City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. Welcome to our meeting for December 16th, 2025, our last meeting of the year. Ms. Hilbrick, will you please call the roll? Yes, sir. Councilman De la Garza? I am present.

Councilman Kider? Here. Councilwoman Butler? Present. Councilwoman Scott? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Young? Here. And Mayor Crocker? Here. If you would, please rise, join me for the pledges, followed by a moment of silence. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. Thank you. Please be seated.

[clears throat and cough] All right. Again, welcome everyone. We will jump straight into our agenda this evening and we'll start with item B1, announcements and reminders. Mr. Garza, do you have anything for us this evening? Good evening, Mayor and Council. I do have several announcements for you this evening. I want to begin by reminding the public that all non-emergency city offices will be closed on Wednesday, December 24th and Thursday, December 25th in observance of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Offices will reopen at 8:00 a.m. on Friday, December 26th. [snorts]

All non-emergency city offices will be closed Thursday, January 1st as well in observance of New Year's Day. Offices will reopen at 8:00 a.m. on Friday, January 2nd. In relation to those holidays, garbage normally collected on Thursday, December 25th will be picked up on Wednesday, December 24th. Curbside recycling and yard waste scheduled for Thursday, December 25th will be collected Saturday, December 27th. All collection scheduled for Friday, December 26th will continue as scheduled. Extra holiday trash will be collected during your regular trash day on the week of December 29th through January 2nd. And yard waste, lastly, yard waste will not be collected December 29th through January 2nd to accommodate those extra garbage collection services. And lastly, the Victoria Public Library will be closed on December 24th and 25th and reopen at regular hours on December 26th. I know that sounds like a lot and so for more information, you of course can visit our website victoriatx.gov um for more information. In addition, on behalf of our Convention Visitors Bureau, the last day to check in to participate in our You'll Love Shopping Victoria campaign is Saturday, December 20th. The drawing for gift bags will take place on December 22nd. To join before the promotion end, head to discovervictoriatexas.com and click on You'll Love Shopping Victoria.

[snorts]

On behalf of CVB, we'd also like to invite the public to uh help us ring in 2026 at the annual New Year's Eve Blast Off that'll take place in Riverside Park from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Enjoy live music from Crowbars the Band and Velvet Drive along with inflatables, a free photo booth, and face painting and giveaways from Discover Discover Victoria. Grab a bite to eat from some of Victoria's favorite food trucks on site and find a great seat in Riverside Stadium for a front row view of the fireworks show at 9:00 p.m. And lastly, on behalf of Environmental Services, all residents who participated in a Keep Victoria Beautiful Cleanup event in 2025 are invited to join us on Thursday, January 22nd from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Victoria Community Center Annex for the annual Keep Victoria Beautiful Volunteer Appreciation event. Um this is always a great event um that of course honors all of our volunteers throughout the year and so we look forward to doing that once again and hopefully you're able to join us as well. Those are all the announcements I have for this evening, Mayor. All right, thank you, Mr. Garza. We will then move to public and employee recognitions and we will start with item 2A, recognition of outgoing board or commission member, Ms. Silberg. Yes, sir. Council and staff would like to recognize Ms. Sarah Zeller. Ms. Zeller served on the Library Advisory Board from 2022 to 2025. The city appreciates your willingness to serve community, ma'am, and presents you with this plaque in appreciation of your time and service. Thank you very much for this recognition and for the opportunity to serve on the board. Um I grew up in Victoria and my mom took us to the public library at least once a month. It's where I introduced myself to lots of great mystery series and Billy and Blaze and American Girls and all these other wonderful books. Um I'm so thankful that we have a library in Victoria. My interest in serving on the board was

sparked by my own children, um taking them to the library frequently and wanting to see the library be the best it can be for the people of Victoria. Um I wish all the best to the ongoing uh board members. I know they'll do a great job. Thank you to Jessica and her staff for all of their hard work. Thanks to all of you for the opportunity and uh to Mr. Buckner for voting me in on the board. Thank you. [applause] Thank you, Ms. Zeller. We appreciate your service to our community. Thank you. Mr. Garza, do you have any other public employee recognitions for us? I do have a couple of employee uh recognitions.

Okay. I want to first introduce to you and to the public our uh new assistant director uh with our Parks and Recreation Department, Randy D. Hurdy. Uh he has been hired as our Parks Maintenance and Golf Services um assistant director. As you know, recently we restructured our Parks and Recreation Department and now has two assistant directors with Kate Garcia recently being promoted to the second. In this role, he will oversee the city's park maintenance operations and Riverside Golf Course, ensuring that facilities are well maintained and meet the community's needs. DeHurdy previously DeHurdy previously served the City of Madison Parks and Recreation Department for 7 years, starting as a rec aid and working his way up to the role of operations superintendent. Parks and Rec is a second career. Um he had a very successful business prior to that and thus has over 25 years of personnel and business management experience that we look forward uh to taking advantage of in his new role. And so Randy, if you wouldn't mind giving a 20-minute speech.

[laughter] Well, good evening, Mayor and Council, City Manager. I just want to say thank you for the opportunity. Uh it's an honor to be here in Victoria working with y'all. Um in the 7 days I've been here, found out how a great staff that we've got at Parks and Rec. And just thank you for the opportunity and then remind the public come out and visit our great parks. And thank you. Okay. Thanks, Randy. [applause]

Uh recently I had the sun Recently I had an opportunity to uh attend our Victoria Police Department's promotional ceremony that took place on December 4th um and it was very very inspiring. Um right now, there are a lot of great things going on with our police department, you know, ranging from the new public safety headquarters facility nearing completion to just the enhanced pay program that went into effect on October. Um Interim Chief Feder has [snorts] done a tremendous job um leading that department. And part of that, of course, is having the right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus. And certainly this promotional ceremony um falls within that. And so I want to recognize and ask them to stand if they're present um to recognize their promotions. Uh James Collins, who has been with the VPD for 16 years, was was promoted to sergeant and will supervise the training and recruiting unit. Um Robert Dial, who has been with VPD for 17 years, was promoted to lieutenant and will serve as the B Company Watch Commander for Patrol. And I believe he's here. So Robert, thank you. Congratulations.

[applause]

And uh Mike Hernandez or uh Racket? Big Racket. Big Racket. Big Racket. Thanks for the clarification. He's been with VPD for 36 years, has been promoted to captain, and will serve as a patrol division commander. These leaders will play a key role in VPD's bright future and we look we we look forward to their leadership. Uh words can't can't begin to describe um just the feeling that everybody in the room felt listening to their passionate speeches as as as they they received these promotions earned these promotions, I should say. Um they're very committed, very loyal to our department, to our community. We are blessed to have them um protecting and serving our community. So I look forward for their leadership and hopefully um under Chief Feder's Interim Chief Feder's leadership and their promotions, we can continue to um encourage the our younger officers to make a long career out of this cuz we have a great community, great department, um and there's obviously opportunities to progress. And so congratulations and uh I we wish you all the best.

[applause]

That's all I have, Mayor. All right, thank you. We'll move on then. Are there any items from council this evening? Seeing none. Okay, I we will jump into citizens' communications. I have quite a few cards this evening. So just as a reminder uh to those of you who intend to speak, please uh keep your comments at 3 minutes just for the sake of uh time uh for all involved. So we will start with Mr. Stephen Moses. Welcome, Mr. Moses. Thank you very much. I don't have anything in front of me. I want to address the honorable council and the mayor. I always wish the best for y'all. Uh just want to say that uh I did try to make an appointment uh with the new interim chief, but uh I I was denied an appointment. [clears throat] So you do have what I have given you from 2 weeks ago. And uh that is part of protocol for the police department to uh fill out

[clears throat]

either uh yes or no uh concerning what's what's on there. And uh since I can't address the police department or the head, I I will continue to do my best to make sure that that is uh what y'all have there is proper protocol as a part of the Victoria Police Department, that it will be signed either yes or no. And I of course I would accept whatever it says on there. Uh I will continue to do my best for my loved ones that I miss and I love very much. And

[clears throat] that's about all I have to say. Um I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. God bless y'all. Thank you. Same to you, sir. Thank you for your comments. Uh the next card I have is Ms. Wilma Edwards. Welcome, Ms. Edwards. Always good to see you. Good evening. Everybody, good evening. Good evening. Good evening. I don't know if you remember the last time I came, I was on I put myself on a payroll. I put myself on a payroll. You remember that? Somebody did. I haven't received any money yet.

[laughter]

But I'll keep I'm I'm concerned about the people in Queen City Park. And I went out again and found some land that could be used to build a building. And somebody was telling me you can build a building, but then when you put the people in there, you have to have somebody to be responsible for those people that goes in there. So, I'm asking you to find some places to move those people out of Queen City. Let them know there's a better place than where they are. And I And I thought about that, you know, they don't even know what a good park look like. So, I don't think they ever was taught or even had a good place to go. So, I'm just concerned that if we If we do something, I think I said I use the word just do something let them know that they care for you. Now, we went over and talked to some of the people and some of them want to get out of that position, but where they going to go? So, some of them came to Civil City. But they all went into one building, one house. So, it's a need up for us to do something. Please just do something so they they know that we care for them. All of people over there is not on drugs. All of those people Some of those people over there have some talents. They need some encouragement. And I'm doing my best to do that, but I need a little more help.

[laughter]

And the land that I was talking about this free 702 North Nevada. I know y'all know about Dick's Food Store was closed down. And I have the real estate address y'all can call and see if we can afford it. And then you have 104 South Nevada. And on that place, the land is just filled up with grass and that's on the south side of town. And nobody's doing anything about that. And my desire is that we as Victory citizen stop talking and let's do something. So, the people would know that we care about them. You know, you got to show people. You just can't say I love you and I'm going to do this and do all that, but you have to show us. And that's our job is to help each other. Thank you so much, Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. And I'm going to give this I'm going to give this address to our Mayor so he can give it back to give it to you. Thank you. Thank you.

[clears throat]

So, next card I have is from Steven Baca. Welcome, sir. Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilman. I'm here to uh as a father to advocate for my children as well as uh uh the community's children. So, this is in regards to Victoria Public Library again. We were here last meeting. And there's been an opposition out there that's moving against what we're trying to do here as far as with these books that sit in the child section. So, we're not just to make it clear, we're not trying to ban these books. We're not trying to not make them available at all. We're trying to move them from the children's section a few feet down the down the hall to the adult section. And that's where they should be because what's in these books are not appropriate for children. Maybe if you had time, you can look at them and see for yourself what's being uh what's being put in the children's section. But there was a few removed. That helps. Uh I say removed, I'm not sure if they were completely removed from the library or out of the section of the children's area. But there's still a lot more work to be done. So, since I got the time, banning an act of officially prohibiting something from being done, used, or allowed. Again, we're not trying to ban, we're trying to move these these books that are nonsense from the children's section to the adult section. Some of the opposition is is is using the term uh education and freedom to allow these books to be there. It's kind of like it's under a guise. It It's It's a loophole. It's no There's no education in there. These kids don't need to read about some of the stuff that's in these books. They need to gain knowledge, more adventures, nothing of the nothing of the kind that they're

trying to put out there. As I read some of the opposition's posts, I run across a comment that's more common than not. It's about these are our truths. These are our truths. This our truths. That. These are full-blown adults saying these are our truths, okay? Be that as it may, your truths are different from other people's truths. And why voice those truths to the children? The children don't They're They're innocent. They don't need to know what you your troubles are that you had as a child, your personal self. They may not relate to that. You're causing more confusion than anything. Um when it comes to racism, if somebody was racist to you as a child, doesn't mean you're going to need to put out a book that promotes racism because that's sending the wrong message. If somebody was racist If you experience any kind of ginger confusion as a child, that doesn't mean all the children are are are going through that as well. So, just look at the emails we've been sending y'all. We sent y'all a few examples. Uh they speak for themselves. And again, we're not talking about banning it. You know, they're going to be available on Amazon. Check your Kindles. They're They're available there. You want them, buy them. Don't use the Don't use the citizens' tax dollars to pay for this this nonsense on our shelves, all right? And that's pretty much it. Thank y'all. Thank you, Mr. Buck. Uh my next card is McKenzie Buck. Good evening. Welcome. Good evening. Um my husband just spoke about the opposition growing to uh what we're doing at the Victoria Parents Book Coalition. I know y'all have been getting emails. Um I believe maybe some of them are here tonight. Um y'all already know our purpose and what our goals are. I just want to read to you some of the books that our opposition want back in the library or books that are currently in our children's section

right now available for our kids. Um and I I emailed y'all. Um I'm not going to say the names here, but I emailed y'all the names and some of the pictures that are in these books. Um one of these books is called Uncle Uncle, a Drag Queen Oh. It's a story about drag queen. Basically, a boy who had a drag queen for an uncle. If you've ever been to a drag show or you know about drag shows, drag shows are not for children. Um another book that talks about babies being racist. Um I don't believe babies are racist. Uh I don't think we need to promote to children about racism. About um some people being oppressed or oppressors because of the color of their skin. There is a puberty book that uh had detailed images of genitalia, which actually goes against the library's um the library's own policy. So, I don't even know how it made it into the children's section. Um and it has things about transgender, non-binary, and queer children. Um There is a book currently in there right now, a a puberty book for girls that again mentions that, you know, you don't you maybe you were born a girl, but you're not a girl, and has links and information for trans youth, which obviously causes confusion. Um some girls are tomboys. It does not mean that you're trans if you don't if you're not a girly girl. I grew up where you had tomboys, not transgender boys. Um one of the most egregious books I actually found today that I cannot believe is in our library for children um is a book about animals, which the cover seems Oh, it's about animals. This book, and pardon my language, this book shows animal pictures, detailed illustrations of animals having sex, deers having threesomes, a bear

masturbating, detailed illustrations of animal genitalia, comparing different penis sizes of animals, um and a giraffe holding a pride flag as if animals think that way. All of these books our children Can we Can we just stop sexualizing our children? Our children we don't need taxpayer dollars to promote this ideology to children. They need to come to the library to learn, to be enriched. If you want to buy those books for your children, that is your right, but it is not the library's job and not our tax funds' job to do so. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Buck. My next card is Cindy Zeppelin, I believe. Is it Zeppelin? Did I get that right?

You got it right. It's Zeppelin.

good. Welcome. Um I have uh petitions here signed by If you'd hand them to the officer there. Thank you. And there's over 500 signatures on there. Um there are more signatures on this petition than there are members of this group that want to ban books. This is a matter of respecting educated, experienced city-county employees over an individual or group without the required, relevant education or experience to make decisions for our community. The leader of this group just started a book club to read the classics because she herself has not read them. Will we be letting a person or small group make decisions about our water supply instead of the people we hired for their expertise? Will we let a person from our community uh take away the position of our road repair workers because they feel that we are repairing roads that they do not value? We have qualified people working in our public service areas and if the book banner wants to be in charge of a library collection she needs to earn a degree in library science and apply for the job. And maybe she can get started after reading Jane Eyre or 1984. I'm here to speak up for our library, our whole community, and our city government's ability to interview and hire the best people for the job based on knowledge and experience. Thank you so much for hearing me. Thank you, Ms. Epling. My next card is Michael Vondra.

Good evening, Mr. Vondra. Um good evening, council, city manager, um and the rest of uh crew. Um I'm Michael Vondra. I live at 2107 North Ben Jordan. Um I just don't think it's right that the city of Victoria has to pay the whole 800,000 since they did don't own it, you know, it seems like the the uh commissioner's court should have to pay at least 400,000, at least half. It kind of reminds me I went on a boat trip with with my buddy and he would take me fishing once a month and he wanted me to buy a new tire for his his boat. I said, "You own the boat and the trailer is yours, you know." And he says, "Yeah, but you go with me once a month." So, I said, "Okay, I'll pay for half of it." Half of the new tire and that's kind of how I I think it should be and uh I don't see why they couldn't just build a new library at the DPS, you know, for maybe 4 million instead of paying 800,000 for um um a roof job that's not going to be high quality, just a jerry-rigged roof and and that's just the way I feel about it. And uh also we continue having problems with loose dogs and um I would like to see animal control animal care services enforce the rules. They're not enforcing the rules. Uh one example is at nursery when a a dog nearly killed another dog and they didn't even write him a ticket, you know, one of those $286 tickets. You you know, where they go to the municipal court or the JP and just just a a warning, you know. And the fines are so lax, it encourages people uh to run the dogs loose. $25 fine if you run your dog loose and it's a has all the credentials, you know, with the dog is fixed and $75 if it's not fixed and I I I think they

should start writing those $286 tickets to the JP and municipal court and let the judges uh take care of that. They've been way too lenient and it's not our job to chase dogs down and give it to the owners and say, "Oh, is this your pitbull?" You know, and I ain't going to chase no 70-lb pitbull and go door-to-door looking for who it belongs to. That's animal care services and uh a lot of them won't take dogs. Uh some people in the trailer park wanted to give some cats to them, they said no. Uh to apartment complex, some dogs, they said no. And that's why the intake is much lower because they're not accepting that many dogs and cats. They expect us to foster care them or anything like that and a lot of times we don't have the places or the manpower to do it. Thanks and have a good day. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Vondra.

[clears throat] Next card I have is Jeff Buckner. Did I pronounce that right? [clears throat]

It was close. It was close. Welcome, sir. Yeah, good to see y'all. Uh thank you for having me, mayor and and council and Merry Christmas to all of y'all. Um very different position to be in tonight. Come uh just ask for your consideration to join the sales tax development corporation. I think that my experience uh serving on in the past as well as on the VEDC board and knowing about the infrastructure in the city would uh would help out a little bit on the sales tax. Um I can get hit the ground running from day one just knowing the issues already and uh understanding where the city is. So, thank you all and y'all have a blessed Christmas. Same to you. Thank you, Mr. Buckner. Uh my next card is William Myers. Good evening, Mr. Myers. Welcome. Good evening, Council. Thank you all for having me. Uh, like Jeff, here to request consideration for uh filling a spot on the sales tax development corporation board. Uh, I've been in Victoria 7 years. Uh, worked for Frost Bank all those years. I'm currently the market president and uh prior to that, formal education, I have a master's in economics, served on several boards here in the community. Uh, I think my wife, my daughter, and I are committed to this community and I'd like to use my skill set to better it and grow it in the best I can. So, thank you all. Merry Christmas. Thank you, Mr. Myers. Same to you. And then the final card I have tonight is Michael Reyes. Good evening, sir. Welcome. Good evening. Thank you. Um, I'm Michael Reyes. I reside in uh Victoria at 122

Creekside Drive. Uh, Mr. Mayor and council members, um, just briefly I'd like to say that uh, I am interested in serving on the tax board uh as well. Um, [snorts] I recently moved back to Victoria. I've lived in Dallas for about 20 years and um I've worked in most major cities in the country and over a dozen countries um overseas and I can tell you that having uh, a vibrant community um, city it really makes it great to um and inspiring to get up and go to work every day. And so, um I have owned several multi-million dollar uh businesses and I know a thing or two about um paying dues. Um, I've um I also um am thinking about consolidating Well, I've been thinking about and working towards consolidating my businesses in pharma, manufacturing, uh, AI and biotech uh here to Victoria. So, um if I am not um put on this board, I know that my good friend uh Mayor Buck Knight and William Myers, who's my banker, uh will take care of it. So, thank you all very much. Have a blessed holiday. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your comments. Thank you. All right, that will then That is all the cards I have, so we'll close out citizens communication and we will move on to section C and we'll begin with uh This is items with public hearings and we'll begin with item C1. Item C1 is the 2024 CDBG Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, or the CAPER. There's no vote on this item. It's just simply a report. Good evening, Mr. Winow. Good evening, Mayor and Council. So, tonight we are going over the 2024 Consolidated Annual Performance Report, the end of the year report that we have for our CDBG grant. Um, as a reminder, this uh 2024 covers

the um October 1st, 2024 to September 30th, 2025 program year. So, the Consolidated Report is the end of the year report that um evaluates our progress made uh carrying out the community development programs and activities that we identified in our annual action plan. It's required that we have a public hearing before we submit to HUD and there is no um formal action required from y'all. Okay, so for our city CDBG activities, we had our administration, which we closed out, where we will move remaining funds to another CDBG activity. Our neighborhood demolition and clearance, we had two substandard structures were demolished using 2024 funds. Um, we'll keep that program open until funds are depleted. And our Bronson Park um sidewalk installation project is complete and we're just waiting on any final invoices and IDIS draw from there. But, the project is complete. For public facilities that we funded this year, uh Boys and Girls Club, their roof restoration, um they came in under budget, completed their project. Uh, Homero Joseph, we completed outdoor security with their fencing. Um, came in under budget as well as along with Hospice of South Texas. And Meals on Wheels, uh and then Mid-Coast, they spent all their money on their industrial kitchen and laundry facility project. And the Salvation Army unfortunately had to cancel their um program this year because they had some staffing uh capacity issues, but um we'll reallocate all those unallocated funds to future CDBG activities. And then for prior years, we had from 2023 funds, we had our affordable housing program for first-time homebuyer buyer down payment and closing cost assistance. We assisted one first-time

home buyer. Um, we'll keep that program open until all funds are depleted for that one. We keep looking for that unicorn out there um, for those first-time home buyers. We also had a affordable housing program, the owner-occupied home rehab. We assisted seven households, um, with home rehabs. Um, the remaining funds will be reallocated, um, along with you'll see down in 2021, um, owner-occupied, we also assisted six. So, in total for rehab, we rehabbed 13 households. Um, and all homes were completed. Um, the rehab work was completed, uh, this program year. And then neighborhood demolition, we had past, uh, funds from 23 and from 22 and from 21. So, we had three substandard structures demolished from 23 funds, one from 22 funds, and then, uh, where is it? One from the 21 funds. So, in total, I believe it was seven. We demolished seven substandard structures, um, this past year with our demo funds. Um, we will keep that, uh, program open until we deplete all those funds. And then past year public facility projects, the first phase of the Mid-Coast Family Services Day Center/Resource House, um, they completed that project as well. And then our public services, um, all of them completed their their programs. Um, Billy T. Cattan assisted 25 individuals with their behavioral intervention program. Boys & Girls Club, 34 children/youth with their summer child care program and after school program. We community action with their rental assistance program helped 19 households with rental assistance.

Uh, Food Bank was able to assist 126 children and deliver 2,566 meal packs with their program this year. Uh, CASA was able to assist 25 children under their care. Uh, Gulf Bend Wellness Center, they assisted 10 individuals at their wellness community. Meals on Wheels assisted eight individuals and delivered 714 meals this past program year. OLV conference of Saint Vincent de Paul, one of our new subrecipients, um, assisted 25 households with, um, utility assistance. Uh, and then Salvation Army also had to cancel their public service program again due to their staffing capacity. And then United Way assisted 22 individuals with their community connections program and VISD Kids Connection assisted 50 children, um, with their project success program. Oh, I'll go back. We had a goal with all of them combined. The goal was to assist, um, 325. We assisted 344 total, so we exceeded that by 19. And then for important dates, we had the public comment period on this, uh, report from November 22nd through December 20 December 9th. And then we're [clears throat] having our public hearing tonight. And then we have the deadline to submit the CAPER by December 29th, but I plan to have that submitted by the end of the week, for sure. So, [clears throat] and then some program year 2025 updates for this next year, which started technically started October 1st, um, but we couldn't start right away. We had the government shutdown October 1st. Um, all non-essential, uh, federal agencies were closed, which included the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Uh, plan year 2025 grant entitlements

were not sent out, um, to grantees prior to the shutdown, so we didn't have our grants agreement yet. Uh, then the federal government reopened on November 12th. San Antonio our San Antonio field office, um, they're currently they're work they're currently working on a skeleton crew, uh, through the end of the year. And all HUD all HUD field offices are unable to process grant agreements at the moment. And our HUD headquarter the HUD headquarters has to approve them to send that to us before we can get that signed. There was no timeline, but we did receive our grant agreement yesterday. So, we are getting that signed and as soon as we have it signed, we have to send it back to our HUD San Antonio field office and then they'll sign it, get it processed, and then send back the fully executed grants agreement. I signed it today.

signed it. All right, perfect. So, we'll send that tomorrow. That was breaking news there. That's breaking news there. Perfect. [laughter]

Uh, and then, And then um, so um so then what when once we get that back, I'll start setting up all the activities, getting all the environmentals done before we start um executing local sub-recipient grant agreements. That's all I have. All right. Any questions? Nope. All right. Thank you, Mr. Winne. Then with that, [clears throat] I will open up a public hearing with respect to item C1. If anyone wishes to address council on this item, please come forward. Yes. Coming up. How you doing? Good to see you. Welcome. You too, Mr. Mayor. Council, my name is Brett Jones. I'm the CEO of Mid-Coast Family Services, but you may recognize me as Drosselmeyer from Victoria Ballet Theaters The Nutcracker. Um but that's not what I'm here to talk about. We were a very proud and grateful recipient of the CDBG funds this year and the previous year and actually many years in into the past, we've completed many projects alongside the city.

[clears throat]

This year we completed the project in April of our community hub, our community resource hub. And we're really proud of the work that's that's being done there and I wanted to tell you a little bit about it. Um the community resource hub originally started just to be a day center for homeless people and it is very much that, but we've also done other things there like hosted the um Victoria Homeless Coalition or the Homeless Coalition of uh Golden Crescent, name changed there. Uh their meetings, we have parenting classes, we also host a municipal outreach docket there. And we try to open it up to any community meetings that need to happen, but primarily it is a homeless day center. And every day homeless individuals who live like in Queen City Park come in and they can take a shower, they can get food when we have food. We don't have a budget for food, but organizations and businesses have been very generous to us, so we have food to give to them. They can do laundry, we have lockers, they can get their mail there. But kind of more importantly, it's a great place for them to connect and find community. Um since we opened in April, we have served 321 unique individuals, unique homeless people in Victoria and we're really proud of that. We have served them with over 4,200 individual services and those individual services would be something like they get to take a shower and I don't know about you, but for me a hot shower can be life-changing. Um but I'm just here to say thank you. We're grateful for the partnership and we really look forward to more in the future as we continue to make Victoria a hospitable and compassionate place. Thank you. Well, thank you for your comments. We appreciate all that y'all do. All right, is there anyone else that would wish to address council on this matter? All right. Seeing no one, then I will close the public hearing on item C1. And we don't need to vote on this, correct? Okay. All right. With that then, we will jump to section D, the consent agenda, Ms. Hilburn. Yes, sir. Item D1 is the adoption of

minutes for the regular meeting held on December 2nd, 2025. Item D2 is a resolution awarding the Pine Street Plant number two demolition project to Leland Landformers LLC in the amount of 117,000. And item D3 is a resolution amending amending our amending the authorizing resolution for the FY2026 Truancy Prevention and Intervention Program to add the assigned grant number as required by the Office of the Governor. Thank you, Ms. Hilburn. I'll entertain entertain any motions with respect to the consent agenda. Motion to approve consent agenda as read. [clears throat]

I'll second. I've got a motion and a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And the consent agenda is approved. All right. We will [clears throat] now move into action items and we'll begin with item E1. Item E1 is a resolution to appoint or reappoint members to the Victoria Sales Tax Development Corporation Board of Directors. Good evening, Mayor and Council. The resolution before you tonight will appoint one council member and two citizens to the Victoria Sales Tax Development Corporation Board of Directors. So, the terms of four members on that board, it's a seven-member board, four members serve um uh uh they're two-year terms that expire on the odd years and the other three expire on the even years. So, uh the term limits uh the mayor does serve for the duration of his term as mayor. And directors uh may not serve more than three consecutive two-year terms. And uh former directors are not eligible to serve again until they abstain for a minimum of 1 year from the date of their term expiration. Um the directors originally appointed to fill a vacancy can uh for a partial term may serve uh three more full terms if the vacancy is less than 12 months, but this time we're talking about full terms uh for all three terms or all three positions.

for

So, currently, uh Mr. Russell Dempsey, J.P. Hall, uh Casey Cullen, Sherry McShaffrey, uh Councilman Lofgren, uh Councilwoman Butler, and Mayor Crocker serve on this board. And um as you see at the end of this month, uh three of them are expiring. Um so, uh Mr. Dempsey, uh Councilman Lofgren, and Ms. McShaffrey's terms are expiring. So, uh as I stated pre- previously, we just need to appoint one council member to replace Mr. Lofgren because um he unfortunately has termed out on that board and cannot serve any longer. Uh we talked about term limits just a second ago. And then we would need also two citizens to fill the position. Um Mr. Dempsey has termed out as well and cannot uh is not eligible for re-appointment due to term limits. And as I stated previously, the terms will end in 2 years, so on December 31st of 2027. And Ms. McShaffrey is eligible for re-appointment and has expressed a desire to be re-appointed if you should so choose. So, we did uh receive several applications for um the positions for the two uh citizen-related positions. So, um from Adam Daughtry, Jeff Bucknight, Michael Reyes, William Myers, David Murphy, and Sherry McShaffrey. So, we heard from a few of them tonight. Um so, we had a really good pull of applicants this time. So, it's going to be [clears throat] a tough decision. So. The ballots were placed on the dais. Um let me move back so you can see the applicants. The uh ballots were placed in the dais. They do include your name because you can't vote by secret ballot, and the ballots will be in my office for review if anyone should so choose to review those. And the um you'll be asked to circle the name of the two applicants that you want to serve in the citizens' positions, and the mayor will discuss the council position with you. Um but for this for the two citizen

positions, you'll use your ballot to circle those. Um just remember that the um individual has to receive four votes or a majority in order to um have their name listed in the resolution. So. I like that tie. Thank you. This is where [snorts] we need that Jeopardy music in the background. That was easy. With one vote, the names that will be listed in the ballot will be Jeff Bucknight and Sherry McShaffrey for the citizens' positions. And I'll let um Mayor Crocker [clears throat] talk to you about the

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Silver. And congratulations to those two. And to those that applied, thank you very much for stepping up. Um in the time that at least that I've been on council, this is the I think the deepest and most talented [laughter]

ballot that you know, that I've seen. So, thank you um all of you. A very tough choice. There's a lot of qualified individuals here. Uh and I would encourage you guys uh uh to apply for other positions within the city as well. I'm always looking for good help. So. Um and congratulations to Mr. Bucknight and Ms. McShaffrey. So. Then moving then, we'll need to appoint someone from council. Um I would like to uh take the opportunity to nominate uh Councilman Kidder uh for that position on the um on the sales tax board. I accept. Okay. Well, then I'll second. I was Well, unless you were seconding. I wasn't seconding. [laughter]

I was just letting the mayor know that We didn't ask you if you accept. No, I'm kidding. So, we have a nomination and a second. Are there any other nominations for a council member for appointment? Seeing none then, all in favor of Councilman Kidder being placed on the sales tax development corporation board, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And congratulations, Councilman Kidder. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. So, then I guess we will need a resolution that puts those three names in, and we'll need a motion on that and vote on that resolution as well, correct?

That's correct, sir. Okay. And I make Go ahead. I make that motion that we appoint Sherry McShaffrey, Jeff Bucknight, and Steven Kidder to the sales tax board. Second. All right. I've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Very good. Thank you, and congratulations to all. All right, we'll move on then to item E2. Item E2 is a resolution approving a construction contract with Rain King Incorporated to replace the roof of the Victoria Public Library building in the amount of 798,000. Mr. Welder, good evening. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for hearing me and it's as always a pleasure to see all of you. So, we're going to go through a kind of a lengthy presentation. Um I've been looking at this stuff for a little over a year, so I may run through some of the technical stuff quickly. If you do have questions about any of it, please stop me. Um and I'll do my best to explain. We'll get started with a little bit of a historic timeline. Um we started seeing the major roof failure occur um summer 2024. Um every every roof is going to have a few leaks here and there when they start aging. Um this roof was purchased that we have now in [clears throat] 2005. So, it's it's pretty old. Um but in the summer of 2024, we started seeing um a lot of a lot of failure areas in the roof. So, we um started to explore options to get that roof fixed or replaced. In the fall of 2024, um as usual, I tried to do it myself and quickly learned that uh it was a little bit over my head. So, we uh we went out uh to an engineering firm that specializes in building envelopes, meaning the entire exterior of a building, waterproofing, those sort of things. Um so, in in February of 2025, um we got a structural uh we got a uh a

roof evaluation completed and turned into us by the structural engineering firm uh with a construction estimate. Uh we used that engineering firm to help us develop a procurement. We went out for bids. Uh we received several. I think we had five. Um and we finalized the cost at that time. We'll get into those costs and what those scopes of work look like here in a little bit in the presentation, so you can see the differences uh from then and now. Um but after we finalized the cost, um a request was sent to the county for a cost sharing uh in the project. In fall of 2025, um which is pretty recently, we we uh heard back on that request and it was denied by the county. Um so, we began work with our contractor to decrease the scope and make this job a little bit more affordable while not sacrificing too much quality. And then winter 2025, here we are um bringing this contract to you. A quick excerpt from the interlocal agreement that I'll just read to you um from the agreement between the city and the county as far as the library is concerned. The city will assume 100% of the cost of the Victoria Public Library, including payment for insurance on the contents of the building. Major capital expenditures on the building at the cost level of $100,000 or more in any one year will be discussed between the city and county for an agreement on cost sharing. County will retain ownership of the property and improvements. So, on to our existing roof. Um what we have up there right now. The the total area of roof is 27,180 square feet. What is there is a uh recovery system. It's called a recovery system. Um the original roof is underneath this recovery system.

Um what is there that you see is a mechanically attached 40 mil PVC single ply membrane. Mil uh as it's used in roofing to describe the thickness of the membrane that is on the roof is defined as 1/1000 of an inch. So, this membrane that's on the roof now is 40/1000 of an inch. Um that roof is 20 years old as of this year. It's in poor condition. The original warranty on the roof was 15 years. So, we got a few more years out of it than than the warranty was worth. Um There are now multiple locations of water penetration. Um there is exposed HVAC ductwork that's in poor condition on the roof. I'll show you a couple of pictures. This picture is looking south towards Prosperity Bank um which you can see in the background. The roof, as you can see, this this sort of gray color is is the actual membrane. It was white. Um this is mold and and mildew and other things that have grown on it from water sitting on it and things like that. As you can see, it's very flat. There's very little pitch to the roof. So, water can pool. If you see the dark spot off to the right, that's an area where water ponds on the roof now. This is a picture showing some of the ductwork and how it's laid out exposed on the roof. And this the close-up one in particular has been wrapped with the roofing membrane. So, 20 years ago when this roof was installed they knew that this that this ductwork was a problem, so they were wrapping it with the membrane to try to keep it from leaking. Not all of the ducts are wrapped with this membrane, and and you can see the exposed exterior of them. They're cracked and rotted and very brittle. Um so, I'm sure that those are are areas that are leaking as well. Um current buildings are not built like this. Um when they build a new building, uh there isn't any ductwork up on the ceiling of the building or on the roof of the building.

[snorts]

So, our original solution in our first procurement document was to remove all of the existing roofing material, including the insulation, down to the decking, which is a lightweight concrete decking. We did testing on the decking to ensure that it was capable of withstanding the load and hadn't been damaged by water or anything else. Uh it passed with flying colors, so we know that the substructure is good. Um the idea was then to fasten new tapered insulation, and tapered is important because we were going to add pitch to the roof to help with drainage. Um this comes at some cost. The insulation that's on the roof now is only about an inch thick. Um and what was going to go back on the roof was going to be a minimum of 4 in thick to bring the building up to the um energy code requirements. Uh on top of the insulation would be a half-inch gypsum fiber cover board, and then an 80 mil single-ply PVC membrane. This membrane was a Cadillac membrane, as they call it in the roofing industry. It had uh a component called Evaloy in it, which would help it resist um breaking down in uh the environment that occurs when water ponds on the roof and the sunlight is magnified onto the roofing membrane. At that point, it becomes brittle underneath and can break um just from stepping on it or or anything like that. Um and in the original scope, we were going to replace all the existing ductwork with new ductwork um so that it would would, you know, be sealed off to the weather and things like that, which we learned a lot about this during the process, which I'll explain in the next slide, but uh we were also going to seal the parapet wall on the inside of the roof. Um on that picture, you can see that that that wall extends up. It's about 5 ft tall. Um we were going to rework all of the expansion joints in between the concrete, as well as put a coating on the inside of that wall. Um it would resist water penetration. We

were going to put a coping cap on top, and we were going to rework all of the caulking joints on the outside of the building, as well. So, the scope was pretty deep. We were going to try to waterproof the whole building. Um all of this for the cost of $1.487 million. Um so, after this is when we uh had the back and forth with the county. Um we went for some VE options, and what we're proposing now today um is to just basically a one-for-one swap. And this is allowed um after some conversations with uh Mr. Rick Madrid, uh we learned that that that this is an allowable um process to uh older facilities. Um we are but we are going to make some significant improvements to the HVAC. So, we were going to move remove the existing membrane and cover board, fasten a new cover board, and not go all the way down to the roof decking. Just leave the old roof there. Um we're going to install an induction weld a new 60 mil single-ply PVC membrane. PVC is important because the library is in a fire district, and you must have um materials on this building that are self-extinguishing. So, PVC, unlike a TPO roof, uh will not burn without a fuel source. So, it's self-extinguishing, effectively. Um and as you can see, we're kind of in the middle of the thickness range compared to where we are now and where we were going with the original scope. We are going to eliminate all of the exposed ductwork. Um the the air conditioning units will be will be raised, the ductwork removed, and we will set those units onto new curbs, and change the way that the air flows. They're all convertible, and they will the air will flow down and up instead of out to the side. Um so, everything that we have there will be back in service, but it will just be setting on top of a curb that acts as the duct. Therefore,

it is not exposed to weather at all. Um the vertical joint repairs we're going to keep in this job are going to be on the inside of the parapet wall and the top, but we are eliminating the coating. Um the new cost uh after the the VE um exercise is $798,000. This is a long-term solution. Um the scope of learn the scope of work aligns with current building codes. As I said, we we did speak with development services prior to um developing this scope of work. The job comes with a 2-year workmanship warranty, as well as a 20-year manufacturer warranty on the membrane itself. Um the construction timeline, if awarded today, um we would begin construction in January, probably mid to late January of 2026, and construction would be completed no later than May 30th, 2026. However, I feel like we would be a few weeks ahead of that schedule. So, that's um my presentation. Um let me know, please, if you have any questions. I'm happy to do my best to answer them. Questions for Mr. Welder at this point. Ms. Butler. For somebody that's not familiar [clears throat] with the challenges that we faced with the library, they might be asking, if they're watching at home, insurance, is there any insurance that plays into this, things like that. Can you help explain the reason that we're moving to this with this cost, and why there's not that Yeah, so um as far as Why would an insurance come Why would our insurance not be assisting in this? Think of somebody at home at their home, and what they think of when they think of roof replacement.

Right. Does that help, Roger?

Yeah, so yes, this is this is in in the normal replacement cycle. So, it's not due to any any uh act of God, natural event that would have damaged the roof. Um this is just due to its age uh and its weathered condition. So, there there is no if uh one event that occurred that would allow uh insurance to become involved in this. This is just a uh normal um regular roof replacement based on its its failure due to age. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Other questions about the roof and process. Can you go back um Yes. Let me see the the timeline. Accidentally. [clears throat] So, there we go. Good. So, I understand that the discussions that took place with the county uh because just for clarification, and this is a county-owned building. This building is not owned by the city. Um the discussions that took place with the county about uh the agreement that we have in place with them for these kind of large uh replacement items, um could either you or Mr. Garza, whoever walk us through kind of when that took place, and did that take place both when we had the $1.4 million option, and when we had the the option that's before us today, the $700,000 option? Sure, absolutely. Oh, excuse me. Yeah, I'll walk you through that, Mayor. Um I personally was the one that was engaging in those conversations with the with the county judge um in respect to the library roof. Um to your point, we began conversations with um the county shortly even before we completed the um structural uh report that was completed in February of 2025. Uh you know, to Roger's point, we started looking at improvements to the library in the fall, um stemming from just the operational issues that were observed by Jessica and her team last summer. Um and so, certainly those conversations began then um under the original scope,

if we can call it that. Um at that time, you know, there were conversations about splitting um the expense 50/50. Um you may recall $1.5 million, and so there were conversations about potentially splitting that 750/750. Um but as you're also aware, the interlocal agreement incorporates other components above and beyond the library. It incorporates components associated with fire and fire and EMS um on our side, and incorporates some components of animal control on the county side. Um and so, the more those conversations continued, um the more it became apparent that in order for there to be um um an agreement on the split of the library roof, we would have had had had conversations about other aspects of the agreement. Um and of course, we just were not in a position um to do that at that time. And then ultimately, when we um presented the um lower cost option, um that's when the request was basically just um denied um because of us um just not being ready to have conversations about other elements of the agreement, basically. And so, it it was presented as a single-item request, but the response back was what I'm hearing you say is we're not going to talk about the single item unless we can bring up a number of other things in the contract. That's correct. Okay. And just to give us a sense, I think those of us up here are somewhat aware. Mr. Welder, you can help us here. You know, we talked about the operational challenges uh that the condition the existing condition of the of the roof uh presents. Can you just kind of walk us through that uh kind of what's the problem

[laughter]

in terms of if you're in the building? Absolutely. Absolutely. In the building, if you actually go in there today on the floor on the main floor near the Main Street side of the building, there is a what we call it a rain bucket, but it's a trash can really, a huge trash can catching rainwater. It is damaging the drywall on the ceiling of the building. It is allowing water to come in several places on the main floor and if anybody's ever been in the upstairs office area, the ceiling grid has been removed from a whole section of the upstairs due to a massive leak that we have not been able to get slowed down in any way. Anytime it rains, people are scrambling to get buckets under where water is falling. It's potential to cause some electrical issues if it were to get on anything that would would have would be electrified. That could be a serious issue. Not to mention damaging carpet, drywall and other things like that. So, from a maintenance standpoint, it's it's pretty sad to go in there and see the brown spots and the holes in the ceiling and stuff like that and the missing ceiling grid. But also it's disruptive. I mean, if it's if it's raining in there folks in the library and you have staff running around trying to catch water that's falling inside the building. It is just not conducive to operations. And if this isn't fixed now, would you anticipate that this is just going to get worse? I mean, we're going to have worse and worse conditions with the roof.

sir. Yes, I I believe it would just continue on and and and get worse over time. More more leaks would show up. The the membrane is failing and it seems like each time that it rains, we have a new spot show up. Okay. Have we had any book damage as a result? None that I'm aware of. No, thankfully. Okay. None that I'm aware We're aware of. Okay. Any other questions for Mr. Welder? [clears throat] Thank you very much. I appreciate the information. Thank you all. [clears throat]

So, with that then, if there's a motion with respect to E2 and any discussion, we can begin that process. I'll make a motion to approve E2. I'll second that. All right. I've got a motion and a second with respect to item E2. Is there any discussion? Other than disappointment that we're bearing the full brunt of this, but our our citizens deserve this. So, we have to move forward. 100% agree. 100%. The like to get back to the issue of the interlocal and holding while they are tied in a in a maybe one contract, I don't understand how the others affect the roof on this building. Yeah. No, and that's a great point. I'm having I'm struggling with that when there's a responsibility to an asset that they own and not fulfilling that and watching that asset really decrease in an appraisal value, losing its value without it. I I I I struggle with that. I struggle with that being the responsibility of the citizens, the taxpayers of the city seeing as that it's a county owned asset. So, to that point, I would like to make this request from from staff. You know, I I know we're we're all familiar up here with the interlocal kind of some of the ins and outs. Some of the newer council members may may not have walked through it as much as some of us have, but I would like to request that you guys bring to us a presentation preferably sometime first quarter of next year and really let's take a deep dive in that interlocal agreement. I'd like to know some of the ins and outs. I'd like to know specifically

to the extent that we can to place dollar amounts, specific dollar amounts in the services that are provided by the city and services provided by the county cuz I want to get I think it would behoove us to take a look at that, dive back into that interlocal and figure out, okay, is this really what's is this really still a good a good contract? Obviously, that's been in place for a long time. I think probably predates [snorts] any of us even up here with some amendments here and there. But if I can make that request and we could get that on an agenda, I think that would be helpful for all of us. I mean, it just occurs to me with the the provision that we saw that says that we will discuss it, you know, we'll agree to agree in the future. An agreement like that is a great agreement depending on the quality of the people that are involved at the time that you're discussing it. And that just leaves me disappointed. Any other comments, questions? No. I I will echo that I I am disappointed that the the county has chosen to take the route that they have in terms of um you know, not participating either in the full fix um of the roof on their building, but also just in what I understand will be about a 20-year fix. Um I will 100% echo

[clears throat]

uh your sentiments, Ms. Scott, that you know, it it it bothers me, it concerns me that as a city we're putting money into an asset that's owned by the county. Uh but it's clear from conversations that the county does not intend to do anything with respect to the building. I think the uh the fact that we have to put out trash cans and buckets and that sort of thing when it rains is quite frankly embarrassing. Um and and kudos to Ms. Burger and her staff for for really having to work around that. Um and I think our our citizens and our community, whether they live in the city or live in the county, deserve better. And if uh the city's the one that has to step up and do this for our community, then I so be it and here we are to do that tonight. So. Any other discussion? Seeing none, then uh all in favor of item E2, please indicate by saying I. I. Any opposed? I. All right. So it passes with one no vote. Dr. Young. Dr. Young, correct. All right. We'll move on then to item E3. Item E3 is a resolution approving an interlocal agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation for participating in the regional P25 radio system. Good evening, Mr. Foot.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. This is actually going to be combining E3 and E4 together. Okay. Um and before I get into these two action items um I D3 and D4, I want to start by thanking the many people and agencies who have helped us to get to this point. This has been a long time coming to to this. This has been a work in progress for over a year. And tonight represents a major milestone for Victoria and regional interoperability. First, I want to thank Todd Spencer with with DPS. Um they with his team, they came in here this time last year to help us program all of our radios. He sent in 10 technicians. Took 2 and 1/2 days to program all our radios for interoperability. Uh and he also participated this past spring in our radio round-up uh that was a huge success. And that radio round-up gave us a a great opportunity to identify weaknesses in our own interop- interoperability plan. And so um it was it was a great it was great opportunity. Also want to thank uh Assistant Chief Ferguson, Fire Chief Ferguson, and also Rick McCreary with EOC. They also were instrumental in uh putting this radio round-up on. It was a huge success and now that is actually being modeled by the state to verify interoperability with other agencies. So, it's it's been a great uh a great success. I want to thank Gordon Harkey with TxDOT for his con- continued support and partnership. TxDOT's willingness to do this and the state's willingness to do this, take this initiative across Texas, that matters. Uh this has been them reaching out to us to agencies and bringing us together helps solve an issue that quite frankly we have had in public safety for the past 20 years and that's interoperability. Um I will also want to thank Council. Last uh last fiscal year, y'all purchased allowed us to purchase those mobile radios. That was a huge part in

our radio interoperability plan. And now when it used to take us weeks to program radios, we're now literally programming radios in hours. So, that goes a long way. So, thank you, Council, for that. And also lastly, I want to recognize one of my employees, uh Wendell Geigel, who's been instrumental in programming all these radios. He's not only programmed with our new talk group, but he's also programmed with all these state and federal interoperability channels. He's a true guru uh when it comes to programming. And our ability to communicate with assisting agencies is now only limited by our coverage, our regional area, and I hope we can address that tonight. So now with that, Council, we're asking to uh Council to approve three related actions, amendment to our existing SWA agreement, our interlocal agreement with TxDOT and DPS, and the City of Victoria's participation in our regional system. So, this interlocal establishes an initial 7-year term between the city and TxDOT. This agreement includes renewal options and it's fully anticipated that this partnership will continue through annual renewals beyond the initial term. At no point does this turn agreement transfer ownership or control of our radio system. The city will retain full ownership and full operational control of our P radio P25 core and all our infrastructure. Under this Under this agreement, TxDOT and DPS will participate in a cost-sharing agreement to assist the city with Motorola systems cost. The city will remain responsible for maintaining its radio sites and related infrastructure including generators, UPS, tower maintenance and compound update. These responsibilities are already part of our existing operations and do not represent any unanticipated cost obligations. As part of this agreement, DPS will utilize Victoria's core as a dynamic system resilience DSR uh for their zone two. Their primary zone two is in San Antonio

at the Quarry Run Regional Operations Center Center, sorry. So, Victoria's role as a DSR site provides redundancy, failover capabilities, and continuity of operations for both our regional systems and also all the state agencies that utilize that core. So, by joining TxDOT's statewide radio system, Victoria seamlessly interop- uh gains seamless interoperability with state agencies. We currently have more than 300 state radios already on our system and we anticipate that we have more radios uh state radios once we we join. This partnership allows our talk groups to extend onto TxDOT towers when necessary improving coverage and flexibility. This agreement also directly supports public safety corporations during emergencies. Our primary evacuation, which is to San Antonio, we will maintain We will be able to maintain continuous radio coverage back to both our city and county dispatch centers uh improving coordination during large-scale evacuations. That's a big That's a big win for us right there. Uh from a financial perspective, the state's willingness to share Motorola system cost allows the city to reinvest those savings into critical radio infrastructure maintenance and upgrades that will be required over the next 5 years. There are some things some significant things that we have to replace within the next next 5 years and we hope these savings can be go to address those. Uh Council um sorry. Additionally, the state is also linking grant opportunities like the our SERI funding uh to participation in regional radio systems. That's another reason to join the system. Council may recall that last month we had y'all approve a uh SERI grant funding opportunity for some radio equipment. Finally, this position um This agreement positions Victoria as a regional hub rather than duplicating

infrastructure cost in multiple counties. A great example of this is TxDOT is planning on building a new tower site along the Refugio Victoria County line. This is something that we'll be able to use. That is a uh an area that we have traditionally have always had poor coverage and so we'll be able to now utilize that that tower site without us having to build a site and maintain it. So, that's a great example of how we can utilize their their their equipment at our locations. So, growing regional participation um Gonzales has already joined the state system. Calhoun County is actively working with TxDOT to connect and discussions are actually are ongoing with DeWitt and Jackson counties. This approach maximizes taxpayer investment, strengthens regional cooperation, and allows Victoria's existing core to be used to its fullest capacity. Uh in summary, this agreement provides preserves local control, reduces long-term cost, improves system resilience, enhances interoperability, and establishes Victoria as a regional leader in public safety communications. And these are the three action items we have for you. I'll take any And James, just to clarify after that, you're not retiring, right? No. Okay. It That's not step four on here. Well, it was it was just a great speech, you know.

[laughter] You know, I I have no political aspirations to stay here. Good to know. You're all you're good to go on that.

but I do want to echo though because James deserves a lot of credit. You know, this has been a personal long-term goal of his to get to this point and he's not kidding when he says that it's been a lot of time and a lot of work that's taken place over a year. Um he deserves a lot of credit. He's had some great support from Gilbert, from Ruby in the city attorney's office. Um they've done a great job, you know, um it's always easy to criticize connectivity of radios or interop- interoperability, you know, after a natural disaster, right? And so, the fact that we're at this point doing this proactively to some extent before anything um serious happens again, you know, is is just key to our mindset of being proactive, being intentional, um and just not waiting for something bad to happen first, right? And so kudos to you, James, for your leadership on this. Yes, thank you very much. I know it was a lot of work, a whole lot of work. And I think it's, you know, this is just another example of the commitment of the city to public safety and that we take very seriously and this is just the next step that I think will enhance that even further. So, thank you to you and your team for all your hard work you put in on this. I know it was a lot. Thank you. And And Mayor, if I will just also just for clarification, sort of piggybacking off of an earlier request about going through the agreement that touches on fire, EMS, animal control, we also have an agreement with the county as it relates to radios, communication. And so, would it be appropriate for that update in in the first quarter of '26, we also incorporate some of these other agreements? Yes, absolutely.

Okay. I think that'd be helpful. Great. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Any questions? For Mr. Foote on these two items, we've only got one called now, but any any questions right now? The interlocal agreement looks better than what we just saw, doesn't it? [laughter]

I hear you. I hear you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Foote. So, then let's go ahead and take care of item E3. Do I have a motion on item E3? Motion to approve item E3. I'll second. All right. I've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor, say I. Any opposed? E3 passes and we'll go ahead and call up item E4. Item E4 is a resolution approving a change order to the Motorola system user agreement to include the Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Department of Public Safety in a cost-sharing agreement. All right. Do I have a motion with with respect to item E4? [snorts]

Motion to approve [clears throat] item E4. Second. I've got a motion and a second. Any discussion on E4? Seeing none, all in favor, say I. I. Any opposed? And E4 passes. We will then jump to our last [clears throat] action item, which is item E5. Item E5 is a resolution setting public hearings on a proposed stormwater drainage utility and drainage utility fee. Good evening, Ms. Lacey. Good evening, Mayor and Council. No presentation tonight. I just wanted to clarify for both Council and the public, the item before you is a resolution setting two public hearings. This does not set the storm drainage utility that has been discussed at previous meetings. It doesn't set any fees. It does not do any of that. All this simply does is triggers a timeline that we're required to follow in order to enact this this utility and this fee. And chapter 552 of the Texas Local Government Code requires that we first call two public hearings. So, those are going to be on February 3rd and February 17th as of now. What we'll do next is we will publish drafts of both ordinances in the Advocate. We're required to publish that three times before the public hearings. Now, that doesn't mean also that the ordinances are set in stone just because they're published. These are drafts. So, we can make changes to them after feedback at the public hearings or if there's things that we decide we want to change in either of them, we can certainly do that. So, all I'm asking you to do tonight is to approve the public hearings we'll have in February. And we can at any time, if we need to, change the timeline, but this will trigger us getting started on on getting both of those put in place later next year. So, just wanted to make that clear to everyone as well as the public that might be watching that we are not enacting a new fee or a new ordinance or anything like that tonight. So, I'm happy to answer any other questions. Any questions on that process? All right. Thank you. Thank you. So, then I will need a motion to set the

public hearings on a proposed stormwater drainage utility and drainage utility fee for February 3rd and February 17th. Motion to approve E5. Second. I've got a motion and a second. Any discussions? All in favor, say I. I. Any opposed? Very well. The hearings are set. So, we will then move to city manager reports. Mr. Garza, I believe you have a couple of things for us this evening. We do. [clears throat] We are first providing or Joel, I should say, is providing an update on Tejas Fest as well as making some recommendations on what to do this year. We'll be looking for some guidance from you on that. And then we'll conclude the city manager report section with an update that I'll be presenting on behalf of the collaborative work between staff and the compensation subcommittee. But first, Joel. All right. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Mayor and Council. And I'm very excited to be here tonight to talk to you a little bit about Tejas Fest 2025 and have some results from the event. And as well as discuss our recommendations proposals for 2026 and to get Council's feedback and direction forward. So, uh we had a wonderful event again in 2025 on October 3rd and 4th in downtown Victoria. We had a really great performances by our headliners Pecos and the Rooftops on Saturday. You see picture there and Michael Salgado on Friday. Again, we brought back the all Tejano night on Friday, which was we saw great success with that in 2024 and then mostly a country focus on Saturday. Had great crowds there and also highlighting some local entertainment. And as far as our festival features, we had another successful cornhole tournament. Had 26 teams and an underwriting sponsor for that, which we didn't have last year for HTO. And as well as a that was presented by Crossroads Cornhole and Kevin Henderson. A wonderful car show again with 72 entries managed by Bobby Sparkman and

Hot Rod Tour Texas. And again, we had an underwriting sponsor for that one in Garage Transformers. Our vendor market was managed by Mother Cluckers Downtown. 55 10 by 10 spaces were filled and then we had 15 food vendors which were managed by city staff as far as their applications and layout and everything like that. I did do a survey to the food vendors and a few of them got back to me and they had gross sales typical of what they had last year. Some of them reported in the thousands of dollars. So they all do pretty well considering the the application fee is only 400 to 450. $400 to $450 depending on what type of electrical connection they need. And that vendor fee is in line with a lot of what the other festivals charge around here. As far as our kids corral, we brought our magician back. Had four local entertainers on the stage there. I'm happy to say the kids corral is underwritten by a new sponsor East Point Energy. They came in late, were a $10,000 sponsor. Wonderful new company and they were great to work with. Our kids corral, we had activities two different activity providers, 11 inflatables from A+ Party Rentals and two activities from Creative Stage Event Co. Those are both local companies. And then the Just for Fun photo booth had 364 folks come by and take pictures for 364 different groups of people came by to take photos. So that was a very well received. And again, a recurring theme here which I'll touch on in a bit. We had an underwriting sponsor for that one with Detar Healthcare System. So again, I'll touch on this in a minute, but our sponsorship achievements were very exciting this year. We had our petting zoo sponsored by Urban Engineering from Wild Things Zoo Safari, the Lucha Libre, our trick roper back and the Chihuahua races which I can say were much more engaging than the armadillo races. We actually had eight entries.

That was managed completely by the Pet Resort on Main and we had Brother Gary Moses out there as MC. So there was quite a quite a crowd around that and they have expressed that they'd be very excited to bring that back. Our other festival features, we had of course local talents such as Ballet Folklorico. We had our margarita contest underwritten by Speedy Stop Spirits and the tamale contest presented sponsored by Venturas Tamales. We're exploring some possible changes with those. You know, the tamale contest had 15 people signed up but only five showed up. The winner had 63 in 10 minutes. So he added about another 20 to his belt there and we had about six or seven margarita contest entries. But we're we're all we're discussing The competitions are very fun. It brings people out and perhaps there's ways we can shake that up a little bit and bring some new things there. As far as our local media spending, we engage and work with pretty much every local major media outlet. And as you can see there, they often come by come back and give us a sponsorship. So between what we spent and what was donated to us, that's $31,000 in local media value there. And of course we run Facebook ads, we run those through our CVB account and you get a lot of bang for your buck there. We our main Facebook ad was $2,000 and had almost 15,000 visits to the Tejano Fest website. We also did a digital display campaign again through CVB with our annual campaign through AJR Media. We had a datafied digital display. And it was probably not as impressive as the Facebook results. So lesson learned there. We'll probably direct a little more money to Facebook. Well, the video campaign did see a very good completion rate and a lot of impressions there. And again, that was not cost attributed to the festival. That was through our

buy through the CVB budget. So some of that creative was dedicated to Tejano Fest. Our local expenses, one thing we're very proud on is hiring as many local service providers as we can. So of our expenses, approximately 105,000 of that was to local uh companies. Work work shifts covered by volunteers 139. You can see quite a few of those are 93 are also covered by staff. Um I'll touch on that in a bit, but that is a challenge volunteer recruitment and I've heard that from a lot of nonprofits and event organizers. It seems like since the pandemic one thing that's hasn't rebounded that much is volunteering. It's been hard to to get volunteers back. Um website statistics uh for the month leading up to Tejas Fest, uh we had again high visi- uh visitation on our website to uh 22,000 about 22,000 main Tejas Fest page wait uh page views as well as a little over 3200 uh views of the uh Tejas Fest schedule. And then our Facebook page um through the month leading up to Tejas Fest had over 634,000 visitors. Uh so a lot of exposure out there for the event. Uh this is a new tool that we utilize in the CVB and I wanted to touch on this a little bit. This is called Placer. And uh you're able to with this program uh create custom POIs, points of interest, um and use their tool to develop a map. So that area comprises most of the main festival area of Tejas Fest. Of course, you have that little section at the bottom left there. That is the kids corral. Um we have our car show in the uh parking lot of the tax office, but I didn't want to include that because I didn't want to include people doing their regular business throughout the day on Friday before the event kicks off. Now, the way that uh Placer does this is they track cell phone data and use their algorithms to extrapolate. So it is an estimation. It's not an exact count of people, but we've used different tools

in the past and this was the first one that actually has been giving us numbers or at least an idea of numbers on what uh the visitation could be for the event. You can see visitors there at about 20,000 over the two days of the event. Uh an average stay time over two uh about two and a half hours. So we're getting people down there and they're staying there. Uh what is our most uh visited day? Of course, we have uh Friday, October uh 3rd and our attendance on that day was about 8 and 1/2 thousand [snorts] and Saturday 14 and 1/2 thousand according to Placer. So Saturday was our more visited day. It makes sense because we have activities all throughout the day. Now, compared to Tejas Fest 2024, it was a little bit of a decrease on um in 2024 Friday uh had 9 and 1/2 thousand visitors and then Saturday had 17.3 thousand visitors. I wanted to include this line graph here because you can see the two high marks. Uh this is from October 1st, 2024 through December 13th, 2025. Those two high marks are Tejas Fest. Um the other high points are the Christmas parade followed by the Crossroads Barbecue and Brew Festival, Marion Main, Cinco de Mayo, but that main Daily on Plaza event area, Tejas Fest, is the most attended uh event in that area. This is a graph of when we saw what times we saw the most visitors throughout the event. Um this could be a useful tool for us for scheduling of music artists, right? You can actually see that the most attendance was at 9:00 p.m. and it kind of starts tailing off uh towards so uh if we want to think about our strategy for booking artists, perhaps we don't throw so much money at a headliner and not have much left for a direct opening, but maybe we balance it out a little bit in terms of the spend and the reach, you know, the fans of that artist. Uh so it does give us some time

that it seems like, you know, the peak time is 9:00 p.m. and by the end of the festival it's it's gone down a bit. But the problem is um isn't some of the attendance driven by when the artist is there? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So um we have our artists this year, Pecos and the Rooftops. They started at their set at 10:15 and went until 11:30. So just by what I could see out there, you see a lot of the families starting to leave by that point. Um people there there's plenty of people there still with their young children, you know, a lot of people I was hearing really enjoyed Cory Morrow and were more excited to see him and that, you know, it appealed to that 40-plus age bracket kind of, you know, uh and the Pecos and the Rooftops appealed more to that 20-something set. So a lot of your folks with families were leaving by then, right? So um it does depend on the artist. It's it's always a, you know, you're doing your best. You never quite sure how, you know, people are going to come out and how they're going to, you know, stay and attend the festival. Uh but, you know, one thing I've seen, you know, at Tejas Fest and I even saw it uh the year before with Chris Cagle and Josh Abbott, is that it seemed like at Chris Cagle's end of his performance, beginning of Josh Abbott, that's when the most people were there and about halfway through that Josh Abbott performance people starting to started trailing trail out a little bit. So, uh do we throw maybe it's not wise to throw all so much money at a headliner and then not have as much for their direct support who's in front of them. Maybe we balance that out a little bit. And uh

Well, I think or revisit the time slots, right? Sure, absolutely. But to your point, absolutely when people go out is driven by talent. And so one of the reasons why we're wanting to have this conversation with y'all now is because last year going into um this year's festival, the recruitment, if you will, for talent started really late. Um and so compared to the talent that we had in 24 uh we spent more money on talent in 24 and started trying to find talent sooner

Mhm. in 24. And so you see that we have numbers to back up that when you have better talent, like we did in 24, we had a greater turnout than this year. And so that's why we want to have the conversation now to get some direction on what to do with 26 so we can start that recruitment. And he's got a slide that'll hit on that um later in his presentation.

And then again, this was presented in that first slide, but you know, we're getting people down to Tejas Fest and they're staying there. You know, the average stay time is over 2 and 1/2 hours. Um and looking back at how the festival went this year, successes, uh sponsorship was a big one. We increased our goal was 75,000. We uh beat that. Uh our total sponsorship was 87,610 uh from just less than $14,000 the year before. Uh Chihuahua races were more engaging than the armadillo races. Uh and then the we also had um a bottled water and soda sales booth so as to people didn't have to uh wait in line at a food vendor if they just wanted a bottled water. Um that was managed by the Walk to End Alzheimer's. Uh that partnership actually uh allowed us to bring in Del Papa as a sponsor, too, because they have a very close relationship with Walk to End Alzheimer's. So when they heard that we were in discussions with them about how to help uh cuz their walk was that same day. It was October 4th that morning. Uh that made Del Papa interested about coming in as a sponsor. So they Walk to End Alzheimer's actually used their booth space um which is part of uh the sponsor benefits for Del Papa. Chances to improve, uh the permanent restrooms, we need to make those available for all attendings during all hours of the event. Uh we made those just for VIP this year. Uh past year, that seemed to be one of the main sticking points with people if you looked out on social media is that those should have been available uh for all staff, for all people um during the event. And that's a lesson learned. Right? Uh our VIP area visitation uh and I'll touch on this in a minute wasn't as big as we thought it was going to be. I mean, you see the sponsorship numbers, we gave out 250 VIP passes each night. And the sponsors you know, don't use them as much, possibly. Um we you know, if we were if I'm guessing the max amount of people I might have

saw in there might have been 100 people in there on Saturday night. Um another thing is to create a way for food vendors to sell bottled water and sodas while avoid cutting into the funds for Walk to End Alzheimer's. You know, one of the things that brought in Del Papa was that, you know, we were giving exclusive rights to sell bottled water and soda to to Walk to End Alzheimer's cuz that would help them. Um there was actually an idea from one of our food vendors during the event. He actually had a pretty good idea. He said, "Well, if some food vendor wants to sell bottled water and soda you know, just charge them an extra 50 bucks with the stipulation that that could go to the the charity." And I was like, "That's not a bad idea, you know." Um and that's guaranteed money for whatever charity might be running that bottled water and soda booth. I think that's still a good thing to have uh especially during peak times when the wait for a food vendor is really long and somebody just wants a soda. They just want a water. Um but there's a way to make that uh also work for the food vendors uh because they were getting complaints from people like, "Hey, I'm walking up and I'm buying my you know, plate of food and I'd like to just get a water now. Oh, you have to walk to the other side of the festival and get a water at the booth." So there's a way to make that work for everybody. Um and then find locations for the portable toilets that are least disruptive to downtown businesses. Uh there's just some sections uh where we put portable toilets that were an issue on Main Street. Um so we're going to work with um you know, Christie and environmental services and look at the festival map and find a place that is really out of the way for everybody. Um again, we even with the public restrooms, the permanent restrooms, you do need to have portable toilets uh because those permanent restrooms cannot be expected to manage the entire amount of people. Um you'll you'll have breakdowns if that's the case. Any questions before I kind of break into the financial numbers? Great. So you can see the allotment from City of Victoria last year from the hot funds was $150,000. Our goal for sponsorships was 75. We

exceeded that. Uh beer sales and ice sales, our goal was 70. Uh we did we um did not do what we had hoped for. That's a tough one to um you know, it's it's like I can't encourage people to drink more, [laughter]

you know, it's it's it's how do you, you know, find possibly new revenue streams to make up for these trends you're seeing in decreased beer sales, which I'll touch on in a moment. Uh vendor fees we did a little better than budgeted uh because we had many uh vendors, most of them were the 250 volt connections. So, uh that was a $450 fee versus $400. And then shirt and koozie sales, um we need to revisit, you know, kind of our shirt designs uh cuz we still have uh fair amount of uh of shirts from featuring a festival lineup in the office. So, um as far as a merch festival merchandise, it's still a great thing to provide. We may just want to reduce the quantities we purchase there and just once we're sold out, we're sold out kind of thing. Any questions on the revenues? Great. All right. Well, I will touch on festival expenses. It's quite a big graph here.

[clears throat]

Um I'll touch on mostly cuz this could take a while to go down line item by line item. So, I'll just touch the items that had the biggest variances as far as expenses go. Mixed beverage sales tax, uh that was a variance of over $9,000. That's just a reporting change uh for the Tejas Fest 24 report in the 25 budget. That was included in the uh beer for resale line item. Uh that was broken out in the report by finance this year. So, that really and you can see the beer for resale expense was, you know, $10,000 less. So, uh that accounts that mixed beverage sales tax, that was something we paid in 24 as well. Uh sound and light production, that was almost $7,000 more than what we anticipated. Uh that can be a variable cost depending on what the artists are requiring. Um and just the increase in cost for materials, that sort of thing and renting things. Uh we do use a local company for that. They have done a fantastic job. Uh Clay Crockett and his crew from So Tex Production Co. have done a great job. Uh and when we receive quotes from other uh entities wanting to do production, their quotes are $50,000 or more. You know, so we get a really good deal there from Clay um and his crew there with So Tex. Um shirt and koozie uh purchase resale, um actually in this uh the uh staff and volunteer shirts were kind of combined with it. So, that's why it explains the variance. Uh VIP food, we had a variance of over 1,800. That was cuz we did really good in sponsorship. So, when you do good in sponsorship, there's more VIPs. Um and then supplies, we had a variance of 17, uh little over 1,700. Um that was due to some past practices with purchasing trash carts for the event. I've worked with environmental services. We've set aside 50 carts to be dedicated just for Tejas Fest use. Uh typically year in and year out, the carts will be purchased and once the festival's over, they'd be put in a

circulation and things like that. Uh those are now going to be set aside in storage. Uh so, we won't have to purchase trash carts for the event next year. Uh so, that will cut down on our supplies cost. And then another one is city overtime. And this is a tough one because most of this is PD and security. Um you know, that's something we don't want to cut, right? Security in today's day and age. Um you know, it's better to to overspend and have a very secure event than try to be saving money in something so critical as as security. So, we're expecting that cost to kind of remain the same uh just being what it cost to to pay all our officers to keep us safe at the event. And that's one of the biggest uh compliments Tejas Fest gets is how safe people feel there. Any questions on the expenses? Great. So, what are some challenges as we look forward to 2026? Course, high high cost for live music fees. Um you know, I do all the pricing for the artists and you'd be surprised how many artists out there cost $100,000 or more. You know, it's uh it's definitely uh a balancing act. Uh we work closely with Kicks 108, Club 106.9 Tejano to get their feedback on artists and who are doing well and we'll do the same again this year. Um course, costs for service providers can always be predictable. Volunteer recruitment can be tough. And then we have to fill those specially critical roles with city staff. Um and then of course, mentioned the decreasing beverage sales. And some of that could be um some of that could be cultural, right? You're are seeing Gen Z, younger generations are drinking less, right? So, what is the answer? How do we catch back up on revenues? Well, the low-hanging fruit is selling VIP passes to the general public. Um this has been something that's been brought up by folks for years. Um you know, we had more in sponsorship this past year than we had any Taste of Fest or Boot Fest, to my recollection going back. Um and that VIP area to the left of the stage was

had a lot of room in it. Um so, if you imagine if you charge $150 a night or you have a discount for a two-night ticket, um I did the break down. I looked uh and this is not just a random estimate, the 35,000. I looked at the area in that VIP area, the area available did 12 ft per square uh 12 sq ft per person, and looked at the max number of money we can make for selling a um that would fit plus 250 VIP passes again, plus um uh it it that area could fit about 385 people, right? So, if you had 250 from VIP passes, let's just say a good round number, 125 VIP passes we could sell each night to the general public. If you sold all of them, all 125 for $150 a night, that's 37,000 and some change. If you sold all of them as two-day passes for $250, that's about 32,000. So, $35,000 is kind of in the middle there. Um so, that could be our potential revenue from selling VIP passes to the general public. And I think we'll sell them cuz people were coming up to the beer booth and the ticket booth saying, "How do we get in that VIP area? I'll I'll pay you right now to go get in there." And if you think, you know, it's sounds a lot for a ticket, but that's about what the Crossroads Barbecue & Brew Festival charged for their VIP. And in our VIP, you get free food. Um we can break out the difference between, you know, sponsors could get unlimited drinks, you know, you could have a limited number of drinks for general public VIP, that sort of thing. That's getting into the weeds. But uh you know, that's that's the low-hanging fruit on as far as revenue streams that we're missing out on. Uh another one even could be a profit share with a mobile bartending business. Again, this is just an idea, um but could provide something that could provide a variety of drinks for people. Um and then, you know, just sharing those profits with them. That's that's another thing to explore.

Moving on to our 26 proposal as far as the structure of the event, nothing would change as far as the days and times. Um main stage Friday night Tejano and Saturday night country, that'll you know, structure as we're very well for us. Lots of daytime activities throughout the event. Uh keep that VIP area to the left of stage while opening up uh fencing it in a way that opens up the restrooms, the permanent restrooms for the public. And that wouldn't necessitate buying something like a luxury restroom trailer. You can rent those from the VIP area. So, there is that exclusivity for them still. Um and you can get those for a couple of thousand dollars for a weekend. So, going on to the 2026 proposal. Looking at the revenue line item, right now as it stands, the proposed um request for council for allotment from COV would not be as much as last year. 135,000. The event sponsorships, um to be conservative, I kept that target at 85,000, but we would work to eclipse what we did this past year. Beverage sales, uh considering if we have, you know, VIP ticket sales, uh you could have a lot some of those folks not purchasing beer then, right? Getting free drinks, that sort of thing. Um so, I was very conservative as far as the beverage sales at 50,000. VIP pass sales, which I mentioned at 35. Uh vendor fees and merchandise sales. So, going on to uh anticipated costs, um main stage um second stage live music fees, I also include in there entertainer hotels, hospitality, like meals for them. COV overtime, keeping that consistent with what we had this past year. Um again, I'm not going to go down every line item, but um you know, there weren't um you know, the total expenses you see there at the bottom at 314,950. Our total revenue at 315,400 for a pretty much break-even amount.

And I can take any questions you have at this time. I'll just briefly uh can you go back, Joel? Sure. I don't have a slide for this, but you may recall over the last couple of uh fiscal budget presentations us talking about our hotel occupancy tax uh fund and the revenues and just this reality that, you know, it's not sustainable long-term unless we see an influx of increased revenue on the HOT fund for us to continue to support the festival at 150, continue to do the support for the outside agencies, on top of doing everything else that we do. And so, I think it's just important to be mindful of that. I think it's a good thing that we're proposing an amount that's lesser than 150,000. I think that's trending in the right direction. Um but I just think it's important that we just keep that in mind that it's not sustainable long-term to rely on $150,000 every year for the festival. Um I think we're all at least I I I believe we're all on the same page with trying to continue to find ways to lessen um the amount of money that comes from the hot funds. Um And so obviously Joe has some ideas for this year, but we're curious to get your any feedback or input um on what we're proposing so that we Joe can start doing some of that research for for artists. Joe, let me ask this question. You know, we have an estimate on [clears throat] attendance. I think it's around 20,000. We'll just call it that for round numbers. Do we have any idea I'm sure the majority of that is local folks. Do we have any idea kind of out-of-town attendance that actually came to Victoria and stayed the weekend for this festival?

And majority of it is residents. Yes. I mean, our hotel occupancy was actually down a bit this year compared to last year. So um it is a majority residents. Yes. I figured it would be mostly local. So okay. They are coming from um looking at the heat maps on Placer, areas maybe 30 minutes out from us, smaller towns. So that's an opportunity to reach out more because if you add those small towns up, that's thousands of people together. So uh there there are people willing to make that 30-minute to 45-minute drive um and that showed in the the maps from Placer. Okay. Thank you. Other questions?

Yeah, Joel, you did a presentation before about the the difference between uh a one-day versus a a two-day event if I recall. And I don't remember the specifics in that regard. Um I know that Friday uh attendance is always less than Saturday, whether that's um whether that's artists, but I imagine Friday night football and all the other uh events going on in community uh tend to pull away from that. And I just want to uh I guess it's just about revisiting that. I know that there was um a cost difference. But you didn't get as much bang for the buck on one day as two

when I when I did when I reached out to days. our service providers, most of their expenses, whether it's a one-day or two-day, are the same. The only place you're really saving money is city staff pay and entertainment fee. Like so the 32,000, the sound, lighting, video, it's the same if it's one day or two day. And then you're missing out on the revenues from beer sales or VIP pass sales. So uh it's not a magic bullet to say, "Well, let's make it one day and that'll that'll cut down our costs by a lot." We called some of that, but wanted some specifics in that regard. So thank you. Any other questions? Comments in terms of kind of moving forward? I mean, is this I think you're seeking feedback on is this something we want to con- continue to explore for the community and um you know, kind of build on the success of the last couple years? Ul- ultimately, yes. You know, it doesn't have to necessarily be tonight, but it's certainly something that, you know, we'd like to get some feedback on over the next couple of weeks so that after the holidays Joe can really hit it hard you know, with trying to find some of that talent. I mean, I I can start, you know, doing the pricing and everything if if we're getting the feeling that this is we're going to move forward with this. I can start reaching out to the uh the booking agencies and getting pricing because January is really that month you want to start making offers and booking people. Um by February they're starting to get up booked up and by March, April it gets starts getting really hard to find people who are available. And it's getting that way especially too because a lot of the artists we can afford, that group is getting smaller, right? Pe- the live music live musician live music artists, their fees are going up because they're not getting so much money from the record companies anymore. They're getting fractions of a cent from Spotify, right? So they're making their bread when with live music. So artists who are, you know, not out there winning ACM awards every year are $500,000,

really, you know? So uh that mid- that small to to mid-size festivals, you know, they're competing for a a smaller pool of artists. So getting out there ahead of the game and getting out there early is really key. Got it. Well, you know, I would just say from my standpoint, I think again, to echo what we said right afterwards, I you know, I think you guys did a fantastic job. You know, I think we've had two years of very successful events um that, you know, as you pointed out tonight, you know, we learned some lessons and can can do it better. It's something to build on. Personally, I think a community event like this is important. I think it it um you know, brings the community together. Uh creates a sense of unity in the community. And I would like to see us, you know, continue to explore, "Hey, how do we make this even bigger and better? Because I I think it's a great event for our community and and I'm glad that it's I'm glad that it's back personally. I think at the 135,000, if I'm doing my math right, we're investing in the community, in the people that come out, about a little over $5.50 as an investment on our part for them to have something engaging within the community that that they can look forward to.

I mean, it's not everywhere you can see Chihuahua races, you know what I mean? That's where I think your t-shirt sales need to be is the Chihuahua races. I right? That's some good That's some good creative. Yeah, that would be fun. Any other comments? Okay. Thank you for the information. Thank you all very much for your time this evening. All right. Gilbert said I have 2 minutes. [laughter]

He's generous. When the Godfather gives you direction, you know, you You ignore. Ready. All right. So, I'm going to provide you an update on behalf of the compensation committee, which of course includes Council members Butler, De la Garza, and Lofgren. And as you know, the committee was established last year by Mayor Crocker to help us look at just how can we be more aggressive and more intentional and more targeted with our recommendations in our pay program? We obviously did a historic pay program that went into effect just this fiscal year beginning October 1st. And by all accounts, that's been very well received specifically by our public by police and fire. And so, nothing but great feedback on that front. However, we know that there are other areas that we need to look at. And so, specifically, I'd like to talk to you about two of those areas. First, talk to you a little bit about public works, specifically the utility division. You may recall when I provided the update at our last meeting talking a little bit about the challenges that we're having on the utility maintenance worker position in that division in general. You may also recall that very last minute we ended up adding a little over $200,000 in the fiscal year 26 budget to do an additional enhancement to that those utility centric positions. And so, I'll talk a little bit to that. And then second, I'm going to hit on dispatchers. Dispatchers was a group that there's just been a lot of change in that market. And so, there's a need for us to be a tad more aggressive and intentional with with pay for dispatchers, but also viewing them as first responders. And following a very similar model with them that we currently do with police and fire. And both of the updates that I'll be providing to you this evening with

that group of employees, we plan on making effective January 1st. So first with public works, I'm not going to read every single line of this, but basically we want to be more competitive. We obviously have some vacancies in that area. And through conversations with the compensation committee, we started to look at things a little bit different. Originally, when we were looking at enhancing pay for the utilities division, we looked at just that that that division. And we simply just looked at their struggles to retain and attract individuals. And the more that we talked to the committee about the issue, the more we realized that we need really needed to compare that position with other similar like positions in our organization. And I mentioned at the last meeting and I'll mention again, but Councilman Butler had an excellent idea to re-evaluate even just what we call the position. And so, as part of that exercise, we started to put together a comparative analysis, if you will, between certain positions across our organization that to the outside world might seem like they're very similar, but in fact are actually very different. And so, for the next couple of slides, we've got some information on park maintenance worker, street maintenance worker, building maintenance tech, utility maintenance worker, and the maintenance technician at either of our plants. And as you see the next couple of slides, I want to very intentionally note that as you progress from left to right, the level of requirements, skill set, challenges, responsibilities evolves and it grows. And so, on the left-hand side, you start with our parks maintenance worker, which of course is responsible for for maintaining our parks. Then [snorts] you move to streets and they start to maintain some additional infrastructure that starts to become a little bit more critical, right? Obviously, streets are critical, not that parks aren't, but you start to see sort of this elevation of of of the critical sense of this

infrastructure. You start to also get a sense of the requirements. So, once you start getting into streets, you start getting into potentially requiring a CDL because of the equipment that they operate, right? And then you continue on. So, building maintenance tech, those are the folks that work for Roger, which of course handle a lot of our maintenance in our facilities, which requires a very specific skill set and knowledge base to handle HVAC work, plumbing, carpentry, carpentry, electrical, etc. And so, again, as you progress from left to right, just the level of experience and background that we're looking for these individuals starts to increase. Um we of course then get to the utility maintenance worker position, um which is the one that that we're predominantly going to focus on, but that's the one of course that um focuses on maintaining the distribution system, handles water main line, water main breaks, uh waste water main breaks, you know, these are the folks that um um obviously handle very critical infrastructure. We've been up here talking about the instances where they're working all night uh to ensure that our water quality and water systems intact. Um obviously that position equally important as our parks maintenance worker, but obviously the nature of their involvement with our water system elevates the level of of of importance, skill set, certifications, licenses, etc. that are needed. And then we get to our maintenance technician, which are handling an even additional layer of complexity with the systems that exist in either plant. So, again, higher level of certifications, higher level of experience that are needed for those positions. And so, you would you would think that based off of that, that the pay would gradually increase as that progression occurs from left to right. And so, I'm not going to repeat all of this, but it but this graphic was was put together by staff to basically illustrate how you go from parks maintenance worker, which you're working

an 8-hour standard day, there's sort of some standard exposure to your environment, some technical some basic technical skills, and you gradually start to move your way to the right, where now you're working more hours per day. Um now you're being exposed to hazards that are a little bit more, you know, challenging, working conditions that are a little bit more challenging, and the skill set begins to reach an advanced to expert level. Um but the pay doesn't match that. And so, you'll see at the very top that it works really well for those three positions, but then you get to utility maintenance worker and it drops back down. And then it picks back up for the maintenance technician at the plants. And so, spoiler alert, we're going we're we're wanting to beef up the utility maintenance worker pay so that it more naturally and organically flows, um filling that gap between 36 and almost 40. Does that make sense? Excellent. So, part of what's driving this is um of course vacancies, and we shared a different iteration of this with the subcommittee, and there was some feedback about the word term that was included in that. Um but we felt it was important to include the termination number. This termination number, we would overlay it over the the last couple of years, uh actually triples. Um and I think that's very important because that speaks to the challenges of the utility maintenance worker position. The reason why there is a lot of turnover um in both resignations and why there's a high termination rate in that division is because of the work schedule. There's a there's it's difficult to have work-life balance when you're on call, and you get called out in the middle of the night, you get called on the weekend. We have employees that

intentionally, if I go back to um to this, we have employees that intentionally go from utility maintenance worker to street maintenance worker, making less money once you account for overtime, um because they prefer a better stable schedule than having to be on call. And the reason why we end up terminating a lot of individuals is because we call people in and they don't come in. And so, the number one reason why somebody gets terminated in our utility maintenance worker position is because they they become no-shows. They're called in while they're on call, and they don't show up. And if we can't rely on these individuals to come in and address such critical infrastructure, which is our water system, then they're just not going to cut it for us. Um and so, it just speaks to the high um skilled uh and and and just the reliability that's needed from this position. And so, let's talk a little bit about the overtime aspect of it. In comparison specifically to streets, because it's literally the closest thing that we have in our organization to compare it to, um these overtime hours are are specifically driven by call-outs. So, we were very intentional with trying to pull out, you know, overtime hours caused by low personnel. And so, this gives you this basically gives you a sense of how often the utilities division folks are called after hours. Um and the number of overtime hours. The right bar chart gives you a sense of how long they're called out when they're called out. You've heard me again talk about instances where they're working all night. Um it's just a completely different expectation that we have of these individuals and it flies under the radar. Um and so, I think it's important to note that it's a very unique expectation that we have of these individuals and it does require an individual that's very committed and reliable. And unfortunately, that can be hard to find.

And so, we're hoping by making some a pay enhancement, we're able to attract um a different, you know, tier of an individual and background, but also be able to retain um more individuals because, as we've mentioned, it's obviously a critical part of our operation that we need to make sure uh we stay on top of um because it can it it can lead to complications if if if if we don't. So, what we're recommending um is changing the job title from utility maintenance worker to utility systems technician. And if I were to go back, I I kind of joked with um with with Councilman Butler in the committee because um it obviously flows really nicely to change the job title to include the word technician because currently it's sandwiched between two technician positions. And so, something we probably should have, you know, caught sooner, um but this exercise was really helpful um to really understand what needed to change. And so, again, we're proposing um and wanting to make effective January 1, uh changing the job title to utility systems technician, increasing that pay the starting pay from 34.8 to 38, which would sand- sand- I keep using the word sandwich now. Um Hungry? I I think I am. Uh tuna, please. Uh but would sandwich the pay uh in between the building tech and the plant tech. Naturally, when we enhance pay for our frontline employees, there's a compression issue that that brings to light. And so, we are also um suggesting that we beef up the pay for equipment operators within utilities division, as well as the crew leaders, in order to avoid some of that compression um that could be caused if we didn't address those two things. Um and as and as mentioned, we included in

the budget a little over $200,000 um for enhanced pay and this falls within within that range. So, no budget amendment needed um for what we're trying to do with these positions. Um and before I kind of get away from these positions, happy to turn it over to any member of the committee for any insights or anything you'd like to add specific to the utility maintenance component. Or just answer any questions that you might have. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say we we spent a lot of time looking at this and and going back and forth. Um I think this is needed. Um very needed. I think it will serve the purpose that Mr. Garza just alluded to as far as recruitment and retention. Um And you're going to have a a different group that are looking at this potential position just based on the the title alone. So, the title change plus the pay plus adjusting for um that move within the other um areas, I think is is really essential. So, just know that we put a lot of time and effort into it. Sure. Makes perfect sense. Yeah. Great. All right. So, moving on to dispatch.

[clears throat]

Needless to say that they are a very critical part of our public safety response. Um these are of course is a 24/7 operation. Uh and we've got some challenges. We've got some challenges with vacancies. Um as as as as you might imagine, it can be a very stressful environment to be in. And in looking at what's to come in the near future, we find ourselves with uh with a challenge. Um we already have two open positions, but we do expect some retirements and some transitions [clears throat] over the next few months, which will only exacerbate um that issue. And so, we want to be um as aggre- as aggressive as we can be um with pay for these positions um in a in in a in a in several ways. One of which is the initial hourly rate, the hourly rate, and then a couple of other things. Uh but, really quick, before I get into that, um we also have We're also in a competitive disadvantage currently. And so, when we proposed the fiscal year '26 uh pay program, we didn't recommend changing the hourly rates for dispatchers. Um all we did that went into effect October 1st was establish a certification program for them. Um because, similar to law enforcement, they can also attain uh intermediate, advanced um licenses. And so, or certifications. And so, we incorporated that into that. Um that recommendation that was made that went into Oct- into effect in October was based off of a compensation study that we had done like 18 months ago that was based off of data from like 2 years ago. And so, since then, there's been uh major changes in the surrounding um

uh market as it relates to dispatch. And so, as an example, um our biggest competitor for dispatch is the Sheriff's Office. And in that 2-year time frame, they've increased their starting pay for dispatchers from roughly 19 to 23. And so, our recommendation that went into effect on October 1st didn't account for that change. And so, we need to catch up, basically. And I would suggest not only catch up, but improve significantly the way that we're uh compensating our dispatchers in a way that not only matches the Sheriff's Office, but enhances and hopefully um recruits or helps us recruit some dispatchers. But, let's talk a little bit about the hourly the hourly aspect of it. So, um as I mentioned, you know, quite I didn't mention, but currently our starting pay is also roughly $19 an hour. Um I'm leaking out on on the figure. What's it What is it, Wesley? 1960. Okay, 1960. Thank you, Wesley. Uh and currently, we only have a position for dispatcher, and we have a lead. And [clears throat] so, it's been a challenge for us historically on how we account for tenure, and how we pay our experienced dispatchers, because we don't have levels. And dispatchers don't have a step plan like police and fire that creates some separation based off of your years of service. And so, we're in essence uh recommending that we increase starting pay to $23 an hour to match where the county's at, but more importantly, create a step structure for dispatchers that does create some separation based off of years of service. And I'll show you a a better table that shows that here shortly. But, also creates a senior dispatcher position so that it creates progression.

And we were very intentional and we're and we worked very closely with Interim Chief Fetters on this, very intentional in what we're requiring. And so, we just we just had a certification program that went into effect on October 1st that I mentioned. And so, we want to be intentional with In addition to having the incentive to to receive these certs, in addition to that incentive being that annual certification, you need that increased certification to promote to senior dispatcher, and then an additional certification to promote to lead dispatcher, right? And so, we're creating levels that just make more sense, and make it more consistent with the way that we're approaching PD and fire, because our dispatchers truly are first responders. Uh similar to the police and fire steps, we're recommending that there is a um embedded 3% step increase every 2 years for a dispatcher and for a senior dispatcher. Again, the same as is the case for PD and fire. And then, once you become a lead dispatcher, that decreases to 2% between steps, which is also consistent with what we did for command staff for police and fire um this year. And so, this gives you a sense of what that looks like once we lay it out in the exact same format that we uh released the step structure for police and fire personnel. And so, as you can see, you'll come in as a trainee, and just it usually takes about a year um to get fully trained. Um and then, you start at that 2346 rate, and as you progress in your years in position, you're you get that pay bump. And then, the moment that you qualify to become a senior TCO, and again, that's based off of years of service and certification, then you can make that jump to senior TCO, and so on and so forth.

And so, our hope is that by having a structured step, um we become a desirable place to work because we know that um our competitors in the region do not offer a step structure for dispatchers or certification pay. Um in addition, we're going to also soon launch a sign-on bonus um effort for dispatchers in an effort to try and recruit experienced dispatchers to our department. Similar to what we recently launched for a sign-on bonus for for experienced police officers. Same thing for dispatchers. And so again, we're just reiterating treating and dispatchers as we as first responders through the sign-on bonus creative, you know, mechanism as well as the step structure. And um all in all um we're um recommending making that adjustment January 1st as I alluded to. The annual cost of this actually hovers around $200,000, a little over that. But because this would go into effect January 1st, we don't need 100% of that of those funds in order to implement it. Unlike the utilities um division, we did not include additional funds in fiscal year '26 budget to fund this enhancement. So we will be bringing forward a budget amendment in January to account for that $160,000 to make this effective January 1. And in addition, if you're thinking, "Well, that's great for those two groups, what group is next?" We've been very clear with the compensation committee that after completing these two enhancements January 1st, our focus shifts

to fiscal year '27. Um it's going to be a very busy spring with civil service with collective bargaining. And so we won't even have the capacity to take deep dives into any particular subgroup in our organization. All of our efforts with the subcommittee in this after the holidays will transition to solely focusing on things that would go into effect October 1st. And so with that again, I'll gladly turn it turn it over to any member of the committee that like to add anything um related to this. I like this with the dispatchers. It's it's creative. Um it uh it puts them in in line with our other um uh public safety. I've always thought that that was part of the same organization and I know that it is, but to give it this additional credit I I like that. I appreciate it. Great. Any other comments, questions? I think it's just an extension of our commitment to public safety. Um and as a reminder, those are the individuals that when our community calls in an emergency we want the best and the brightest on the other end of the line. We want to recruit and retain retain the best and the brightest um because that is a reflection of not just first responders, but the city as a whole. I certainly wish the best to those that are about to retire Yes. even though we're going to miss them. Well, hopefully we can convince them not to.

[laughter]

That sounds good. Working on that. This helps be an employer of choice. There you go. No, agreed. Much better said than what I came up with. No, and thanks to the committee. I know that that was those of you on it, I know that was a lot of work went into [clears throat] this and I think both of these recommendations make a lot of sense based on kind of you know, where kind of the holes in the organization are. And so thank you all for for identifying that and figuring out a way to address that. That's good work there. It was a joint effort, Mr. Garza, Ms. Campos and and Mr. Gilbert over there were really really gave us a lot of valuable information through the process [clears throat] and and provide feedback for. So it was it was a collective unit that was And Wesley behind the scenes of this whole thing. Yeah, if I don't call him out here, he'll like bench press bench press me outside or something. So Okay, great. Well, thank you so much. All right. Any other reports, Mr. Garza? Uh no, sir. And we do have an executive session.

do have an executive session. Okay. Let's take a 10-minute break and we will reconvene in executive session at 7:25. Okay. The City Council recesses for executive session on the 16th day of December 2025 at 7:15 p.m. The deliberation is as follows: Texas Government Code 551.07, 551.072, and 551.071. I told I took I have a question.