our Keep Victoria Beautiful Beautification Award for the month. Ms. Byrd. Good evening. Good to see you again.

Hi, nice to see you guys. So this is exciting because it is at once a repeat and also the first time this has happened, at least under my tenure. So we received in our nominations for this current award, a blanket nomination for all the Sonics in Victoria. And we've never received a nomination that's included more than one location of any business. And so this is really exciting because this is also Sonic's third time to be a KVB award winner. And so this is really cool because As you're driving around Victoria, if you think about, you know, okay, there's two Sonics on Navarro, the John Stock Bauer, the Houston Highway. The first thing that you typically notice is all the beautiful landscaping out at the road. And there's a ton of work that goes into that, not to mention having four locations to keep up with. And so tonight, I'm very happy to present this award to Garland and BJ Sandhop for all of the Sonic locations here. If you guys will join me.

Wow. As you know, by the look of the flowers, I'm into flowers. So I don't know how to fix a hamburger, but I've never flipped one. But I do love flowers and landscaping, and I appreciate that. You guys notice that and God blesses us every day with great employees. I've had some employees 20 plus years that are still with us. So thank you again, thank you, thank you.

Congratulations, well deserved recognition. So moving on then to our next public and employee recognition, we have a proclamation for Victoria's Farmer's Market Week. Ms. Hilbert.

Yes, sir. Whereas victorious farmers and ranchers provide citizens with access to healthy locally and regionally produced foods through farmers markets which are expanding and evolving to accommodate the demand of a diverse array of agricultural products, and whereas farmers markets and other agricultural direct marketing outlets provide infrastructure to assist in the distribution of farm and value-added products, thereby contributing almost nine billion each year to the US economy, and whereas farmers markets serve as significant outlets to which small to medium, new and beginning, and veteran agricultural producers market agricultural products, generating revenue that supports the sustainability of family farms and the revitalization of rural communities nationwide, And whereas the City of Victoria recognizes the importance of expanding agricultural marketing opportunities that assist and encourage the next generation of farmers and ranchers, generate farm income, stimulate business development and job creation, and build community connections through rural and urban linkages. whereas the Victoria Farmer's Market has been in operation more than 35 years, including the past 10 years as an official program of the Food Bank of the Golden Crescent, resulting in unprecedented growth of the market. Today, the Farmer's Market supports more than 75 local farmers, ranchers, food producers, artisans, and small businesses from throughout South Texas, providing a year-round opportunity to sell directly to the public while expanding access to fresh, locally grown, and locally produced foods for the residents of the greater Victoria area, and whereas the Victoria Farmer's Market helps bridge the gap between local agriculture community access by accepting supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits and participating in the Sustainable Food Center's Double Up Food Bucks program Year to date, in 2026, the market has processed approximately 4,700 in SNAP benefits and nearly 3,000 in double up food bucks, helping families stretch the food budgets while increasing access to fresh, locally grown foods and supporting local farmers And now therefore I, Dwayne Crocker, Mayor of the City of Victoria, do hereby proclaim the week of August 2nd through 8th in 2026 as Victoria Farmers Market Week in Victoria, Texas, to further awareness of the farmers market's contributions to our lives and in conjunction with the observance of National Farmers Market Week, I call upon Victoria residents to celebrate farmers markets with appropriate observance and activities.

Good evening. I'm Miranda Lastinger, the market manager of the Victoria Farmer's Market, which is a program of the Food Bank of the Golden Crescent. On behalf of the Farmer's Market, thank you for recognizing National Farmer's Market Week and for your support of local agriculture and small businesses. The Victoria Farmer's Market is more than just a place to shop. It's a place where local farmers, ranchers, food producers, artisans, and families come together to strengthen our community. The Victoria Farmers Market continues to make fresh and local grown foods more accessible by participating in SNAP and the Double Up Food Buck program. These food assistant programs not only help families purchase healthy foods, but they also boost our local economy as those dollars spent at the market support hardworking producers and small businesses that make our community unique. Our market is open year-round, every Wednesday and Saturday, opening at 9 a.m. As we celebrate National Farmers Market Week, we invite everyone to join us this Saturday, August 8th, for our Before the Bell Market, opening from 9 a.m. until noon at the Patty Dotson Public Health Center parking lot. Thank you again for this proclamation and for supporting the Victoria Farmers Market and many local businesses and producers who make it possible. Thank you.

Thank you. The farmers market's a great addition for our community, so we appreciate your hard work on it. All right. I believe, Mr. Garza, you have at least one more public and employee recognition tonight? I do.

I have one. All right. I'd like to publicly introduce our new deputy city manager, June Ellis. I asked for a short biography, and I got a full page. I'll go through the highlights. He has an impressive career. Mr. Ellis has 30 years of experience in municipal government. Throughout his career, he has served in leadership positions in seven cities, building expertise across finance, public policy execution, strategic and long-range planning, and executive administration. Mr. Ellis began his municipal career with the City of Detroit, Michigan. And he said, hey, I want to go back to Texas because who wouldn't, right? And then he moved back home and joined the city of Pearland and in that role oversaw the budgets for all 27 city departments and 36 funds during a period of significant population and organizational growth. Mr. Ellis then moved to the city of Missouri City. where he prepared and presented comprehensive annual budget summaries and did a slew of different projects and special initiatives. He continued to broaden his leadership experience with the cities of Sugar Land, Buda and Haskell where he strengthened organizational operational financial management while serving in key executive leadership roles. Most recently he served as the assistant city manager for the city of Beaumont and In this role, Mr. Ellis helped advance several transformative initiatives that positioned the city for long-term growth and investment. His professional credentials and recognitions include designation as a certified government finance officer, certified public manager, and has earned a certificate in economic development as well. He was also selected as a 2024 Texas Municipal League Leadership Fellow and has completed the Harvard Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative in 2025 and has been recognized as an ICMA credential manager candidate. Mr. Ellis holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Texas Southern University and a Master of Arts in Political Science from Wayne State University. Very impressive, and so we're very, very excited that he has joined our team. In his capacity here as Deputy City Manager, he will start off, key words start off, because we really want to obviously take advantage of his vast experience, but he will start off overseeing our public safety-centric departments, which of course include the police department, fire department, municipal court, and he will also help directly oversee human resources. In addition, as deputy city manager, he will serve as my primary backup and assist me in just running the day-to-day operations for the entire organization. And so we're very, very excited that he's here. And so Mr. Junelis, welcome to the city of Victoria. And as promised, I'm putting you on the spot.

Good evening, Mayor. I just want to thank this council and especially the city manager for hiring me in this role. I'm very honored to be the city's deputy city manager, and I appreciate the opportunity and the confidence that the city manager has in me to serve out the duties of this position. I'm excited about the opportunity to join this wonderful team, the wonderful staff working with City Council as well as being involved in the community. I desire and will be fully ingrained in this community and I'm hoping and I know that I will be here for a very long time to continue to promote the goals, the mission and the initiative of the City of Victoria. So once again, I'm excited to work with you. I'm excited to work with the staff and excited to work with the key stakeholders in this community to help drive this city forward into prosperity. Thank you. Thank you, Gene.

I don't have any other recognition.

Great. Well, Mr. Ellis, welcome. I know we all look forward to working with you and great to have you on board. All right, we'll move on then. Items from council. We have one item this evening listed. This is from Mr. Lofgren, and it is regarding stormwater drainage utility and drainage utility fee. So, Mr. Lofgren.

After the presentation on the stormwater drainage utility fee, which is a long sentence, I had some second thoughts. And I looked into the laws that have to do with the drainage fee. I have a proposal, which I'll get to in a minute, but I want to sort of summarize some of the stuff that we learned at the meeting. There's two categories that the fees fall in. There's residential and everything else. There was a lot of discussion about exemptions. There's some mandatory, there are some things that have to be exempted and then there's discretionary ones. What I really wanna talk about is the discretionary ones. There was a lot of debate up here. Some people don't want exemptions and a lot of people want exemptions. And this is the proposal I would like to make and I'd like council to weigh in on it. For the categories where council has discretion, including qualified religious organizations, public schools, and the county, I support a partial exemption that treats them as a residential equivalent account rather than exempting them entirely. Now, I ran this by Mrs. Lace, by the city attorney. She's on vacation. I hope she's having a nice time, by the way. The strongest argument is fairness with moderation. Government and religious organizations should not be treated as ordinary commercial properties, but they should not receive a full free ride. A residential equivalent... charge recognizes their community role while preserving the basic principle that properties that contribute runoff into the public drainage system should help maintain that system. Council's not deciding whether churches, public schools, or the county have value. Clearly they do. The real policy question is whether the public value should eliminate any contribution towards a utility system they use in effect. A residential equivalent charge answers that question with a practical middle ground. Everyone participates, but public serving institutions receive restrained treatment. I respect the role of churches, schools, and public agencies play in Victoria. This proposal is not about penalizing them. It is about fairness and shared responsibility. Stormwater runoff does not distinguish between a home, a church, a school, a county building, a business. If a property contributes to runoff into the public system, it should contribute something towards maintaining that system. I am proposing that these institutions be charged like, not be charged like large commercial users. I'm proposing a modest residential equivalent contribution. This recognizes their value and protects ordinary residents and private businesses from carrying a larger share of funding, the stormwater utility fee. I'd like everybody's weigh in.

Can you specify, just so I'm clear in what you're proposing, when you say a residential equivalent, so.

Five dollars.

So five dollars. For every property that they have.

If they have a water meter, it's $5. If they have another property over here, it's just like if I had a rental. If I had a rental, it'd be $5. Every property would be $5. But their church wouldn't, if their church is, would not be a commercial, valued as a commercial property. So if they have one water meter in a giant church, they pay $5. So it's per meter? Per meter. Okay. Okay. And that's how the residential, I'm sure, will probably be set up.

OK. No, thank you for clarifying that.

I can tell you that is something I would support.

Thank you. I would not support it at all. I own a home, and I'm going to pay the stormwater utility fee. And if I had a business, I would have to pay the fee also, but also go to church and also give to my church. So my fee would be, I'd feel like I would be double taxed Also, I give the money to the church because they feed the hungry, they feed the poor, they feed victims of violence. That's where I want my money to go to. I don't want it to be double taxed for a storm utility fee. I am 110% against this, and I think a lot of people would also be when they look at it that way. I don't want my money to be... taxed again, and I call it a tax, a type of tax. I want it to go to where that church, my church, thinks it needs to go in. I know for a fact almost every church in Victoria helps the poor, helps the hungry, and it's getting worse in Victoria. It's getting worse in the state of Texas, and that's where I want my money to go. I don't want to be, I have to pay that stormwater utility fee twice, and I'm not going to waver.

That seems reasonable to me, what you're proposing. I like the concept. So yeah, I could support that.

And just so I'm clear too, I wanna make sure my memory's correct on this. The discretionary exemptions we have right now are VISD, county, and religious, is that correct? And ourselves. And ourselves, okay.

Victoria College and A&M are mandatory. They're mandatory, right, right.

But those are the discretionary.

And state agencies are. Right. I will say this, it's a utility fee. If we rate, nobody in Victoria gets a break on their utility fee, on their water fee, their garbage fee. I think this is a middle ground. I don't think $5 is a lot for a church to pay. If they have five properties, if I have five properties, I gotta pay $5. I think it's only fair that if you, that they contribute. That is a...

a very small, small amount. That doesn't bother me a bit, and I can certainly support that from a equity and a fair standpoint, but it's not punitive in from what they do, and I don't think it will take away from the mission of the religious institutions at all at $5 a month.

I think it's a well reasoned and well explained argument, but I completely disagree with it. I'm very comfortable with the exemptions where we are. Um, to Mr De La Garza's point, you know, I feel like that, um, our religious institutions do quite a bit for us. Uh, when, uh, we have a hurricane, that's who helps, that's who feeds folks, that's who, uh, helps, uh, the disadvantage within our community. Um, the city does obviously what we can through CBDG funds and things of that nature, but we really, uh, rely on our, religious institutions to provide that kind of outreach and that kind of care for folks in the community. As it relates to the county, uh, you know, BISD, then basically we're talking about taxpayer money going to taxpayer money. I mean, it's, it's, you know, we've talked before about, about, you know, well, we've done certain things based on, well, it's just taxpayer money going from one pocket to the other. To me, it makes, more sense to say, because these are taxpayer funds, then we're gonna leave those where they're paid, and that's where they are, We'll figure out what we need to do to address the stormwater fee. Those institutions, and I get, are already paying for their usage on water and things of that nature. But in my mind, I think we've gone through these exemptions, we've looked at them, and I'm very comfortable with what we landed on at the last meeting. So I would be against any kind of change to what we've already decided on the discretionary exemptions.

Well, I would argue that if the county has to pay five more dollars for their water and they have to raise taxes, I mean, if we increase their water rate, they'd have to increase their taxes. Their tax base is not only the city of Victoria. And by the way, there is a tax that the city, that the county applies to your, it's called road and bridge tax. But if you go to the comptroller's website, it's called farm to market flood control tax. And none of that money is spent inside the city limits. It's for flood control drainage. I think the county can pay for $5 for each of its thing, and I think the schools can pay. The school districts is not just the city of Victoria, and I don't think it's fair to let other governments off the hook because they're governments, or because this idea of double taxation. They have to take care of their utilities, they have to take care of everything else, I don't see that that's a real good argument. You and I disagree on this.

I understand your argument, and again, I completely disagree with it, because it's still taxpayer money. I appreciate that. At the end of the day, we don't sell widgets. The county doesn't sell widgets. The ISD doesn't sell widgets. What they do is they bring in funds from taxpayers. So you're talking about taxpayers paying more money than they would otherwise. And from my standpoint, I just, I feel like these, again, let me finish. Again, these discretionary exemptions, I think we've been through them. We've talked about them. Everybody agreed on them last time. I understand you had a change of heart, and that's fine. I have no problem with that, but I will not support your change of heart.

Okay, let me go back to what you just said. I lost my train of thought. I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. I disagree with you, though. That's fine. We can agree to disagree. We can. We can.

Yeah, I think to some extent it is a philosophical question. I just look at the need for the product, the need for the stormwater drainage handling. And I look at who is the consumer that needs that product more than any other. And it's the one that creates. the runoff, and that is the big paved areas which just happen to be commercial but also happen to be school districts, happen to be churches, happen to be city properties, happen to be county properties. So I think that a charge is the fair and equitable thing to do. At our last meeting, when we talked about various exemptions, I was comfortable with the exemption, but I was equally comfortable with not giving an exemption or the 50% exemption. And so I think that's why I feel like it's really the only fair thing to do to charge at least something to, again, what I consider the ones that create the need for it more than others. So I like your reasoning.

Let me, your point was it's double taxation. If the county doesn't pay, then the people in the city are gonna pay.

Well, no, I disagree with that.

The money that doesn't get charged to the county will be made up somewhere else. And where will it be made up? It'll be made out of the city's budget.

Mark, here's what I'm gonna say. Just a point. Here's what I'm gonna tell you. We can't have a discussion if you keep interrupting me before I'm done, okay? I'm just gonna say that, okay? I don't wanna have an argument. We both stated our positions. We've agreed to disagree. I'm not changing my mind. You're not changing your mind. So I'm not gonna sit up here and argue with you, particularly if you're not gonna let me make my points. And so Mr. Garza, do you have sufficient information from this discussion?

My recommend, I guess I have, first of all, I have a clarifying question. So to be clear, what you're proposing solely applies to the county school district and religious institutions.

Those are the only ones that I know that are discretionary exemptions.

And ourselves?

Right.

Okay. But you're not, I just want to be clear, you're okay with us exempting ourselves? Not if you're consistent. It's just, I mean, I'm just trying to understand.

Well, if it needs to go to that fund, then no. We don't need to be exempted. Because it's going to a specific fund that has to do with drainage.

So... If we want consistency, just as an example, we don't charge ourselves for water usage. We do charge school district, county, religious institutions for water usage. We don't charge ourselves. So just keep that in mind. I would recommend though, that before any final decision is made, now that we're understanding exactly what the proposal is, is to allow us to sort of run the numbers. If the idea is it's $5 per water meter, let's have staff run the numbers so that we can bring to you what that figure actually is. And then I think at that point, you can make a more informed decision on whether the added amount of money that we would generate in revenue is sort of worth the changed position.

I think that's fair. I think it'll be a minimal amount, but yes, I'd like to see what that number is.

Okay. And then procedurally, we have a couple of options. We were anticipating or planning, I should say, on bringing the ordinance to you in September. We have to publish notices in the newspaper on that. We can do one of two things. We can just proceed as we've discussed so far. And then in September, when the items come before you, you make an amendment on the floor. to adjust it to whatever you decide. Otherwise, we have to start the process from scratch. And at that point, republish notices in the newspaper, which will likely then push the formal vote of the ordinance later. Now, at the end of the day, we weren't planning on implementing this until January anyway. So there's time for that in theory, but there's a lot of wheels in motion behind the scenes to kind of stay on this track of bringing the ordinance before you in September. So just keep that in mind. Okay. For now though, like I said, we can run the numbers and kind of regroup internally on more formally coming up with some options for you to consider and then go from there.

All right. All good. Any other items from council? All right. We will move then into citizens communication. I have three cards this evening and just a reminder to our citizens that, uh, there is a three limit or three minute, uh, time limit. Please stay within that to respect everyone's time. Uh, we will start with Martin Martinez Jr. Ms. Martinez, welcome.

Good evening. Is it okay if I use my cell phone for reference points?

Yes.

So I kind of want to bring up the data center that's being built. I'm aware that it's in Calhoun County, on the Calhoun County line. But I believe the receptor and the nuclear energy plant is on Victoria County. My main concern is noise pollution. It's a relatively new topic since these data centers been coming out. So for the noise pollution, the cooling systems that these facilities use can range hertz from, I want to say, 20 to 200. So most of these facilities use a standard decibel A noise meter, but it can filter out, basically meaning that a facility can comply with the decided cap while still producing the kind of low frequency noise. that's been reported and a lot of other counties and in theory can cause vertigo, headaches, and in theory, I know it's a stretch, but organ failures and birth defects in animals. There have also been reports on farmers noticing less bees being around their land. And my main point is I want them to measure decibel C. So I'm asking the council to require a low frequency decibel C monitoring, not just a decibel A limit, because as written, this ordinance may not protect the people it's meant to protect. And then I also want to talk about or bring up the concern about the water usage. I know that it's been reassured that they're not using drinking water, but I also want to know that it's a real concern using a large scale of backish water. It can contaminate wells. I believe it's called salinity migration. I also just want that to be noted in the restrictions or whatever y'all are on right now. Because like I said, I know that it's technically in Calhoun County, but I'm sure we also have a say in restrictions that this project has. Oh, shit. All right, well, thank you for your time.

All right, thank you, Mr. Martinez. All right, the next card I have is from Ms. Wilma Edwards. Ms. Edwards, always good to see you. Mr. Garcia and I were just commenting the other day. We hadn't seen you in a while, so it's good to see you.

Thank you. Good evening. I'm still talking about the park. MLK park. And I noticed you sent something in the mail, not in the mail. My daughter received something here stating exactly what y'all going to do, but not until 2027. I don't know if you're aware of that cause I was just, We'll see that today. But we still need somebody to do something. I think my statement is always say, do something, okay? And we have to master plan. And if you wanna do something now, come out and decide what you're gonna do. So in 27, you will have to wait. It needs to be done then. Because you keep saying you're going to do this and you keep saying you're going to do that. And all of a sudden, you could ask a question, but you don't have to answer it. But when you're concerned about the people that's in the neighborhood and you're concerned about the people all over Victoria, Texas, those people want to know what you, city council, is going to do. And this is a suggestion to me. Stop. making plans to do something else with the city. Finish what you started. I think in the home, you would start a project, you would finish it before you do another one. Maybe not, but maybe that's the problem. But if you say you're going to do something, do it. Is that correct in your homes? Okay, I'm going to water my plants tomorrow. I said, well, did I do it? That's all I'm asking. Just do the things that need to be done. And I also went by Queen City. I don't know what's going on over there, but Mayor, they have trash cans, small, real, real small. And the clothes and everything is on the ground. So I don't know who's supposed to be checking all this. I told y'all I was going to be on the payroll, on your payroll. But things is happening in Victoria and I don't think you as a councilman, city manager, is not knowing what's going on. And I don't think everybody want to come up here and talk to y'all. So sometimes it's for you to go out and talk to us. you are getting more out of us if you come and talk to us. We don't have to come up here all the time to talk to you. You have our address, you have our telephone numbers, and we have things that we wanna tell you, but I don't wanna come up here all the time to tell you everything I need to know to tell you, but I'm asking you to please do something. And I'm so glad we have a new person on the city board. I don't know, I just feel like talking, so I think you'll have to stop me. That's all I was gonna say, just remind you to do something. And I can tell you a whole lot of things that's going on. We don't have enough time to do that, but things in the city is getting worse than better. Seriously.

Well, we appreciate your comments.

Thank you.

All right, the last card I have is Michael Vandera.

Mr. Vondero, good evening. Good evening, Mayor, Council. I'm Michael Vondero. I live at 2107 North Bend, Jordan. I want to put in a motion to change the Martha Luther King's name to the Wilma Edwards Park. Because... She's done way more than Martha Luther King has for this park. You know, he hasn't came and spoke and everything, you know, and she's put in a lot of legwork and I deserve, I think she deserves the same recognition as Gary Moses, you know, and, uh, also, uh, I, I wanted to talk about that, uh, murder, uh, over on real grand street, you know, uh, He was in the subway and he left and then he got stabbed to death and killed, that was last Thursday. And I think DAs and detectives and police officers should put in recommendations for enhanced penalties if they're like near a church or a school or the Salvation Army. A lot of people go to church at the Salvation Army and they're not homeless, they have jobs. And all these thugs, they get probation all the time. And I would like to see more time. The sentencing guidelines is five to 99 years for murder and stuff. And that's just too close to Salvation Army. And they lauder around the businesses. And the workers can't do their job. A lot of them, they live at the car wash. You can't even wash your car there. I had to stop washing my car there. And also, I would like to talk about summer stone apartments. It looks like a war zone or it just looks terrible like a junkyard. And the code enforcement and public works had to team up together just to get rid of the sewer leaks that were all over the place. And I would like management to do their job. I don't know if Deputy Ellis, Attorney Ellis could help, but I could use his help. I think we need a team of attorneys to get it done because they don't listen to code enforcement. And code enforcement has to write them before they do it. And there's roach infestations. There's rat infestations. They make you pay $8 a month. so they could spray for roaches, and then they refused to spray for roaches. I would like all the tenants to get their money back for all those years they never sprayed and stuff. It's very dishonest what management does, and I would appreciate if an attorney or a deputy atlas could help at 2107 North Ben Jordan because it's in a real bad shape. They don't care about Keep Victoria Beautiful. Thanks. Have a good day. Thank you, Mr. Vondra.

All right, we will close citizens communication. We have two items tonight with public hearings. So we'll start with item c1 Miss Hilbert Yes, sir.

Item c1 is an ordinance amending and re-adopting traffic regulation schedules as provided in various sections of City Code Mr. Shedlick welcome.

Good evening mayor council Tonight we're going to discuss amending the traffic regulation schedules and This came about because there was a, the traffic regulation schedule are adopted by the city of Victoria to establish the city's one-way streets, parking restrictions, speed limits, school zones, and other traffic-related requirements. Any changes to these designations requires the ordinance to be amended. A request had been received to add a school zone designation on the streets adjacent to the Vine School, excuse me, Mesquite Lane and Cameron Street. We visited with PD, they had no objections, visited with traffic control, and came up with this plan that we would, We have the school zone on Mesquite Lane running from the west side corner of the Vine School all the way to the east side of the athletic facilities, the Lady of Victory athletic facilities. And then on Cameron Street from Locust Avenue up to, I can't see that. Anyway.

Rosebud.

Rosebud, thank you. Thank you. Again, we're following, going on Cameron Street, we're encompassing the entire length of the athletic facilities there too since those also have young children and such attending. Since revision to the traffic regulation schedules is required, we decided to review the entire schedule to see if there's anything else that needed to be adjusted. What we found was some school zone closures that needed to be amended. Victoria ISD is closing down the Shields Elementary School so we are going to remove the school zone designations for Lawrence Street from, I believe it's Polk Street to just the north of Crestwood and Crestwood Street from Oh, it's 300 feet east of, well, as you see on the map, I should've memorized those actual designations. Also, the Stroman campus, which has not had any attendance for a couple years, that is still, the school zone designation is still in that schedule. We're going to remove that. Also, some downtown parking restrictions. With the relocation of the PD at the Public Safety Headquarters, there's no need to have, or currently, the regulation has reserved parking on the east side of Bridge Street between Convent and Church and between Church and Wan Lin, which is reserved for Police Department. since the police department's not located on Wan Lin anymore, this can be re-designated to two-hour parking, as is the rest of the parking in that general area.

Are there any questions? I do have a question on the Shield School closure.

Yes, ma'am.

If you'd put that map back up again. I don't at all disagree with closing that, because there's no school there. However, Our Lady of Victory School is further down, basically from Mesquite on down to Airline. And it benefits from the Crane School zone on the airline. Uh, but it also has been benefiting from the shields and I don't, I didn't know whether it had a separate one.

I didn't know if there is a separate school zone for the lady of victory. I believe it begins at Laurent street and ends where the, um, school zone for the shields elementary began.

Okay. So that would continue to be in effect. Thank you.

Mr. Shiblett, could you put the map back up on the parking? I think it was your last slide. Here we go. On Church Street there, just south of the post office, the north side of that street, a portion of that, I think, is designated as no parking at this point. let's double check that because it's noted on here is 10 minute parking.

So that was brought to my attention earlier today and I did look and that is a no parking area and we will get that map revised.

Okay, perfect. I just want the map to match what's on the ground out there. So yeah, thank you.

I have a question about this map right here. Is the US Marshals parking going to be affected that's right next to the federal building?

No, sir. Right now, that area is designated as a no parking zone for regular traffic. We're not gonna make any amendments to or changes to that area as far as parking regulations.

So the US Marshals will continue to be able to utilize that?

Yes, sir. I think what we're suggesting is to clean up the ordinance to match what's actually happening. Because currently the U.S. Marshals are parking there, but our current code shows it as a no parking area, correct?

No, on the map here, it shows it as a 10-minute parking area. Got it. It's the blue line on, it would be the north side of Church Street, just south of the post office.

It is actually posted by signage to be a no parking.

Got it. Right. Okay. That's what I'm saying, we have to clean that up. Yeah, we just need to adjust the map to show that as a no parking area, or... remove it from the 10-minute parking.

I was just concerned with Church and the U.S. Marshalls parking.

That's exactly the spot I was talking about. Yeah, that's 100%.

And as far as the parking, can you go back to the first map of the Vine School? That area is horrendous. It needs... some type of school zone, not just for the school, but for the St. Joseph Field of Dreams. They have soccer games there, they have flag football games there, they have softball games. I've had a house there in that area. My family, other family members live there. When they have events, it is horrendous and I cannot, I'm very happy that we haven't had a child hit or struck there yet. It is horrible, the kids going across. So some type of a reduced speed limit sign along with the school zone needs to be put there, like ASAP. It's extremely dangerous.

My recommendation real quick on that or thought is that school zones have to follow certain specific standards associated with schools. What you're referring to are recreational amenities, which would apply to any of our neighborhood parks or just anything. There has been a, Council Member Lofgren has in the past brought up the idea of looking at lowering residential speed limits, I believe to 20. 25. Okay. Cause I think by default they are 30. And so one thing we could look at doing is rather than, um, lowering our residential speed limits to 25, we could look at simply just look at those areas where there's recreational amenities, neighborhood parks, that kind of thing that would make more sense than to try and create a school zone for something that is not a school. But it would affect, create, you know, require slower traffic in the area that you're specifically talking about. Now this, though, addresses your area. What's highlighted in green hits on right in front of the area that you're referring to.

The Field of Dreams?

Correct, yes. However, the school zones typically apply only during certain times. And so if we wanted a reduced speed limit around recreational amenities, it would have to be a longterm change to the speed limit on that street.

The current condition of the roads in that area are the best, um, speed preventative, um,

Thank you. Although I will say that between Navarro and Laurent, there are no stop signs. And with the addition of the medians by TxDOT, that is used as a cut through. And that street is actually in really good shape. And people move up and down that street very quickly. This is what led to the conversation where this came from, the conversation that I had both with the Vine School and with St. Joe. to basically you know say hey can we get some kind of some kind of school zone there which to me makes all the sense in the world and so that's where this is coming from if we want to look at something in addition to that because I know that cars park along Cameron Street there when there there are activities and that sort of thing you get kids running through then that's certainly something I think we could look at it in addition to this at some point. But certainly I think the school zone was discussed, asked for, they're in favor of it, and really want this in that spot.

And on the topic of the streets, just real quick, I've alluded to in the past that we're working on a supplemental street program that we would be prepared to present at the December workshop. part of that program will look at addressing streets surrounding recreational amenities, neighborhood parks, things like that. And so, um, under that program, we would attempt to try and address these streets.

I'd like to see maybe the city attorney can get a clarification if, if that field of dreams is owned by St. Joseph high school, that's an educational institution. I mean, does that qualify for a school zone, or does it have to be the school building where the children are, and does it omit the recreation? It's still owned by a school. So if I can get a clarification on that, of the law next week or something.

As the city manager says, school zones typically are for specific time periods during the day. There is a section within the traffic regulation schedule, a section for reduced speed limits for certain streets, for certain blocks or regions, and that may be where we need to address what you're asking for.

Also, in front of the Victoria College on Red River, when the students, the nursing students and EMS students cross the street to go to the hospital to do their clinicals, there's a crossing light. So if they hit the button, the light comes on and cars slow down, maybe that's an option over here also, but we need to do something about the safety of those kids. We're not talking about 10, 20 kids, we're talking about hundreds of kids.

No, I think the school zone that's proposed is a great start and we can look at whatever else may be available to us, but certainly this is what specifically was requested by the schools. Awesome.

How long after this is ultimately passed will it take to get that up and operational?

I think the signs are actually already up. So the signs have been proactively put up already.

Any other questions? No? OK. Then thank you, Mr. Shiblick. Appreciate it. Then I will open up the public hearing with respect to item C1. If there's anyone who wishes to adjust counsel on this item, please come forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing on item C1 and entertain any motions on this item. CHRIS JERRAM, M.D. : Motion to adopt item C1. Second. CHRIS JERRAM, M.D. : We've got a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And C1 passes. All right, let's move on then to our second public hearing, which is item C2. Ms. Hilberg.

Item C2 is a resolution approving and adopting the Community Development Block Grant or CDBG 2026-2027 one year action plan and authorizing the city manager to submit all required documentation for the fiscal year 2026-2027 CDBG program to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD.

Good evening, Mr. Windle. Welcome. Good evening, Mayor and Council. So tonight we are going to have our final approval and adoption for the program year 2026 CDBG budget. So it's going to look very similar to our meeting back in June. So just as a reminder, the Community Development Block Grant is an annual grant that the city receives from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. to help localities and states assist with the development of viable communities. And the purpose is to reduce poverty and its effects and to develop viable communities by providing quality housing, creating a sustainable living environment, and expanding economic opportunities. As a reminder for our CDBG application timeline, we opened up a workshop back in March. We had intent to request funding due at the end of March, and then all of April we had our application process open, they were due at the end of April, and then the first half of May we reviewed and evaluated the applications and got with the potential funders to see if anything needs to be adjusted, but we worked with them. June 2nd we brought you the funding recommendations, and then today we are having our public hearing for our final approval of the action plan, and then I have until August 16th to submit the plan, but that will be submitted well before then. So our funding for 2026 program year, we have $540,141 in entitlement funds available, along with unallocated funds from previous program years, totaling $152,000 for a total budget of $692,183.93. 20% of that can go towards our administration costs, so we'll have 108,000 towards that. For affordable housing programs, we will have our down payment and closing cost assistance program. We'll put $30,000 towards that program and we'll have our demolition and clearance. We're gonna fund $75,000 into that one. That's one of our popular ones. That one runs out pretty quick. Public improvements, we will have a one-land street sidewalk project and I have a picture later in the slides showing exactly where that will be and what it will look like. for $198,000 and then we'll go through on a separate slide our public facilities totaling $200,000 and our public services at 81,000 and those are capped at 15% of our entitlement. Okay, so for our public improvement, our one land sidewalk project, it's the little blue line on the map. This is showing all the yellow are our low to moderate income areas on the southern side of the city. So for us to do a sidewalk project, it has to fall within one of our low to moderate income areas, and this map clearly shows it's smack dab in the middle of that south side one. Here's an aerial view showing exactly where it'll be, that red line, and it's gonna run from, let's see, from Ben Wilson Street to 2811 Wanlin Street on the community center side. So that's our projected, location for that. We worked with engineering. This was a project they had shared with us that could be done. So we'll go move ahead with that.

And I believe we had a citizen actually come to council at a meeting last year kind of bringing this issue to light as well.

Does the sidewalk connect at that point or is that a future expansion?

I believe it would be a future expansion on that left side. It connects to the Ben Wilson side.

Thank you.

Our public facilities, we have two. The George Washington Carver Foundation, we're gonna help with revitalization and pre-construction of the Carver Center for 50,000. And then the Housing Authority, renovation of their office space, they're gonna renovate it into a community resource room for tenant meetings, community meetings, somewhere where the housing authority residents can come get resources. It's a good gathering place for them. And then our public services, we always have a lot of applications for this one and it's always the hardest one because it's that 15% that we have to limit ourself per head rules. So we will be funding Boys and Girls Club, their after school and summer camp program, Crossroads Community Actions Rental Assistance Program, Food Bank, their kids weekend meal program. The Golden Crescent CASAs volunteer for every child in need. Golden Crescent Habitat for Humanity, they're gonna have a critical and general home repair program. Gulf Bend Center will fund their wellness community. Hope of South Texas, the trauma care for victims of child abuse program. Meals on Wheels of South Texas, their home delivered meals. Midcoast Family Services, their resource hub. Perpetual Help Homes Resident Management Program. And then slide two, United Way of the Crossroads Community Connections Project. And Victoria County Health Department, their community resource services at their resource center. And so as you see, we had a request of 164,000 and we had to cut that down to 81,000, so. That's always tough, but they do a lot of the good work and it's just hard to cut those, but those are per HUD rules. And then as a reminder for our low to moderate income limits, for residents to be considered low to moderate for our public services, they have to fall below that 80% median family income. So as long as they fall below that last line, depending how many people are in the home, that's how they qualify for their public services. And then, so we have our public comment period was from July 2nd through August 3rd, and we're holding our public hearing for final approval. And then, as I said, we have a statutory deadline to submit by August 16th, but our plan is to have it at least by Monday submitted, hopefully sooner.

That's it, that's all I have.

All right, any questions for Mr. Wendell? Thank you much, appreciate it. So with that then, I will open up the public hearing with respect to item C2. If anyone wishes to address council on this item, please come forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing on item C2 and entertain any motions on this item.

I move we adopt item C2.

I second it. I've got a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And C2 passes. All right, we'll jump to our consent agenda. Ms. Hilberg.

Yes, sir, item D1 is the adoption of minutes of the regular meeting held on July 21st, 2026. Item D2 is a resolution appointing Wesley Januszczyk, CPA, as the representative to perform the no new revenue tax rate and voter approval tax rate calculations. Item D3 is a resolution authorizing the publication of the notice of meeting to vote on tax rate. Item D4 is a resolution scheduling public hearings on the 26-27 budget. And item D5 is a resolution approving a variance request to section 21-146A2D lattice style telecommunications tower. Towers secured by guide wires and lattice style towers are expressly prohibited for a property located at 206 East Crestwood Drive.

Thank you, Ms. Hilbert. Do I have a motion on the consent agenda? Motion to approve consent agenda as read. Do I have a second? Second. Motion is second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? And the consent agenda is passed. All right, we will move now to our action items. We'll start with action item E1.

Item E1 is a resolution approving the second renewal of the city's annual bulk fuel supply contract with new distributing company incorporated in the amount of $1,482,940.45.

Mr. Welder, welcome. Hi, thank you. Good evening. This is pretty much regular business, but it is a big ticket item, so... Just real quick, it's just a one-year renewal of our supply contract and new distributing. This is the second of three available renewals, so we will have one more after this. The dollar amount is fixed year over year. It's variable with gas prices. The bid solicitation is actually for their differential price, which is actually what it cost them to deliver per gallon. So that's how they bid the job. Um, we based it off of a rounded number of usage, fuel usage for unleaded gasoline, ultra low sulfur diesel and death fluid for the years. So, um, have it answer any questions. I don't have a presentation for you, but, um, I'm here for it.

Any questions? Grill them. Ask him all the tough questions. Well, I think it turns out we need fuel.

We need a lot of fuel. Got it. Any questions? All right. Thank you, Mr. Weller. Appreciate it. Thank you all very much. Do I have a motion on item E1?

Move to adopt item E1.

Second. I've got a motion and a second. Any discussion on this item? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And E1 passes. All right, we're going to skip down into our city manager reports. We're going to go through those two items, and then we will come back up to item E2. So Mr. Garza, city manager reports. I know we have a lot of budget items and things of that nature tonight.

We do, and I'll give them a quick minute to pull up the presentation. But as they do that, oh, that was quick. Thank you. But before I begin, I just wanna give a quick shout out to our finance team, Wesley, Laura, I don't see Victoria. Well, Victoria, Raina, and our finance office, they all, as every year, did a tremendous job in spearheading, putting the budget together. Gilbert gets just a little bit of credit this year. We're fading his credit out slowly but surely. But no, thank you all so much for all your hard work. This year in particular, there was a lot of things that were occupying personnel in my office, keeping personnel in my office pretty busy. And so this year in particular, they did an excellent job in spearheading this with minimal involvement. So if you have any questions, direct them to Wesley is basically where I'm headed to. So I want to begin just by highlighting or summarizing, I should say, the budget story for 27. There aren't any major drastic changes to what I will walk through today compared to what I went through in June, but the minimal changes that are included in this presentation I'll specifically highlight. That presentation in June, I started off with showing you a lot of headlines. because there are a lot of cities across the state that are unfortunately facing deficits or shortfalls simply because of the plateauing of the economy. And unfortunately, it's not uncommon for cities to overextend themselves on the expenditure side. Fortunately for us, our conservative approach to budgeting has always put us in a position to be able to absorb anything that might come, whether that's a recession, whether it's a pandemic, whether it's a downturn in the economy. And so this budget is once again reflective of that conservative approach. And so we are not facing any deficit or any shortfalls. And so I'm very proud of that because again, there are a lot of cities that are in that unfortunate situation. We of course have a balanced budget. I will also, for the first time, share the official property tax roll information and the proposed tax rate, which is a decreased tax rate of over two cents. And so we'll walk through that. That's always a great story. We, of course, always do our best to improve compensation for employees since they are our greatest asset, and so we definitely are continuing to do what we can in that regard in 27. We are not proposing any changes to our health plan, but I will highlight a concerning trend that will necessitate some possible changes in 28 or beyond. It's a big year for community, excuse me, for capital improvements because of the community center. And so I'll walk through a little bit of the timeline of that, but that's something that's gonna take up the majority of fiscal year 27. Grant programs is always a big thing for us. So we always appreciate Katie's work. And as we specifically went through in June, there's a lot of grant opportunities that a lot of departments are pursuing. And so I think that helps us to an even greater degree help absorb any changes in the economy because we're not fully dependent Recurring dollars alone and as always public safety is a priority that and in this year in particular that's being shown with one-time expenditures and fleet acquisitions as well as other Technology investments. There's a few added slides to this presentation that I did not show in June that highlight some of that And so I'm looking forward to being a little more specific in in those areas. I So overall, these numbers are identical to what I presented in June, shows an overall expense budget of 242 million for fiscal year 27 as well, and revenues coming in at 231 million. That difference of almost $11 million can be explained with this slide. As you know, we always utilize excess funds to help fund one-time expenditures, and that always covers that difference. But the recurring revenues are sufficient to cover our recurring expenditures, and that's where the balanced budget requirement comes into effect. But we certainly rely on fund balance and excess working capital to be able to fund one-time expenditures. And so this year is no different. I asked Wesley to include a slide showing what that has looked like historically over the last five years to reiterate the point that this is common. It's not uncommon to utilize excess funds to help pay for one-time expenditures. Now, the availability of excess funds is obviously dependent on the cushion that oftentimes exists between a minimum reserve and where we budget. And as I alluded to in June, we are seeing a downward trend in that cushion. And I have a slide at the very end of the presentation where I'll show you that visually. The overall revenue budget, as I mentioned, is $230 million. That is a $13 million decrease compared to fiscal year 26. That can predominantly be attributed to just not having a CIP that is as large as well as decreased one-time expenditures and the fact that we aren't accounting for as many grants. I'll of course hit on the sources of revenue that are of most interest. And so this is where I'll transition to, I guess, I suppose the delivery of the appraised values. And so you'll see that our certified values came in at an NTAV of just north of 5.6 billion. You'll see that that is a net increase of 2%. compared to our 2025 tax roll. We of course always kind of hone in on the trends of commercial and residential, which I think are always important. And so you'll note that those both went up to the tune of 3% or more. How that looks historically is that you can see that on our commercial that's kind of plateaued a little bit, but you'll see that residential is peaked to a little greater degree than commercial. What we wanna look for when we show this slide is are these things trending together? Because as I've alluded to in the past, Typically, regardless of what way your economy is going, typically your values for both commercial and residential are trending either up or down together. And so at minimum, we're seeing that consistent application of the appraisals, if you will. This shows a little bit of the history of how much our NTAV has increased over the years. You'll see that we are currently experiencing on average over the last three years just a 1.5% increase average on our NTAV growth. You could see that that is actually less than what the average was pre-pandemic. You can also very clearly see how we experienced the significant growth between fiscal years 21 and 24, which afforded us the ability to be able to do things that we historically had not been able to do, primarily investing in our employees. But as I discussed over the last couple of years, that was not something that we could anticipate just happening indefinitely. And so we're definitely beginning to see the plateauing of our property values. That is not just a Victoria issue. That's a big part why other communities across the state are facing shortfalls and deficits. Their property tax values have also plateaued or have decreased, which has put them in a position of not having that property tax revenue to keep up with the pressures of their expenditures. In addition to the economy though, I think it's important to highlight that another factor that is impacting or minimizing that increase in NTAV has to do with a recent, a bill that went into effect that came out of the 2026 legislative session. And that was an increase to the business personal property exemption. That went from $2,500 to $125,000. That is significant. I'm not gonna reiterate SB2. I think by now we're all familiar with the limitations of SB2. And so I'll focus on just the new limitation that as we unfortunately have become accustomed to, the state continues to find ways to restrict our ability to generate additional revenue and make it that much more difficult for us to keep up with just the increased cost of service delivery. And so if you're wondering what that impact is on us, Wesley put together this slide to showcase that. And so that increase of $2,500 to $125,000, that increase alone equated to 153, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Wesley, correlated to $153 million that went to the exemption side of the house. If that 153 million would have stayed, as just part of our normal NTAV, which would have been the case had that piece of legislation not gone into effect, our NTAV would have actually gone up by another 2.7%. Mas o menos. Mas o menos, yeah. Very technical term, mas o menos. Yes, thank you. And if you're wondering how much money would that have brought in in revenue had we actually tapped into bringing in that revenue, it's over $600,000. Más o menos. This was a last minute addition because we felt last minute that it was important to highlight the impact of this legislative change. So I just want to double check that I'm interpreting it accurately. But at the end of the day, you get the sense of it. You get the real life impact that the legislature and their decisions are having on our process to generate additional revenue. So any questions on that? This is kind of a new thing.

Okay.

So our approach going into the fiscal year 27 property tax rate, and I went over this in June, is that we want to focus on the no new revenue tax rate for a number of reasons, predominantly because we want to prioritize the implementation of the new stormwater drainage fee, which of course was talked about earlier. And now looking back on it, I should have added a little graphic and made it part of the 2027 budget story. But We of course have always been mindful about the impact on our taxpayers, on our rate payers, and so we wanted to, again, be very intentional with that. And so we're proposing a decrease of the tax rate by a little over two cents. The tax rate would go from .4790 to .4538. Now, the bulk of that decrease can't solely be attributed to the change in appraised values. The bulk of that decrease can actually be attributed to something completely different, which I'm very proud of and I want to spend an extra minute talking about, which is a decrease in our INS rate, which is the right-hand most column of this particular slide. You could see that the bulk of that decrease in the tax rate, almost the full two cents coming strictly out of decreasing the INS rate. Now this is a byproduct of a couple of things. One, the fact that we have over the last five years invested almost four million dollars in early bond redemptions. We have very intentionally, as funds have allowed, have wanted to be aggressive with that. Not only does that help obviously save millions of dollars by finishing paying off that debt sooner, but it allows us the opportunity to create debt capacity sooner than what we would have had we not redeemed those bonds earlier. And as we've talked about in the past, as part of our CIP debt management strategy, it was important for us to redeem those bonds early so that we could have some debt capacity over the next three years to be able to have a CIP. I know that the CIP that we're proposing for fiscal year 27 was a challenge for all of us because it was the first year out of four years, right? Where we had a reduced amount of budget that made it very difficult. And there was some very heated conversations about, well, which residential project are we going to cut? Which one do we want to add? Because we hadn't had to have had been that, uh, restrictive or that limited with those funds. But as limited as they may be, they wouldn't have had even been available and wouldn't be available over the next few years if we weren't as aggressive with redeeming these bonds. And so to that end, we're actually proposing to continue to do that. And so the fiscal year 27 budget actually is recommending another million dollar bond redemption program. That continues our aggressive approach as described and will provide some more flexibility on our tax rate going into 2028. Any questions on that? Okay. The one thing that I do wanna also highlight and draw your attention to is the unused increment tax rate, because this is important, especially because of the fact that we're proposing an only revenue tax rate this year. If nothing changes with SB2, we would have the ability to utilize that unused tax rate increment that you see on the slide going into 28. So we're hopeful that we won't have any major changes to SB2 or that there are changes to SB2 that won't apply to fiscal year 28 because we do foresee an opportunity to be able to utilize some of that increment without it affecting the tax rate because of the continuation of the decrease in the INS rate, if that makes any sense. So just giving you a small preview of how we foresee that looking. And I know Council Member Lofgren is smiling because I know he's been talking for years about obviously lowering our debt obligation, shifting priorities and so on and so forth. So it took years, Mark, but we're there. Okay, you're welcome. All right, so what is that impact on our local residents? And so this kind of gives you a sense, if we apply a 3% value increase to property values, which again was the aggregate increase to residential values, you'll see how the property tax liability actually is decreased. And obviously, depending on the value, depends on the value of that decrease. But this is a great story because again, the fact that we're implementing a new utility fee I also thought it would be appropriate to also show you this history of just the tax rate, because I think it tells a great story on just the trajectory of our tax rate. If we were to overlay a history of our property values to this, you would see a direct correlation between increased property values, decreased tax rate. And so as an example, 17 years ago, I believe our NTAV was 2.6 billion. or something to that effect. And so we're almost sitting here at $3 billion more in assessed value, which has afforded us the ability to decrease the tax rate by over 20 cents in that 17-year period. I think this is something that we can be very proud of because other cities over that same 17-year period have not done that. Other cities have either maintained or increased their tax rates over that 17-year period, which on one hand certainly has given those cities more money to have in their general fund today compared to us. However, our approach to it has saved our taxpayers millions of dollars over that time frame. And I know that we value that a lot. So before I transition to sales tax, any questions, comments on the property tax side of it? Wesley, did I miss anything? You want to add anything? Ish. Ish. Okay, so I'll move on to sales tax. On the sales tax side, pretty straightforward. We're increasing our budget figure by half a million dollars. We feel comfortable doing this. I have verbalized over the years how we typically have taken a very conservative approach to this, but we are seeing some positive momentum in our year-to-date sales tax receipts. As a matter of fact, there's always bets going on between Gilbert and Wesley on whether projections will come in as Wesley projected, and I believe Wesley's in the lead so far.

No? Okay. All right.

He gave me the eye. He gave me Ojo. Anyway, increasing by half a million dollars on the sales tax side. We did recently present a preliminary budget to the Sales Tax Development Corporation, and so we applied the same methodology on being a little bit more aggressive with sales tax to the Sales Tax Development Corporation budget, just for situational awareness. So moving on to highlighting expenditures. And so our fiscal year 27 overall expense budget is 242 million, which is a $12 million decrease compared to fiscal year 26. And consistent with the revenue story, that's due to a decreased CIP, decreased one-time expenditures, and just decreased grant involvement. You will notice though how there's an increase, the blue items are on insurance, personnel, maintenance, sort of just the day-to-day items. And I'll walk you through the biggest change of that, which is on the personnel side here in a little bit. So I'll start off with our CIP. And so this is a decrease of a little over $10 million compared to fiscal year 26. you'll notice that the combination of residential streets with thoroughfare streets is a significant decrease, and that's what I was alluding to earlier, that this is something new that's sort of becoming our new reality over the next few years. This is why we are working on that supplemental initiative that we plan to present in December that will more than likely result in a budget amendment of some kind, because we heard your direction loud and clear that we need to just think outside the box and find ways to be as aggressive as we can be with our streets. We added this slide to show just a little bit of a different version of highlighting the same information. And so on the left hand side gives you a sense of how that $69.2 million CIP is split up. And then on the right hand side shows you the big ticket items. And so the community center project is the biggest capital improvement project that we have and we will have ongoing in fiscal year 27. And then some of the other major ones are utility centric projects. centered predominantly around the regional wastewater treatment plant, the SCADA project, and the North Street utilities. We also have some grants projects in here related to the CDBG-MIT, which are the ones associated with Lone Tree Acres. SCADA is actually part of that as well. So we're hoping that we're finally close to the finish line with the CDBG-MIT. That literally has been a five-year effort. This is a 10 year history just to give you a highlight of how much we have been able to invest in capital projects. This is another story that I think we can be very proud of because as you can see over the last five years between fiscal year 22 to fiscal year 27, it's been over $200 million that we've been able to invest. In our CIP, which includes facilities, streets, et cetera, that is a drastic increase compared to the five-year period between fiscal year 2017 and 2021. And so that's something we can be very proud of. And as I alluded to earlier, we're now at a point where we're able to even decrease the tax rate. And so it's a blessing to be able to have invested that much money into our CIP whilst being mindful of our taxpayer. I want to highlight the fact that we are, once again, transferring some general fund monies to our CIP. This is also a common occurrence. You may recall that back during the pandemic, we had a couple of years of this being a high number, predominantly because we slowed down. Some projects had to be slowed down during the pandemic. We saw an influx of cash coming in from some of the programs that the federal government had put out. And so that was an anomaly. What is more common is for a figure somewhere between the $3 to $5 million range. And so we're on the low end of that. And again, that is also consistent with what I alluded to earlier, that the amount of money that gets transferred to the CIP is also dependent on how much excess cash you have available. And if that excess cash is dwindling, then the amount of money that you have to apply towards one-time expenditures or to the CIP start to trend downward as well. But for now, we are good. Any questions on CIP? OK. I'll transition to pay program. I won't go through the details of this, but this is just to remind you that over the last six years, we've been able to invest quite a bit of funds into our employees, predominantly because of the fact that we did experience higher than usual increases in our property tax appraisals over that four-year period. Since 2021, we've been able to invest almost $11 million in recurring dollars towards compensation, and so that's another item that I think we can be very proud of. Before I walk you into what we're proposing for 2027, I did think it'd be appropriate to walk you through some very specific staff changes that could help explain baseline adjustments to a little maybe greater degree than what we've had in the past, just to be transparent to a greater degree on reorganizations within our organization.

How many times did I say organization? Six times?

Man, I won't use it ever again.

Stop saying that.

So this is very similar to what we shared in June, but there is a slight change here, actually. We actually forgot to include in June a change that led to an addition of a finance assistant director. The reason why that was missed in June was because there was no monetary impact to that change. We're actually proposing... eliminating the library assistant position and a grant specialist position within finance to create that capacity for that assistant director of finance. And so because there was no impact to dollars, it was kind of missed originally in that presentation in June, but I wanted to specifically highlight that as something that was added to this. This slide added this reference in the bottom left and it includes other reorganizations that were mentioned in June that range from fully funding the deputy city manager position and city manager's office to the elimination of some positions within the fire department that ended up adding five EMTs and an EMS lieutenant to some other changes that didn't lead to adding personnel, but I think are worth mentioning. So for example, there was a reorg within our PIO office that saw a budget increase of $76,000. There's some changes within HR, building and equipment services, within the police department. You heard our directors talk about these changes during their department presentations in June. And so this better captures those changes. One of the other ones that was missing from this presentation was a change that Joel alluded to in his department presentation, which was the fact that we split up Main Street personnel. No budgetary impact to this, but we wanted to make it official as part of this budget and official as part of this presentation that we did send basically some maintenance workers that were associated with Main Street over to parks in order to just try a different approach to handling Main Street. I do want to go back to this to highlight the fact that we have applied for a safer grant. I've mentioned before, and Chief Gomez has mentioned as well, that there is a need to add personnel with the fire department. And so the reorgs that he undertook in the middle of the fiscal year that added those five EMTs and EMS lieutenant We're intended to help address that, but we do need to add more personnel. And so we have applied for a safer grant for six firefighter positions. We should receive notice of that September, October timeframe, more than likely after this budget gets adopted. And so if we do receive that grant, we will bring a budget amendment to you in the fall to officially add those six positions to the budget, as well as adding the funding for those positions. The way the Safer Grants works is that it basically helps you spread out the cost of those positions over a four-year period. So you're able to hire those six positions immediately, but you're not financially on the hook for those positions until the fourth year. And so it's just a staggered approach to being able to fully fund those positions, which of course in our financial environment, that's the perfect way to do it. So all in all, the pay program is $1.6 million. It's inclusive of a little over half a million dollars in baseline adjustments, which I went over most of those, but they're also summarized in text right below this box. In addition to all of those changes that I mentioned, we've also increased the TMRS allotment by 1% from 17.8 three to 18.83%. This isn't an effort to just be proactive and intentional with ensuring that that rate doesn't get out of hand for us since we aren't proposing any changes. And I want to be very clear about that. The $1.6 million pay program does include funding the STEP program for our public safety personnel, which includes police, fire, and now includes our dispatchers. You may recall that we added them for the first time into that model in fiscal year 26. We're also including a 2.5% wage adjustment for the majority of our general population. because they did not receive any major adjustments in fiscal year 26. Fiscal year 26 was a year where we prioritized over 75, over 70% of the pay program to public safety personnel. And so we're trying to come back and make sure that we address and don't fall too behind with the remainder of our employees. Any questions on that? Okay, this is just another way to show you the same information. This specifically shows you where the money's coming from and as the case every year, the general fund is the one that takes the biggest hit since the general fund is the one that has our public safety personnel and the majority of our employees. This slide on debt service highlights what I already alluded to, that our debt service commitment is decreasing, and so you see it on the slide at the very top that our debt service payment is dropping by almost two million. You see that we've added that bond redemption program of a million dollars, and you just see the net effect of that ultimately leads to a decrease of two million dollars. So this is another great story to be proud of. So Gilbert deserves a lot of credit with the strategy here. I'm trying to score some points with Gilbert. So this slide here is a new slide. We thought it would be good to include, and Wesley, I appreciate you putting this together, a different way to show you the one-time expenditures. We normally don't summarize one-time expenditures in this holistic budget presentation. Those are normally highlighted in the departmental presentations, but we thought it'd be good to kind of give you a sense of that. And so you'll see here how the general fund has $6 million worth of one-time expenditures, and you could see just the effect of all the different funds. And at the very bottom, you'll see the most expensive items on the one-time expenditure list, and I'll call to your attention the a few items. So there's the cat RMS system replacement, which is labeled as $1 million, but that's actually a commitment of a multi-year commitment that ultimately totals close to $3.5 million collectively. And so this account, this accounts for updating our, our cat system for dispatch that of course affects both police and fire, but also a, um, station where a station alert system that is much needed for our various fire stations. I mentioned earlier that this budget prioritizes public safety in the area of one-time expenditures, and it's predominantly via a combination of this investment in technology, the pumper truck replacement that is referenced there at that $1.1 million figure. That 1.1 would be funded via the sales tax development corporation, and so we did include that 1.1 million in the preliminary budget for sales tax that was presented to them last week. But in addition to these one-time expenditures, there's also a heavy priority in public safety as it relates to fleet. And so this is another new slide that highlights and summarizes the different vehicles that we are including in fiscal year 27. And so you'll see how it includes that pumper truck that I already referenced. It includes five new police interceptors and it includes a slew of other vehicles for other departments, but it also includes some grant funded acquisitions for our police department through the auto grant fund and the Lone Star grant fund. And so those are at the bottom. Any questions on one-time expenditures holistically or fleet? Okay, this presentation will obviously be shared and will be available online as well. All right, so I'll get into some other budget. I'll go through these quick since I already went over the bigger picture items, but the general fund. So the general fund is being budgeted at 67.7 million, which is a minimal increase of $748,000. That's predominantly because of these one-time expenditures that I just alluded to. I also wanted to highlight our track record in investment in public safety as it relates to percentage of general fund. Five years ago, mas o menos, this equated to 55.5%, and now is almost five percentage points greater than what it was then. And so I think it's very, very important to reiterate any chance we get to highlight the fact that public safety is a priority for us, it's a priority for you, it's a priority for my administration, and certainly the budgets that have come before you over the last five years reflect that. And so I just think that it's important to remind you and the public of that and those investments. So this is just another way to highlight what this increase can be attributed to. I already alluded to the one-time expenditures. I already alluded to the public safety step, as well as the 2.5% increase in general population. That basically covers the majority of that increase, as well as just some ongoing basic maintenance, whether that be electrical, fuel, et cetera. Insurance actually went up quite a bit. And so property insurance went up quite a bit across the board. On the general fund side, you'll see a couple of items here. You'll see the very minimal increase on property tax. That's all associated with new improvements. You'll see that we are increasing and being a little bit more aggressive with calculating what we anticipate receiving in an ambulance revenue. There's a half a million dollars in sales tax that I referenced, and then the $1.1 million that would be coming in from the Sales Tax Development Corporation to help pay for that pumper. This here just shows where we are anticipating ending at the end of fiscal year 27 as it relates to the fund balance. And so you'll see there on the bottom right that our minimum reserve is 16.9 million and that we are about $1.4 million. There's about a $1.4 million cushion there. Those cushions are very important, if you didn't already know. On the utility fund side, This is a increase of roughly $11 million for a total of $53 million. This can all be explained, for the most part, to the CIP. You may recall that our budget typically ebbs and flows. There's a heavy utility year, then there's a heavy street year, and it just staggers. That's by design, right? And so in fiscal year 2027, we have the funds for the North Street utilities. as well as all of the ones that I went over earlier, which include some of the wastewater treatment plan improvements. We also have the design for the off-channel reservoir interconnect project. And so there's quite a bit of investment. There's manhole projects in there as well, stemming from the I&I study. So there's quite a bit of work going on in 2027 as it relates to our utility system. Some of the other minor increases are because of things that I already mentioned, increases in just, fuel, supply, chemicals, personnel because of the 2.5% wage increase, increases because of property insurance going on, so on and so forth. This is just another way to explain the same thing. This highlights those utility projects that I referenced. And this is where we end up we project ending up from a budget standpoint at the end of fiscal year 27. So you'll see that our minimum reserve for the utility fund would be $7.36 million and we have about a $765,000 cushion there. The Environmental Services Fund is a $1.6 million decrease. This decrease can, for the most part, be attributed to the fact that we are not buying trucks anymore. You may recall we had a budget amendment that came before you last month because we had an early delivery of trucks. Originally, those trucks were actually going to be in fiscal year 27, but since we did that budget amendment, now we've removed those from the proposed fiscal year 27 budget, and we're also not proposing utilizing this fund to purchase ambulances. Some of the ambulances that were purchased in fiscal year 26 came from this fund, and if you haven't had a chance, there is an ambulance sitting out front, brand new, that is amazing, and so I encourage you, if you haven't had time, to go check it out. And some of the minor increases that are highlighted in green on the right-hand side are attributed to the same items that I've been alluding to. It accounts for the personnel increases as well as just some basic overhead increases. There are no changes to the revenue budget. We are not proposing any rate changes that we have sole control over. Oops, I went backwards. So per our financial policy, of course, our Environmental Services Fund also has a minimum reserve requirement. And so that minimum reserve is $4.7 million. And we have about a $1.5 million cushion in this fund going through fiscal year 27. We are continuing to proceed with a new fund, a new enterprise fund, which of course is the Stormwater Drainage Fund. What we have in the budget is what we've discussed up until this point. I recognize that there might be some additional changes, but for purposes of the formal proposed budget, it's as it had been discussed, accounting for those exemptions for Victoria County, religious institutions, the school district, and ourselves. And so you see how we are projecting about $2.5 million in revenue. We are accounting for a start date of January 1 for this. Any questions on that? Okay, so health plan and our health insurance fund, I won't go through the details of this, but this also just highlights the great work that we've done in investing and improving our health insurance program. We have not increased our rates for our legacy plans since 2019, since 2018. We of course introduced a new EPO plan that did have higher rates, but our legacy plans, which are high deductibles, those have not seen any increases in premiums since 2018, 2019 timeframe. So we're very proud of that. We are unfortunately seeing increase in expenditures on the claim side. And so in order to buy us a little bit of time to find some potential solutions for that, the fiscal year 27 budget does have a one-time transfer of $600,000 going into our health fund. That's to help absorb some of that increase on the claim side. We're also projecting an increase in our stop-loss insurance. You may recall our stop-loss insurance helps cover some of those high claimants. And as any insurance, the more you use it, the more expensive it gets. And so we certainly have had some high claimants and we have been tapping into our stop loss insurance a little bit more aggressively. And so we do believe that's going to lead to an increase in just the cost of that insurance next time we renew. This shows you a little bit of the trajectory of where the health plan has been. I mentioned earlier we haven't made any changes since 2019. That, ironically, is also the point where our health fund reached its lowest point. That is when our reserve within our health fund was at its worst. We, of course, have been very intentional in trying to build that up. And that predominantly has come in the form of us, quite frankly, just pumping more money into the fund. to ensure that it covers its liabilities. And as I mentioned earlier, we're now beginning to see a trend going in the opposite direction. And so the way that we anticipate, I guess, tackling this is basically working with our consultant throughout the course of 2027 to come up with some strategy that more than likely will lead to some changes going into 2028, because we can't do nothing about it and then end up back in the same situation where we were back in 2018, 2019 timeframe. The hotel tax fund, like anything associated with the economy, has plateaued as well. And so we are seeing a decrease in this fund that is a little bit more visible Here in this slide, we're projecting about $80,000 less in hotel tax revenue, as well as interest income. This fund funds a variety of different initiatives. It's hard to read, but I know you're very well aware that this money helps fund the CBB department. It helps fund and offset some expenditures at the community center. It of course helps fund our Main Street program. It helps fund the sports tourism efforts that we undertake, the outside agency program that Joel oversees and that the committee helps implement. So there's a lot of pressures being put on this fund. And so that's something that we're always mindful of because there's only so much money coming in to this fund. But as I mentioned earlier, we're seeing a slowdown in this revenue and so we're wanting to be a little bit more conservative going into fiscal year 27. The community center project, this is about a $39 million budget. I've been hearing that there might be some confusion that this project might be more than $39 million. And so I want to reiterate that as of now, the budget is $39 million and it is split up over four different fiscal years with the heaviest part of that being in fiscal year 27. We are proceeding with this project in two phases with the first phase being the new arena, as well as some improvements to the backside of the property, including a new stall barn. That is scheduled hopefully to break ground in August, worst case scenario September. We are working with our financial advisor to bring before you, either in late August or early September, approving the venue bonds. We haven't been able to do that, but that's obviously necessary in order for us to proceed with the project. We also will need to bring before you amending the contract with Logger to include a guaranteed maximum price. And so expect those two items on an agenda soon. And hopefully more details on when the groundbreaking ceremony will be as well. We're in the process of finalizing those details and we'll share them obviously as soon as we have them. Any questions on the community center? Okay. So some ongoing items to be mindful of. We of course have the stormwater utility that we are proposing implementing in January. Obviously there's some possible changes that you may wanna consider, but that's something that we wanna be very mindful of as we proceed with fiscal year 27. There is a water rate study underway. We have not adjusted water or sewer rates since 2019, and so that is something that we want to reassess and just have a conversation about. We of course are in the middle of implementing some of the recommendations from the water feasibility study pursuing several grants And so that's something that's very important for us as a matter of fact the mayor and I just had a meeting with former mayor Gary Middleton and just Talking through other strategies on how we can continue to strengthen our water availability We, of course, now with the move of Municipal Court and Police Department to the Public Safety Headquarter Building, we are still working through what the plan will be for the City Hall, what I'm referring to, the City Hall Complex, which is the building that we're in now, as well as the building next door. We have been working with Raleigh McCoy Associates Architects locally on that. We have not gotten to the point where we feel fully comfortable proposing any specific figures to you, but I do anticipate probably coming before you with some kind of budget amendment at some point in the fall to also begin formal design of that renovation project. We of course have civil service and collective bargaining that is ongoing. We know that compensation is a big priority for you and as well as our council subcommittee on compensation. We haven't had time to work with them to a great degree because we've been prioritizing the civil service collective bargaining. But as we look to wrap up the collective bargaining this summer or early this summer, we'll be able to turn our focus in the fall to meeting more regularly with the subcommittee to start thinking more big picture about priorities and how we wanna tackle compensation moving forward. And then of course we don't know what's gonna happen with the legislature and property tax caps or changes to SB2. And so we wanna make sure that we stay mindful and vigilant to those changes to work on a property tax rate strategy throughout fiscal year 27 since we do foresee some changes unfortunately coming out of this next legislative session. I've alluded to the fact that we also need to be mindful of a decreased trend in our fund balance. And so I asked Wesley to put this together to make the point. So we are What you're seeing here left to right is the history of that cushion. The difference between what our minimum reserve is and what we have available. You could see that we reached peak in 24. Now this was intentional and you could see a lot of yellow there and that's because we intentionally were saving up money with the Environmental Services Fund to be able to buy garbage trucks cash. So that was by design that we built up the environmental services fund balance to be able to do that. But now that that's happened, right, that's why you're seeing that decrease. You're also seeing general fund go up and trend downward as well as the utility fund. Now on the general fund, it was also intentional on our part to have excess fund balance because we, for a few years, were planning for that historic pay program. And so we intentionally build up the fund balance to be able to afford the historic pay program that went into effect in October. I think that's very, very important because I could see how from the outside looking in, it may appear that we were able to make that happen by magic out of nowhere. And it was a combination of thinking outside the box with the subcommittee, but also a combination of staff proactively letting that excess grow to be able to cover these increased commitments. But now that that's also done, we're seeing what you see here in fiscal year 27, which is a drastically reduced cushion in the general fund and the utility fund. that is something that we need to be mindful of. And I don't mention this to be doom and gloom. I mentioned this because I think it's part of my responsibility to highlight this trend and to convey to you that this is why having these conversations about the utility rate study are important. That's why having conversations about our property tax rate strategy are important because we want to make sure that we're proactive and develop a plan that does not put us in a position that other cities are in of having shortfalls or having deficits. So to that end, some things to also be mindful of moving forward, of course, are just the overall economy. I alluded to the utility rate study. We are also embarking on a solid waste rate study because our garbage rates have actually not decreased in a longer period of time. And so that's another conversation that we're gonna have to have at some point. And we will have to lean on your direction on how you wanna approach those. I already alluded to the fact that we may need to make some changes to our health insurance plans. And then of course, there's always the need to be mindful of our CIP. We do know that we have some pretty large projects on the horizon, some of which are already accounted for in our CIP, Guy Grant, North Street, and then others that haven't. The remodel for this complex hasn't really been contemplated for. We know we're gonna have to either relocate or renovate a fire station at some point or two. And so that's also something that we're gonna have to work creatively on over the next 12 to 18 months. to ensure that the next three to five years are as fruitful and productive as the last three to five years have been. Any questions on any of those things that we need to be mindful of?

I got anything? I have a question about garbage trucks. How often do we buy garbage trucks?

I'll defer to garbage man.

Garbage man.

So originally, we did seven years on the trucks. We worked hard to push them out to nine years. But with the automated trucks and the arms and stuff, we had to kind of draw that back in because it's so hard to get the parts and everything in a timely manner. And so the downtimes push us back. We're back to seven years on automated trucks. Rear loaders, we run about 10 years. Brush trucks, about the same, 10 years.

Thank you. And that's always part of those rate studies. So part of what always goes into these rate studies is these consultants, they get a good sense of what are those capital needs that you have and they try and make recommendations on rates that can get us to affording those things. Any other questions or concerns on things that we need to be mindful of moving forward? Okay, so I'll wrap up with just big picture reminders. So of course tonight is the presentation of the budget. We will have a budget work session should a conversation need to be had, which clearly there will be one on the stormwater utility. But any other item that needs to be discussed or that you have concerns about or want to reassess or whatever the case may be, please give us a heads up prior to the 18th so that we can plan accordingly for a fruitful conversation. Because if any adjustments are needed, we need to make those during this timeline. On September 1st, we will have an official vote on the budget, as well as a public hearing on the tax rate and an official vote on the tax rate ordinance, which is slightly different than what the action item is on the agenda today. Then on September 8th, we will have a special council meeting, which will include a final vote on the budget, as well as an additional public hearing on both the budget and the tax rate. And then of course, the budget goes into effect on October 1. Now, as is the case every year and has been the case specifically the last few years, our budget's available online for your review. We do have a physical copy of the budget that will be made available at our city secretary's office for anybody that wants to come in and look over it in person. If you prefer a physical copy of the budget, we can certainly print one out, but we have found it to be more useful to... have it electronically and available. And so it will be available on our website. You'll be able to actually easily find it on our homepage, or if you want to directly type in the URL, you can do that, or you can scan the QR code, and hopefully that works. I didn't get a chance to test it. Okay, thank you. That was close. And so with that, that wraps up my holistic budget presentation, and happy to answer any other questions you might have.

Any questions? I know it's always a lot to absorb coming in, and I'm sure we'll all spend some more time with it. So appreciate all the work that went into working on it from finance team and SSU and your team.

Absolutely, this isn't an action item?

Correct, correct. But we do need to go back up then, if there's nothing further on the reports, then we'll go back up to action item E2 for the proposed tax rate, correct?

Yes, sir.

Okay, all right, then we'll move back to action item E2, Ms. Hilbert.

Etude is a resolution proposing the tax rate, scheduling public hearings, and scheduling a vote to adopt the tax rate for fiscal year 2026-2027. Okay.

So we've seen the tax rate that was presented. Do you want to walk through the change?

Yeah, just a few remarks. And so the tax rate that was included in my budget presentation is a tax rate of 0.4538. per 100 valuation. It is a slight change to what was included in the agenda packet. That had to do with the fact that we were made aware this afternoon that there was about $16 million worth of exemptions on mineral rights that were excluded from the original certified tax rolls. And so that is now accounted for. And so what you have in front of you in the form of an updated aim reflects that change. And so the introduction of that new exemption that was missing increases the proposed tax rate very minimally to the .4538 from what was in the packet. Still a decrease of over two cents from what we have today, but there will have to be an amendment on the floor in order to make that change.

Right, so what we'll need to do is get a motion as second on the resolution as presented, then we'll get a motion as second, vote on the amendment, and then go back and vote on the amended motion, if that makes sense. So to start that process, is there a motion with respect to item E2 as presented in the packet?

I move to adopt.

Second. Okay. We've got a motion and a second on E2. Is there any discussion on that before I ask for any other motions? All right. Ms. Scott, I believe you may have a motion to amend. I'm psychic this way.

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Due to a revision in the certified tax roll information received from the appraisal district, I move that we amend the resolution to approve the proposed property tax rate to be $0.4538 per $100 valuation for the fiscal year 2026 to 2027. Thank you, Ms. Scott.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right. I've got a motion and a second on the amendment. Are there any discussions on the amendments?

Seeing none, all in favor of the amendment say aye.

Aye. Any opposed? And the amendment then is approved. So now we have a motion and a second on the motion as amended. And I can call for the vote on that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that should take care of it. Ms. Boone, did I miss anything there?

That was perfect. Thank you.

All right, again, look at those things as guidelines rather than rules sometimes. All right, I believe that concludes our agenda items. Mr. Garza, I believe we will have a brief executive session?

Yes, sir, brief, I promise.

All right, very good. Well, then it is 7.03. Let's take a 10-minute break, and we will reconvene executive session at 7.13.

City Council recess or executive session on the fourth day of August 2026 at 7.03 p.m. Subject matter is as follows. Texas Government Code 551.087, 551.072, and 551.071.