[0:00] Clock. Alright, well welcome everyone. It's 6:00 pm

[0:05] on february 10th, 2026 for the special college city council meeting. City council when

[0:09] work winning winter work. Oh my gosh. Winter workshop,

[0:13] training room session. So, uh, let's start with the, uh, moment of silence, of with

[0:17] the prayer. Would you pray with me? Mm-hmm . Gracious, loving god. We give you thanks for

[0:21] glorious day and for a wonderful opportunity to be in service to our community and a wonderful community that we live

[0:26] in. We, uh, ask for a special blessing upon mike brinkman as he starts his venture with the

[0:30] city of burn over the utilities department. We ask for a smooth transition between him and

[0:34] his staff, and, uh, continues success and, and blessings upon that entire

[0:38] department in the city of burn. Continue to guide us this evening, guide our hearts and

[0:42] our minds and our decision making as we have discussions tonight about, uh, not only where we

[0:46] see you leading us in this community, but where you see this community and its needs and how we fulfill

[0:50] those, uh, to the best of this council's building and for the betterment of this entire community overall

[0:54] in your precious systems. And we pray. Amen. Would you join me in

[0:58] the pledge of ance and the texas flag?

[1:03] my pgi flag, united states and america,

[1:08] and two republic, which stands, one nation under god,

[1:12] indivisible, with liberty and justice, overall honor,

[1:17] texas flag. I pledge, pledge allegiance to be texas,

[1:21] one state under god, one and indivisible. Thank

[1:25] you. You may be seated. We will move on to agenda item number

[1:29] two, public comments. No one you signed up to speak, but I will give the opportunity

[1:33] if somebody wants to come forward somewhere in the room and stand and podium,

[1:38] wherever that might be. No. Okay.

[1:42] no further comments. Alright, we're gonna move on to agenda item number three. And at that time,

[1:47] I'm gonna turn the rest of the meeting over to, uh, city manager, ben, tha ben, thank

[1:51] you mayor and members of the council. Appreciate you being here tonight. Uh,

[1:55] love this time, this part of the year every year where we, we pause,

[2:00] take a moment to step back and talk about strategic policy conversations,

[2:05] topics that are important for you to, to think about at, especially as

[2:09] we gear up and get ready to go into our budget season. Believe it

[2:13] or not, we look at sarah next week. I believe we

[2:17] start internally with staff on some trainings and some kickoffs. And this week we're doing some

[2:21] trainings, so that'll be really heavily upon us here, uh, before

[2:26] we know what, and you guys understand how that process works. But this is the fun part.

[2:30] this is where we really get guidance and what are our key,

[2:34] uh, objectives for the upcoming budget season. We'll throw out some things for

[2:38] you to consider appreciate, uh, what we're doing here

[2:42] and your, your patience with us. Uh, we, you know, we have some presentations, but we're also

[2:46] gonna have a very facilitated, kind of brainstorming strategic visioning

[2:50] exercise. And so we needed to, we thought, well, maybe we try a different setup here where you

[2:54] can see that wall, but also see these presentations here.

[2:59] uh, so we sh we won't go more than 90 minutes. There's good

[3:04] chance we might be even done before that, depending on your conversation. With that last part,

[3:08] we'll start off by hearing director carroll, jeff carroll, um, giving us an

[3:12] update on our safe streets for all initiative and, uh,

[3:16] what's been taking place so far there and what's on the horizon. Then after

[3:21] director carroll, director bloo will come up and give us a sneak

[3:25] peek on the budget calendar and a couple things that are already on our radar that

[3:29] we want you to be aware of. So with that director carol will

[3:33] come on up

[3:45] and you do have these presentations in your folder if you want to take notes on it for you.

[3:54] so, evening mar and council, uh, here has been mentioned. We're here to talk

[3:58] about the safe streets for all, or, uh, we commonly say ss four a engineers

[4:02] like acronyms. Um, this kind of ties back in this

[4:07] s four a program obviously ties into safety and security and investing in maintaining

[4:11] our high quality infrastructure and advancing master plan recommendations.

[4:15] safe streets for all is a federal program that's been around for many,

[4:19] many years. It's had some different names over the years, but in the current five parts,

[4:24] five partisan infrastructure bill, there's actually $5 billion

[4:28] out there for the safe streets for all program over five fiscal years.

[4:32] we're actually entering into the fifth fiscal year of the program. Um, but it's

[4:36] a nationwide program trying to increase safety for roadways, but

[4:40] really for bikes and pedestrians in particular, but roadways all around.

[4:44] um, this is something that a lot of cities and text out are all kind of really looking into

[4:49] the safe street program and it ties back into, if you remember, um, several years

[4:53] ago we kind of did a, a vision zero program. Again, trying to get zero

[4:57] deaths in, in a, in a year. It's kind of a goal.

[5:01] we are in the planning and demonstration grant phase. The, the grant

[5:05] actually has two separate grant programs. We applied

[5:10] and got a a planning grant, and that's what we're working on now.

[5:14] um, for some of you might remember, we actually several years ago applied for implementation

[5:18] grant. We heard some rumors that everyone was planning for

[5:22] applying for planning and no one was applying for implementation. And the buckets were very segregated.

[5:27] so we, we tried to gamble of trying to apply for that implementation,

[5:31] didn't get it. And one of the feedbacks is that you really need to do the two step process that

[5:35] we've defined. Okay, we do that. Um, so we we're doing that now we're working through the

[5:39] planning grant. Um, so we had a, got the grant,

[5:43] we had to go then do a special federal rfq, get an

[5:48] engineer to help us on the grant. We have to go through a very specific federal requirement

[5:52] phase. We've been working on the planning grant. Um, one of the

[5:56] big things that they have in there is called a safety action plan.

[6:00] uh, when we started our mobility plan a couple years back,

[6:04] we actually worked through several the items that the state requires in a safety action

[6:08] plan, but we were missing some of the federal items. Um, so this eight components

[6:13] are the things that are required in a federal safety action plan.

[6:17] so we're working through those. We kind of, as part of this grant continuing all the

[6:21] parts that we were missing that we didn't complete with our mobility plan.

[6:26] um, just kind of quick history, um, april in 23 is

[6:30] when we adopted and kickstarted the ss four a

[6:34] planning. Um, I'm sorry, that was when we got the mobility master plan

[6:39] adopted and we kind of started this process. March of 24 is when we applied for this

[6:43] grant. December of 24 is when we got the grant application awarded to us. April

[6:47] 22 is when we got the consultant picked for us. And then may 29

[6:51] of 25 is when we kind of got the actual kickoff meeting and got this process rolled. So

[6:55] it's several years in the works that we've been working on this one particular project.

[7:00] so what have we've been doing exactly? Um, we've been working kind of the

[7:04] section number three, the safety analysis. What we've been doing, um, and chief

[7:09] perez knows this as well, the, anytime that there's an accident, whether it's

[7:13] burn pd or sheriff's office or it's troopers, it goes into a tech

[7:17] stop chris accident reporting system. Um, and so what we did is

[7:21] we got all the data for the last handful of years, the last five years of crash data

[7:25] for in the city limits. And we did a lot of deep diving into those crash records.

[7:30] um, I'll talk more, but we established a high injury network of our roadways

[7:35] and we did a lot of effort on our downtown pedestrians. That's one thing that from citizen

[7:39] surveys and just talking from a lot of our engagement activities, we get a lot of

[7:43] feedback on how to make downtown safer. We've been working on

[7:47] community impact assessment. Uh, this is a, a fancy way

[7:51] of like what parts of town do we really think are the more areas

[7:55] of pedestrian and bicycle safety are most important. Um, so one of the

[7:59] things we kind of identified through our task force is kind of the downtown corridor, but also by

[8:03] the schools and by some of the parks. We've had a lot of community

[8:08] and stakeholder engagement. I'll talk through those. But we've had surveys.

[8:12] we've had a booth at a at the market days. We have task force meetings

[8:16] and I'll explain those more. And then we've kind of gone through and defined strategy

[8:20] and kind of project selection terms as we go through this process.

[8:25] as I mentioned, uh, we did a deep dive into crash records. In those five

[8:29] years, we have 2,342 crashes in the city of burn

[8:33] proper. Of those 36 of 'em are fatal and serious injury, and 24

[8:38] of those were pedestrian and bike related crashes. Um, so we have those kind of the bar

[8:42] charts. It's kind of interesting. If you remember, 2020 is kind of covid year

[8:46] and not a whole lot of people were driving the first half of the year. Uh, but then 21

[8:50] and 22 was t stop was still finishing the bridges. There was a lot of accidents kind

[8:54] of up on the bridges of, while tdot was doing their work. So it was looking good in 23

[8:58] and then 24 kind of spiked up again. So it's just something we'll continue to watch

[9:02] as we go through the crash records, as we can progress through years.

[9:07] this is, again, we, we pulled all the records in that chris database that tells

[9:11] you everything of how that accident occurred. And so we were really looking

[9:15] at what could be the triggers that's causing accidents at specific lo locations

[9:21] using all of those crashes. Those 2300 crashes, 49%

[9:25] of 'em were at intersections, 80% of them were on

[9:29] the txdot system, which as you know, most of our major roads in town,

[9:33] main street, river, east bandera over, sorry, west bandera over

[9:37] by heb blanco, those are all t stop roads. So 80%

[9:42] of our crashes occurred on those t stop roads and 1% of those 2300

[9:46] crashes was a bike and pedestrian. Now, if we look

[9:50] at just all of those crash records, if we look at

[9:54] just the fatal and serious injury crashes, we get that

[9:58] the 39% of 'em are at the intersection. So actually, actually decreased. 83%

[10:03] of 'em are at the, on the textile system. So that increased the overall system, but really what jumped

[10:08] out to us is 25% of the serious

[10:12] and fatal injuries happened with bikes and pedestrians. So that kind of shows

[10:16] you that that number of, um, they're, they're kind of a a v vulnerable group. They're

[10:20] getting hit by big cars as opposed to cars running into each other. It's kind of just an obvious safety

[10:24] factor. And that ties into

[10:28] all of these crash records. We take all those records, we analyze 'em on a

[10:32] map, and it's a federal term. We're called a high injury network.

[10:37] um, I can talk a lot about it, but really it's just defining a map of where

[10:42] most of these injuries are occurring. Um, when we get into

[10:46] federal grants and federal opportunities, that's a specific thing is, is this

[10:50] project on a high injury network. Um, so that's something that we'll look at for future

[10:54] grant opportunities that now that we have this defined. So

[10:58] here it is, here is our bernie high injury network.

[11:02] so if you look at these roads, 73% of

[11:06] those 2300 crashes occurred on these roadways. Um,

[11:10] so there's some interesting ones I thought, um, that didn't jump out

[11:14] initially as much as some of the others. I mean, we all kind of think main river

[11:19] blanket 46. Uh, but using, looking back at all the

[11:23] crash records, there's other roads on there that get to that 73%. Um, and

[11:27] so of that roadway, these roadways are 15 and this was counting the

[11:32] city and the tout roads. These roads account for 15%

[11:36] of our city roads in the city. Again, that's 73%

[11:41] of the crashes are happening. So that's kind of an interesting mindset that 73%

[11:45] of the crashes are happening on 15% of our roads. Now it

[11:49] obviously makes sense here, like kind of local neighborhood road people aren't

[11:53] necessarily getting in crashes on your neighborhood roads. Um, but

[11:57] it's, it's an interesting fact. And so now as we move forward with future grant opportunities, that'll

[12:02] be a, a box of check is, is herf road on the high injury network? Yes, it is.

[12:06] um, so that's something that we can look at as those federal grants progress.

[12:12] I mentioned that we did a lot of engagement activities. Um, we had

[12:16] a safety task force meeting that we specifically set up for this grant.

[12:21] um, we had three meetings in this very room and we had a very diverse group

[12:25] of people in there. We actually had two county commissioners, uh, chapman and mccall.

[12:29] we had mayor pro, tim willison. We had planning and zoning chair band wolff.

[12:33] we had chief perez and fire marshal lee who joined us. We had three

[12:38] citizens that joined us on the committee. Uh, and that included two that were specifically kind of picked

[12:42] as downtown business owners. Uh, we had tech set representatives from both the area

[12:47] office and kerrville and the district offices down in san antonio. And we

[12:51] had bernie, isd staff and school board members attended all of this and as well as city staff.

[12:55] um, so we met in this room. We talked through the crash records, but we also had,

[12:59] you can see this picture here from the last meeting where we had roll maps where we really spent a lot of time

[13:03] looking at downtown main street, downtown river road, the plaza,

[13:08] and several of the other areas that we did a lot of comments about pedestrian safety.

[13:13] as I mentioned, we went to one of the market days. We rented one of the

[13:17] stalls. We had a little popup. We sat there all day, uh, listening to people tell us what

[13:21] their versions of safety on pedestrians and bikes and got a lot of good data

[13:26] for that. We had our own standalone community survey for the

[13:30] ssa four program. And, uh, we worked with communications that got sent out. Um,

[13:34] we had that, we had a separate intersection safety assessment that we had

[13:38] representatives from bernie pd, bernie fire, myself, our

[13:42] consultant. We actually went and looked at several of our intersections,

[13:46] uh, in person, sat there 30 minutes watching traffic and just even just standing

[13:50] there, you can see some common things that are occurring. Like we watched a

[13:55] river, or sorry, main and bandera and that's if anyone's gone through, that's the dual left. That

[13:59] seems like a lot of people can't grab cat grasp that dual left concept there.

[14:03] um, and we saw as we're standing there with six of us with yellow safety vests, we

[14:07] saw near accidents of people almost running into each other. And then also

[14:11] as part of this, we've created a bernie safety dashboard that has all of this crash

[14:16] record data that's on online portal right now that, uh, and we've sent citizens. It's

[14:20] to those that portal specifically

[14:26] as we mentioned downtown particularly that's one that kept coming up

[14:30] in our community engagement and the surveys and everything is how we're gonna make downtown

[14:34] safer as part of this. Um, so we spent a lot of time talking about that in particular.

[14:39] and going back and looking at all of the crash records,

[14:43] 69% of the pedestrian crashes occurred on this corridor

[14:47] of main street and river road. Um, so that kind of ties back into

[14:52] where our, our places that we need to be putting our most effort into looking how

[14:57] we can mixed up safer. Um, but this really kind of opens up a conversation

[15:01] and this is kind of a, a policy conversation as we, as part of this

[15:05] grant program, we're gonna come up with concepts of safety projects.

[15:10] um, and these safety projects more than likely will cause a

[15:14] reduction of parking on the downtown, uh, corridor

[15:18] separately. Those of you that have kind of heard, I've heard it said multiple times, hey, we need

[15:22] to prioritize and improve and maximize our existing roadways

[15:27] without working on new roadways. I've seen, I've seen

[15:31] schematics that txdot and others have put together removing parking.

[15:35] 'cause that's, if you're going to maximize these roadways, removing parking is

[15:39] one of the options to really reduce congestion, reduce issues with that. So

[15:44] reducing parking and we're adding safety factors

[15:48] could all potentially have parking implementation implications.

[15:52] so that's something we need to talk through as a policy decision of what it do we

[15:56] want for downtown to look like. And there's many examples out there that

[16:00] I can provide of cities that have put, whether it's medians or it's

[16:05] planters or decorative fences or other type items. I know we've talked in the past about

[16:09] our jaywalking issues that we have downtown. Uh, there's many ways that

[16:13] you can put objects in to kind of help prevent and try to focus people

[16:18] to a safe location that we can do a better crosswalk

[16:22] or a better with signals or lights, signs. There are all sorts of stuff we can do,

[16:26] but right now it's kind of a free for all for pedestrians. For the most part. People are just crossing

[16:30] wherever they want to and it's not very safe at all.

[16:35] and then this, we did, we had a couple years we had the, the fatality there across

[16:39] from kowski, uh, as well. So this in this downtown area,

[16:44] um, we spent a lot of time and effort looking at that.

[16:49] really this was a targeted approach. We looked at intersections, we're

[16:53] looking at corridors, we're looking at systemic type con concepts that we can do that

[16:57] improve safety all throughout our city. These

[17:02] particular intersections are the ones that all of the crash records really

[17:06] pointed to. Um, I don't think many people will be caught by

[17:10] surprise on any of these, but, uh, river and plant, uh, there's lots of rear ending

[17:14] accidents that occur at that location. Uh, that traffic is congested there

[17:18] pretty frequently. Perkin river road, we know all about that intersection.

[17:23] uh, main street and river road, uh, that's one that has lots of crashes. We've

[17:28] had some pet issues, pedestrian issues there. Uh, main and school street, that's five

[17:32] points. We've done several schematics and talked with tdot about that location over the years.

[17:37] main street and bandera, that's the two left turn lane I was just

[17:41] talking about. Interestingly enough though, is the esser and the bernie

[17:45] high school driveway. Uh, and this is one that we've been having conversations with the

[17:49] school district. Uh, there's a lot of new drivers that are using that

[17:53] location. Uh, and that's something I know chief perez and I have had many meetings with txdot

[17:57] and the school district on that particular location as well

[18:01] as casca and scenic loop down at the bottom, uh, main and k gronkowski

[18:05] that we talked about in johns school, which was interesting to me as we're working through

[18:09] this project using data separately. We've already been

[18:14] talking about many of these intersections just from, we just knew so that several of these

[18:18] intersections needed issues and had to look at. But it is nice to have the data to

[18:22] back it up that these are our most critical intersections and

[18:26] in particular these corridors. So the west bandera section

[18:31] along heb and all of the kind of retail in that area, but

[18:35] as well as downtown. So on the plaza on the section of main

[18:39] street downtown and on river road. So these are our targeted corridor

[18:43] areas that we're gonna study further as part of the corridor and what projects we could potentially

[18:47] do to improve safety and some of our systemic safety count

[18:52] measures, uh, that we're gonna look and recommend as well. Um, noticed

[18:56] around town tdot's already doing some of these things. So tdot's been replacing some

[19:00] of our traffic signals with flashing yellow arrow signal

[19:04] heads. Um, so you'll see some in the town are having this signal head, um,

[19:08] instead of a green light that you yield to make a left turn, it's a yellow flashing

[19:12] arrow. Um, so that's considered a lot safer. They've been putting the reflective back

[19:17] plates, kind the yellow back plate behind the traffic signals.

[19:21] um, so that's something tdot's been working on already. Um, one of the other things

[19:25] that is in our safety from the state and the federal guidelines

[19:29] is looking at rumble strips on the edge of lanes, but also using wider

[19:33] edge lines. If you notice when txdot retried main street last year, they went from

[19:38] a four-inch strike to six inch strike. We've started following that new txdot

[19:42] spec as well in our re striping efforts. But just having wider lines,

[19:47] data is showing as being safer. And then on a pedestrian and bicycle front,

[19:52] um, one of the things we're talking about is working with tdot on the traffic signals

[19:56] at a couple key traffic signals. It's called bleeding pedestrian interval.

[20:00] if you've ever been sitting at the traffic signal, let's say you're driving on blanco and you wanna make a left onto

[20:05] main street, when that left green arrow turns on, that's

[20:09] also the exact same time that the walkers will start walking. You can

[20:13] program the signal that will let the walkers, the pedestrians start first and

[20:17] have kind of a head start to get out into the intersection. So when the drivers start,

[20:21] they'll see the, the people hopefully, hopefully .

[20:25] but right now, that's something that's a common occurrence. I see it almost daily

[20:30] that people are making the left turn without seeing the people, the pedestrians

[20:34] coming out. The issue with this, and again, it kind of goes back,

[20:38] there's always a pro and con this makes it safer for the pedestrians, but

[20:42] in theory it's taking away seconds that the traveling vehicles can go

[20:46] through that intersection. You only have so many seconds in that, that cycle of the intersection.

[20:51] so we might take away five seconds from the overall cycle, but it helps allow

[20:55] the pedestrians to be safer because that'd be something that a couple key intersections

[20:59] like blanco and maine or some of the others that we see a lot of pedestrian

[21:04] activity, crosswalk visibility enhancements. That's what we've been talking

[21:08] through. There's a lot of signage, there's other things we can do. There's, um,

[21:12] ways that we can improve the crosswalk striping itself or other things.

[21:17] and one of the things they're really in the federal guidelines and state guidelines is really going

[21:21] to six foot is the absolute minimum sidewalk. And so that's

[21:25] something we have lots of three foot four foot. The city was doing five foot

[21:29] sidewalks for several years. We've gone to six, eight, and 10 sidewalks more

[21:33] recently. Um, but improving sidewalks and blanco is a perfect

[21:37] example there. If anyone's tried to walk down blanco on those little three and four foot

[21:41] sidewalks and you have trucks zipping by you and you're right up on the curb, it's kind

[21:45] of a, a dangerous situation. So giving you that more there, more room on

[21:49] that extra sidewalk. So

[21:53] what are the next steps in this big grant process? Obviously today, I'm kind of giving you the overview.

[21:58] um, we will be back to counsel march 10th is our plan to

[22:02] present the draft of the safe streets for all safety action plan to you to

[22:07] comply with the federal guidelines. This is kind of the process that we have to go

[22:11] to say that we're following the process. Um, we're gonna present you the draft on march 10th.

[22:16] on march 24th. We're gonna put it online, um, available and

[22:20] we'll have a a way for public to comment on it. Then later in march

[22:24] we'll have, um,

[22:29] sorry I have a typo messed up here. So I have march 24, but then march 26th.

[22:34] so we have been told that the the next stage of

[22:38] the ss four a program is supposed to come out in in march. Um,

[22:42] so we're targeting that. So we're finishing up the planning grant and the whole schedule we're

[22:46] working for is to finish the project. So march the new

[22:50] opportunity comes out. So in may we'll finish and get the resolution approved.

[22:55] we'll publish it in online to the public, and then end

[22:59] of june we'll actually submit for that next final implementation

[23:03] phase of the grant if that's something that we want to do for. So this would basically, uh,

[23:07] potentially get us money to go build some of these things that we're coming

[23:11] up in the grant process.

[23:16] so that's really, we wanted to give you this just to go through that. You're going to see, and we're gonna

[23:20] talk to state streets for all a couple more times in the next couple months and kind of give you a heads up of the whole

[23:24] what we have been working on the past year and what we will be talking to you in the next couple months.

[23:29] really. Do you have any questions? So mayor proam

[23:34] is a member of that task force. I've already had smaller

[23:39] one-off conversations with each of you about the downtown parking situation. Of course, we're

[23:43] trying to focus on some efforts there. Uh, those

[23:47] of you that are on the, uh, downtown plaza

[23:51] park subcommittee, some of this will impact how we look at that project

[23:56] as well. So I just wanted the whole council to be aware of this as it comes

[24:00] down the down the lane. It'll have a lot of implications, not just

[24:04] for pedestrian safety, but our mobility plan, our park plan, a lot of different factors.

[24:09] and so it was important, uh, for you to see thatty. Did you have

[24:13] anything you want to, you have a perspective on from your task force involvement?

[24:17] I think the meetings were all, um, pretty great. I mean, everyone was

[24:21] really engaged and it's fun just getting on the maps and kind of

[24:25] everyone having different ideas. Um, even some very creative ideas for five points

[24:29] from txdot, from safety perspective, not necessarily making the traffic

[24:34] better, but making 'em safer. Um, um, I think tdot's

[24:38] not too key on doing the roundabout like we'd all want yet 'cause

[24:42] just 'cause it's such a massive project. But they had some good, um, safety

[24:46] ideas. So just for me, fun being a part of that process. I think the

[24:50] fact that we can possibly get some funding this way in conjunction with working with

[24:55] ampo. Um, again, all these getting things shovel

[24:59] ready, it's all, that's what it's all about now for funding. So, um, the more funding

[25:03] we can get to get things shovel ready, um, the better we are to

[25:07] get more funding. So that's what it's all about. Any

[25:11] questions? No, just comments. Um, I'm glad to see that blanco made

[25:16] that list because it, you know, worries me quite a bit when I see the high school track team

[25:20] and cross country team running at, you know, the sun

[25:24] sun's coming up. It's already hard to see along that high, uh, that sidewalk.

[25:28] um, talking about solutions in the task force, the things you actually have control over.

[25:32] one of the things the comments I would have is, um, I often had people

[25:36] tell me their biggest concern of traffic is during the rush hour traffics around

[25:40] bernie, which is the school drop off times, right? And they'll even make the follow up

[25:44] comment, I don't have this problem during spring break. I don't have this problem in in, uh,

[25:49] the summertime. Um, were there any conversations around, 'cause I know she had school

[25:53] board members on that task force around offsetting middle school and

[25:57] high school start times because that's something we could start like monday. It's not gonna be possible with

[26:01] busing. I can tell you with busing, that would be, it's impossible.

[26:06] you have to. So how do other places that do do that make it possible? They have, if you're a large enough

[26:10] school district that you're running three routes maybe, but we would have to,

[26:14] you would have to double the number of drivers because I feel like we run the buses 24 7

[26:19] anyways. They idle all day. Right. And then I look at like waste management when we went

[26:23] to them and saying, hey, is it possible to do single routes? And they said, we don't have the number

[26:27] of routes or the scale, the scope to do it for bernie, yet y'all aren't big enough. Then they did it. Right.

[26:32] so I just, you know, and part of what's possible in discussions, I didn't know if that ever came up.

[26:36] so it, it did come up in conversations. We had several and we purposely had school

[26:40] people there. Um, so that came up. One of the, the other conversations was even just the, the

[26:45] boundary lines between schools. There are some lines that potentially are causing

[26:49] traffic issues or causing more traffic to go to this particular school while

[26:54] this school might be closer. Um, so we, we've talked through that with them, um, as

[26:58] well and just other options that we could potentially do for the school

[27:02] districts. But you're absolutely right and in general, every city school rush hour is big.

[27:07] um, but our, it's even worse for us kind of because we have this

[27:11] district, there are some schools now that are outside the city limits, but the majority of the schools are in the

[27:15] city limits and all the people out of the city are coming into the city and then they're leaving.

[27:19] and that's something even with the conversations we've had with txdot, the river

[27:24] herf intersection, the on herf making the right turn

[27:28] onto river in the morning and the evening, 40% of the

[27:33] traffic are going to champion. Um, so they're going to champion dropping

[27:37] off kids at champion and they're turning around and coming back out of champion. So

[27:41] we're having cars that are going through that intersection twice just to get kids to

[27:45] and from champion. Yeah. And I, you know, again, wasn't part of the task force, so I don't know what was vetted

[27:49] out and what's possible. I'm not a logistics expert, I just know that transportation, there's a lot

[27:53] of people that that, so it's a good question. It's a fair question. There probably isn't a

[27:57] really legitimate reason why it can work or if it could, maybe it's this cost and

[28:02] well, and I just, I think one thing to, and we, I think we told rich this

[28:06] a couple of times. This really was focused on like pedestrian safety versus actual

[28:10] efficiency of browser correct timing. Right. So it was kind of two separate things. So that's still

[28:14] valid point, which we were talking about with text on in a separate meeting with frank mm-hmm . Where that

[28:18] did come up more. So this is really focused more on safety

[28:23] specific specifically. So that's why it didn't as much make on this list, but it did briefly come

[28:27] up from a kind of different perspective. But that's why it didn't as much for this, it makes sense.

[28:31] and that's also going into what can we do to improve safety.

[28:35] we, we heard feedback from families that didn't feel safe for their kids to

[28:39] walk to burning high school. Yes. And so they're driving their kids and they're too close to ride the

[28:43] bus. They're in that one mile range. So now we have families that are driving and picking

[28:47] up their kids and where they could be walking if potentially we could have

[28:52] the, the sidewalk system on the city side and on the bernie campus as well.

[28:56] just have it where it all kind of made it better where families would push the kids and make 'em walk instead

[29:00] of driving them. But also, I'll comment in general, at one point we had

[29:05] conversations with the school district as well. The percentage of bus riders for bernie

[29:09] isd is way low compared to other school districts. We just have a lot

[29:13] of kids that don't ride the bus for whatever reason, um, here in this, at the city as well.

[29:19] okay. Is the, the targeted grant amount, is

[29:23] that known? And if so, or is the targeted recommendations based off of the possible

[29:27] grant amount you would get? So the, the, our planning grant

[29:31] we have is set dollar amount. So we are working through concepts. I have concepts

[29:35] that I'll present to you at that next council meeting. And our consultant is

[29:39] preparing cost estimates for those. And so when we submit for that next grant,

[29:43] we will have a dollar amount, um, for consulting and

[29:48] construction and building, uh, these proposed projects. Yes. Do you know

[29:52] how much it's gonna be available come next month for?

[29:57] I don't remember the dollar off the top of my head. Sorry. No. Now, so quick

[30:01] question, what was the consensus then? Because I know some members of the committee

[30:05] don't wanna build the roads. I'm all aware of that. So what was the consensus about the

[30:10] solution? You talked about getting rid of all the parking on river and maine to make the

[30:14] ment safety. What, what is, what is the solution that you've come up with?

[30:18] I mean, what's the thought? I don't, I'm just asking, you mentioned that, so I'm just asking. Well, I think there

[30:22] was various things. I think there was, um, some ideas for

[30:27] additional ways for pedestrians to get across main street safer.

[30:31] right. Things like that. Um, I think jack mentioned some of the things,

[30:35] um, connected to traffic lights. Um,

[30:40] let us do that. Yeah. So there, there's some medians that we, we were looking at potentially some, some

[30:45] medians, uh, that we could put in. It'll allow center refuge points so people can

[30:49] only go halfway and then they can go all the way across, I think. Yeah, I think that would be more effective because I can tell you,

[30:54] I, you could pull the people that are jaywalking and it's not because the crosswalk wasn't painted bright

[30:58] white and it wasn't because it wasn't a light flashing. Tell 'em where to go. They know where to

[31:02] go. It's easier to cross convenient where they are. Exactly. Mm-hmm .

[31:06] so it's not about the signaling or the lights or, I mean those are all good things, but, and so our,

[31:10] this planning grant is, is looking at safety, pedestrian safety

[31:15] and other things. So we will have a percentage, a small percentage

[31:19] of parking spaces that would potentially lose to help improve safety. But it's that

[31:23] further conversation of congestion or other things that

[31:27] we potentially need to do to make downtown safer that could have potentially lose more. Because

[31:31] that's something even we really would be nice to have a left turn lane for southbound

[31:36] main street to turn left onto river road. How many people have been stuck by someone trying

[31:40] to turn left and you're stuck behind them? It'd be nice if they had their own left turn lane. We're adding left

[31:44] turn lanes like that, that's gonna wipe out a block of parking on both sides of the street.

[31:48] so that's a decision if we want to do that. And then also the other part of that

[31:52] as well, we start putting medians in. That's gonna reduce, some

[31:56] people might not have a left turn anymore. We might have some driveways or some even

[32:00] city streets that might lose their avail availability to have a left across main

[32:04] street. And so that'll be a decision as well. There's other cities out there that have put medians in

[32:09] that had businesses will not be happy when people can't make a left into their parking lot anymore.

[32:14] can I get a clar, uh, clarification? What is, we said 36 serious

[32:19] injuries or death. What qualifies a serious injury? Because then the follow up

[32:23] is 69% of those happened on main street. So what is a serious injury?

[32:28] broken bones or er visit basically an er visit. Broken

[32:32] bones chief, I don't know if you wanna describe yeah. Serious bone injuries could be all your stuff that usually is

[32:36] gonna require transport by ems to an emergency facility. Severe injuries.

[32:40] yeah, it was like a specific, I think that's all it was. Check.

[32:45] um, there, uh, one example joe too, which is was an interesting one, which

[32:49] was more of a tech stop one, which was the bandera over by heb. Right

[32:53] now it's a center lane for turning mm-hmm . And they'd like

[32:57] to change that to actual like a, a median with

[33:02] a more defined left turn. Planned turns. Planned turns. Mm-hmm . 'cause that would be

[33:06] safer. And that's, um, that's right. That right. Versus of the free for all. Correct.

[33:10] correct. Exactly. So that again, that, that one would honestly didn't

[33:14] even cross my mind, but that's just a data driven based on statistics

[33:18] off, um, accidents. Yeah. That's something they need to probably look at too. Also in 46

[33:23] too, like if you're going out 46 in the morning, you've got high school kids

[33:27] that are trying to come down the center turn lane. They're already at center turn lane by valero.

[33:32] you know, because they don't wanna get back up by traffic. I mean, I've been almost hit head

[33:36] on two or three times there already. So that's, I think, I mean I think right now the focus

[33:40] is more safety than anything to your point. Yeah. We kept,

[33:44] we'd always drift towards these other solutions, but really this program

[33:49] isn't for that. But I mean, right. No matter what you start drifting towards thinking of the

[33:53] other solutions. But I was in a previous half building the other where we

[33:57] did go and put, um, medians all up and down in main real fair, kind

[34:01] of like main street. It wasn't a state highway, but it was a farm to market road

[34:05] and a lot of screaming and gnashing teeth. You

[34:09] hurt my business. But the data, the safety data

[34:13] was so high for it. And then once we did it, uh, it

[34:17] had crashes came way down. Uh, businesses still

[34:22] survived. People just learn their behavior differently, right? And so, so

[34:26] hey, we're not here to say we're doing this next year. Right? We gotta, we

[34:30] gotta have these conversations. Little by little projects will, uh, will

[34:35] occur that will have some of this in it. So we just need to be aware in our community. And they used to know we're

[34:39] talking about this. I say other big positive is tech

[34:43] dots continue to be a part of these conversations and they used to not be.

[34:47] I think it's critical because it's good to be candid. This is great, but we all know

[34:51] this. To your point, if you ignore all the other elephants in the room, which

[34:56] are really, you can't solve the total problem use of kind expensive

[35:00] bandaids, put it that way. But then they're good ones. I'm not saying they're bad. Yeah, yeah. But,

[35:05] oh yeah.

[35:09] anything else? Okay. Thank you jeff. Alright,

[35:16] director . Let's talk budget.

[35:32] alright. My part of this workshop today

[35:37] is to talk about the deliberate approach that we take with our budget development process every

[35:41] year and how it fits into our overall organizational strategic group.

[35:46] starting with, of course, our strategy map, which almost any presentation

[35:50] that you see me do related to the budget will always have a big old circle around the whole

[35:54] strategy map. The budget pretty much hits every item on this.

[36:01] additionally, every quarter when I come up and give a, uh, financial presentation,

[36:05] I'll go over our strategic management system and budget cycle,

[36:09] which starts, of course takes off october 1st for our fiscal year.

[36:13] uh, right now we are in the second quarter we're here with the city council

[36:17] strategic workshop. And after this, the leadership team is gonna

[36:22] pull away for some key takeaways from the workshop tonight. And

[36:26] then we'll move into budget development and adoption later in the fiscal year.

[36:33] the budget process is just one component. You'll see it is that light green stripe

[36:38] right in the middle right here of the triangle of our overall

[36:42] strategic framework. Um, overall from the citizens at the very

[36:46] top that dictate our overall vision to the employees that support

[36:51] the foundation of our organization. We set our strategic priorities,

[36:56] we meet our priorities, and then we measure our results.

[37:01] it's important to know as we kick off the budget process that it's highly dictated by law,

[37:05] both under the local government chapter, um, 1 0 2, the property

[37:09] tax pay. And we, um, definitely adhere to those laws stringently.

[37:15] additionally, locally, we have some requirements under our home rule charter

[37:20] specifically, oh, specifically for a

[37:24] balanced budget. And what that means is that we only use current revenues

[37:28] to fund our operations. We don't dip into our fund balance to, uh,

[37:32] fund our current operations unless there's a specific plan for it or council

[37:36] gives us approval.

[37:40] these are our nine budget guiding principles. And by the end of the budget process, you'll be

[37:44] very, very familiar with them. But I do wanna review just

[37:48] a couple of them specifically. Um, we are very strategically

[37:53] aligned, the, the the thing forward.

[37:57] um, we're very strategically aligned with our master plans as we're developing our budget,

[38:02] specifically the 10 year rolling plan. And that does create, uh, continuity

[38:07] year over year in our priorities so that we're not shifting, um, we're

[38:11] keeping our eye on the longer term. Additionally, we talked

[38:15] about the, um, the budget being balanced. And so when we talk about

[38:19] structural balance, that's, that's what we're talking about. We do maintain an optimum

[38:24] fund balance that works for us per policy for our, um, our credit ratings

[38:28] and for continuing with operations. Additionally,

[38:32] at the city of bernie, we aspire to be an employer of choice. Um,

[38:36] we are a professional organization. We rely on a team

[38:41] of highly dedicated skilled professionals to come to work every day to

[38:45] provide high value services to our residents.

[38:51] our approach to the budget process, as I mentioned earlier, it's very structured and disciplined.

[38:56] first off, um, we're very committed to transparency from the very get

[39:00] go. We have a website that will list all of our meetings, past, present,

[39:04] future. The discussions that were had that anybody in the public can log on and

[39:09] look at our cola with, which is our cost of living adjustment.

[39:13] it is based on policy, it's based on an economic indicator. And

[39:17] so that again, creates consistency year over year. It's not, it's not a

[39:21] percentage that we just determine on an annual basis, zero

[39:25] based budgeting. I'll touch on in just a minute what that is exactly. And

[39:29] then we have a multi-year capital improvement plan that we adopt annually

[39:33] as part of the budget process.

[39:40] so zero based budgeting, what is that mean? It just means that, um, all

[39:44] the expenses have to be justified at the point of zero. You don't just carry over your

[39:48] budget for one year to another or assume that you had a certain departmental

[39:52] budget last year. So this year the budget continues. Um, we have to look

[39:57] at each component of the budget and justify all those expenses accordingly.

[40:01] so how that works operationally is we look at last year's

[40:05] budget and we remove all those one-time expenses. So if you got a

[40:09] piece of equipment last year, we'll take that cost out. You, you don't

[40:13] naturally just get to keep that cost rolling forward until the next year and then fund

[40:17] something else. You have to ask for that money. Um, this year specifically,

[40:22] we are not taking into account in inflationary factor the budgets. We'll

[40:26] start at a, what we call a baseline of 0% increase.

[40:31] um, of course we'll continue with the justification of recurring expenses. So

[40:36] we may ask for an additional review or additional detail on expenses that

[40:40] happened last year that are gonna recur, um, as not just be given that because

[40:44] it got budgeted last year, I'll get budgeted again this year. Something

[40:48] that's new is, um, we did analyze, uh,

[40:52] departmental budgets over a several year period and where

[40:56] there were, um, kind of historical over and under. So we're calling 'em budget variances.

[41:01] we may have adjusted the baseline accordingly, either up or down depending on

[41:05] what needed to be done. So that's, that's something new for this year where, um,

[41:09] the baselines we may have to, you know, reduce the line if it wasn't used.

[41:14] but then if the department feels that they still need that, they can always ask for it. And

[41:18] then of course, any new requests or increases, any new programs, any new

[41:22] cost delivery services, um, any new equipment

[41:27] will have to be requested specifically. And that goes through a challenge and

[41:31] ranking prioritization process.

[41:36] so some of the things, um, that we are going to

[41:41] consider this year and bring forward are, um, implementing

[41:45] an equipment replacement fund. And so what that is, is it systematically

[41:49] saves for your known equipment that you have in place

[41:54] over the period of the equipment's life, so that there's not this one time

[41:58] expense when that piece of equipment fails or, um, when you need

[42:02] to replace that piece of equipment, you're saving a little bit every year because you know you're gonna have to eventually

[42:06] replace it. So that's, um, that's what we want to look into.

[42:11] additionally, uh, we might have some de that we are bringing for

[42:15] consideration the remaining bond funding for adler road, depending on

[42:19] the progress of that project. And then the gas utility and the storm water utility

[42:24] do have some large capital projects that might be on the horizon. So we're looking at

[42:28] potential debt. Is there additionally

[42:32] the texas municipal retirement system, which is what we all pay into

[42:36] for our retirement. Um, oh,

[42:41] I thought, okay. Sorry, I keep doing that.

[42:45] the, uh, texas municipal retirement system, um, has given cities

[42:49] the option of funding 8% versus seven. So we have some analysis

[42:53] to do to see what the implications of that would be to the city. Um,

[42:57] and then we'll bring forward that whenever we look into it. And then we're

[43:01] hoping to have a new park, uh, the north side community park not hoping to have, we're

[43:05] gonna have a new park . Exactly.

[43:09] so, uh, we will have to look into the operational impact of that brand new park, which we're

[43:14] all very excited for. This is just

[43:18] a high level overview of the main, um, point to our calendar this

[43:22] year. The items with stars are those public meetings. That council

[43:26] will be part of january. We already started planning for the budget and we

[43:30] actually started planning the senior adopted the last one, but january was a

[43:35] big planning month for us. And then of course we're kicking off the, um, council

[43:39] winter workshop today, march and april are gonna be

[43:43] very busy with the budget development at the departmental levels. And

[43:47] then may we'll have all those one time items, those horse ranking and prioritization

[43:51] items that are gonna be looked at. And then starting in

[43:56] june, we'll be coming to council at least once a month with either, um, an

[44:00] update presentation or workshop. And then finally some

[44:04] of the, the legally mandated steps that come later in august. And then

[44:08] september 8th is when they're planning on adopting.

[44:13] so with all that in mind, now's a, now's a good time to think about

[44:18] last year, what went well, um, where are some areas that maybe we can improve upon this

[44:22] year. Um, is there any insight so far into this workshop or

[44:27] that you thought about this year that you may want us to consider in our budget

[44:31] approach? So yeah, last year, is

[44:35] there anything specific that you'd like, didn't like? And you don't have to gimme

[44:39] an answer tonight, but if there's anything you want to more for that process, now is the time

[44:43] for us to weave that in. Um, I will tell you that this next

[44:47] year, so the end of this fiscal year, the beginning of next fiscal year, we'll

[44:52] do a citizen survey update and an employee engagement survey update.

[44:56] the employee engagement survey's already budgeted. This year's budget citizen survey will be budgeted

[45:00] next year's. Um, but from a process standpoint, we, we had a

[45:04] lot more meetings last year. We documented things a lot more,

[45:08] um, transparently on, on our website. We had a dedicated budget

[45:12] website. We always had that stuff. We just more intentional about making sure everything

[45:17] was, uh, clear to the public. Um,

[45:21] so yeah, when do we do our, the one-on-ones or two on

[45:25] twos? What, what is that in the process again? I can't remember. You have that on

[45:29] that calendar is usually in june. It's not clearly outlined. The

[45:33] the, so, so that was new last year. I did it twice

[45:38] before. We always had it once and we kind of did that in july. I kind of did one

[45:42] at the beginning last year, at the beginning of june. Okay. Here's some more things we're we're

[45:46] seeing just, you know, any other insights you have. Then in july we do it again

[45:50] right before we, uh, propose the budget. If

[45:54] you guys are amenable to that, I suggest we keep that, that place that, that

[45:59] worked really well for me. Um, you know, I just started in may, right? And I had

[46:03] experience managing $500 million plus budgets before, but

[46:07] managing a city budget budget and a government budget with all the different departments and how they work

[46:11] together, um, you know, there is a learning curve and so I feel like, um, you did a

[46:16] great job taking time to come back and explain to us and council and I had clarification

[46:20] questions around just comparing apples to apples. Um, so thank you for that. And

[46:24] I just feel like heading into 2026, um, I'm gonna have a lot more

[46:28] familiarity with all the moving parts. So I'm looking forward to that. Um, but no, 2025 was great

[46:33] 'cause you took that extra time to explain it and those one-on-ones or two by twos or whatever

[46:37] were very helpful. Yeah. So it's not clearly outlined here, but that is the intent to

[46:41] do that. Any other

[46:45] thoughts? It really comes down to how much money you had to spend. I mean, it comes, I

[46:49] may hate to say it, but we talk about projects and ideas. I mean, every time we meet,

[46:53] I mean, ty, you and I, this is our seventh or eighth time doing this and um,

[46:58] it comes down to what sarah tells us. She thinks the revenue's gonna be, but we

[47:02] know what the fixed costs are gonna be. I mean, we know what the overhead is for administration, police, fire to some

[47:06] degree. We know what your growth projections are gonna be for that. But, and we know what a lot

[47:10] of the projects are that are kind of sitting there. So I mean, I, I mean there's

[47:15] small things I guess I could think of. I can think of a number off the top of my head, which I won't go into, but

[47:19] I mean, big stuff. Well look, I'll commend you

[47:23] guys. I'll come in the staff, the system that we have balances all

[47:27] the things that we're in involved with. Growth, growth community. We have a lot

[47:31] of infrastructure needs. We're tackling them. We still got a lot more, um,

[47:36] we have, uh, growth

[47:40] development concerns, right? Was residential commercial, what's too much of what,

[47:44] um, what's that impact, right? We're we're measuring that. Are we having

[47:48] fiscal discipline from a departmental standpoint and how much we're growing. We know we got a,

[47:52] you know, a new fire station, uh, has an added cost, a new park has an added cost. We,

[47:56] we, we've been talking about that. We're doing that in a very measured, balanced way

[48:00] and I'm very appreciative of, of the staff for supporting that. But there's also

[48:05] the legislature, right? I know. And I'm already having those conversations and hearing about what

[48:09] might come down the pipe again this next session based on attempts,

[48:13] last session that failed and how are those gonna morph into what might be viable

[48:17] this next time around. Those are the things that keep me up at night on still how

[48:21] do we manage adding more infrastructure needs? Jeff darryl's

[48:25] stuff where I'd like to go do more roads. And we've talked, so you've talked to me about when's our next bond

[48:30] initiative, right? That'll be still be backed by community survey data and

[48:34] master plan data for sure. But that's a huge balancing act, right?

[48:38] and so I, I appreciate the system that we have in place really helps us manage

[48:43] that in a, in a more predictable manner. Process is perfect.

[48:47] well, and having a 10 year plan and adjusting every year is definitely important. I

[48:51] do think, you know, when you start thinking long-term planning and how property tax laws,

[48:55] the state level might impact city revenues, you know, at the tml conference, there are cities

[48:59] that have, you know, rely on entirely on property taxes. They

[49:03] don't have any other types of taxes to help their city run. And, you know, what happens if that changes? And so

[49:08] I do think long term there are things we need to think about. Um, infrastructure.

[49:12] you know, I don't think there's anyone that disagrees that growth is happening. It's just a matter of how

[49:16] we manage it. So growth is inevitable, but how does infrastructure keep up with it?

[49:20] right? Right. So I think those are some big blocks that have to be thought about. Um,

[49:25] it's important to have it out there. 'cause as I mentioned to you my comment, the friction between

[49:29] the public's desire for things to happen, parks, roads, parking

[49:33] lots, whatever. And the desire not to pay taxes or to have lower property

[49:37] taxes and property taxes is the only fundamental infrastructure revenue we have.

[49:42] and if the governor gets his way, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I don't know what they're gonna place property taxes

[49:46] with if they get rid of property. I'm not sure where the revenue comes from. Be that as it may,

[49:50] that's what the public needs to understand. That's the friction. You want these things, they're not

[49:54] free. And right. I, I, now I'm gonna say, you know, what keeps

[49:58] me up at night is not the fact that a property taxes might go away, it's just the fact that the rules of

[50:03] the game will change, but change drastically. And so how do we morph and pivot,

[50:07] which we always do. Cities are resilient that way. And I think we, our community city

[50:11] of bernie should be, um, feel lucky and privileged that we have a diversity,

[50:16] uh, of assets, revenue streams, a great utility system.

[50:20] other aspects that we can, uh, we can lean on because joe's right council

[50:24] , there are cities that are completely a hundred percent property, residential

[50:29] property tax. They have no commercial base, don't have utility systems and things

[50:33] of that nature. So, uh, we just wanna be very, uh, deliberate and intentional as always

[50:37] in the way we do our business and strategic so that we can handle things when they, when they arise.

[50:45] any other thoughts or questions? Feel free. If you ha think of something

[50:49] else, let us know. Uh, again, we're gonna be working on this in the next couple weeks with, with leadership

[50:53] team. Thank you.

[51:01] alright, we're gonna go to the brainstorming session.

[51:06] it's a reflection exercise. Um, some

[51:10] of you have probably participated in swot analysis, brainstorm,

[51:14] unity, threats. We'll call 'em this a spot. I don't like the word weaknesses.

[51:18] I think there's problems, right? Uh, we, we are

[51:23] resilient by nature. As a municipal organization. We can address problems.

[51:28] we are strong in certain areas and we know how to work around what we're not strong yet.

[51:33] what opportunities do you identify? Can you see that we automate,

[51:37] pursue? And what are the risks and pressures

[51:41] that you're feeling maybe have hurt us? You know, talk about what we feel.

[51:45] I just mentioned a couple, but I really want you guys to take a moment

[51:49] and pause and we'll go, I'll facilitate this exercise to

[51:54] where you just give me all your thoughts. And I, and I think you guys have already, you saw

[51:58] my email last week to get you started thinking about this. Uh, danny and

[52:02] nick will help me here. I'll give you post-it notes and you can, I'll give you a couple minutes and

[52:06] I'll give you a question and you just, whatever comes to your mind. I want to

[52:10] stress that this is a, again, a reflection exercise. It's not a

[52:14] problem solving exercise. We're not trying to find solutions here.

[52:19] we're not gonna be evaluating staff or evaluating a department. This

[52:23] is as a city organization as a whole. Let's reflect

[52:27] on our performance as a city body. That includes you guys. You guys are part of the city

[52:31] organization as a whole as well. Um, so we're gonna look at governance. There

[52:35] might be aspects that relate to employees and organizational culture elements. That's,

[52:39] that's all fair game. I just wanted to throw that out there. There are no dumb ideas.

[52:44] no dumb thoughts, no stupid ideas. Uh, what we're

[52:48] gonna do, um, pass these out here and, and each

[52:53] quadrant up there is associated with a certain color. And I'll, I'll, I'll throw out a

[52:57] question and give you a couple minutes

[53:01] privately. Just jot out as many as you want. When you're done, let me know. Nick and daniel

[53:05] will come and grab those and they'll take 'em and they'll get everyone's ideas and they'll

[53:09] categorize them and themes, they'll probably a lot of like-minded areas here,

[53:14] areas. And then we'll post those up there. And then I'll go on to the next question and

[53:18] we'll go through that through all four. Once we get done with that, when we've done all

[53:22] four quadrants, we're all gonna go up and gravitate over there

[53:27] to the, to the wall, look and just see what

[53:31] resonates with you. What themes, what other ideas do you see?

[53:35] is there certain priorities that also mean more to you than maybe they didn't before?

[53:39] or just kinda see if there's things that that come to mind. And we're

[53:43] all gonna share. You guys will share at least one, one or two things

[53:47] because then that'll help seed or plant the, the conversation

[53:52] next on the agenda. And that is, we'll look at the strategy map and how is this

[53:56] working with what the exercise we just did. Okay.

[54:01] any questions before we jump in? You guys? Everyone got a pen?

[54:08] one, one thought per post-it? Yeah. One thought per post-it. Here,

[54:14] use it. You have another one? Use another postit. Okay. Separate. If you have separate,

[54:19] you can use small sentence. Yeah. 20 close, but,

[54:23] oh, okay. Multiple. Yeah. So the very first one,

[54:27] we're gonna look at kind of strengths. What are we good at? What do we naturally

[54:31] do? Well, blue. Blue, right? Yeah. We do the blue until the,

[54:35] the light blue.

[54:39] um, again, one thought per post-it note.

[54:44] where are we delivering? Well, as a city organization,

[54:49] what are we proud of? What are you proud of? What do you think we do? Really, really good.

[54:53] if you want to compare us to fair oaks and ville and fredericksburg as whatever, but

[54:57] what do you think we do really well at? What are you

[55:01] proud of? And I'll give you a couple minutes.

[55:15] it's not my phone. Print well enough that we can bring

[55:20] no scripts done there. No promises. It's just the, uh, city as a whole,

[55:24] as a city organization. Yeah. This is a governing entity.

[55:44] I need a another stack of postit notes numbers.

[56:08] you just, we'll combine them if we have multiple,

[56:13] there you go.

[56:19] go ahead.

[56:27] you gave a prescription for adderall.

[56:32] don't

[57:12] if you, if you're good, you can, you're done. Move your tube into

[57:16] the side and that way I know you're, you're done. You still have some more time if you

[57:20] keep going, done

[57:32] messing.

[57:44] it's michelen. Se

[57:51] it's h-o-o-t-e-r-s in a different

[57:55] ways.

[58:12] what's that? If you have one? No, no. I'll give you about 10

[58:16] more seconds. Okay. Just he'll pose the question.

[58:25] okay. Um, you know, so when our, we did our

[58:29] leadership summit last october, november, we did a similar exercise, not

[58:33] the same swot analysis. We need a different type of analysis.

[58:37] we have post-it notes all over the place. It's fine. Alright.

[58:41] pull out your purple.

[58:46] alright. Problems. Where do you see strength?

[58:52] where do you see friction? Where do you see reoccurring concerns?

[58:56] what are people talking to you about a lot?

[59:05] don't just write my name on there. Not supposed to.

[59:42] oh, okay.

[59:57] brain's got a file. Hopefully the library.

[1:00:02] library. I should have been in blue guys. I didn't say it. I forgot that. I forgot

[1:00:06] it. I'm sorry. You're right. What did you doing? I really

[1:00:10] was counting. Sorry, I was really counting on you. I didn't even say it

[1:00:14] out loud. I thought I didn't even have say it.

[1:00:19] I think that was, you can't add that.

[1:00:38] am I the or separate? No, no, we're separate. Okay. Just making sure.

[1:02:33] alright. Maybe 15 more seconds.

[1:03:09] okay. Alright.

[1:03:13] just to give a little pause so we can group some these. Let's,

[1:03:18] we're gonna highlight really quickly kind of the themes of the strengths.

[1:03:22] have you guys ever do that for me? Yep. So over here we've

[1:03:26] got, these are public safety, fire, police, um,

[1:03:30] emergency services, first responders, um, in this

[1:03:34] kind of category. All of these you've gotta see, these are,

[1:03:39] um, kind of policy, udc, lid, uh, bouncing,

[1:03:43] uh, strict development with pro business tree ordinance,

[1:03:48] bouncing growth with community identity, um,

[1:03:53] municipal utilities and city services. All of these, um,

[1:03:57] two rows here. These are all quality of life. So these are parts, open

[1:04:02] space, uh, focus on quality of life, town spirit, recreation, library,

[1:04:07] um, they here in the culture and roots. Events, community events,

[1:04:11] main street, community engagement, all quality of life here.

[1:04:15] staff development and leadership. Uh, more utilities.

[1:04:19] so we had a couple right here that got separated.

[1:04:27] utilities, uh, communication, transparency, effort,

[1:04:31] uh, to improve at communication here. Governance

[1:04:36] structure, fiscal responsibility. These kind of meet together. Model

[1:04:40] city governance, uh, council administration and strong

[1:04:44] schools. That really kind of falls into quality of life too.

[1:04:50] okay. Alright. Pull

[1:04:54] out your yellow, your green, yellow, green stat.

[1:04:58] these are our opportunities. What do you think deserves more attention

[1:05:05] over the next few years? There's something that we haven't quite been able

[1:05:09] to go after, just because we have a lot on our plates. Or maybe the time isn't right.

[1:05:14] what do you think we ought to pursue out in the, in the short term?

[1:05:18] let's say maybe in the next three years or so.

[1:05:23] not defined with anyone's counsel term. That's not that.

[1:05:53] no, these are,

[1:06:31] what are these ones?

[1:08:27] new mayor. Yeah, new mayor.

[1:08:34] put that right there. New mayor.

[1:08:40] it's just one replacement.

[1:08:45] new.

[1:08:49] alright, looks like we're kind of down here. Take

[1:08:54] .

[1:09:00] oh, ers.

[1:09:05] this is the mon man. That was the month. Hand

[1:09:09] that over there. Natalie. One more. You have more for me. Yeah, right there.

[1:09:13] thank you sir. You're doing great.

[1:09:18] natalie, where am I supposed to put this one? . Quality of life. Tell

[1:09:22] me. Quality of life. Things have gone way down. Quality.

[1:09:26] you know, it's, if you look at this,

[1:09:30] we're still trying to figure out the problem. We, we know problems. We all

[1:09:34] are quick to, to identify what we think is wrong. It's all

[1:09:38] district one and district five. . Thank you very much.

[1:09:43] I know several people in the county. Yeah. Alright,

[1:09:48] let's go to the last one while there're still processing you. Me to start. You good? Yeah.

[1:09:53] here's the things for the problem areas. So over here we've got really kind of environmental issues

[1:09:57] on this far left side. So this is trees, oak will, um, water

[1:10:01] and river road park, uh, water conservation, water issues.

[1:10:06] this second row here are traffic related issues. I was really surprised we didn't have more of those, but I

[1:10:10] think everybody just understands that one. Um, these are

[1:10:14] growth, uh, all all related to growth and dealing

[1:10:19] with all those problems related to growth. Uh, these are all development inter

[1:10:23] or these are governmental. So all of the interlocal

[1:10:27] agreements, city, county relations, erosion of city, county relations,

[1:10:31] all of those political, uh, issues here in the middle. Um,

[1:10:40] these are kind of structural quality of life. So this, uh,

[1:10:44] community activities and facilities lacking public, uh, arts and theater,

[1:10:48] lacking recreation, uh, facility, indoor pickleball, uh,

[1:10:52] not enough parks. These are all parking and pedestrian related.

[1:10:57] so either, um, sidewalk or pedestrian related, um, issues.

[1:11:01] these are all code. And, uh, udc, uh, either

[1:11:06] were too strict, not strict enough. We're both strict and strict. Not strict enough

[1:11:10] at the same time. Depending on which side of the strictness. Wrong enough on

[1:11:14] everyone else. Purpose depends

[1:11:18] on those. Um, these are kind of social media perception, public

[1:11:23] perception, uh, lack of, of, of, uh, restraint. I want,

[1:11:27] I want. Uh, and then a small, uh, fire department,

[1:11:31] petty crime, public safety issues. There was one that

[1:11:35] said the fire department is too small. Chief, I don't know how you got up here. Yeah, honestly,

[1:11:41] only. We were building a second fire station. Guys, it's

[1:11:45] just you to bring you that the best we can

[1:11:50] ask tomorrow. Alright,

[1:11:54] let's pull out the, pull out the, uh, your last stack

[1:11:58] there. Last post of good stack. We're gonna look at our threats.

[1:12:03] what do you think could materially hinder our

[1:12:07] long term success?

[1:12:12] what could materially hinder our ability

[1:12:16] to perform the way we have in the past

[1:13:21] new scott?

[1:13:31] there's gotta be an aggie here somewhere. How many people

[1:13:40] involved in this? Yeah, you could, you could, you can sort us out, you know.

[1:14:54] okay.

[1:15:00] what else? We got

[1:15:20] all opportunity there. Get a few more that are coming up here.

[1:15:25] I'm bigger step or what?

[1:15:31] that's not, that's not, okay. Same, same, same thing twice. Okay.

[1:15:35] . Alright. Yeah. Danny. Sheriff's, the kind of the themes on the opportunities.

[1:15:40] so these are on these opportunities. These are gonna be traffic. So new roads,

[1:15:44] um, repave and stripe, esser, um, infrastructure,

[1:15:49] road grid, road diet, roundabouts,

[1:15:53] all of their opportunities for kind of road, uh, potential

[1:15:58] bonds grants. So this is all money funding, uh, manage

[1:16:02] commercial, um, for options, funding, city

[1:16:06] services, operational efficiency, vehicles and buildings. Fiscal

[1:16:11] responsibilities in this second column. Third column is,

[1:16:15] uh, traffic, traffic issues, transportation,

[1:16:21] cars and people ampo projects. I'm getting shorter,

[1:16:25] I think. Uh, this next row here, downtown walkability,

[1:16:29] sidewalks, downtown plaza, fire trucks, patrol officers,

[1:16:34] kind of safety related, uh, quality of live

[1:16:38] trails and parks. Uh, unified culture and arts plan.

[1:16:42] pocket parks, uh, big events. Driven destination,

[1:16:47] destination town, uh, strength, our strengthen our community, uh,

[1:16:52] involvement.

[1:16:57] and here we got commercial development hotels, limited,

[1:17:01] limited vape shops. ,

[1:17:07] downtown parking and parking lot. Always attacking,

[1:17:12] uh, planning related, uh, planning department. Expand

[1:17:16] enforcement of the udc.

[1:17:20] I'm not gonna try to read that one. It's okay. Expand

[1:17:25] waste water utility with portable water.

[1:17:33] a tap, maybe a tap pump, water up ri ridge up river.

[1:17:37] I think a river road park, I'm assuming. Uh, discussion here.

[1:17:42] and then partnerships with local businesses. Build relations with county,

[1:17:47] uh, combined resources with businesses and county

[1:17:52] engaging our youth and bisd more. And then

[1:17:56] animal shelter upgrade. Those are the ones on our,

[1:18:00] yeah, opportunities. Okay. So as they're processing the threats, I would like

[1:18:04] you to pull out the strategy map in your folder.

[1:18:10] and based off the things that you just heard or just going through this

[1:18:15] exercise, take a minute or two to look at this map. You've

[1:18:19] seen it in, in, in you, in utilization. I'm gonna tell you, the

[1:18:23] last couple years have been, I think, phenomenal for us because we've had this resource.

[1:18:28] it's been so helpful to communicate to new employees, to onboard new

[1:18:32] directors, new council members. I think it's a communication, great, fantastic

[1:18:37] communication tool to the public. And so you guys know, we, we lean on

[1:18:41] this heavily. A department head cannot make a budget

[1:18:45] request without aligning it to somewhere here. So I want you to really

[1:18:49] reflect on this. And it's, and you'll notice it's kind of vague in

[1:18:54] certain, it's not so precise that it locks us down, but it does

[1:18:58] guide us in different areas and themes. So

[1:19:02] we, we don't need to figure this out tonight, but I want to get feedback. If you think we need

[1:19:06] to maybe pivot somewhere. Somewhere. Do we need to add something? Do we need

[1:19:10] to wordsmith something? Do we need to open something up even greater, do account for something

[1:19:14] else? And so, uh, my question to you is, how well do you

[1:19:18] think this is working for us? You

[1:19:22] don't need to answer now. Just reflect on it while we finish up these, these, uh, threats.

[1:19:27] I would say, I thought this was one of the things I really liked when I got on council. Starting everything like that,

[1:19:31] you could see it made it easier being new to see that alignment. I feel it

[1:19:35] was a great tool. Um, is this on our website or found to be

[1:19:39] aware? Think it's internal. Chris, is there strategy map on the website that is the

[1:19:43] goal for this year? Yes. Okay. So it is a, a fundamental part of, yeah, right? 'cause I think

[1:19:47] this is something that community should be aware of as well. And I know we use it to focus

[1:19:51] ourselves, but we do have a couple of elements on our website

[1:19:56] about our strategic philosophy, right? I have talked with chris about how

[1:20:00] do we, uh, do a better job of communicating who we are. I think this is a core piece of

[1:20:04] our governance structure for council and for the city leadership team. And you're right,

[1:20:08] the public and the community of large need, not danny and I, christie, we

[1:20:13] often are asked to speak about this piece across

[1:20:17] the state. Larry had me speak to, um, to, uh, a bunch of visitors

[1:20:21] center and directors and stuff about our, this system and whatnot.

[1:20:25] it's really unique to a lot of folks across the state. It

[1:20:29] is in the budget document section with several places in the budget, but not as

[1:20:34] promised. Standalone really dropped to.

[1:20:38] alright, danny,

[1:20:44] tell us what you got from, from the threats perspective. So interesting with the threads here, they a

[1:20:48] lot more spread out. Not as much grouping here. Well, and most

[1:20:52] of the other ones we had, you know, some really big groups, uh, and themes. So,

[1:20:57] um,

[1:21:01] strong civic political leadership, uh, lead the community.

[1:21:06] um, and then ta wilson. I don't know ty, you put that one or

[1:21:14] you notice I said staff council was fair game, right?

[1:21:19] knock it off. Right. Well, tammy needs to be open on mondays.

[1:21:24] work seven days a week.

[1:21:30] dr. Mackey has one about weather issues, but there's a word up the top today. Hundred percent unforeseen

[1:21:35] weather issues. Um, threat of running outta water, natural disasters,

[1:21:39] uh, prolonged drought, all threats that we know. Cost of living, cost

[1:21:43] of everything, uh, but really water. Uh, and then

[1:21:47] down here, state regulation, uh, tax revenue, state legislation,

[1:21:51] legislation, uh, at the state level,

[1:21:56] uh, county, county relationship, county court, lack

[1:22:00] of, uh, cooperation with the county and bisd. Uh, failure

[1:22:04] to maintain the budget. Um, lack of, uh,

[1:22:08] funding, cybersecurity, economic, uh,

[1:22:13] economic down, downturn misinformed. Public

[1:22:17] strong, public distrust. Um, bipartisan

[1:22:25] business retention. Oh, business division, bipartisan now I'm just making up words. . Well,

[1:22:30] business retention. That's, you don't have the dyslexic

[1:22:34] oriented job industry. Uh, we need lucrative professions and job opportunities.

[1:22:38] uh, development loopholes. Decreasing approvals of

[1:22:44] decreasing approvals of bisd equals less. People choosing

[1:22:49] schools. Schools to build life and burning. Okay, failure. Failure

[1:22:53] to adhere

[1:23:00] mobility. Oh, solutions to mobility. That's the one you can tell me.

[1:23:04] federal government, uh, turmoil discussion in, uh, in

[1:23:08] the council or division in the council. Uh, failure to achieve

[1:23:17] from, uh, public, what's the last name? Biden. Elector.

[1:23:23] uh, big and outside. Uh, influences on local politics and policy.

[1:23:29] so let me, uh, lemme invite you guys up up here. So you can just take a look

[1:23:34] at this and um, just see if there's

[1:23:38] any other priorities. Uh, you all have your priorities in your mind. Is there anything else that,

[1:23:43] that you, that you see jump out at you? If you look at

[1:24:26] what, uh, any thoughts or observations from

[1:24:30] any one of you going through this exercise? Anything you want to share?

[1:24:36] say that again, frank, out loud. I said I think these two go hand in hand. I said

[1:24:40] because what we see, what I've seen a lot of these problems are, are opportunities that we're

[1:24:44] looking at trying to address already. That true.

[1:24:52] any other kind of observations going through this

[1:24:56] exercise? I think it's cool to see the continuity of us in

[1:25:00] general, right? Well, all of us come from different backgrounds, but still generally

[1:25:05] thinking the same, same way in threats. You think there'd be differences anyway

[1:25:09] because I think those just generally kind of different anyway. But for

[1:25:13] the three that there would be similarities. That shows

[1:25:17] that there are, yeah, that I like the strengths and

[1:25:21] opportunities was very the same. Like I thought we had really strong parks, but I also

[1:25:25] think we can improve our park. So I think this, I think some

[1:25:29] things on our strength also be brought opportunities. Yeah, I think, uh,

[1:25:33] I think our staff does a phenomenal job providing good resources in that area. But we

[1:25:38] also know the demand is still a lot, the appetite's a lot greater,

[1:25:42] right? We talked about that a year ago. The same workshop. I think the

[1:25:46] scope of some of these opportunities or problems, you know, could be

[1:25:51] 10 timeframe. So how do you, how do you manage that, right?

[1:25:55] is there loading up for quick wins that can be, that can be achieved and,

[1:26:07] alright, so what we're gonna do, um, what I'll do is, we'll I'll

[1:26:11] transcribe this and uh, and I'll send it back out to you guys so we have,

[1:26:15] we'll document it. Then when we go into our budget kickoff of directors,

[1:26:19] they'll have it as well. And so as they can start processing their budget and

[1:26:23] their department of work plans for the next year, they'll, they'll identify, hey, I think we can do something

[1:26:27] that this is low hanging fruit or wait, this might be something we gotta process in

[1:26:31] a master plan or cip or whatever.

[1:26:36] and so we'll handle that, uh, through the budget process. And so I'll keep you apprised

[1:26:40] of how that goes. Alright,

[1:26:45] appreciate you guys, your help, your involvement in this and your preparation coming into

[1:26:49] this. Typically a lot of cities will hire a consultant to come in and this will be an

[1:26:53] all day endeavor. Y'all did it for like 20 minutes. So thank you for being physically conservative

[1:26:57] man and not waste us money.

[1:27:02] alright, the last item I do is that strategy map. Is

[1:27:06] there any feedback you have for me now, again, you can email me later, we can bring this

[1:27:10] back in a, in a work session conversation in a regular council meeting once we have all this process.

[1:27:15] but is there anything that you think we ought to look at? Dr. Mack,

[1:27:20] when you say environmental responsibility is one of the four major

[1:27:24] tenants, I don't see anywhere in the four subclasses

[1:27:29] that it actually says anything about that we're assuming it says that.

[1:27:33] and I think part of the public and certainly my interest is we

[1:27:37] mentioned oakwell, we mentioned water supply, we mentioned a lot of things about code

[1:27:42] enforcement. Somehow that should be worked in here to reflect

[1:27:46] that because I think the public thinks many people in the public, either through

[1:27:50] ignorance or or misinformation that we're not. And we

[1:27:54] are, for example, tree ordinance, very strict tree ordinance. I get complaints about

[1:27:59] the baptist hospital, which we don't even have control over, get complaints about the

[1:28:03] aviso development, which was actually approved in 2007. So it's going forward.

[1:28:07] so I mean, this is something we need. Yeah. You know. Okay. So I would tell

[1:28:11] you, um, and also strengths, a lot of udc, a lot of other development

[1:28:16] regulation. Maybe there's something that's well went in. Again, you don't wanna be so

[1:28:20] specific that you're locked down into a very particular niche area.

[1:28:24] uh, but you also want to make sure you're covering a lot of things. So that's, that's good.

[1:28:29] just a reminder that these strategy map, these four quadrants are, hey, what

[1:28:33] are your customer centric objectives? What are your business process objectives?

[1:28:37] what are your financial objectives? What are your employee objectives? And

[1:28:41] those four tenants above are kind of the key focus areas. We, we, we want a community that's

[1:28:45] safe and secure, that's fiscally strong and excellent,

[1:28:50] great community charm. We hear that everywhere. We want to protect that. There's not a whole lot

[1:28:54] in those objectives below that about unique community charm, but we know we're gonna have business processes

[1:28:58] and, and fiscal and employee stuff dedicated to that. So we could even open

[1:29:02] a lot of that as well. That's a good comment. What else? Any other

[1:29:09] things you think that, that we ought to look at? I mean, I think it's good. I mean it's,

[1:29:13] it is a good overview. It's a good place to start. It's a good baseline. You know, if you start

[1:29:17] trying to nitpick it and get too centralized on it, like you were saying,

[1:29:21] then you're gonna have 10 or 12 line items under each one of those. That's the

[1:29:25] directors s other thing. You don't want to, but we could have six objectives under each one if we want. And

[1:29:29] I'm not opposed to that. But you don't wanna have so many things and so many values and so many,

[1:29:34] you know, long mission statements that people are, don't understand the core of

[1:29:38] who we really want to strive to be. So.

[1:29:44] okay. I appreciate it. Again, the feedback is good. I'm glad. I appreciate

[1:29:48] my directors, uh, team here to listen. Um, we will process

[1:29:52] this. We write it up and send it back out. We'll have a follow up

[1:29:57] thoughts about councilman al's. Um, comment.

[1:30:02] are you open to me maybe looking at some sort of objective that constitutes

[1:30:06] more environmental, maybe some other development regulatory okay.

[1:30:11] included to serving our customers, our customers in public. Yeah, I would like to

[1:30:15] see the, the summary of this, how this all boils down and then kind of layer that into

[1:30:19] the strategy map. I think it's great that we have a strategy map 'cause you do need to have a plan and directional,

[1:30:24] you know, guideline of where you want to go. Um, but, you know, taking

[1:30:28] some of these common problems and strengths and we all have pretty much the same things on

[1:30:32] here. So I think if we layer that in on top of this, it would reinforce this

[1:30:36] code, code those to, you know, cf do whatever possible.

[1:30:40] so what we'll do is we'll process this, get it to you, we'll do another prep. We'll have another

[1:30:45] item, maybe, maybe the first meeting of march.

[1:30:49] we can come back and say any, any thoughts here. We, we'll, we'll wrap

[1:30:53] it up. Does that sound good? Mm-hmm . Excellent. Excellent

[1:30:57] job. Okay. I said no more than 90 minutes. If we quote the mayor,

[1:31:01] I'll give the form back to you. So you asked me not to ask council for

[1:31:08] talk, joe not allowed to talk. No.

[1:31:12] any comments from council? Great exercise.

[1:31:19] you comments from council? No. Alright. Uh, great job guys, city staff. Appreciate

[1:31:23] it. Uh, man, everybody, lori, uh, great job as always. Thank you guys for your time and for

[1:31:27] everybody from the community was here. Appreciate your engagement. Uh, meeting adjourned

[1:31:32] at six, or sorry, 7 31.

Feb 10, 2026 City Council on 2026-02-10 6:00 PM - Special Called

Agenda

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