>> call this meeting to order on monday, july 21st, 2025 at 5:30.
would everybody please stand for the invocation and also the pledges?
heavenly father. We owe it all to you.
tonight, the council is going to be doing business. We ask for your wisdom and knowledge.
but lately, we have lost special people.
I want to pray for mark pate and his family.
I want to thank you for his leadership
and his example that this man brought to the police department and everybody around him.
also, [inaudible].
you get individuals you send us that spend their life taking care of others,
and we want to thank you for her. Heavenly father, be with us tonight.
we love you. We thank you for your son. In christ name we pray, amen.
>> good evening, mayor and council. That moves us on to section 2, public presentations.
we have no proclamations this evening. However, we do have two presentations.
I will announce both presentations. We'll have a brief update by deanna phillips,
director of community services, and then at the end, we'll take one big picture for each one.
first is the adoptable shelter pet.
>> terry compos. Animal control officer shelby welch
has brought kingston with her for us tonight to feature. Kingston loves it here,
and he might just become our council dog. He's been greeting everyone. Kingston obviously is still a puppy.
he's about three months old. Him and his sister came into the shelter. Our best estimate is he's some shepherd mix.
we think he'll probably become a medium to large sized dog. He's very sweet and very friendly,
but he is a puppy, and puppies do need a lot of attention. Goodness. He's not potty trained yet.
as a reminder, the animal shelter is at capacity, and in order for us to place as many dogs in available homes,
we do waive the adoption fees. All potential adopters must still go through all the shelter screening process before an adoption can be complete,
so please come over to the burleson animal shelter and let us match you with your forever friend. Maybe it's kingston.
that's literally my nightmare, but it's fine.
you read the next one.
>> thank you. Next is to receive a report to recognize the communications and police departments for statewide marketing awards.
once again, deanna phillips, director of community services. >> thank you very much.
it's my honor to present to city council tonight the various marketing communications awards
the city of burleson received this year during the texas association of municipal information officers,
that's a mouthful, tami annual conference in june. More than 650 entries were submitted across
29 categories and the city of burleson is proud to have brought home 10 awards.
these honors highlight the creativity, innovative and engaging ways the talented professionals behind me work
to cut through the noise and educate our community on important initiatives and services.
I'm going to take a moment to introduce the team. We have collin gregory, who serves as the police department side as
the community engagement and crime prevention specialist. We have tina brinkman, the marketing manager and head of
the city's communications team, marcus jackson, our video production specialist,
jessica pounds our multimedia specialist, and carrie chavez, our website content coordinator.
these individuals are truly among the top public communicators in texas,
which I already knew, but the awards only confirmed it. We were second only to the city of mckinney,
who took home 11 awards, to our 10. For a city of our size that speaks volume
about the caliber of this team and the work they produce. I could easily brag on them all day,
but I will jump to the awards because I know you have a full schedule tonight. The first, we did receive four first place trophies,
and the first ones for the explore btx blog, jessica partners with the economic development team
to highlight new things to do in town each month. The love shouldn't hurt poster is
collin's powerful campaign offered a discreet way for victims of domestic violence to seek help.
this police piece was even recognized by congressman roger williams on the floor of the us house of representatives.
poorly drawn pets campaign was jessica's creative idea to raise funds for
the shelters new adoption trailer and had all of our staff drawing hilarious pet portraits,
which helped both drive awareness and donations. The best use of photography,
jessica again captured adoptable pets, paired with our public safety personnel creating compelling and heartwarming images.
moving on to the second place categories, an award for collin's video,
unveiling the police department's new vehicle design with the help of legos.
calendar for a cause, and was a shelter project led by jessica.
pet owners paid to feature their pets in the calendar, allowing us to produce it at no cost.
it received both awards in special publication, and most creative with lease dollars.
best use of vertical video. Video, again, was tied to jessica's leadership in
shelter marketing and our campaign to raise funds for the adoption trailer, and a public education video produced by marcus that shared
a cardiac arrest survivor story and promoted cpr awareness. This video is part of a broader campaign led by tina,
who partnered with the fire department to reinvent their cpr classes. Now branded as save a life saturday.
as a result, their monthly classes are consistently filled up. Finally, we earn third place for btx bob,
a fun and informative campaign developed by katie brown in public works and brought to life through collaboration with marcus.
please join me in congratulating this exceptional team, and on behalf of the entire group,
we want to thank council, city management, and all the departments that we get the honor to
represent as for your continued support of our communication efforts. Your trust allows us to do meaningful,
impactful work that truly serves our community.
>> council, if you would like to come down and take pictures. Council?
thank you, mayor and council. That brings us to 2c, community interest items.
>> I have a few.
hold on. Yes, I followed larry's lead, and I wrote it all down.
>> you got a minute.
>> I'm hurrying. Now I can't find it. I'd like to take a moment and recognize hidden creek golf course.
since our last meeting, I felt compelled to see it for myself.
I'm so glad I did. I even picked up a new to me set of clubs,
and my husband and I have been visiting a couple of times a week. I must say, I've been genuinely impressed.
lately, I've been on a mission to discover and appreciate the beauty that surrounds us right here in burleson.
hidden creek has become one of those special places that really captures what makes the community so wonderful.
a few moments really stood out to me. A father watching his young daughter golf turned to her and said,
"that was beautiful. Good job, baby." while waiting for range balls to be reloaded,
a man who had no idea who I was, started chatting with me.
he said, "my wife and I have a membership. We pay $30 a month.
it's our time together. Just have to watch out for those sprinklers at 8:30."
I saw two young people in aggie t shirts on a first date.
one was from mansfield, the other had just graduated from centennial.
the young man will be playing golf at texas a&m. Hearing their laughter and conversation from a few feet away was just heartwarming.
I share all of this because this is the burleson we are building; a place where families, couples,
and friends come together to create memories. Hidden creek is a shining example of
a community investment that brings people joy, connection, and pride.
it's more than a golf course. It's a gathering place, and it's something we can all be proud of.
way to go hidden creek. My next one. I'm going to not cry.
after spending a few days volunteering at the centerpoint volunteer fire department,
known locally as the command, just outside of kerrville, texas, I came home with a lot of my mind,
and I kept asking myself, what would you do, in burleson,
if a natural disaster hit? Are we prepared? What emergencies are we vulnerable to?
what plans are in place to protect our first responders, public works crews, distressed citizens,
volunteers, and even the media? These are important questions,
so I reached out to fire chief casey davis, he and joe laster,
our emergency operations manager, responded right away and sat down with me
to go over our city's emergency preparedness plans. We had a great conversation about the what ifs,
and looked closely at the resources and response strategies we have in place.
one of the key things we discussed is the cert program, community emergency response team.
this is a volunteer based initiative that equips residents with vital skills in disaster response,
such as fire safety, basic first aid, search and rescue, and team coordination.
cert trained volunteers play a crucial role during real emergencies
and are also active in supporting local events and preparedness efforts.
we're currently gearing up for our next cert basic training course this fall,
and we're looking for new participants. This training is completely free and open to all members of the public.
if you've ever asked, how can I help or what can I do to support our community?
this is your opportunity. Also, don't miss our burleson emergency preparedness fair happening on saturday,
september 28th, 2025, at the brick.
this event will bring together first responders, local organizations, and vendors,
to promote public safety and emergency readiness through hands on family friendly activities.
cert will play a big role in this year's fair, and it's a great chance to learn more and get involved.
we are fortunate to have a community full of people who are ready and willing to help.
if you've ever said, "I want to help when it really matters," this is your chance to get trained,
get informed, and be part of something meaningful. I truly invite you to join us.
let's get ready together. Now, I'm done. Do you want me to talk more?
>> I want to thank the lions club for the parade,
and thank chief cordell for chauffering and me and alexa round.
I had a blast. We had so much fun out there. The weather was great.
I also want to welcome our new recruits, valeria figueroa and also austen zimmerman,
who just graduated the police academy. Welcome on board. But I'm going to talk about my favorite nodehead and that's stacy singleton.
stacy is really a prime example of what we have in burleson.
he has been in kirk county helping with the recovery. Hats off to you, bud. Proud of you.
>> thank you, mayor and council. That will bring us to section 3, changes to the posted agenda.
3.a is items to be continued or withdrawn, and 3.b are items to be withdrawn from
the consent agenda for separate discussion by the city council, staff, or members in the public in attendance.
>> madam secretary, I'd request that we remove item 5.d, I,
j and o from consideration tonight due to the cancellation of our tiff and 4.b meeting,
and five all of these items will be coming back. 5.o is administratively removed for me addressing some purchasing items.
>> those are items on the consent agenda this evening. Is there anything else?
that'll move us on to section 4, citizens appearance. Each person in attendance who desires to speak to
the city council on an item not posted on the agenda, should speak during this section.
speaker card must be filled out and turned into the city secretary prior to addressing the city council.
each speaker will be given three minutes to speak. Each person in attendance who desires to speak to
the city council on an item posted on the agenda, shall speak when that item is called forward for consideration.
at this time, I have no speaker cards. Is there anybody in the audience who would like to address the city council on an item not
listed on the agenda? There are none.
mayor, that'll move us on to section 5, consent agenda.
all items on the consent agenda are considered to be routine by the city council,
and we'll be enacted with one motion. There'll be no separate discussion of the items,
and approval of the consent agenda authorizes the city manager to implement each item in accordance with staff recommendations.
this evening, consent agenda is items 5.a through 5.c, and
5.e through 5.h, 5.k through 5.n, 5.p through 5.u.
>> is there a motion?
>> I'll move to a proof. >> a motion by adam and a second by victoria,
please vote. Pass, unanimous.
>> thank you, mayor and council. That brings us to item 6.a, etj release petition for 1700 tarver road, case 25-176.
tonight's to consider and take possible action on a petition for release from
the city of burleson's extraterritorial jurisdiction for approximately 27 acres of land addressed as 1700 tarver road.
the staff presenter this evening is tony mcilwain, development services director, mr. Mcllwain.
>> yes. Thank you, madam city secretary. Mayor and council, mr. Baisden with renfrew street holdings limited,
filed a petition for the release of his property at 1,700 tarver
road from the city's etj on june 17th.
I'll not go through the presentation unless prompted to do so by you, but your options on tonight's item are to
approve the petition or to take no action on the petition.
again, if it's the council's desire to not grant the petition,
the city attorney recommends that the council take no action, on item as opposed to formally denying the petition.
I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. >> any questions?
>> do we agree with no action on this?
we're going to take no action on this time. >> yes, sir.
>> thank you. That brings us to section 7, development applications 7.
a. Excuse me,1679 southwest wilshire, case 25-128,
hold a public hearing and consider and take possible action on a zoning ordinance change request
from gr general retail to gr general retail with a specific use permit for a liquor store.
this is before the city council on first and final reading. The staff presenter is tony mcilwain development services director.
mr. Mcllwain, once again. >> thank you. Mayor and council, as the city secretary just mentioned,
this property is located at 1679 southwest wilshire.
that's an old aerial on the screen. This is a developed site with an applicant looking for
council's consideration for sup approval for a liquor store.
this is an urban mixed use designation in the city with the current zoning of general retail.
we've got the parcel polygon highlighted in white on the left hand side of your screen,
and then the blue area some round on the property on the right hand side.
the building supplemental regulations, we've got on the screen.
we have our standards. This particular site is not the 5,000 square foot standard that the city has set up,
is approximately excuse me 3,000 square feet. They do meet the provisions regarding proposed distance from any other liquor store.
the location does not include a walk up or drive through or drive up windows.
independent entrance will be available on the site and it will be physically partitioned from any of the retail space,
and they meet the other provisions that we have on the screen.
we provided public notices to property owners within 300 feet of the site and
published the notice of the public hearing in the newspaper and posted
signs on the property received no formal opposition. P&z's recommendation was via vote of 7-0 to recommend approval.
I'll answer any questions that you have prior to opening the public hearing.
>> any questions? Is there a motion.
>> mayor. Open the public hearing.
>> I'm sorry. I want to open the public hearing at 5:52.
is there anybody in the audience who would like to speak on this?
then I'll close the public hearing at 5:53.
is there a motion on this?
>> I make a motion to approve the sep.
>> is there a second? >> I have a motion by larry and a second by alexa,
please vote. Pass is unanimous.
>> thank you, mayor and council. That brings us, sorry.
that brings us to 7.b, 138 north wilson street, suite a.
hold a public hearing and consider and take possible action on a zoning ordinance change request from
"c" commercial to "c" commercial with a specific use permit for indoor commercial amusements as an escape room.
this is before city council on first and final reading. The staff presenters. Once again,
tony mcilwain, director of development services. >> thank you. Mayor and council. We have interesting application tonight submitted by robyn reyna,
who's the applicant for the phobia room. This is an escape room that she's looking to open here in burleson.
these type of indoor amusements are allowed per sup,
which is why she's petitioning for that tonight to go along with her commercial zoning district.
this is a commercial area that's within the old town overlay.
this is our street view picture.
we've highlighted the suite that she's going to look to occupy in that golden color,
so you can get some idea of where it's going to be if approved.
we asked for a layout not to give any trade secrets away,
but this is the proposal renovations that she's looking to do with existing walls,
and then some proposals to make some changes within the lease space.
you'll see two entry points located within the building.
in addition to this sup request, she's looking to propose an outdoor patio.
that's a sketch that they provided to city staff for review.
this would be for patrons to utilize while they're at her location.
again, we provided notice to those surrounding property owners as well as in the newspaper,
received no formal opposition. P&z's recommendation to you is by vote of 7-0 to approve the indoor amusement,
as well as the patio seating area and staff also is supportive of the request.
miss reyna is in attendance tonight, but I'll answer any questions that you may have
prior to opening the public hearing, mr. Mayor. >> where's the patio going to be?
>> of the north side.
>> can you please come forward and state your name for the record, please?
>> thank you. My name is robyn reyna. If you're facing the building,
the north side would be on the far left right now. It's more like a just like a gravel pit,
some weeds and stuff. That's what's there right now. >> that's all I needed to. I'm fine, anybody else?
>> look at that, mike. I'm familiar with that building.
hardly any parking in that place. Business hours are going to be wild because you have other businesses open during the day.
is there going to be enough parking? Or we have a back entrance? There's no back entrance to those places at all.
>> I've spoken to the landlord about it, and he is planning on adding additional parking around the north side,
so we had to cut down on our patio space so that he could add some wrap around parking that comes up.
it'll extend what's already there at the front, and then wrap around the north side.
>> I'm fine with this. I just don't know anything about it. Will it be during the day or evening.
>> we probably won't be open on monday and tuesday. I'll actually probably keep similar hours to the business that was there,
which was ax throwing, and we'll probably be open from 4 o'clock to about 10 o'clock at night.
>> thanks. >> anybody else? I'm going to open the public hearing at 5:57. Thank you.
is there anybody else in the audience who'd like to speak on this?
then I will close the public hearing also at 5:57. Is there a motion?
>> I make a motion to approve sup case 25-145.
>> motion bear and a second by feel. Please vote. Pass is unanimous.
>> thank you, mayor and council. That brings us to section 8, general.
8.a is to hold a public hearing and consider an ordinance renaming a portion of county road
1016 between county road 1016b and county road 914 to chisholm summit boulevard.
this is before the city council on first and final reading. Staff presenter is tony mcilwain, development services director.
>> mayor, council, this is the first of two street name changes that I'll be presenting to you.
as miss campos mentioned, ra development is developing a portion of
roadway that will realign portions of existing county road 1016.
their request to you tonight is to rename a portion of county road 1016
from county road 914 heading west to county road 1016b to chisholm summit boulevard.
this is the roadway connection that we have illustrated in the 2023 thoroughfare plan with
the connection point being that dotted area that we have the arrow pointing to.
then you see the orientation of the roadway of the project as it hits west.
this is a major arterial in the city's thoroughfare plan.
this graphic was put together by city staff that gives you an idea of the full extent of the road,
and the extent of the road that their street name change they're looking to have for county road 1016.
excuse me. If approved,
street name change will affect the addresses of five abutting property owners.
staff provided notice of the public hearing to the property owners and in the star telegram. I actually made a mistake on the first letters and provided
the second notice just to make sure we're covered for tonight. But those names listed at the bottom
right are according to the johnson county appraisal district. If there's a change in property recently that's not accounted for,
we're required to notice in accordance with the property tax records.
with regard to the city's naming policy, adopted in resolution r-1162-09 reserves the right to initiate renaming of a street,
if it determines a name change is appropriate to eliminate driver confusion, enhance economic development,
to improve emergency response or other circumstances which in the decision of the council necessitate the street be renamed.
staff is of the determination that street name change request satisfies the above reference criteria.
staff recommend city council approve an ordinance renaming that portion of
county road 1016 to chisholm summit boulevard,
and then amend the official map of the city of burleson. As of the date of this meeting,
I've not received any phone calls nor had any conversations with any of the individuals that we direct mailed regarding the street name change.
people may be in attendance tonight, but we just haven't received any calls.
that concludes my presentation, mr. Mayor, if you want to ask questions or open the public hearing.
>> is there any questions on council?
>> then I'll open the public hearing at 6:01. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this?
then I'll close the public hearing at 6:02,
and I'll entertain a motion.
>> I'll make a motion to approve the renaming.
>> I have a motion by alexa and a second by phil. Please vote. Passes unanimous.
>> thank you, mayor and council. That brings us to 8b, hold a public hearing and consider an ordinance renaming that portion of county road 914,
located between county road 1020 and county road 1016 to lakewood drive,
and designating the roadway extension from county road 1016 to farm to market 1902 as lakewood drive.
this is before city council on first and final reading. Staff presenter is tony mcilwain.
once again, director of development services. >> I'll sit down after this. I promise.
this street name change mayor and council is for lakewood drive.
as you know, this has been in the hopper for a while, for us to bring this to you.
it is actually two fold tonight. It's to approve the renaming of county road 914,
which is now owned and maintained by the city to lakewood drive. Also approve the naming of the roadway extension,
which we consider greenfield project in the 2023 mobility plan to lakewood drive.
just as a reminder, anytime there's a greenfield roadway project,
we have to have the council name that per ordinance. We're combining these efforts into one action tonight.
back on june 7 of 2021, 380 economic development agreement was approved with the developer of chisholm summit.
per that agreement, the developer is responsible for designing and constructing extension of
lakewood drive from just south of county road 1020 to fm 1902.
that phase of road construction is complete, I believe we're still putting in some landscaping things of the like,
and a temporary connection fm 1902 has been done. As a result of these actions and requirements,
staff is recommending a street name change renaming the entire facility between
fm 1902 and county road 1020 to lakewood drive.
mayor and council, this is the thoroughfare plan that shows
the lakewood drive extension that's been constructed and also the segment of county road 914 down toward 1020.
again, it's another major arterial on the city's thoroughfare plan. We've got a map that shows portions of the roadway dedicated per plate,
the existing county road 914, which affects the surrounding property owners,
and then the area that you see in the middle in pink is dedicated by a separate instrument.
that will require an ordinance which will be incorporated in tonight's actions if you approve this.
again, we have five abutting property owners, we provided notice to them as well as in the start telegram.
we provided the notice in the start telegram at least 10 days prior so that we allow enough time for people to respond.
I did not personally receive any responses from anybody regarding the street name change for this.
I'm not aware of my staff receiving anything as well. Again, you have the authority with
you through this resolution to approve a street name change. Staff is of the opinion and determination and recommendation to you that should occur.
we recommend the renaming of county route 914 between 1020 and 1016 of lakewood drive.
we want you to officially designate the roadway extension as lakewood drive and then amend the official map.
I'll answer any questions that you have, mayor and council, prior to open the public hearing.
>> anyone? I'll open the public hearing at 6:05.
is there anyone in the audience that I'd like to speak on this? Then I'll close the public hearing at 6:06. Is there a motion?
>> I'd like to make a motion to first renaming the portion of county road 914 located between
county road 1020 and county road 1016 to lakewood drive, second,
officially designate the roadway extension from county road 1016 to fm
1902 as lakewood drive and third amend the official map of the city of burleson.
>> I have a motion by larry and a second by alexa, please vote. Passes unanimous.
>> thank you, mayor and council. >> thank you, mayor and council.
that brings us to 8c, consider the use of eminent domain to condemn property and consider
resolution number cso 5842-07-2025,
authorizing the filing of eminent domain proceedings for the purpose of obtaining the necessary real property for drainage and roadway improvements as part of
the hooper business park drainage improvement and realignment of county road 1019 project to serve existing and new developments in the city.
the staff presenter this evening is michelle mccullough, deputy director, city engineer. Michelle.
>> thank you. Good evening, everyone. As ms. Campos said,
my name is michelle mccullough, deputy director of development services.
I believe you have seen this in the past. This is our hooper business park drainage project,
and what we need to do is acquire a piece of property that is
included in one person's ownership.
this currently is a section of roadway at the elbow of 1019 up to fm 1902.
as part of the design, the north pond will outfall onto this property,
so we are also looking to acquire a drainage easement.
as mentioned, the roadway that is currently there, we will be realigning that to go out to what is
going to eventually be the realignment of fm 1902 to lakewood.
condemnation process will provide a clear title to this property.
the staff recommendation is to authorize the use of eminent domain and approve the resolution.
I'm here to answer any questions you have. >> any questions? Is there a motion?
>> I move that the city council of the city of burleson authorize the use of
the power of eminent domain to acquire the land and drainage easement described in resolution number cso number 5842-07-2025
as presented specifically a 0.453 acre 19,738 square feet,
tract of land on property described in document number 2014-23765,
official records johnson county, texas, and a 0.029 acre 1,254 square feet,
permanent drainage easement on property described in document number 2014-23765,
official records johnson county, texas, for the purpose of construction and maintenance of drainage and roadway improvements
as part of the hooper business park drainage improvements and realignment of
county road 1019 project to serve existing and new development in the city and for other public purposes as permitted by law.
I further move to adopt resolution number cso 5842-07-2025 as presented.
the first record vote will apply to all units of property to be condemned.
>> I have a motion by adam and a second by alexa, of which you talked longer than alexa did a while ago.
please vote. That is unanimous.
>> thank you, mayor and council. That brings us to 8d, consider and take possible action on an ordinance,
establishing a 30 mile/hour speed limit along county road 914 between
county road 1021 and 155 feet north of county road 914a.
this is before city council on first and final reading. The staff presented this evening is eric thompson,
director of public works. Mr. Thompson. >> thank you, miss campos, and good evening, mayor and council.
we have two different roadways, but they have relatively similar recommendations from staff,
and that's that we establish 30 mile an hour speed zones for each of them.
I'll start with a little bit of background on county road 714,
sometimes known as south dobson street. On the aerial to the right,
we start at hidden creek at the north. Every time that line changes color from green to blue or blue to
yellow or back to blue or back to yellow or blue and green,
the speed limit officially changes on county road 714.
that segment is a mix of city and county maintained portions of the road.
the speed limit, again, it bounces back and forth between 30 and 40 miles an hour.
city and county staff are supportive of a consistent speed limit of 30 for the entire stretch
from hidden creek at the north to fm 731 or john jones on the west.
actually on july 12, the county commissioners court
approved an order for the county portions of this road to become 30 mile/hour officially.
this would basically be complimentary action on the city's part so that we would result in 130 mile an hour speed limit.
a little more background.
this is the city portions in the middle are really only the front edge of russell farm.
that's the rectangle to the left there in yellow, and then the new pecan grove development
that's under construction right now a little further to the west, but you see there's a couple of 100 feet of county
maintained 714 in the middle between those two city segments.
russell farm, you are probably aware was donated to the city back in 2011.
pecan grove will be 81 residential lots. It's on the construction now that was annexed into the city november of 2018.
then we also have a couple of significant vertical and horizontal curves along the way,
which sometimes challenge sight distance. From a professional staff perspective,
the 30 mile/hour speed limit is really supported, and that's part of how we got here today.
now moving to the west out to county road 914, you've heard about that sum in the previous few items.
here, we're talking about the section of
914 south of where you just renamed a couple of agenda items ago.
this will be between county road 1021 on the south. This map has turned almost 90 degrees for just to make it fit the slide a little better.
north to the left. From 1021 on the south up to 914a,
that's a section that's got a lot of challenges with the road conditions.
there's a lot of truck traffic with a lot of construction out in this part of the area.
between the narrow road with, significant truck traffic and the road conditions,
staff would also support lowering the speed limit from 40-30.
until such time as the city can improve the roadway.
you got a couple pictures on the lower right to give you a little bit of idea of the conditions.
video probably would have been a little better to help you get a feel for the speed that some of the vehicles are traveling out there.
but I think if you drove it, you'd probably agree that 40 is probably a little more than we would consider safe.
more background, staffs install some warning signs to help
at least give the message to drivers that they would be well advised to slow down.
we've got the rough road and advisory, 30 mile an hour speed limit signs on either end.
the action that we're asking for tonight is actually to establish the regulatory speed limit.
the speed limit that could actually be enforced as 30.
mentioned a couple, at least once about future improvements, potentially.
staff is working on some funding options for council's consideration in the future of how we might go about improving this roadway,
so that could be a project that starts as early as the next fiscal year,
and it will likely require some minor land acquisition. There are some drainage needs that would need to be addressed as well,
so that could compound the land acquisition needs.
then there's also, as you're well aware, additional development, out in this area,
there may very well be a need for a second sewer line to run down the same roadway.
we would love to be able to coordinate all that and make it all happen as part of one project.
again, bottom right, you've got a couple of pictures of conditions.
everyone likes to use the part of the pavement that's in best condition,
but only one vehicle can do that at a time in one direction.
it's making for some challenging conditions.
>> state law, transportation code gives you the authority
to change speed limits in certain conditions.
this is not the typical one. Typically, you see requests to change speed limits that are based on a traffic study.
in this case, because of conditions and circumstances, there's a carve out in the code that allows you to still change
speed limits provided you meet certain requirements. All those requirements are met.
there's one more that we'd be subject to, which is an annual reporting requirement.
won't read all of that, but if you authorize this speed limit change on 914,
under this section of the transportation code, we would have to produce on
our website and provide to txdot every year by february 1st, I think.
a report that gives some data on traffic and speed enforcement.
how many citations were issued by burleson police officers for speeding on this particular section,
how many warnings were issued by those same staff,
and then how many vehicle collisions resulted in injury or death that were attributable to speed limit.
it probably sounds maybe a little more cumbersome than it is, I'm not sure that there is.
well, I won't speak to the volume of enforcement out there or how many tickets or citations or warnings are issued,
but we'll be careful to work with the police department to make sure that we can pull that data to get
it loaded to the website and sent to txdot according to the requirements.
again, we would only have to do this for the county road 914 section,
separate from the 714.
two reports, but each section has its own report.
tonight, we're asking that you approve an ordinance
establishing a 30-mile per hour speed limit along 714, those sections previously mentioned,
and then also would ask that you approve an ordinance establishing a 30-mile per hour speed limit along county road 914.
both of these items are public hearings, so we'll take questions or discussions or we can just go right to the public hearing.
>> I'm sorry. First of all, I didn't read item e into the record because this is a presentation for two items,
so I'll read that item in. Consider and take possible action on an ordinance
establishing a 30-mile per hour speed limit along the city's portion of county road 714 between fm 731 and hidden creek parkway.
this is before city council on first and final reading. Also, mr. Thompson,
there is no listing of a public hearing on these items. >> tony had one, so I wanted one.
[laughter] >> we cannot copy tony. >> I'm going to ask you if there's any questions on d or e. We'll have two votes on that.
is there a motion on d?
>> could you state that you're approving which speed limit, please? >> I move to approve an adjustment to 30-mile per hour speed limit
along cr 914 between county road 1021 and 155 feet north of county road 914a.
>> I have a motion by victoria and a second by alexa. Please vote.
pass is unanimous. Now, 7e. Is there a motion?
>> I move to approve 7e establishing the 30-mile hour speed limit on portions
along county road 714 between fm 731 and hidden creek parkway.
>> I have a motion by adam, second by alexa. Please vote.
pass is unanimous. >> thank you, mayor and council.
that brings us to item 8.f. Consider approval of an ordinance amending the city budget for
fiscal year 2024 through 2025 by increase in appropriations to various funds to accommodate operating and capital needs,
and find also that time is of the essence. This is before city council on first and final reading.
the staff presenter is kevin hennesy, interim director of finance. Kevin?
>> thank you, amanda. Mayor, council, it's a pleasure to be with you this evening to discuss
a proposed amendment to the 2025 fiscal year budget.
what we will do we'll begin by looking at a city wide impact,
broken down by fund, and then we'll dive into each one of those funds,
looking at the purpose of the proposal, as well as the fiscal impact of each one of those items per fund.
we'll begin with the citywide table. Due to the cancellation of the 4b meeting that tommy alluded to earlier,
we will have to remove the parks performance fund items from consideration this evening.
they will be coming back at a later date. But without that considered,
the total amount of the proposal this evening is $2,737,917.
whereas the bulk of these items we'll see in the fora and the erp replacements are items that we've discussed,
as well as been a part of long term planning.
we go from there, we'll look at the general fund.
the beginning item on this is an interdepartmental transfer from
the city manager's office to animal services to cover overtime associated with egret.
a re-wiring of city maintained overhead lights along wilshire,
and then another interdepartmental transfer from city manager's office
for a automatic door opener for the senior center front door.
then a contract for lonestar lobbyist firm.
this is how that breaks down at the fund level as we see those interdepartmental transfers net themselves out.
the increases to budget consists of their rewiring and the contract for the lobbyist.
which leads us to 4a. The 4a board reviewed this this afternoon.
this is for the purchase of the building at 114 west ellison street for the purpose of economic redevelopment.
the purchase price was $1,100,000.
this brings us to the parks performance fund, which we'll skip over this evening,
but these items again will be brought to you at a future date.
items related to the bartlett.
this is what that will look like in the future. But what brings us forward to the miscellaneous special revenue fund.
this is related to a donation that we received recently.
it's to purchase a memorial bench at one of our park facilities. The cost of that.
this is to appropriate the cost of that donation is $8,997.
this brings us to the equipment replacement funds. I do want to mention and remind you that this is for the 2026 replacement items.
we're bringing this to you in advance so that we can order these things in advance. All these items are for 2026 replacements.
these are the five items for the governmental. We do have a generator replacement that's been added throughout the summer.
but the impact on the fund is $557,330.
those two big items, the john deere tractor and the generator, making up the bulk of that.
but we also have a ford f-550 chevrolet traverse for the police office,
as well as some graphics for the fire department. Which brings us to the proprietary equipment replacement fund.
this list is a little bit longer. But we look at f-550,
sprayer, which will also have a gps attachment to it.
it's a little further down the list, but those was added a little bit later in this summer.
a couple of ford rangers, a couple mowers, and f-450, john deere/gator,
as well as a backhoe. There's that gps conversion I alluded to.
the generator, as well as an f-150. The impact on the equipment replacement fund is $797,590.
again, this is all for fy 26 replacements that we're proposing a budget amendment for,
so we can order early.
which brings us to the library grants fund. The library received a grant.
the texas library association awarded a $2,000 grant. This proposed budget amendment is to appropriate that award so that
they can spend it on the activities of the library.
with that, the staff recommendation would be to consider approving
a mid-year amendment to increase the appropriations in the amount of 2,737,917,
which would need to be mentioned in the motion, but I'll have to defer to the attorney to guide you very specifically on how to do that.
>> mayor, council, what we'd ask you to do tonight is reference, simply, if you moved to approve,
it'd be subject to the removal of the items associated with 4b and then state the amount that mr. Henesy has provided.
>> would the removal of 5.of the consent agenda have any effect on this erf?
>> no, sir. That's for this fiscal year, those items.
mr. Thompson, are you correcting me?
>> yeah. We need the amendment, but that item was for the purchase authority of those vehicles.
>> the authorization, we'll still need the amendment, but we'll come back for the purchase. Does that make sense?
>> that makes sense.
>> is there any other questions? Then we're ready to vote. Is there a motion on this?
>> I'll make a motion to approve the amendments.
>> I have a motion by larry, a second by phil, please vote.
>> excuse me. I forgot to say accept the parks performance fund.
>> yes, sir. >> great. That's good. Thank you. Pass is unanimous.
>> thank you. >> thank you, mayor and council.
that brings us to section 9, reports and presentations.
9.a is to receive a report, hold a discussion, and provide staff direction regarding
the wicker hill road and green ridge drive improvements.
the staff presented this evening is randy morrison, director of capital engineering. Mr. Morrison?
>> good evening, mayor, city council. My name is randy morrison,
director of capital engineering. This item this evening is to review and discuss
the wicker hill road and green ridge drive improvements project.
to recap on the background, the parks at panchasarp farms development includes
a elementary school site for joshua isd,
and that project is now moving forward, and jisd,
they now have an estimated completion and school opening for the fall semester of 2027.
in june 16th, 2025, staff introduced the wicker hill and greenridge improvements project as
an additional consideration for the fy 26 cip.
the reason it wasn't presented previously is because we were still working
closely with jisd on the progress of their project and it is very preliminary,
and we are waiting on some key items, including their traffic impact analysis and the site plan submittals.
that allowed us to determine the improvements that are needed.
based on the discussion from the june 16th council meeting,
council asked for us to consider and look into temporary interim solutions
that the city can move forward with until we can fund the full improvement or full build out alternative.
with that, staff looked additionally at the existing improvements,
and just want to recap on these that were presented on the june 16th meeting.
the existing conditions on the roadway, there's a lot of pavement failures.
the existing overall pavement condition index is 14.6,
which is essentially a failed roadway at this point. There's a lot of concerns with the existing conditions,
as well as some of the drainage improvements. There's three drainage coverts that would need to be improved
and/or replaced if any expansion of the roadway were to take place.
in addition to the pavement condition, the average pavement width is around 20 feet along the corridor,
so it presents additional concerns with bus traffic passing by with opposing traffic.
that's some concerns and one of the primary concerns that joshua isd has presented or brought up in our coordination meetings.
in addition, staff looked at the right of way along this corridor,
and a lot of it is prescriptive right of way and a lot of it needs to be dedicated by the developers that are adjacent to the roadway.
in addition to the pavement width and right of way,
we could not perform any widening efforts without going out and perfecting some of the right of way along the corridor.
with that information, we took another look at the alternatives.
we're presenting tonight here three alternatives, really. One is a do nothing alternative,
one is a interim solution, 5-10-year interim improvements,
which is estimated around 1.4 million, and then the full build-out option for a full build-out
of the roadway to the ultimate width at 6.9 million.
as I mentioned, alternative 1 is really do nothing. Obviously, this presents additional concerns,
the longevity of the roadway, as well as any potential safety concerns with
the bus traffic that will be added to this roadway. This would more than likely increase operational cost for the public works department.
>> alternative 2, this is a 5-10-year estimated interim improvements;
this would include perfecting the right-of-way. In order to do that,
we would need to have some preliminary schematic design, the drainage improvements that I mentioned earlier.
I would be some upfront preliminary work, also acquiring the right-of-way.
once we acquire the right-of-way, then we can go in and do some temporary improvements,
which would include pulverizing in place, stabilization, some minor widening,
and repaving the roadway. The reason this is identified as an interim improvement
because this would not include building out ultimate improvements. It would not be reconstructing the roadway to an ultimate pavement section.
in our opinion, this would be an inadequate pavement section, but this would provide a safer road,
a better condition that would hold up for some time until we could fund the full buildout.
but this project, also,
the funding behind it, it's still considered a maintenance project or at least a portion of it,
and would consume a good portion of the public works street maintenance budget,
if not all of it, for one year. I mentioned the preliminary estimate on this alternative is at 1.4 million,
and that does include some schematic design, right-of-way acquisition, and construction.
the timeline for alternative 2, roughly estimating 18-24 months for this,
this would put us beyond the estimated completion of the school or opening of the school.
that timeline is really dictated by the right-away acquisition and
the preliminary design work that we'd have to start before going to acquire.
now, looking at alternative 3, which is the full build-out alternative,
that would include full design to put together plan,
specifications for us to go to construction. It would include the right-of-way acquisition to perfect the
right-of-way and a full buildout with new concrete roadway,
curb, gutter, sidewalks. Almost all of the improvements with the ultimate buildout.
this estimate doesn't include any traffic signal work, assuming that the adjacent development would trigger that at wilshire and wicker hill.
this estimate doesn't include that, and it doesn't include landscaping improvements as well.
ultimately, this would provide us with a brand new roadway fully reconstructed to ultimate improvements.
the project estimate on that is at 6.9 million that includes the design right away and construction.
the timeline on this alternative is roughly 30-36 months,
and a lot of that is also due to right-away acquisition, full design.
but also, if council desires to pursue this route, we would add this to the fy26 cip.
due to timing of that and then getting the project started, we're estimating 30-36 months to complete the project.
with that, staff is seeking direction from counsel and
any discussion on which alternative to pursue.
that includes, again, the do nothing alternative, the interim solution, as well,
the full build out, which would require adding the project to the cip, amending the cip,
and we're estimating that adding this to
the cip could have an impact of $0.01 on the tax rate.
I know there's additional information that's coming on that. There's still preliminary numbers,
and the estimate could definitely change.
>> we can't do absolutely nothing. The condition that the road is that bad.
we did speak with our financial advisor over the weekend,
and harlan's got some updated information. I do want to just note for the council that everything that we talk about tonight,
as it relates to this, and in my presentation later, assumes a 2% growth rate.
we do not have our certified roles yet. If those numbers come back with the growth rate
that's less than that or different than that, it would have an impact on anything harlan's about to tell you,
as well as what I'll discuss later. >> thank you, tommy. Good evening,
mayor and members of the council. I want to briefly talk a little bit about the finances. We did have a meeting,
a follow-up meeting this past friday with our financial advisor. I want to give you the latest information we have from them.
I'll begin by giving you a little context. Early may, we had a meeting with the finance committee,
and we talked about the cip and funding it. We were basically asking two questions.
should we reduced the cip to stay within
our current debt service tax rate or increase it to fund the existing cip?
they made a recommendation that went on to the full council to adjust the tax rate to fund the full cip,
and the council concurred with that in late may. At that time, we were considering a tax rate of 5.4 $0.07,
but that didn't include the use of the fund balance in the debt service fund.
we've been discussing using the fund balance and drawing it down which we have an additional 3.6 million we could use.
we've talked to the financial advisor about rerunning her numbers and including that as well.
to fund the current cip as proposed,
it would require 3.4 cents if you use the fund balance in your debt service fund.
if you would add this additional project, the tax rate increase would go to 3.77, almost four tenths.
the percent increase is the difference. Mended the last bullet is based on her conversation.
the question is, if you're interested in adding this project, which would still be a much
lower of a tax rate increase than we discussed with you in may, but it's really a bit less than four to tenths of a percent.
then the second question would be, do you want to use all of the fund balance of this upcoming year,
as we have been discussing, or do you want to spread that use out over two years?
>> I think the only thing I would say, too, is that we plan with the council for a planned drawdown of the debt service fund.
we would still keep the minimum $1,000,000 that we've discussed per policy.
the drawdown harlan's talking about would still leave approximately 1 million in the debt service fund.
>> we have to do something. But we're in such a money crunch,
and because a cat hadn't given us our numbers. I don't know what to tell you.
we can't go over the 3.5 cent because if we don't get that bond,
that tax increase is approved, then we're in a real pickle, right?
is that right? Is it all or nothing on the [inaudible]? >> 3.5 is on the maintenance and operation component portion of the tax rate.
what we're talking about here is the interest in sinking. You're not bound by that same cap there.
>> when are we supposed to get the certified roles? Friday? >> friday. >> theoretically?
>> yes, sir. >> theoretically. >> we talked in may, and we were going to raise the debt rate 5.5 cents.
now it's 3.4,
possibly 3.7, if we do option three. I'd do option three.
we're already adding it back, spend the money, get a good road in there and go for it.
but I'm also tempted to table this till the fourth until we get
the certified roles where we can make a good decision. We are not this. >> one of the challenges that we have is that we're going to
be having to finish our tax rate calculation, so I can file the budget.
this is something that we've talked about internally. Now, what we're attempting to try to do is to establish
a debt service rate that remains consistent across the five years.
you theoretically could not raise the tax rate this year,
but you'd have to increase it the next. We're trying to be cognizant of the fact that we know that there is going to be one.
you could add this later and adjust the rate accordingly,
or we move with what we've got and then adjust it in the future. You have options, but we need to try to file the budget and do our tax rate calculations.
>> then I'd say I like option three. Add it back to cip. >> the region I agree with is the fact that we go in there and we do a nice,
heavy-duty patch on it. We're spending money.
to redo that to get the final product at some times, is probably so, is that correct?
is what is the fix going to be part of the new construction,
or are we starting over? >> we would have some duplicated efforts or not lost efforts,
right with the right away acquisition and some of the schematic design. But the construction effort,
we would be redoing that with a full reconstruction when we did the final buildout at a later time?
option 2 comes out of m&o money, and option 3, we can put it on the debt rate.
option 3 is good. I don't want to take money from the street maintenance budget.
we need that money for another district. >> we are trying to get the more money at every turn.
then here we're talking about completely emptying out their account
to fix one road that will inevitably have to be rebuilt.
if we are considering a tax rate increase for the debt rate,
to adam's point, this is the time to do that.
the unfortunate thing, really, our options are do nothing or fix it completely,
rebuild, because that going in between is just not responsible to empty out an entire maintenance operation budget.
only give it a patch job. But we know an elementary is going in there.
these are those times when the citizens look to us and say, if you knew this was coming,
why didn't you do it right the first time? I think that as much as it stings,
it's the right thing to do. >> option 3 to me would be the right way to go.
my concern is, as we're talking about the tax rate, do we want to go ahead and run the debt service fund balance down to 1 million,
or do we want to increment it down over a period of years? That would be my only concern in this option.
to keep the debt rate down, we can deplete it down to 1 million in one time.
or we can increment it over two to three years. >> the financial advisor did run two scenarios for us.
one, reducing it according to your policy in the first year next year,
and the other one spreading it over two years. It was really cost-neutral because of what the city manager said a moment ago
that the big hump in the debt service rate comes out in a couple of years.
it didn't make a difference if you used it the first year or spread it over two years.
I'd like to mention also we would prefer to have this conversation after we receive the certified numbers as well.
but the way the truth and taxation calendar work in terms of noticing and when the council needs to receive information and provide direction,
it really is such a crunch that we would have to everything would be backed up substantially.
that's why we didn't have that luxury. But we do plan to meet friday. Hopefully, we have all of those certified numbers and
we can get you updated information, and we can make any adjustments necessary.
>> senator, to adam's point, do we need to look at the certification before we talk about this,
or do we need to go ahead and go on? Four option three. >> we're saying, we don't really have the luxury of waiting
until we get it because of the timelines. We're scheduled to come back to you on august 4 with the truth and taxation tax rates,
the no new revenue, the voter approval. To do that, we have to have a projection of
what the debt service schedule is going to be next year. >> I'm getting the temperature of council number 3?
>> alternative 3. >> I don't think we gave. Larry had raised a point of how are we opting
for the single drawdown or the over two years. >> over two years, what we're going to have to do.
that keeps us at around $3.34 or $3.43.
>> 3.77 with this project included. >> yes.
>> with this project. >> based on an assumption of 2% growth?
>> that's right. >> I'm sorry, harlan, before you skewed away from that.
john, if there was legislation
passed at the last minute that said they would have to move toward annual reappraisals,
but the tax roles will not have the growth rate,
will that be impacted? That's going to go off of how they initially prepared
their tax rules until we get all this shaken out, as far as whether or not they'll be mandated to have an annual reappraisal.
>> that's an excellent question. Currently, there is a debate whether or
not legislation has already passed that would require the annual appraisals.
the way our delinquent tax collection attorney put it,
and he also represents the appraisal district, he said, board can't approve
a reappraisal plan that requires anything less than annual reappraisals.
it places the hands in the chief appraiser, whether or not they elect to follow best business practices for appraisals.
now, of course, johnson county, a central appraisal district,
is in the process of selecting a new chief appraiser, so we can't ask that person at this time.
it puts a little bit of a question mark over our head. But if the plans in terms of every three years go away and they do annual re-appraisals,
then our long-term forecast is changed substantially. In that setting. That is another wild card that we
have to consider in forecasting impact on our debt service.
>> until we have more clarity on that, we've elected to not change any of our financial assumptions and be very conservative.
>> option 3. Thank you, sir.
>> thank you, mayor and council. That brings us to nine b receiver report,
hold a discussion and provide staff direction on updates identified
for the 2025-2026 fiscal year employee handbook.
the staff presenter this evening is cheryl marthiljohni director of human resources.
>> thank you, ms. Campos. Appreciate that. Good evening, mayor. Members of council.
I come to you this evening to talk about updates for our employee handbook.
just as a reminder, we do an annual policy review as part of our budget process throughout the city.
we take that position to review any updates to our employee policies on
that annual basis as well and then bring those items back to you for review and consideration.
it's important for us to keep an annual review of our policies in front of us to ensure legal requirements are met,
aligned practices with policy. We want to also maintain that we have that competitive position in
our marketplace and provide clear expectations for all employees.
as a reminder amendments to the policy, the city manager may make revisions
to the policy which do not involve a change in benefits offered or changes which would then require an amendment to any annual operating budget.
tonight, we bring forth a couple of changes for city council consideration that must
approve all changes involving employee benefits and/or budget amendments.
any new rules or regulations issued supersede the regulations before and then are fully binding by all employees.
the ones we bring forward to council tonight on proposed changes.
the first one deals with our sick leave policy. We want to add a provision that allows our employees to
utilize their earned sick leave in a different way, and that would deal with any additional bereavement leave that the employee would need.
it also will allow that those employees can also take paid
sick time to cover bereavement relationship that might be outside of our current bereavement policy.
this update just allows more flexibility for our employees to use some earned leave time dealing with bereavement leave.
the next one is paid parental leave. We've had some requests,
and we've looked into offering or dropping the one year waiting period for new employees.
we're requesting that we remove that one year waiting period for our new employees,
but give them 40 hours, 53 for fire if they want to tap
into this benefit and utilize that as paid parental leave. Again, to be competitive in the marketplace,
be that employer of choice, we felt like this was a benefit
that we could make some changes to for our new eligible employees.
military leave deals with the new law, the h.b.2513, which becomes effective september 1 of 2025.
military leave for paid military leave absences for a fire shift employee,
either has to be a 24 hour work shift constitutes workday,
or for our 4896, it would be a 48 hour work shift constitutes one workday.
we would have to do some calculation with regards to their paid military leave that goes into effect that september 1.
other provisions that we're asking counsel to review tonight also goes into our leaves under other.
it includes currently, we have mental health leave for police officers and telecommunication operators.
we want to broaden that and also include firefighters to our existing policy.
then catastrophic leave, we wanted to add language that the city will
review case by case options for leave outside of the catastrophic leave pool.
if an employee does not have enough time to donate as a member of the pool and need
arises that they meet that criteria otherwise described in our catastrophic leave pool.
we've had a couple of incidences this past year after adopting that policy last year that causes us to come back and want to clean up that language.
we also want to update the language to include gapping the compensation between short term and long term.
there's no avoiding that double benefit time with either paid leave time and then what they earn at a short term and long term disability.
those are the ones under consideration tonight for council. We do have a list of those that we're recommending for city manager,
but are there any questions on those that I've covered tonight?
the next is we're keeping tommy busy.
we've got a request for city manager approval, so I'll go through these fairly quickly.
if you have any questions on any of them, I'd be glad to answer them. Some of it's cleanup.
we want to replace the word termination with separation throughout the employee handbook discrimination.
we wanted to make sure that we added the same statement that we had under our grievance policy in our discrimination section of the handbook.
probation period. We needed to add the licensed telecommunications probation period begins after they
complete their training plans to align with sworn peace officer and firefighters.
nepotism. We want to update to include city will not hire immediate relatives of internal service departments.
that's hr, finance, and it. Weapons. We want to broaden that and include any knives that are
5.5 inches in length and have that as a prohibited weapon.
cell device is just clean up, update language. That one was pretty dated,
so we just want to update the language to line with current practice. Corrective action, we want to add reassignment and
retraining as steps or actions that can be taken as part of corrective action.
under the grievance, we wanted to update our current steps to include deputy city manager into the evaluations of any grievances that are filed.
then comp leave update that the records are kept in time keeping software,
not with staff, accountant, or hr. Inclement weather, we wanted to update to align with current practice that
non essential staff may be deemed essential based on the event, severity and expectation for essential and non-essential to remote work when practical.
bereavement leave. We want to remove language regarding paperwork being completed by hr.
in voting, we just added clarity when voting is considered pay time.
internship. We wanted to remove just college level language
and allow high school and/or career and technical students to intern or job shadow.
we also clarified the provision for unpaid interns, compensation.
in the event an employee passes. We wanted to add language to discontinue use of
a final pay beneficiary form and follow state statute regarding final pay and
clarifying language for vacation and sick payout for the years of service that they're eligible for.
travel. Finances no longer have a petty cash,
so we wanted to remove the language referring to petty cash. Workers' compensation.
we want to clarify payments for first responders will be offset by temporary income benefits,
in essence, keeping them home from a pay perspective, avoiding double payment.
then reasonable accommodation, remove citizen ada policy,
since this is an employee handbook and add employee related reasonable accommodation policy aligning with current practice.
those are the ones that we are requesting city manager review and approve.
any questions on those? Next step then would be that we would adopt the updated handbook on october 1,
2025 and communicate these changes to all employees. Any final questions or comments tonight?
>> anybody? >> thank you.
>> thank you. >> thank you, mayor and council.
that brings us to 9.c. Receiver report, hold a discussion and provide staff direction on
the proposed fee changes for fiscal year 25-26 budget.
this evening, the staff presenter is dylan whitehead, deputy director of development service building official. Mr. Whitehead.
>> good evening, mayor. Council. Dylan whitehead,
deputy director development services building official. During the budget process,
city management asked us to review all of our department fees to see what fees need to be adjusted.
either bring them into rate, find out what services that we are currently offering that don't have any fees associated with them.
the following fees are just a outline of what those fees were that were found to hit
the general fund that are either going to be new fees for the upcoming year or adjustments to existing fees.
we'll start with the police department. This is their commercial alarm permit fees.
these fees were last updated over five years ago. They are looking to increase it from $75-$100 for
the application plus $10 for any business representatives over the allotted five.
if this fee is approved, we're looking at an increase of around $1,800-$2,500 annually.
next up is community services, our library. The library currently has in their possession is a large plotter.
they're looking at adding an extra service to customers to do large format printing.
similar to what you would go to kinko's or costco or staples to have posters printed and stuff like that.
they're able to do that in house, and they want to start offering that to their customers.
they're looking at offering for five dollars per linear foot. This equates out to be a little bit less than those other businesses in town.
it's just a new service that they're looking to offer to the citizens.
they're anticipating that this could potentially bring in $1,500-$2,300 annually a year.
onto development services, our planning department for etj plat exemption letters,
they are looking to increase this from the current $25 per letter to $50.
there are no comparison cities for this one, since we are the only one currently with
the interlocal agreement with johnson county for plating in our etj.
our etj release applications. Currently, we do not have this on the fee schedule.
as noted earlier today, when we get applications,
there is staff time that goes into them to put that report together, bring it to the council for consideration.
proposed rate will be $200 for each application.
legal filing fees for these are for when we have to go down and with the county,
whether it be plats, easements or anything else like that.
currently, our small plat is $50 for the first sheet,
$25 for each additional sheet, and then our larger plats is $80 for the first sheet,
$25 per each additional sheet. Johnson county and tarrant county have increased their fees recently.
their fees are up to let's see.
pardon me. Johnson county has increased their fees up to $80.
staff is proposing $100 fee to help compensate for staff time actually traveling down to
the county appraisal district and filing these fees and just come in line with some other cities.
municipal utility districts, mmds.
currently, we do not have this on the books. There's a lot of staff time that goes into these whenever we get approached by
developers that we're currently not getting any compensation for.
staff is recommending a $4,000 non refundable application fee.
this is just again, to help compensate and recover some of those costs for staff's time.
pids. Again, something we are currently in the middle of.
we do not have a current rate for. Staff proposing a $2,000 application fee for these.
again, just to help recover the staff's time that goes into doing the research,
putting in the work and putting together presentations.
this is just a breakdown on what we would expect if these fees
were to move forward with the etj plat exemption, we're looking around $3,000 additional revenues,
the etj releases, $11,000, legal filing fees, around $1,000,
the mmds and muds, around 8,000, and for the pids,
we're anticipating around 4,000.
for permits and inspections. This is for our commercial one trade permit.
if a business is going to need a new water heater replaced or get some their hvac system replaced.
this is specifically for commercial properties. What we're doing is trying to catch up this fee rate
a few years ago when we adjusted our validation fees.
we did not touch this fee. In essence, whenever we have a full bigger project and
there's other trades working underneath the main permit, they're validating underneath that main building permit for $75,
whereas if they were just going in and do individual work, they can get away with a $50 rate on some smaller work.
this is just trying to keep that in line and keep it consistent.
foundation only permits. This is again, addressing specifically commercial projects.
our current rate is only $75. We do get some of these requests in that really is to the benefit of the development.
it allows them to speed line their progress and they're able to get construction work going while they're still working through the rest of the main permit.
we're proposing a $250 rate. Again, that's just to go through and recoup some staff's time going back in.
we're creating separate permits. We have to separate the plans out.
again, that's just to recoup some of that.
>> if the fees go through commercial one-trade permits, we're looking at about $10,000 increase annually.
for the commercial foundation permits, we're looking at roughly $175-$350.
development engineering. For our construction plan review process,
there's a few changes here. Primarily, it's a 3% increase just to recover the 3% staff salary increase.
the other change on this one is going to be the full review fees going to be due at time of submittal,
versus we were collecting 10% for residential and 20% for commercial at certain times,
and this is just not been working out. We've been getting burned on some of those reviews where
some of the projects don't actually make it all the way through, but we've already put in the work doing the reviews.
we're looking at changing that. For construction inspections, again,
this is basically a few years ago, we had to change our fees from a 4% inspection fee rate to a set rate.
these fees are just a 3% increase based on, again, staff salary increasing.
just a few more of the inspection fees.
right-of-way encroachments, this fee is proposed to go from 250-525.
last year in april, council amended chapter 70 to adjust the fees.
actually, you set the fee, and that amendment,
it designated on when planning would handle
right-of-way encroachments and engineering would handle right-of-way encroachments,
which is essentially outside of old town. This fee increase is just to keep it in line with what was
adopted last year with the amendment.
sign installation. Currently, city staff is responsible for installation of all the public street signs.
our current rate, as you can see, is only $250 per pole.
estimated cost per pole, staff time included, is around $300-$350.
as you can see, we're not even recouping what we're presenting.
staff have made a recommendation of $350 per pole to
finance committee after some discussion and further research.
looks like $700 per pole is more in
line with what it actually costs developers to have this installed.
we are also offering the option for the developer to install these signs.
if they want to do that, they can do it on their own cost. The city is not going to charge them.
we will still come out and make that part of our final inspections to make sure the poles meet our standards,
the signs meet our standards, and everything else.
traffic impact analysis. Again, this change in the fee is going to be our current rates, $1,400.
as you can see, the projects on the right,
those projects are costing the city more than the $1,400 we're collecting.
the traffic impact analysis are done through an outside consultant.
what we're offering now is a $1,000 application fee; the way we get that up front,
they'll at least get the ball rolling. Then, before the project is released for construction,
they will have to pay the true cost of what that survey was.
this is just pretty much a pass-through so that we're making sure we're covering the cost of the consultant,
and we're getting the $1,000 application fee upfront.
similar to the traffic study,
is going to be our flood studies. Our current rates, again,
we're losing money on what we're collecting versus what is actually costing our consultants to do these studies.
similar to the traffic impact analysis. We're looking at a $1000 application fee,
which is going to be due at submittal, and then plus the actual cost of the consultant.
these are just some numbers. If these fees are adopted or flood study,
we're looking at potentially a $21,000 increase. Traffic studies, potentially a $9,000 increase.
just keep in mind, those are going to be pretty much a pass. It's not additional revenue,
it's going to be really a money savings that we're not paying out.
then the sign installation is potentially a $13,000.
for the fire inspections, I'm going to ask chief davis to run through these for you.
>> good evening, mayor and counsel. Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk to you about our annual fire inspection fee.
if you're not aware, every year, the fire marshal's office is charged with going and doing
annual commercial fire inspections for all of our businesses.
there's a little over 1,900 businesses in town that we have to inspect each year,
and we're inspecting those to be in compliance with the fire code that's adopted by city council for us to enforce.
[noise] one of the challenges that we currently have with that is
that a vast majority of those inspections are done by operations from firefighters out on the fire trucks,
and it's due to the fact that we don't have the staffing in the fire marshals office to be able to
keep up with the demand of that and all the other objectives that is part of that office.
we're going to walk through what all that office does here shortly for you. But tonight, really,
we're here to talk about a way to receive some revenue that could
help potentially offset some costs for another fte in the fire marshal's office.
it's a supplemental package that I've put into the budget. Now, of course, I know nothing is set in stone or anything like that.
this is just a request, but we were looking at ways that we could try to offset those costs,
and this is one of those ways. Our current model is very inefficient.
we're sending four firefighters out in a fire truck to do an inspection that really one person in a pickup truck could do,
but since we don't have the staffing in there, we've had to utilize that model, and I'll walk through a little bit more about the why on
that here shortly when we look at the fire marshal staffing. But right now in the fire marshal's office,
there's three ftes in there, so you have the fire marshal rob moore. He is in charge of all of these things on the far right of the screen.
he is the administrator of the tico agency because their law enforcement,
they have their own tico regulations. Rob serves as the tico. Administrator for that.
fire code interpretation, [noise] commercial plan review, permitting, open records,
development, assistance, social media,
and city events that we participate in. Rob's got a lot going on,
plus he has two ftes that report to him. We have one investigator inspector.
their primary role and function is on the commercial inspection,
whenever we're building new projects, new businesses, stuff like that, going out and keeping up with that.
that's pretty much a full-time job on that side. Then that position also helps with our community risk reduction efforts.
like our cpr, drowning prevention,
going to the schools, those things. The other position in there is
another law enforcement position that's an arson investigator. They have full investigation responsibilities,
plus this role serves on our swat team medic program to
assist that as a medical component along with chief moore.
but this also is heavily involved in our community risk reduction efforts as well.
between all of the different areas that they have, there's not enough time to be able to get to all of these.
just walking through a little bit of a timeline with the fire marshal's office over the years,
back in 1991, we had one fte in the fire marshal's office,
and it wasn't until 2006 that another fte was added.
[noise] went from 06 all the way to 15. Before, there was three in there.
at that point, there was two arson investigators and a fire marshal that was also an arson investigator.
2018, we took on the management of the oil wells,
and we got that position in fte. We added on to what the responsibilities of the fire marshal's office was.
but we got creative with that position, and we turned them into an inspector,
and that way they could assist with the day-to-day operations in the office and also keep up with the oil wells.
then in 2021, during the middle of covid, we had one of the arson investigators retire,
and the decision at the time was not to replace that position due to fears in the budget with things that were going on at covid at the time.
we are still currently with three ftes in there. [noise] as we discussed through and talk through the impact of what this fee could be,
it's just trying to get back to where we were back in 2018 with another arson investigator in there.
the department is much busier now than it ever has been,
especially back in 2018. We're building a lot more things. We're running over 9,000 calls a year.
we have the ambulance service on top of it. There's a lot going on in the department to try to keep up with this as well.
but these are incredibly important. Fire prevention is hugely important
to reduce the risk of fires or prevent them from even happening on the front end.
we want to make sure that we're inside of these businesses each year, making sure that code is being followed and all of that.
but it comes with a cost associated with staff time and being out there.
we polled 32 city agencies. We found that 11 had no fees associated with annual fire inspections, such as ourselves.
twenty-one had some fee in some manner, 10 use a tiered approach based on square footage.
then, eight charged for re-inspections if they failed an inspection, and they had to come back.
then, two used a flat fee rate. Here's where it averaged out based on those square footages.
you can see there that 5:10,000, $66, and it goes all the way up to $209 whenever you get above the 200,000 square foot model.
thinking through, there's several different models of this out there. What are the different responsibilities?
we wanted to make sure that we understood that. This chart summarizes like 77% rely
solely on the fire marshal's office to do these fire inspections. They don't use operations whatsoever.
the vast majority are under that model, and I don't know that we would ever get fully to that model,
but we would want the vast majority of that to be in the fire marshal's office,
reducing the in operations, having to be a part of doing the annual fire inspections.
fifteen percent share some responsibility on the fire crews, 4% rely only on the fire crews,
and then 4% use conditional or mixed approach based on staffing and building type, and those things.
that's really a model that I think we would still continue,
but like I said, the vast majority being on the fire marshal's office. These are the total cities that we sampled,
and then I'll break those down for you on the next slide. This is the typical burleson comparable cities that we benchmark ourselves against.
of course, all of them do annual fire inspections, as you can see there.
then what divisions do that? Again, you can see here, the vast majority is the fire marshal's office.
only two of our comparable cities use fire crews to some degree. Cedar hill said that they use their crews moderately.
keller said they use high similar to us.
I'm sorry, I went through that. Then re-inspections. Do they use them for re-inspections?
again, our crews also go back out and do re-inspections as well.
again, if you think about the efficiency of that model of a fire truck that's out there,
they're in the middle of doing an inspection, they catch a call, they have to immediately leave, so they may have to drive back to finish the initial inspection.
then if there's some compliance issue, they may have to come back another time or another time after that as well.
again, that's why a lot of these other cities don't have their fire crews doing re-inspections or inspections to begin with.
then fees charged associated with the annual fees on that last column there to the far right.
you can see that there are several arlington, cedar hill, cleburne, and fort worth all charge an annual fee to do that.
then we also looked at the texas fire chiefs association, which is a much broader group.
again, here, I think what we wanted to show is the vast majority are doing annual inspections performed through the fire marshal's office.
again, the division that's typically doing it's the fire marshal's office.
midlothian, princeton, and colville were the only ones that had their fire crews participating in those.
then re-inspection again, was similar, with only midlothian and colville doing re-inspections.
then again, on the far right, you can see what cities are charging an annual fee for that.
there's more and more cities, I think, looking at trying to do this.
we presented this to the finance committee back in june,
and this is what we presented at the time, based on the data and the feedback that we had gotten was basically doing a square footage model.
if you're a smaller business, where it's a simple inspection where it doesn't utilize a lot of staff time,
we thought that $50 was the right place for that. All the way up to $175 for that 1,000-250 square foot.
during the middle of this conversation, the question came up, well, what about if and when we get a place that's bigger than 250,000 square foot?
we walk through it a little bit. This is what the finance committee recommended.
we bring this before you tonight for consideration on feedback.
>> we simplified it down a little bit more, cleaned it up and really made it more simple.
it goes 50, 75, 100, and 200 for that 50,000 square foot and above.
really, whenever you're getting into those bigger buildings, there's a lot more doors and exits and lights and offices and extension cords,
and those things, but also there's usually some fire protection system. Alarm systems and fire sprinkler systems.
they spend a lot more time there on site. This isn't a lot of money,
and this would be a one time year fee, but it is something that we're adding to add onto
our businesses that's different than what we've done in the past. We wanted to show that it's not unprecedented to
do it with our peer cities at the same time. Then also, again, just to try to look
at how we can maybe recoup some of those costs to help offset the fte cost that is needed for that.
then here, this was just competitive fees, that 6,000 square foot. That's the biggest area that we're going to have.
was our proposal in the right space there? We wanted to break that out for you here.
as you can see, anywhere from 25 to as high as $60.
if we went with our $50 fee with our original model,
this is where this would break out to. This was what we originally presented. It would be a little over $108,000.
after taking recommendations from the committee, it would go up to $109,000,
so a little bit more, but really it would be the same and this fee structure simplifies it a little better,
and I think it serves us better. But that's what we would like for you to consider on the annual fire inspection fees,
and I'd be happy to answer any questions or concerns that you may have around.
>> do you take into account on sprinkler systems? Aren't they supposed to be certified every so often?
>> yes, sir. Part of the annual inspection is making sure that they got it inspected like they were supposed to.
we go into the room, we make sure it has a heater, and it has a light, and it's been inspected,
and they look at the pressures and make sure it hasn't been damaged or anything like that. That is part of our annual inspection. Yes, sir.
>> anybody else? >> I think it's needed.
>> well, I'll back up. I'm totally against it. I think there's more nose on cities here.
case, I'm sorry. I just think that's something we need to provide to people.
insurance on these buildings has tripled tremendously.
they have a question, do you have a fire sprinkling system, etc.
I think that's the cost and that they have to have that if they don't want it,
then they don't have to have it, but most buildings do have those particular things to protect.
their insurance rates are unbelievable. On a building in town, they tripled the insurance last year.
I just think that I saw a lot of no's that city have no fees.
I just think that fees were killing people. We've got fees all over the place.
well, that's for some reason in the last couple of years, that's a modern way of we're getting your money again.
these small businesses in burleson. I've been here since '83. We haven't grown near as much as mansfield.
>> sure. >> thank goodness. We have two schools. They have six. We used to have one piece.
mid lothian same way. A lot of towns are the same way. Hurst us, bedford. I'm sorry.
[inaudible] may be in favor, but I'm not. I just don't like it. Another fee.
>> think about it if we're paying for this service, we need to do it, and I've been in small businesses where they're set in
there with wires exposed and everything else. If we don't do this,
the difference here is either we charge or we do it for free because it has to be done.
bottom line, and a lot of these places just they don't mean anything bad but they're a hazard.
now you're putting our firefighters at risk. It's not something, they're in business.
if they're not making enough to be able to afford $50 a year,
maybe they need to get out of business. I'm not trying to be mean. I'm trying to be practical on this.
we're here sitting here fighting for revenue to get things done.
it just doesn't work that way. We need to charge for this.
>> I understand that, but we've always had inspections in the building.
the fire department would have come by. I'm not saying what else you have to do.
I know you're extremely busy. It's just part of the job. I just think that's part of it.
I had to do stuff that was required to me, and I didn't get to charge anything, part of the job.
I just think it's part of it. That's just another fee. It takes more money out of their pockets.
>> I'm sorry. I just don't agree with it. >> anybody else? >> I was going to say that the issue with it is right now we're
using basically a full fire truck to go around and do fire inspections.
then in the middle of the inspection, they get a call and they got to leave and they got to go do the call.
then they got to remember where they left off and come back and do the inspection. What these fees do is it offsets the cost to hire a fourth investigator.
they've got in which not to steal your thunder, tommy, but you put it at about 150,000 ongoing,
and then this would be 109,000 because I support the alternative. I'm biased because I'm on the finance committee.
>> sure. >> I like our recommendation. But that's what it is.
it's to get these guys that are on the trucks to not have to do these inspections,
and they can focus that additional time on the training that they are so badly wanting to do and continuing to brush up on,
and so that's why this is being brought up. >> that would include a smaller vehicle or go to do this in, too.
>> correct. The fire marshal's office, if we had this other fte, they would take on the vast majority of these.
it would be one person going out in a smaller utility style vehicle to take care of these and follow up with them
and be able to do a more thorough in depth inspection while they're there and not get interrupted like the fire crews do often now.
>> would this individual have the same training as everybody else or would this be [overlapping] >> yes. They would be a firefighter that has all of the exact same training,
plus they would be an arson investigator and investigate, and this would be their specialty.
this would be what they do every day all the time. They would be used to answering those questions and those unique situations.
they are are resident experts on when it comes to the fire code.
>> larry. >> I'm good with the fees.
>> mayor counsel, I just want to state and this comments really more about this entire presentation,
that as we went through the budget process, I knew that it was going to be a more difficult process,
and I challenged every department director to look at how we do business,
what we assess fees for, what we're out of market, what peer cities are doing,
and what are best practice. I fully understand and respect that many of these things
increases for for our residents or for people that do business in burleson,
that's not lost on us. We just simply want to give the council the ability
to see what options you have, what fees, maybe we haven't increased in some period of time,
and then revenue offsets to maybe do things a little bit better. I just want to make it be
known that I did challenge every department director to do this. This is ultimately coming from me.
chief davis is recommending it. It's from me.
>> my question is, what are the fees going to be used after you make the money where is the money going?
what's the fee going to be used for? >> I'm going to talk about that in my supplemental presentation,
but I do want to make it clear, also, and I'll get to it in mind.
right now we're not making any assumptions about revenue increases. In any of the numbers that I present,
I am not making an assumption, we've not modified revenue.
I do propose a revenue offset for the inspector position to fund it.
not recommending the inspector without an offsetting revenue to pay for it because I think there are other things.
but the long story short is that it would go back to just general fund.
it wouldn't be allocated or earmarked for a specific purpose.
>> do you want to answer. >> in this scenario [overlapping] >> casey you want to hire somebody to do it.
>> you have an option. I'm recommending that if you implement this fee,
we change the way we do business, and we hire another inspector, and we take the burden off of the firefighters.
the council reserves the right to assess the fee and tell us to keep doing business the same way we do it today.
not my recommendation, but it's 100% your purview.
>> thank you. >> casey? >> yes, sir. >> I think the counsel is on board with going with the fees.
>> thank you, guys.
>> thank you all. The affirmation fees that we just discussed,
those were all the ones going directly to the general fund. The following fees are proposed fees from other funds that are
focused on improving cost recovery and consolidating the fee schedule.
administrative services or utility customer services.
these fees are largely intact of making some corrections on some small errors that were in the previous fee schedule.
credit card processing fee is currently listed 3.75 or a minimum of $3.50 per payment.
actual minimum is only $2.50, propose updating the word to reflect this correction.
propose listing two separate credit card processing fees
in person of 3.75% or a minimum $2.50,
and additionally, adding a 50 cent ivr fee.
this is already something that's currently in the software, so now staff is just looking to incorporate that into our fee schedule.
then lastly, on this is to propose to add the solid waste section of the fee schedule under
administrative services and taking it out of the cmo section of the fee schedule.
if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
for parks and recs on the golf course. This is just simply increasing the maximum rate from the current $55 to $62
with the understanding the maximum fee will not change
until planned improvements that were discussed last council meeting.
those improvements begin to be implemented, staff has the ability to increase that maximum fee.
then on public works, our water and wastewater meter and tap fees.
the following slides give you a breakdown on
the various meters and tap fees that have paid by the developers.
this is all looking towards cost recovery. The proposed fees represent full cost recovery,
fees at less than full cost recovery represent subsidies
to the private redevelopment funded by the water wastewater pairs.
many small municipalities in the region make it very hard to
find information on their fees.
doing a quick search through comparable cities,
we just couldn't find them. Short of having to go through open records request,
you can't find any information on the website.
here are the proposed fee rate changes for different meter sizes.
we can sit here and go through each one of these if you'd like.
majority of these are going to be paid by the developers and the builders. It's development paying for development.
these fees have not been changed in over five years.
biggest ones are going to be whenever we need to make a new tap,
whether it's in an easement or outside an easement. If there's concrete work or road construction that goes along with those,
those prices are set by public works.
we contact our public works director, they'll go out and assess the site,
and then they will give us a quote on what the actual cost is to make that tap.
>> dylan, do we know if we're competitive with other towns on this? Are we pretty close?
>> that's what I was referring to, sir. Trying to find the information as to
other cities and what they actually charge for these. It's very difficult to locate.
eric, do you have more info? >> eric, could you speak a little bit just about the costs
that go into this in terms of meters that we purchase and what we're paying for them as opposed to what the fee schedule is?
>> sure. To the mayor's question, the short answer is,
we feel like we're in line with the region. Some of the larger cities have actually
published their information and we're fairly in line. A lot of the individual fees on here
have the asterisk because they include some pavement work.
we won't know exactly how much that work is going to cost to restore until we actually go to that specific location,
figure out how deep is it. Is it asphalt? Is it concrete? Is it something else? The size of the meter?
in order to make a connection, this is the material costs to give them everything they need for the connection.
it's a lot of materials. A lot of those materials, fluctuate in price.
they're basically a commodity almost. We felt it'd be better not to lock ourselves into a rate now and
then have tariffs or something else cause those meter costs,
for example, to sky rocket. Now we're way under recovering what it's costing us to
connect that customer or relocate that customer. Does that help?
>> the revenues from these fees are purely demand driven.
it is, again, a recovery effort.
current fees are estimated to generate approximately $45,000 in revenue this year.
the proposed fees are projected to generate additional 3,000 and
a total annual revenue for 25-26 of roughly 78,000. With that?
>> when would these go into effect? If someone's got something under construction,
we aren't going to go out there and raise a price on them, are we? >> yes. The fee schedule will be adopted with the budget.
>> it would be effective october 1, mayor. >> we'd have plenty of time to let everybody know what we're doing?
>> yes, sir. >> anybody? We can't keep picking the tab up for it.
I understand. Thank you, dion. >> staff is seeking direction on which identified fees
the council believes should be increased or incorporated in to the fee schedule. On june 18th,
the majority of these fees were presented to the finance committee with approval to bring them forward to counsel.
a final fee schedule will be presented to counsel in august for consideration.
any other questions?
>> anybody? >> mayor, just to make sure as we continue to go through
the budget development process is a direction for full council to proceed with all the fees as presented this evening.
>> with the alternative on the inspection fees. >> as recommended by the finance committee.
for point of clarity, there were two or three fees that the finance committee recommended modifications too.
the counsel's recommendation is to proceed with staff's recommendation,
except for, if the finance committee made another recommendation.
>> we're good to go.
>> thank you, mayor and counsel. That brings us to the. [overlapping] >> amanda. We're going to take a little break.
counsel, try to come on back as soon as you can, if you would. Casey.
>> hold on. >> let's go. >> thank you, mayor and counsel.
move on to item 9d, receiver report,
hold a discussion, and provide staff direction on fire billing services.
the staff presenter this evening is casey davis, fire chief. Casey.
>> good evening, mary and counsel again. I'm here before you tonight to talk about fire response cost recovery.
similar to what we were talking about earlier. This is another way
to recover some of the costs for the services for the fire department.
there's some challenges with this,
that I'd like to explore with you and talk through. Fire cost recovery proposal was presented to the finance committee back in june.
the committee was receptive to this concept and expressed support.
their formal recommendation was to bring it back to the full council for a report and presentation.
again, with the city facing some of the financial situation we've been in,
city manager ludwig has asked us to look at all the different options of ways that we can possibly recover cost.
this is a way to do it, and it's not unprecedented for the burleson fire department to do this cost recovery.
we've done this in the past as part of our model. As a matter of fact, kristie menchaca,
that's one of our administrative assistants, she was originally hired on the premise that she would help do
some insurance cost recovery billing whenever she was first brought on. That's what her background was in.
they did that for a few years early on, back whenever the city was transitioning away from
the county and not being a part of the esd and just running the city. There was a time that we did this,
but we did it internally. One of the challenges with this is that,
we learned through that back then was that we didn't have the staff to do that or the expertise to do that,
because fire billing is unique in its own way.
it's not very predictable, and it depends a lot on the type of insurance that someone has.
some insurance carriers include fire department service charge recovery clause in
their policies to help pay for the costs related to fire incidents and first response.
again, like I said, our department doesn't have the processes or the staff levels in place to
identify and pursue these reimbursable claims for incident.
but as you all know, we use a merger con as our ems billing agency,
and they have a division called merger fire who does fire billing,
where they bill insurance companies for claims that are submitted for emergencies.
we haven't committed to emerge fire by any means that we would do business with them.
they were just a natural source to go to since they offer that service, and we already have a contract with them for ambulance and ms billing.
we explored this with them. You'll see their name throughout the presentation, but again, by no means,
does that mean that we have to do business with them and we haven't promised them any business to this point.
again, like I was saying, they're a division of emergicon.
the process does move from a direct taxing model with
a potential for an insurance premium increase.
we wanted to say that out front. We don't know if that's the case or not.
we reached out to a merger fire to find out if they've experienced any of that. This is what they told us about,
would this impact someone's premium. I'll just read this to you.
to date, there's no formal case studies that specifically isolate the effects of fire response billing on insurance premiums.
premiums are typically influenced by the incident itself, such as vehicle crash,
fire, or hazardous spills not associated with the costs billed by the fire department.
premiums are based on events, not fees, insurance underwriting looks at an overall claim,
property damage, injuries, liability, and the involvement of the emergency services is already factored into that risk.
whether or not the fire department bills for service does not affect how the claim is scored.
fire billing is treated as a claim line item from the carrier's perspective,
these charges are like towing, cleanup or other post incident services that are bundled into an overall claims cost.
many municipalities across texas has successfully implemented billing for
fire services without seeing any reported increases in resident premiums as a result.
these programs have been operating for years and and there have been no insurance pushbacks based on billing practices alone.
I talked to christie, our administrative assistant,
and then I reached out to chief wisdom, who was the fire chief at the time when he was here. They both reported that they don't recall anyone having
any issues with their premiums going up whenever we were going through that process then, as well.
counsel has the ability to establish specific policies and parameters to ensure that
these fire billing services are in line with our values and our expectations exactly the same way that we did it with the ambulance billing site.
options for consideration include billing strictly only insurance companies,
ensuring that no individual or individual business would ever receive a direct bill.
we could also prohibit the use of third party collections under any circumstances,
similar to what we do with the ambulances now. What can we bill for?
well, basically any incident that we respond to.
motor vehicle incidents, structure fires, vehicle fires, equipment fires, hazmat incidents, industrial commercial incidents.
basically any time that there was some incident that the fire department responded,
and then there was an insurance claim. That would be the only time they would bill.
they wouldn't bill an individual citizen or anything like that with the model that we're proposing.
they would just bill a claim that's already billed, just like a record driver would or hazmat company would,
or a disaster recovery company would do.
this is a similar model. These are all the cities that emergifire is currently doing business with in texas.
all of the ones in yellow highlighted are in north texas.
then the ones at the bottom there. These are cities that are currently in negotiations
with emergifire to consider taking on their services as well. There's several in north texas that are already doing this and being successful at
it for consideration. Basically, how would it work? We would have an incident,
just like we do now. We would run the incident, take care of the incident, and we would collect information on that.
we would send that over to a emergifire or whatever company we were doing business with.
we already have that process in place because we do it on the ambulance billing side. They're already plugged into our software.
if we did choose to go with them, we already have that piece in place with them.
insurance billing opportunities, they would then see if that incident had any billing I'm sorry,
insurance premium associated with it. They would then file claims with the insurance company,
and if there was coverage on that insurance premium, and the insurance company deemed
that it was appropriate to pay that. They would pay that. They would then collect the revenue from that.
they would take out their fees associated with that, and then they would put that in our account just like they do for the ambulance side now.
again, here, this is breaking down that process of just saying how they would promptly submit those claims,
provide instructions for submission to require documentation to a emergifire.
if they needed more information on the claim, then they would promptly post those payments whenever they received them.
provide monthly client report updates, which we already have that relationship with them now,
and they do that now for the ems side. What they would charge if we did decide to explore this further with
them is they charge 15% for all revenues collected for a emergifire.
that is more than what's on the ems billing side. But like I said, fire billing is not as consistent as ems billing.
not everyone has these on their premiums, are part of the or their insurance coverage.
I think to cover their cost associated with going after that, that's why it's 15%,
plus an additional 2% for any credit card fees, which is similar on the ems side.
ems billing is way more consistent. It's based on call volume and payer mix and
things that are much more predictable than what is on the fire side.
we did ask them to run some numbers and give us some estimates on what they think that we could receive back based on this.
they looked at last year. What they came up with was 123 possible claims on the business side and
550 individual claims that they felt like we could have possibly billed for.
on the far right column there, you'll see that these are average times on scene per incident,
because not only they bill for units, they bill for staff, but they also bill for the time that you're there utilizing that equipment.
their preliminary revenue estimates, and like I said,
they did not want us to nail them down on this. They said that this is very unpredictable,
but they think that we could get as high as $145,000 a year in cost recovery.
again, as we're asking to increase staffing for the fire marshals office and for firefighters and for paramedics,
those things associated with that, we're looking at ways to try to recover some of these costs.
we feel that this is a responsible, reasonable way to go about that, because we're collecting on
insurance claims that the person already has this built into their insurance coverage.
again, how do they go about developing their rate? They use fma rates.
those are national standard rates based on if we went to
like some natural disaster like a hurricane down at the coast or something like that.
this is how fma would reimburse. That's how they base their fee schedule off of that,
accounting for a four person crew. The result in the average base rate is $177 per hour for an engine company,
and an additional $376 an hour for allocated fuel equipment,
personnel, all of those things. Now, I won't read all of this to you here,
but these are if you go into specifics, so like a motor vehicle incident,
$602-838 plus is what they think that they could recover on those if they had this coverage.
the reason why I say plus is if there's extensive hazmat cleanup or something like that, those will be additional things.
this materials response is anywhere from 972 to almost $8,200 plus.
hazmat, again, is very broad. It could be something very small to something very
large that goes on for hours or even days.
then, fire response fee, again, $554-693 an hour.
they can also bill for fire investigation, and incident command, which we're required to have at those incidents as well.
water-related incidents, back country or special rescue incidents,
that would be something like the cell tower rescue we recently had where we were out there for
multiple hours on that natural gas leak response.
the next steps to consider is we could consider
a billing policy if counsel wants to go down this road,
where we only bill insurance companies that have an insurance claim with
no contract or billing inquiries made to individual citizens or individual businesses,
never utilizing third party collections. We need to consider some procurement options for contract with a billing service.
I've been exploring that with purchasing, if we did decide to go down this road of how we could best go about doing that.
consider an ordinance establishing and implementing a program to charge mitigation rates,
and then the rates associated with that. Initiate a public awareness campaign.
I think this would be much similar in the way that we approach,
not having a subscription fee on the ambulance side of things. I think that this taken out of context,
people could maybe think that we were going to build them individually or something like that. We would want to be very clear with all of the citizens and the businesses
in town that we would not bill them individually, or that wouldn't be our recommendation to do that.
then, complete the standard operating procedures
and with the target go live of january of 2026.
be happy to answer any questions or get any feedback that you all have about this.
>> I'm all on this. I guess one of the things that went through my mind
is an electrical fire on an electric vehicle. >> yes, sir. >> you've given us a presentation on what it takes to get one of those fires put out.
>> yeah. Thankfully, we have not encountered that here in burleson yet,
but those are very significant fires when we have one.
some of the issues associated with those is basically our bunker gear then has to be sent off and specially cleaned.
that is very expensive to have that done because of the type of chemicals that are involved in those batteries.
there's going to be a hazmat incident associated with that, so you're going to have a hazmat team out there for hours
trying to clean that up and mitigate those efforts as well. You're talking a lot of manpower hour time,
and then the cleanup internally with the trucks and the equipment and all of
those things to be able to get all of the carcinogens out of that bunker gear for it to be usable again,
and all of those things, it would be thousands of dollars associated with the cost just for one electric vehicle fire.
>> we could pretty well use the same questions that we did with the ames and the fact that
we're being sensitive to the client to our citizen, right?
>> yes, I think that would be my recommendation is to follow a similar pathway.
my recommendation would be to bill insurance companies where there's already a claim.
the person has already had the reck, they're already filing an insurance claim.
then if they have these provisions on their policy that the citizen or the business is already paying for that coverage,
then this would be associated with it. Again, I know the question has inevitably come up.
could this cause their premiums to go up? I can't stand here before you and say absolutely no, that wouldn't happen.
but from talking to magnifier, they have not seen that to be a major issue or concern.
again, they look at these as similar to a wrecker driver or something like that,
providing a service within that clump of that claim. >> anybody else?
>> I think as long as we focus on the insurance companies and not having
contact with the individual or business and no third party collection.
>> we absolutely can't go after people. But if this is a provision that they include as part of their insurance package already,
if it has this fire department service charge, that's already part of what they're paying for as a client of whatever insurance company,
and then it's a benefit that no one is capitalizing on if we're not seeking a claim on that.
the instances that really stand out to me,
we're unique in that we sit between I-35, 121.
there are a lot of people, and even on 174 that pass through our town that aren't necessarily burleson citizens,
but take up time in the event that they have a car accident or on I-35,
if there's a situation where a truck rolls over,
there's so many instances that we could be involved in that would take up a lot of fire time, staff, tools,
and then we miss out on an opportunity that we could
potentially request some recovery back on that on those fees.
I wish in some ways we could identify those, but I don't think that would be worth a contract to say,
if they happen on major thoroughfares, then that would be your opportunity.
but those are the instances that stand out to me. We talk about that at cog sometimes of the state.
state troopers sometimes are far and few on those big thoroughfares,
so instead, it ends up being on the backs of local law enforcement or
local fire providers to deal with those situations, and they can take up a lot of time.
>> we stand ready to respond to anybody whether or not they have that provision or not.
I answer that question often for patients that call in about their ambulance bill,
and I tell them the same thing every time. If you call 911, we're coming.
this is just an opportunity to
try to get some cost recovery on a provision that's built into someone's insurance premium. That's the way I saw it when it was presented from mergify to
us as something that they're already paying for in their benefits,
and this is something that they can try to do cost recovery. Again, they think they might be maybe be able to get us $145,000,
which is nowhere near covering the cost of the budget for the fire department or anything like that.
it's a small portion of it. But as we consider needing to add more staff and things like that,
and city manager ludwig has asked us to look at the different ways that we can bring that.
I wanted to bring this to you as an option for consideration.
>> you good too? >> casey, you do a good job presenting things
the same way when I presented stuff when I was still working.
I can sell lies to somebody in alaska and you do a good job. Not that I agree with you, and that's fine.
we can have differences and still be good. I don't agree with this again,
simply because now we're going to hear from the chief cordell about we're going to raise money.
another fee if they call 911 for emergency on police or they have to draw their weapon,
we're going to charge them $5. Insurance company will recuperate the cost.
it's going to cost somebody, and that's sure not going to be the insurance company. I'm sorry, they're out of control.
but I think it's another fee of some way or other.
tommy, you did a great job of figuring out how to do this and raising money.
we've been all over about doing that. You've done a great job. But just personally,
my common sense telling me I don't like it because in your presentation,
you showed that chart. I counted the first row before you took it off, 16 out of 22 didn't do it.
only just a few doing this, not very many. Again, I feel like if somebody has a wreck on 174,
whether they're from joshua, whether they're coming to cleveland going town or inner city, you do take care of them.
by the way, you wrecked your car. We got a $500 bill we're going to attach to it through your insurance.
you just burnt your house down half of, we're going to charge $1,000 go through your insurance.
somebody going to charge him, and insurance will go up on them. I'm sorry. I guess I'm going to argue to move tonight.
I just don't agree with it. >> yes, sir. >> sorry. >> I respect your position.
>> I'm going to go against what he just said because I do know personally,
the insurance companies, they take a totaled vehicle, for example.
I paid my deductible, whatever it was, and they were paying the rest.
six months later, I got another bill for a sign because my daughter drove through the sign.
but they told us that wasn't supposed to come to you. That was supposed to go to
the insurance company because you've already paid your deductible.
had I not paid my deductible, I guess it would have disappeared miraculously.
>> [overlapping] increase over year. >> I have two teenagers.
>> go forward. >> thank you.
>> thank you, mayor and council. That brings us to 9e,
receive a report, hold a discussion and provide staff direction on
the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget supplemental request,
five-year fund forecast and receive additional direction from
city council regarding the annual budget for fiscal year 2025-2026.
the staff presenter this evening is tommy ludwig, city manager. Tommy?
>> good evening, mayor and council.
we have a very detailed presentation for you tonight. I'll try to go through it as expeditiously as possible,
but intention here is to be very transparent. If you have questions regarding anything that I'm discussing, let me know,
we also attached as an appendix to this presentation every supplemental that was presented.
I only intend to go through those that I'm recommending or if I'm recommending a service delivery reduction.
however, if you have questions not associated with the presentation, please let me know.
with everything that we always do, my focus is always on strong fund balances.
first and foremost on everything that we look at, and that includes also working capital.
we have a minimum of 20% requirement for our major funds.
we're being consistent with that. We also look not just in a one year period,
but over a five year horizon. You've heard me say many, many times, as we move further away from one year,
the less confidence we have in our numbers, but it's still important to budget this way from a trend perspective.
it lets us know, are we seeing revenue go down? Are we seeing expenditures increase?
are we seeing fund balance reduce? We're paying specific attention to that. We're also taking into account over the five year horizon,
the impact of the reappraisal plans that we've discussed many, many times from both johnson and tarrant county,
as well as some softening in our economic growth over the next couple of years.
I've already alluded this from my comments earlier, but we've not projected any fee increases in revenues,
including anything associated with the stormwater fees that we've discussed.
that has a potential for a fairly significant impact to the general fund, but as of now,
that's not in there. Then finally, our strategic vision from
the council played heavily in the recommendations that I'm presenting to you this evening.
then also, with our proprietary and special revenue funds, the cip play in conjunction to our supplementals,
and we take all of those into account. One of the things that we talked about in may was
the fact that we were projecting even after the base adjustments of needing to come up with about an
additional $1.5 million in reductions. I want to talk you through how we've gotten to that number.
tonight, I'm going to pose for you about $850,000 worth of reductions,
and approximately $810,000 of those are re occurring. As we look back through the budget,
we made some additional base level adjustments to the budget, so just looking at historic spins,
not service delivery reductions, but those line items where we felt like we could reduce with that impacting service delivery.
we've made those in the base budget. As I said, before,
we had not yet included salary savings in our projections.
this is just our standard attrition. We don't budget and assume everyone is going to be filling a position 100% of the time.
people are going to retire, they're going to promote, they're going to take other positions,
and so we've budgeted in salary savings of $1 million,
which is very consistent and very conservative what we've seen historically.
in total, we were able to hit about $1.9 million, which exceeds the 1.5 we targeted.
I know it's small here, but my intention is to go through at a high level and go through each one of these.
these first two items that I specifically proposed,
and one is changing our merit calendar. Are still budgeting merit in step at 3%.
but historically, we've had those come into effect on october 1. I'm proposing in the budget that moving forward,
we would shift that to 1st of january date. What that functionally saves is about $360,000 a year.
I would be hesitant to recommend shifting anything beyond this state for a couple of reasons.
one, I still want timely merit increases for our staff, and two, our benefits run on a calendar year,
and we project a 5% increase year over year, so I want to make sure our employees aren't in a position where they effectively
get a pay decrease for three months out of the year because their premium goes up, but their raise hasn't gone into effect yet.
I'm recommending holding an additional engineering position and development services.
this is very much tied to the amount of work that we see coming in and permit activity.
right now, I'm projecting to hold this indefinitely.
should we see a rise in building permit activity and a commiserate increase in revenue,
then it would be one that I would want to try to restore. But at this time, I'm recommending holding it.
in finance, gradient services is a third party consultant that we used this year,
and we intended to use moving forward. They provide various consulting services this year.
what they looked at was our p card, our city purchase card transactions looking to make sure that one,
was there any red flags, which there were not, and then two, do we have vendors that we're
constantly using on p card that we might be able to shift to a purchase order just to better improve our internal controls.
we didn't have a defined scope of work for them next year, so we're going to be removing that.
looking through human resources, many of these are really related to limiting travel and training and
focusing on more in house development opportunities for staff across the city.
the overtime number specifically related to hr
specifically looking to leverage more comp time opportunities within that department.
limiting outside professional services, again, third party trainings,
etc., coming in. We're also forecasting based on the number of employees that we
anticipate on boarding over the next several years and being relatively flat,
that we can reduce our background check needs, so a $5,000 reduction there ongoing.
you see $3,000 here for a move to paper light. This is a municipal court.
this is implementation of a software program that they have that's going to be reducing their need to print and consume paper products.
we see an ongoing reduction there. You'll see meal reductions for city council.
this is going to be for staff on council nights as well as assume reduction in council attendance at various chamber of commerce events,
about $4,700 there, rather.
change in newspaper publications. This is something that we've talked about many,
many times at the policy evaluation committee and full council. What we would be doing here is shifting more to cleveland times,
as opposed to advertising in fort worth. We would still utilize for fort worth.
this would be on an as needed basis, certainly for those more high profile items
such as various zoning changes or the tax rate. We want to still advertise in fort worth,
but we'd be shifting more to cleveland times through lots of our publications here.
for the community development, no longer printing, planning and zoning and old town materials,
of course, they would still be available online. Legal advertisements. Occasionally,
our purchasing group would rely on third party services for the development of requests for proposals or requests for qualifications,
primarily based on workload. We'd be reducing that.
now, this in turn may result in longer lead times in our procurements,
but it would be a reduction here. Rotary flags, I know that this item is small,
but we looked at literally every line in the budget many, many times.
right now, we do budget $200 a year in the police department to have rotary flags set.
that's not something that we absolutely have to do. We're proposing to reduce that.
eliminate council's travel to national league of cities. That'd be a $15,000 reduction to the council budget.
here, we see remove directors and council retreat. This doesn't mean we wouldn't have retreats.
it simply mean they would be staff led, which they primarily have been staff led. We would hold them in house,
and we'd have very limited expenses. We'll still plan to do these things,
but we essentially won't have a budget associated with them. Egret funding.
we had that forecast that is a reoccurring expenditure, and I'm proposing to eliminate that
so there would no longer be additional egret dollars that we've set aside for advanced egret deterrence.
printing and mailing of the community newsletter. We historically have done that quarterly.
last year, we cut down to only mailing that out twice a year. This option, it would be 100% digital format,
so it'd be a $14,000 reduction here. At the police department,
they have a medsafe drug destruction drop off for your prescription drugs,
if you would like to safely get rid of your prescription drugs. There is a cost associated with that with the liner in that box,
and we would be removing this as part of my recommendation so that box would no longer be
>> lobbying services. >> I'm sorry tommy. We still have the two annual events for the drug take-back.
I know those are in partnership with the dea and some. >> yes, to my understanding,
would just be the boss. >> we would still have community collection dates and auctions for citizens.
>> confirm that's correct. Good question. Lobbying services.
this would be a reduction of our contract with focus advocacy, essentially eliminating that contract.
however, we do spend more than this amount with focus advocacy,
but this is an expenditure offset because we did factor in our contract that was approved with lonestar for federal lobbying.
if you look and you realize that our contract with focus advocacy is more than this amount,
we're offsetting the expenditure that we've approved in the budget.
foundation center grant-seeking database. This is something that the library offers.
it's basically a database that allows people to apply for grants. We would no longer be offering that.
there are two municipalities in north texas that we're aware of that still have this. It would be dallas and plano.
while it wouldn't be as convenient, it is still available for people to access. Armstrong lab.
this is with the police department for various lab testing that we have to do.
they are our primary source of lab services. There are low-cost and free labs that we can use.
however, they have a very extensive lead time. We use armstrong frequently.
looking historically at our expenditures, we think that we can reduce this line item by
$20,000 without any operational impacts to the police department. >> I'm assuming these are like our rape kits and that kind of stuff?
>> multiple types of forensic testing. >> but it's not going to impact?
>> no. Again, back to if we ever ran into a position where
we're not going to do anything that's going to limit our police operations response or the timing of anything we do,
we just looked historically and said, this is a line that we can probably reduce based on historical spins.
>> that one makes me nervous. >> chief cordell, do you have anything that you want to add to that?
>> unfortunately, a lot of police work involves labs, so I don't want to inhibit what we're doing.
>> yeah, obviously, we do not want to reduce services. Armstrong provides us an ability to turn that around a lot quicker, 6-8 weeks.
you can send the items to be tested to one of three places through dps.
turnaround time can be up to six months on those.
then we also have to drive those to either tyler or austin,
or I can't remember the other place, and pick up, which means we're constantly on the road.
armstrong gives us some better turnaround times,
but I think this was based on history.
but we're one crime train away from that changing. We can't predict that.
>> I would just like to put an asterisk by that one for now, tommy, something that I'm hesitant about reducing.
obviously, if their workload isn't there,
then they don't need that, but in the event that something picks up.
>> I can assure you that I'd be bringing a mid-year budget adjustment. That's what we do this for or end-of-year budget adjustment.
again, this isn't about reducing a level of service or trying to reduce our response.
I think it's really based on looking at the budget and saying,
this is an area where we feel like we've probably over budgeted, because you're going to have one off.
>> workload is going to be for the year. >> correct, and so if we make this adjustment, I would anticipate every few years,
there may be a need to come back based on a particular incident where we may have to have a mid-year adjustment.
but we can put an answer about that, and sure, of course, if the council wants to strike it,
this is the whole purpose of tonight's presentation. >> this may be a question for the chief.
is this something that we could just have on if a situation were to arise?
would we be able to send it off? Or is this we have to commit?
>> like a standing contract. >> a standing contract. >> that's a good question. I don't know to have the exact answer for it.
I will find that out and get back to you. This is our targeted.
my guess is that we can come back with armstrong and admit that, but I don't know that for sure. I will find out.
>> I'm with victoria on this one. I don't feel good about it.
>> is the 20,000 just a portion of the budget? >> yes. I believe, correct.
>> it's not the complete budget for armstrong. >> if I recall correctly, that total item was about $75,000 originally.
>> we should continue to use them. We're just going to reduce the budget. >> correct. Yes, sir.
my recollection, councilman boedeker, is that this contract is like a as we use it type of service.
we pay for what we use. I don't think we're bound contractually by a specific dollar amount.
I want chief cordell to verify that, but my understanding is it's just solely based on you pay as you go,
and you pay for what you've utilized the service for.
other questions. I know I've gone through this list relatively quickly, but I want to make sure that I'm giving it.
everything needs time.
a few other police related items. Originally, when I presented this to the finance committee,
this tlo item was actually one safe place. One safe place is a firm that we partner with that is a victim's advocacy group.
deep talking with chief cordell, that's one that was near and dear to his heart. That was an $11,000 reduction.
he has since proposed with his command staff that we look at
reducing our total number of subscriptions to our tlo database.
this is a database we use for research. We have other platforms that we can use to access the same type of data.
we're not really reducing service, and I thought this would be a better shift because
the one safe place reduction would have been a service delivery reduction.
>> I appreciate the chief standing up for that one. That one's really important; it impacts directly
the citizens that we're serving. Thank you. >> as we go through this, many of these things are
not things that we would like to reduce. The important services, the del carmen racial profiling reports.
we produced that quarterly, but statutorily, we're only required to do that annually.
we would reduce that down; we would still meet our annual requirement, but we would reduce the total dollar amount there by $10,000 annually moving forward.
the btx rebate program. This is lisa delelo and tony's program
that offers matching grants up to $5,000 for home repairs for individuals,
and this has been a program that has been used to the fullest for the last several years.
it's been an excellent program, but it's not something we absolutely have to do.
when we look at reductions, this was one that begrudgingly that I put on the list to do.
the swat breaching software. What this is, this is essentially a database that the police department can utilize
to look at how other departments have utilized various explosives.
we also rely on our own data for that primarily. This would just be essentially eliminating that database,
but again, we rely on our own information internally from historical history.
from a standpoint of talking with command staff and with swat,
this was not one that they deemed to be specifically operationally impactful.
there's a one-time reduction of letter map revision allocations for professional services pay in development services,
that's not ongoing, but we anticipate we could see savings here this year.
then we did hire an hvac technician in facilities,
and so we think that we're going to be able to reduce our reliance on third-party services.
we see a reduction there. In terms of overall reductions,
this is what I'm proposing. I would say, I don't want to make this abundantly clear.
I've had questions about burleson opportunity fund. It's not being proposed as a reduction.
the council had given me direction last year to look at that as a one-time supplemental and reconsider every year,
so it's not on the reduction list because it wasn't an ongoing expenditure,
but it is not listed in my recommended supplementals at this time that I'm going to touch on in a moment.
depending on how you look at it, that could be perceived as a reduction, so I want to make it clear that we're trying to be transparent.
any questions or concerns associated with the deductions, save the comments associated with armstrong labs?
>> I would like to strike that one.
the armstrong lab services. The $20,000 reduction.
>> I trust that the pd is going to know when something
can withstand a longer wait time or turnaround time and when something can't.
I don't know what that dollar number is going to look like, but I think we should just accept that that one might be a little bit more
fluid because who knows what situations might pop up in the next budget year that
will require us to turn around those lab results, and I wouldn't want to impede on the work that they're doing.
>> duly noted, and again, no intention there of impacting any police operations,
what I will say is this, is that I'm presenting this to you a little bit in a vacuum
because I don't have our certified roles so what I'm recommending to you tonight,
I'm doing with the caveat is that it may drastically change when you see
my recommended filed budget because we may have changes in our revenue assumptions.
>> the money may not be there. >> the money may not be there, and, of course, you, as council always reserve the right to modify
my recommended budget as you see fit when you take your final vote.
I will do my best to try to keep that line item out, but given the fact that I just don't know where we are with revenue,
I can't commit that I won't recommend it as the file budget, but you certainly have the right to change that as the council.
with regards to total of supplemental request recommended
or requested by the departments for the general funds over $5.5 million,
I'm going to be recommending a little less than a million dollars with at least a revenue offset of
$108,000 that was recommended or discussed by chief davis with the fire inspections.
most of these are going to be ongoing, and then there's 1.5 ftes that I've recommended.
first and foremost on my list was public safety equity pay,
and that was one that we had talked about previously at full council.
that's $765,000, and that's a reoccurring expenditure.
the axon master services agreement. This was one that was discussed at council.
it went back to public safety committee, and ultimately public safety committee, after they received additional feedback,
made recommendations of approval of that to the full council.
would say here that we're not forecasting an increase in this over
the next five years based on how we would be structuring that contract.
I would say that I have made some assumptions in the base budget about operational efficiencies that we would see as
a result of the use of that technology that would help lead to that being a zero cost over the next five years.
the arson investigator and fire inspector, again, chief davis has spoken about this.
I'd be recommending that, but with a revenue offset of at least the 108,
but depending on if the council moves forward, ultimately,
with adopting all the fees, it would be a total revenue offset between that and the emerging fire.
well, I'm also recommending installation of an additional handicap ramp
at the senior center adjacent to where the accessible parking is now,
a third-party annual safety audit of all of our playground facilities.
it would just be a one-time third-party assessment to ensure that
those facilities are meeting our safety protocols and standards that we expect.
the finance committee did not see this last item I've added since that meeting.
an additional seasonal drainage worker, a budget cycle ago or so,
we shifted from public works to the parks department, drainage-related maintenance functions,
and just to continue to keep up and peak demand, adding a part-time person to help keep up with that.
we only moved one fte, and we knew with public works,
when things got busy, they had larger crews that could help absorb some of that.
this is really probably more of an equity thing to try to give the parks department the resources they need to keep up with that demand.
this would be in a no tax rate increase scenario.
assuming a 2% growth, the council could fund this and not have a tax rate increase,
and this would be what your five-year projection would look like: what the ending fund balance of a little over 22%.
any questions associated with the supplementals recommended in a non-tax rate increase scenario?
>> I just had one comment. >> yes, sir. >> do a great job. No problem.
thing stuck out to me. This is very, very petty, I guess.
the staff reduction in meals for here.
I don't think we should expect these guys to go all day without a day meal.
if you're going to reduce them, take ours away, get me a hamburger, and fry on the way.
that saves a lot of money, but I don't expect those ladies to sit here from noon until 10:00 at night without eating.
that's just very little amount of money. We either feed them or we don't feed us.
I'm sorry. I'm not speaking for the rest of these guys. >> can I just do a point of clarification on that,
because there is a little bit of background on that, because we did talk about this. Currently, what we were doing is purchasing 25 meals for every council meeting.
we were just saying any and every possible person that could come to a council meeting.
but as you can see, not all staff stay. This is a irregular meeting where most of the staff has stayed.
that reduction there is not the full reduction. It's not like we're not going to supply meals;
it's just going to be at a reduction. Currently, what we do is we just really try to make sure we have enough meals,
and as you can see, sometimes we have a ton left over. It's a little wasteful, is what we're seeing also.
we're trying to do that. There is still some capacity within the budget,
even though we're reducing it, that number is very large because it also is water.
>> snacks and everything else.
we would not be requiring people if they needed to eat,
we wouldn't say you're not eating this evening. We would just make sure that we're doing it in a proper.
we're just trying to take a finer pin to our numbers that we had and
that's what I've done is I just took that finer pin to it to make sure we were doing it the best way.
>> I appreciate it. I just asked staff if they're going to be here tonight and you want to be fed.
yeah, I see what you're saying. Thank you.
>> in this next scenario, we're assuming a tax rate increase.
just keep in mind that you are limited to 3.5% increase on the m&o portion of your tax rate.
you've directed me to prepare a budget does not assume a voter exceeding that rate and going to the voters for approval,
and we've exceeded that calendar timeline essentially already. For every 1%, not $0.01, for every 1%,
it's about $260,000 increase, and again, assuming a 2% growth rate.
the maximum that you could increase the m&o budget by would be not quite a million dollars.
in the event that the council implemented a 3.5% increase,
I would be recommending four supplementals which would be the three paramedics for
the staffing of the fourth ambulance and one additional patrol officer.
of note, that I want to make sure that I state clearly,
in the event that the paramedics are not hired, we do anticipate having to absorb that call volume
on overtime which chief davis is projected to be about $270,000.
questions associated with this scenario and
then you see your five year projected fund balance is slightly higher than the other scenario because the cost are slightly below the increased revenue.
you see that number b a little bit different.
any thoughts before I move on to the other funds?
four b, we had about $860,000 worth of request.
I'd be recommending 400,000 with approximately 2.5 ftes.
this first item here is recommending an aquatic maintenance specialist for
the brick to perform various maintenance related functions. Having somebody that specifically dedicated and focused
on maintenance of our assets there. Then we'd also recommend a part time field athletic attendant.
we're projecting additional tournaments and because of that we'll need increased man hours there.
if we don't add this individual, we would be paying it in overtime probably exceeding this number in overtime.
we think that makes sense. This next item would be providing irrigation for our sensory garden at russell farm.
there's an item that we discussed previously at both park board, as well as council for additional slide, maintenance,
a contract for our new slide, having the vendor come in and do maintenance and provide training.
we treated that as a one time expenditure to evaluate
whether made sense and something we to continue to do ongoing.
we're also forecasting use of some additional protective chemicals at the brick for the stair structure for the slide.
some additions of portable pushing mounds. There's a program room update at the brick that serves as
a flex space that would be replacing some flooring, repainting, tent on some windows,
removing some shelving, etc. This next item would be a new dump trailer
for athletics that would be shared across the parks department today. My understanding is that trailer when it's used,
it's used from the public works department, is just not an efficient use of time. Then an additional ice machine to keep up with various activities.
this is another item. These next two were not seen by the finance committee
because we were awarded grants between the finance committee and today's presentation.
we did receive an urban forestry grant for to hire arborist position.
that would be the revenue offset here would be 50,000 in the first year,
and then 25 for the next two years. We do have the full position budgeted across the five year horizon and moving forward.
we also have additional tree maintenance. That was a grant and it was a one time,
and then there's a revenue offset associated with that. Then we also have an item here,
and we didn't discuss this in great detail in our budget amendment about taking on
some maintenance responsibilities at bartlett and some of our contract renegotiation.
we're making some assumptions here about the city taking on maintenance responsibilities,
and we'd be retaining existing trucks until new trucks came in because the staff,
the housed a athletics would need to travel to bartlett to do that maintenance.
assuming that that budget adjustment was approved, we would order new trucks,
but until such time as those come in, we've got new trucks that are nearing delivery and so we would just
basically use those and keep the existing trucks in service until the replacements came.
parks performance fund is a pass through account, as you all know,
so there's really no fund balance discussion to be had here. However, I want to pause for a moment and go back to
the recommended supplementals and see if there are any questions or concerns.
shifting on to hidden creek golf course, $500,000 worth of request.
I'm going to be recommending a $200,000 worth of supplementals with an fte.
going line by line, there's some in ground trash cans that we're proposing as well as
some additional ball wash stations at
various holes just to help provide opportunities for people to throw away trash in a more productive manner perhaps.
this air fire is something that we actually rent and it actually by purchasing this equipment,
we actually save money. The ongoing cost is associated with our equipment replacement fund contribution.
the side cutter is another piece of equipment that we rent and I think that costs something of $500 a week when we have to use it.
again, more cost effective to try to purchase that equipment. Tree removal and limb up.
this is 29,000 in the first year, 20,000 reoccurring, thereafter, just to continue trying to make
improvements to the course and making sure that we're maintaining the trees as we need to be.
additional turf training for staff beyond our superintendent, just making sure that staff has
a good education on how to properly maintain the turf at the golf course.
a seasonal grounds keeper and this car born attendant, these are both part time individuals,
and genet alluded to the fact that we have carp burn superintendent that will
becoming a mechanic and will be reducing the amount of contributions we make to the equipment services fund by $75,000,
that will help offset these additional positions that we also discussed as part of
the ongoing staffing to continue to enhance golf operations.
then the finance committee actually recommended to add two additional items here,
drainage basin repairs and some additional irrigation expansion at the golf cars.
these are not necessarily specific areas. I'm sure james has them targeted,
but nothing was specifically mentioned in the finance committee with relation to location.
any questions associated with the recommendation? Yes, ma'am. >> the tree removal and limb up,
could the arbors that we have that it's coming on staff,
could they not take care of that? >> they are going to be really focused in on trying to
develop an urban forestry plan, doing tree inventory, identifying the types of trees we have,
when we should be replacing trees, what the treatment methods should be. Do we have trees that maybe we
should no longer be planning because they may not be native? They're really more going to be focusing in on trying
to come up with the overarching plan, not really doing maintenance per se.
now, they may play a role in giving recommendations on how trees should be trimmed up or pruned appropriately,
but they wouldn't necessarily be the ones doing the actual work.
other questions associated with golf.
you'll see here, the golf self sustaining number as
we shown before is still hovering around that 71%. We're not making lots of assumptions about future increases in fees.
we'll just take that as we continue to make improvements, we'll continue to increase or make modifications to the fee structure.
the hope is that if we continue to make those investments, that we'll see a better self sustaining number,
but we're not projecting that right now.
four b fund, there are only a couple of items here that I'm recommending one a mr. Machine,
and then some canopies for special events.
then when we look at the 4b, about 48% fund balance over the five years.
this takes into account the existing proposed capital plan.
questions associated with 4b before I move on.
it support fund. There's various recommendations here from mr. Gramish,
about $840,000 worth of request. I am going to be recommending one request here in the amount of
$660,000 that I will touch on here. This is our cohesity backup.
this is essentially the infrastructure that's required to make backups of all of our databases and it infrastructure.
the existing equipment essentially reached its end of life and is no longer supported.
this would be good for a five year horizon. Then after five years,
we'll be back at this again with a new number with the changes he's making in
infrastructure and the changes we've made with regards to cad and the number of virtual servers we need,
we hope that this number may ultimately go down in the future in terms of how much backup capacity we need,
but it's still too early to say, and we don't know what prices will be in five years.
with regards to the it support fund, I want to touch on a couple of things here.
you do see the $606,000 one time supplemental, but you'll see a drawdown of approximately 1.2 million.
that's a plan drawdown over a two year period, and this is essentially putting up funding for
the johnson county radio network infrastructure that we know that we're going to have to be making a contribution toward.
we'd be cash funding that as of now and james will continue
to look for the best ways to support the radio network moving forward,
but right now we're making the assumption we'll make that 1.3 million dollar contribution.
hotel motel. We received
one recommendation of supplemental request that I'd be recommending is to
be enhanced and expanded 4th of july program because this is next year will be the 250th anniversary of independence.
budgeting a little bit more for a special occasion. We do have sufficient fund balance in the hotel motel fund to accommodate the request.
with that said, that wraps up the total number of
supplementals that I'm making recommendations for,
as well as my reductions. Again, finance committee has seen all of these with
the exceptions of the handful of items that I think that I've touched on. Seek feedback from you all tonight on any of the recommendations that you may have.
then, again, finalizing this is going to be critical to the filing of the budget.
friday may come and I may have different numbers and I may have to make
some changes to accommodate whatever revenue we see or if we see shortfalls.
with that said though, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have associated with the presentation.
>> anybody got any wants or questions or anything?
I think you good to go, buddy. >> I think the only thing that I'll add is that,
I don't want to continue to harp on the fact that we don't know what friday will bring.
it is possible we could see negative numbers. If we do, it's going to change these assumptions here and I'll stop
working way backward on my recommended supplementals. In terms of the general fund, the public safety,
equity adjustment would remain my number one, I would try to bun that at all costs beyond other positions,
even public safety positions simply because we can budget for those,
but if we don't pay people adequately, I won't be able to fill the position.
again, I say that knowing what I've also said about
the paramedics and that we may see overtime costs associated with that.
we'll be mindful and we'll try to clearly articulate everything in the budget as we go through
those presentations but when we file it and go through in greater detail in our next several sessions.
if you have no other questions, that wraps up my presentation. >> we're good. Come on.
>> thank you.
>> that brings us to 9f. Receive a report, hold a discussion,
and give staff direction on amendments to council policy number 40
and various chapters in the code of ordinances concerning boards, commissions, and committees.
staff contact is amanda campo, city secretary. >> good evening, mayor and council,
so we'll move on to the exciting portion of the meeting.
>> this is an accumulation of two meetings that we had
with the council policies evaluation committee. This isn't just a one-time meeting.
they did meet over this several times to review all of these. What were we reviewing?
the main focus of the review was the creation and purpose of all the boards,
commissions, and committees, the memberships and term, and the current board structure, and the number of boards that we have.
we'll look first at the creation and purpose. Just so you know, we looked at it,
and is the original creation and purpose still valid? Yes, however, it's not in the most ideal way for all of them.
there is room for improvement. Of course, there's always room for improvement. It's been probably decades since we last looked at their actual purpose and mission,
and how we were using those. Nothing here is to say that if we change it
here and we get down the line two years and we say, this isn't working, that we can't change it again,
all of this is at the discretion of the city council. These are your boards commissions and committees,
and we want them to function in the highest value way that we can.
after meeting and reviewing all of them, the recommendations that came forward from
the committee members is increase their guidance for a purpose.
that's to staff and everybody else. We just haven't been consistent across the board with all of our boards and commissions,
and we want to make sure we do that. Committee members feel valued when
they know what their purpose is and what they're doing. They don't hear from their neighbor that they're on another boarder committee,
and they're doing something different from them, and then they feel left out. We don't want that. We want increased participation.
we want active participation. This will allow them to focus more on development and
community needs by removing items that they looked at what they look at for budget,
finances of the city, fines and fees, and maintenance operations. I think tonight is a perfect example that the council is
overseeing that part of it and keeping track of that. What you want is your citizens voices there for the major developments parks.
you want to move those forward, the library, you want to keep continuing to move that forward,
and you need your citizens to talk about that. If we did that, how would we accomplish that?
I just wanted to give a quick snapshot on that is we would have to edit the code of ordinances.
remember, any edits that we do to the code of ordinances will require two readings.
I would bring anything forward on the 4th, and then the 18th august meeting would be the final change in those.
we would also want to amend your council policy 40,
which deals with your boards and commissions outside of the code of ordinances.
we're trying to give some more guidance here. This is just the wording we came up with that we would present
the items in there for their meeting. We would recommend bringing forward
their recommendations through the director or the city manager or his designee.
we said necessary time frame for the items, because sometimes these items need to come and turn around pretty quickly.
they may meet this week and then turn around on the 4th and have something right before you,
so we'll allow them to do that within that. We also want them to provide reports that are full consensus of the members,
that understanding that not all the recommendations coming forward are going to be unanimous.
sometimes they're going to have some differing opinions on that, and it's important that you understand that they're differing opinions.
that doesn't mean you'll go with the minority over what the majority says. It's just that maybe it'll get you thinking differently on why
maybe two members didn't agree with the direction of the rest of the board.
we would want them to do that. We would want them to provide a high-level executive summary.
this is important because we don't want them to provide verbatim minutes. If we were going to do that, I would recommend to the city council that we record,
we video every board and commission meeting. Then that would be your verbatim minutes.
I don't want to put more onto the staff members, and the committee members did not either,
but we also wanted to make sure it was very important that we were
reflecting their full discussion that was happening at the board or committee level.
any of the board members up there that wanted to speak at any time to stop me and you guys can jump in.
then we'll move on to the membership and terms. Does the membership still work?
yes, membership does. This council looked at the membership number and terms in 2022/2023.
you guys have been consistent with that. The only thing that they did recommend to change was that,
the park board to be a full three-year terms like the p&z.
all boards and commissions are two-year terms, except for the plan and zoning, which was three-year terms.
the committee recommended the three year apply to the park board also.
then the membership to stay the same as nine members on every board and commission.
how would we accomplish? That's a quick edit to the chapter 2
also by adding and park board on there. Membership & terms.
we wanted to talk about as far as attendance goes, because the way that it's written currently is very vague,
and it could be read different ways, and we were unsure of where
board members needed to report their absences. We are saying, to change that language up to make it clearer
for the board members serving and for council. We also wanted to make sure that it wasn't as harsh,
and so it wasn't an immediate removal. It's let's talk about that.
during the appointment process is when we would bring that forward.
I'd note that down, and that would be part of the city secretary's office report
to the appointments committee that somebody failed to meet the 75%.
the reason why that's important is because you could have a board that met three times in the whole year,
and so that's hard to make that 75% if you're only meeting three times.
we wanted to make sure that there's the full picture that the council is viewing.
we have to remember that these are volunteers that are serving on these committees, and we don't want to judge them as harshly as we
would maybe an employee that didn't do the same thing. We want to make sure we're appreciative of them and understanding that absences happen.
we would change the policy also to add in there that they should notify
my office and the board liaison within the 72-hour notice of absences.
as in tonight, we had two previous meetings that were going to occur,
the tif meeting and the 4b meeting, and those did not occur, and you guys didn't know until last minute.
we had to scramble, and that's because we weren't notified until today, and no excuse was given. We just can't make it.
we would want to try to firm that up a little bit. That helps us with planning also. Sometimes what they're doing,
we rely on the following meeting to get in place.
quorum and the texas open meetings act, this was a very spirited conversation.
I think the committee members and myself were on one side, and the city attorney, matt robitski, was on a different side.
we're not saying that people can't talk. That's not what we're saying. We just need help to meet,
because we have some boards that are very unique, and unique, as in, their membership requires them to have members outside of our area.
they're not citizens. It would be ideal if we did have, like,
on the animal shelter advisory, if we did have a licensed veterinarian who's a citizen of burleson,
and a licensed veterinarian or somebody that's in charge of animal welfare, like,
that they could be anywhere in the county or the city or the state and be on this board,
and so we wanted to do that. Then the advisory committee on people with disabilities,
we have a committee there that it is sometimes a physical impairment for them to get to city hall,
because that's part of the reason why they're on our ada committee. We were trying to make it actually virtual meetings
could be better held and more realistic to be able to be held.
but after the review, the legal recommends that we stay under toma.
I know the other city attorneys looking at me too. But we can add verbiage for quorums that would help with these quorum issues.
I will say that alan taylor also was there too and said
the same thing and said that they would help us craft the wording to make it better and easier for these boards to meet
because when you have an ada committee that's trying to meet to bring forward a policy recommendation for all,
and this is something we need in the city, and we're trying to get forward for our citizens,
and we can't meet because we don't have a quorum because somebody can't get a ride up here to city hall to meet.
part of the membership is that some of the members have to have disabilities in order to serve on the board.
we'll work that one out. We're still working with the legal council,
and so we should get something soon and then we'll modify that.
the born property advisory council. That one was created not by the council,
but through the agreement because of the adoption of the russell farm property.
we feel like we can remove that one because there are maybe two members that are here locally,
everybody else is like in austin and everywhere else and so we're
okay with removing that one and just addressing that through our agreement.
we'd modify the agreement. How would we accomplish that? Just like I said, we'd edit policy 40 to add quorum,
establishing some number required to hold a meeting, and then also amend the russell farm facilities use agreement and
resolution establishing that one so that we can we can make them be able to meet.
they don't actually say things, and then you guys take action on what they do.
they're a little bit different. Then we looked at how many boards
and what their current structure is. Here's what the committee recommended.
we'll keep unchanged because they have specific legal requirements, the plan and zoning commission,
the board of adjustments, and the capital improvement advisory. We would combine into a brand new board,
the cemetery, and the citizens public art. Just to note the citizens public art committee was set to terminate in december.
it was a just very specific purpose committee, and we'll just have that ongoing,
but into this new committee, their function. The park board renaming that to the parks and recreation board,
that better reflects what they're doing because they do the brick and everything else, not just parks.
change the park board. Park now the new park and recreation board, remove the russell farm,
because we would handle that through the born property advisory council.
the animal shelter advisory committee, we would remove the cost effectiveness from
their function and have them follow state law, because we are required to have an animal shelter advisory committee under the state law,
and those state statutes are specific on what they would do. They would still function under that.
we would expand old town development standards, and I don't think we went into specifics on how we would expand that,
but we want to start working towards that. I'd work with development services to try to come
up with an idea of how to expand theirs and probably bring that back again to
the council policies evaluation committee to do some more work there, and then create a brand new committee,
the public spaces and cultural history, which would incorporate the cemetery,
the citizens public art, and the senior center, which we had not addressed in any of
these other boards or commissions now would be addressed, and then anything else. I know that mayor pro tem
mcclinton has always been in favor of some theater coming forward or some short term stuff like that runs here,
somewhere we could find that. This would be a new committee that could help try to figure
out what the best avenue forward on that would be.
I'm just going to let you now tell me what directions based on these recommendations,
how would counsel like to move forward with these? Are there any that we don't want to move forward with or ask questions or modify?
>> I'm just confused. Slide page 12.
>> oh, gosh, it's not 12 in mine. I don't know which one.
>> go back one more. No, yes, right there. Sorry.
>> this one? >> yes. Court. The one that says we are not state that's the one.
the born property advisory committee, we're going to eliminate that one?
>> no. It'll stay. It's just not going to be under the texas open meetings act.
>> that's what I was confused about. Thank you. Because we went back and said, we're going to call it this. Thank you.
>> anything else? >> I'd like to know from the committee why the recommendation of
moving back to for a parks board to be a three year term.
it's a popular board. It's highly sought after. Just a couple of years ago,
the reason we had moved to two years was so more people could rotate through.
ideal. We know, planning and zoning is popular,
libraries popular in parks because they're active, and people really strive to be on those.
I don't know what the thought process behind that was. >> this was something dan brought up.
of course, he's not here tonight. I can't speak for him. I don't know what all his intentions were,
but he did bring it up in the meeting. I wasn't much discussion on it.
>> I see both sides, of course, if I got on parks, I'd want to stay there too, but it's highly sought after.
it just gives people more opportunity to get on. We can get involved.
>> we can move p and z back to two terms, I guess, also. >> I think the discussion around p and z is that it is a lot to understand, take on.
I mean, I'm perfectly I could go either way, too, but I remember that discussion being because it's
like drinking from a fire hydrant on and they're actually bound by they
have legal requirements that they have to meet in that kind of stuff. So theirs was a little bit different. But I can go either way,
but I know parks is just it's a popular one a lot of people want to serve on it.
when it's a three year term, it's hard because we don't turn it over as much. I don't know.
>> well, I can't speak to dan either, but I know to get more participation is why we increase the number of
people on the board for seven to nine so you get more people on.
>> we did both at the same time. We increased the board seats, and we decrease terms to try and get people more opportunity.
I mean, every year, especially as we grow, more and more applications come through. I'm up for, I know dan's not here,
and he was the one who made the recommendation. >> I suggest when he gets back in town.
>> there was no discussion. I do not remember much.
in fact, when we met the second time, mayor pro tem mcclinton said, on terms when
I was reviewing recommendations, he said terms. He said, we're going to increase park board,
and I did not have it down on my notes that we were, but he was adamant that he remembered that to be the case.
>> should we move everything back to two years and then it's across the board and not one or two that stand out?
>> remember the terms are three years. Two is really six years and three year terms are nine that's nine years.
>> [inaudible]
>> I just know like p & z, the parks board has a lot to learn when they get on there,
and it takes them a long time to learn it, and once they get to rolling, then they roll right off.
then you start the education all over again. We did increase the number so that more people could be on there.
that was before me. That was previous council.
>> you have to sit off one full term or go to another board?
>> correct. When you reach your term limit, then you need to sit out one full term,
or you could be appointed to another board or commission.
>> [inaudible]
>> the other council members, do they?
>> I'm fine with three years, including the nine, two full term.
[overlapping] the membership of nine.
>> we've got nine. >> include three years.
>> for all of them or just the park board? >> for all.
>> because currently, right now, everybody except for planning and zoning does two three-year terms, so that's six years.
>> that's six years. >> planning and zoning does three three-year terms, so they do nine years.
>> [background] six years is a long time, nine years is long time, too.
I don't know. Whatever, what everybody agrees with, I'm fine.
>> how many did I do on p&z, amanda? 07? >> I'm sorry.
>> when did I get on p&z? Fifteen, 16, is like seven. A long time.
>> do you think that's too long? >> no. I hit the end,
I was going to be done with that, to change plans.
planning and zoning for sure, it takes a good year or two to get going,
to learn all the stuff before you need to go, and then you're done with your term.
it's like being up here. It takes a year or two. Without that experience, it's a lot steeper inclined.
but it doesn't matter to me. We got to make a decision.
>> [inaudible]
>> the other part with that, too, is that it gives more people an opportunity to come in,
but it also gives an opportunity for other visions to be seen.
speaking artistically. [laughter]
>> this is why y'all make this decision and I don't. [laughter] it's not an easy thing.
there's multiple sides to it, and either way you go, there's one side or the other that's not going to be happy with what you're doing.
as long as you're taking the approach of trying to go forward with equity and involvement,
if that's your end goal, then whatever you do, and again, I'm standing before you,
we've changed these before. We did it in 2023, and I'm before you in 2025,
saying we may change it again. We can change it. Harlan said we could change it every six months if we want to.
>> let me throw this out there. We can think about p&z going back to two full terms.
but instead of having to sit out for a full term, how about sit out for a year,
and then you can reapply? Then it's up to the committee to determine, okay,
and maybe that was the only person that applied, and they're wanting to get back on,
and then let them back on. >> that one I'm less circular about,
because I think you see your applicant pool and you're trying to engage as many people as we can.
I think it is about the fair piece of, I just want to let more people get the opportunities to serve.
some of these committees, they email regularly, and they're like, hey,
if there's ever more, my board hasn't met, but one time this year.
I absolutely appreciate the perspective of considering the public spaces and cultural heritage.
that's being creative and trying to look for opportunities where we can combine some of these and give people
more engagement opportunity because those that are offering their time,
they're wanting to do stuff, and then there's not enough for them to do. That's what I don't like the perception that if you get on certain boards, you're golden,
and you get to stay longer, but these other ones that don't necessarily have the workload,
you're rolling off a lot sooner, too. >> we are very lucky in burleson.
we don't have the problem of not having applicants wanting to be on our boards and commissions.
in fact, we have the complete opposite. You are right, council member johnson,
we have people that have applied consistently every year for at least five years,
every year, [overlapping] and have still not been able to be appointed to any board or commission.
>> or committee. >> what's our retention rate on the parks board? [overlapping] how many people drop out?
>> [overlapping] nobody leaves the parks board, the library board, the animal shelter, nobody leaves.
they only leave if we force them off, mayor. [laughter]
>> for fairness, I think we should absolutely remove the stipulation of when you're termed out,
you have to wait an entire term. I think one year is very considerate.
then if we could just make it even across the boards to say, two three-year terms.
that's six years consistently. That would be my recommendations,
unless and sometime in the future, our application poll shrinks. But we have a lot of applicants that apply
for things and people that are eager to be involved, and we just want to find opportunities for them to do so.
>> planning and zoning is one of those boards that we will
consistently have the greatest amount of people wanting to be.
we've talked about the park board, but in reality, the planning and zoning commission is the one that everybody wants to be on.
because we've had people for so long and continue to be for so long,
I don't mean to offend you, mr. Janis, but those are the people that every year,
are you sure I can't? Is there no opening? >> I've never seen dan bring something up.
he didn't have a good reason to bring it up. If we're going for quantity, not quality,
we could always go to one term if that's the argument.
but I'm back in dan. I don't know what his reason was. I don't know why he brought it up, but he did.
>> he was adamant about it, too.
>> [overlapping] but he didn't give a reason. >> [inaudible] just call him in kawaii.
[laughter] >> how much do you care about this right now, mr. Mcclendon?
as you're probably on a glamorous height. [laughter] >> what time is it there?
>> that's true. I completely agree with you. I wish dan were here.
I don't know. I threw it out there, and no one has a good answer. Should we just table this?
>> we can. The only thing that I would say is, I would like to bring something forward for action on
the second meeting in august for sure because it'll take two readings, and then the final reading in september,
because our terms start october 1, and anything we do,
I wanted to have that in place. Then also, if we're going to create this new board public spaces we want to make sure
we have that so that the appointments committee is looking at that and appointing people beginning october 1.
we want to do that. I'm fine with bringing this back again and
getting some clarification from mayor po tem mcclendon.
then I can bring forward that way, because I think the terms are what we're just going both sides.
everybody can go either way, one year, two terms,
one term, three terms. This one, yes, no. Dan will be here,
then we can close the whole deal at one time, could we? >> I was like, can't you bring it already written up?
>> I can bring it with three different options. Then y'all pick which option you want for that particular one,
and then we can go forward with that. If we're good with everything else, then this is the only one,
and I can bring forward some more options with that, and then you can choose. >> we might change our mind, too. You never know.
>> that's true, we could. Dan could persuade us all. The other thing to consider is if we're combining a couple,
then that means we're going to be lessening the amount of seats available,
total for people to serve in. >> one was rolling off anyway, right?
>> yes. >> the citizens public art committee was due to end in december.
that membership, I don't even think is nine. >> it's not nine. >> no, it's five.
>> we also have people that aren't necessarily citizens. We have a representative from hill college.
I like the idea of involving more citizens. >> this would be our citizens.
of course, your cemetery board members, there are some that are terming out,
and then there's some that, they're very inactive that board,
but we would absolutely offer them, is this a board you'd like to be?
>> in the ada board with the restrictions we had on it, we weren't getting a quorum anyway.
>> I know. >> they weren't all there. >> that's another one. I didn't see that one listed,
and that one I couldn't figure out which board. >> [overlapping] the ada will stay. >> it's still there. We were trying to get it to where they didn't fall under.
>> [overlapping] that's why it was on that slide. We were trying to get it to where it didn't fall under [inaudible]
>> but now if it does, we're talking maybe allowing the virtual meetings and things like that to where people could participate and not have to be up here.
they're looking into that. Matt's looking into that. >> [overlapping] matt's looking into that.
>> I appreciate that matt. >> why is matt being so quiet?
>> he looks like he's on time out.
>> I'm wondering why nobody will sit next to him.
>> matt versus the whole city. [laughter]
>> do you have direction? >> sure. [laughter]
>> pacifying me. >> no, I do, mayor.
I appreciate the discussion. Thank you. >> thank you, ma'am.
>> that was going to take us on, but apparently, we're not going to go on.
we're going to go back to item 9e, because the city manager just can't get enough.
he's going to talk more about the fiscal year 2025/2026 budget supplemental request,
five year fund forecast, and receiving additional direction.
>> forty minutes wasn't enough. No. I just simply have one question for you guys that I
realize after I sat down that I didn't expressly ask.
I gave you two options, one without a tax rate increase, and one with a tax rate increase,
and I never asked you which option you were directing me to proceed with.
I gave you two options. I gave you no tax rate increase,
which essentially did not have the paramedics and police officer. Or I gave you an option in the general fund for a tax rate increase of approximately
3.5% that would fund the three paramedics and police officer.
I need direction from you guys, how you'd like me to proceed. >> the finance committee recommended a 3.5% increase to add that.
what's not in the budget is the potential revenue of
having the fourth ambulance operational from calls and things,
but I support the increase. >> with our finance situation,
I don't see how we can say no to the increase. Everybody on board?
>> the other thing that wasn't in the budget too was the possible stormwater runoff fee that we still have to discuss.
>> correct? We're all on board? We're on board.
>> I just wanted to make sure before we move forward with budget that I expressly asked. Thank you.
>> with that, we'll move on to section 10: city council request for future agenda items and reports.
well, that will bring us to section 11 executive session.
in accordance with chapter 551 of the texas government code, the city council will convene into executive session in
the city council work room in city hall to conduct a closed meeting.
they will go into executive session pursuant to section 551.071,
551.072, and 551.087.
>> is there a motion to go into executive session? >> so moved.
>> I've got adam, and I've got alexa. Please vote. Pass is unanimous.
we're going to executive session at 9:23. We can convene into the regular session.
I got a motion by victoria and a second by phil.
please vote. Pass is unanimous.
is there a motion to adjourn? Victoria. Alexa. We're out of here at 10:11.