I'm on. All right, let's find our seats and we're going to get started real quick. It is seven o'clock, so we'll get started.
We've got to wait on an illustrious fire chief to make his way back over here.
Good evening, good evening, and thank you very much for coming out here for our town hall meeting.
It's always a joy to be at this meeting and see the citizens that show up. Some familiar faces, we've got some new faces in the crowd.
We're here to answer your questions and so that's what we're going to do this
evening. First off, I'm Gary Landers. I'm your police chief. It is my honor to
serve as the police chief for you for the past 14 months and 15 days. We'll see
if it lasts into tomorrow depending on how I do tonight. But just some
housekeeping things. If you need to use a restroom, if you don't know the
restrooms are at the top of this stairs to the right in that hallway there's
also restrooms outside this door and in the corner over there if we have to
leave the building for some reason I'm going out this door if anyone wants to
follow me I'm going that way that is to the outside but we got to exit here
and exit down here and up there all right any questions about that all
right here's how we're going to conduct the meeting before I start doing
and some introductions.
This meeting is for you.
We're here to answer any questions that you have
about the city of Eulahs,
about what's going on in the city of Eulahs.
We ask that you limit your questions to one at a time
so that we can answer that.
We have some microphones in the room, correct?
We got microphones in the back,
so if you will raise your hand and one over here,
this good-looking officer, Jay Kansen over there.
They'll bring a microphone to you
so that everybody hears what your question is.
We do have some presentations that we'll get into later
or if a question is related to that,
we might start those at any given time.
If you notice when you came in,
also there is a little area down here
at the bottom of the stairs
and into the pre-counsel room.
We have tables set up.
Those tables are set up for every department
after we are finished inside here,
After three hours of being in here then we're going to go outside.
This will last about an hour and 15 to an hour and 30 minutes.
We're going to stop at 8.30, one way or another, but we are here to answer your questions until
the last person leaves.
If you have a specific question for a department and you think it would be better for you
to ask that question individually instead of in a group, ask that you hold that question
because you'll have a chance afterwards at the tables to go visit with them
personally and ask that question. All right? The last thing is let's all be
respectful to each other. All right? If you disagree with someone that's okay,
but that person has the right to ask that question. So let's keep our, let's
keep our heads on our shoulders. All right? All right, now let's start
introducing the illustrious staff that's here tonight and I would ask
that you hold your applause till the end. I'm going to introduce each one of them. They'll
wave their hand to you, and at the end we can give them a big round of applause.
City Secretary Kim Sutter, Director of Finance Janina Joule, Director of Public Works Major
Jones over here against the wall, Interim Director of Planning and Economic Development
Lisa Payne, Director of Human Resources and Risk Management. I always mess hers
up somehow. Heather Moorhead, Interim Library Director Angela Jones, Fleet and Facilities
Director Kyle McAdams, Texas Star General Manager Glinda Hartsell Shelton, Municipal
Court Manager Claudia Quintero, Fire Chief Chance Bennett,
Assistant City Manager Lawrence
Brian and Assistant City Manager Stephen Vieira. Let's give all of them a
round of applause for being here.
You might notice a bunch of uniforms and a
bunch of different city department uniforms around the room. Those are all
representatives of the different departments in the city and they're
here to answer your questions as well after the evening and they may answer
some of them during the evening. All right now let's talk about the
the distinguished individuals up here at the table.
And the city council.
City council member Annabelle Eads.
City council member Tika Padel.
Mayor Pro Tem Tim Stenerford.
His you really gotta hold till the end.
Council member Eddie Price.
Council member Perry Vynum.
And everyone knows and loves our mayor, Linda Martin.
Let's give them a round of applause.
One person I forgot to introduce is the distinguished gentleman with the white
beard in the middle of the table there. This is our city manager Chris Barker
and he deserves his own round of applause.
Now it begins. Who has the first
question? Not you. No, I'm just joking. Ellen, right here. Get a microphone.
Where's Bob? He's learning how to spell his name.
Right here in the back.
Thank
you for the opportunity to speak to you.
I have a couple of comments I'd like to make.
First, I'd like to thank the Parks and Recs Department for the wonderful job that they're doing.
I've lived in the City of Ulus for more than 40 years,
and my original time that I spent was a very small circle,
and I've decided to explore the Parks and Recs Department.
I'm very impressed.
I want to express my gratitude with a great job you've done with walking trails,
keeping the parks well maintained.
I have never seen a bunch of trash overflowed.
The paths are clear.
They're lighted well, so thank you for that.
I have a couple of comments concerning things that I've seen in the city.
One of them is at 1102 Oak Ridge Drive.
You have painted the fire hydrants.
I don't know if the city did it or if you hired a vendor,
but the one at 1102 Oak Ridge Drive remains unpainted.
They have it primed and there's plastic around the coupling and I have reported it twice maybe three times to various departments in the city that that one's been missed.
And as of 5.30 today, I drove by to make sure that if I spoke tonight that it was true, it still remains unpainted.
The other thing that I'd like to talk about is public safety is a big concern for everyone, every citizen.
And I know there are instances where there is a, shall we say, a violent or somewhat altercation in home.
I don't know if it's the common practice of the police department to do a background check
when they go to one of those events of the individuals that are there.
If they notice that there's a lot of guns or that the violent acts happened.
I was very thankful many years ago.
Some strange person showed up at my door.
I called the non-emergency number and said,
this is not an emergency, but this guy is kind of weird the way he's acting.
Thankfully, the police department responded,
and they followed up with me and said,
yeah, we located him, and he had a warrant in Ohio for burglary.
He was probably cased in your home.
He's in jail. He's going to be sent back to Ohio.
So thank you for that.
I do have one area of concern.
It is the intersection at Signet and Industrial.
That intersection, there's just three very small lanes.
I realize that the building of Wilshire Park School is a temporary thing,
but we have big trucks, we have equipment that are going up that way.
That's temporary. I realize that but school buses, when they try to make that turn,
it is very hard for them to do.
We have children on those buses, we have traffic problems, that light is forever before it changes.
So I would ask the City Council to please consider not just improving it,
but expanding those lanes so it is easy for school buses and other, even me in a car,
if there's two people in the lanes that are going to go south,
it's hard for me to make that sharp turn to go up-sign it.
So okay, so thank you for the comments. Thank you for the
Nice things you said about the police department. We appreciate that
I'll pay you afterwards
To your first question about the fire hydrants Chris. I know there's some work being done on that
But maybe you can expand. Yeah, I'm gonna get major raise your hand right over there
So major Jones are public works director. Believe it or not firemen don't paint fire hydrants
I don't know why that's the case. I've asked them to and they refuse. I think they say it's skilled labor or something like that
But no majors group is in charge of that. We do use a contractor
And I think I've written down that address major. You probably did as well, but we can double-check on that
I appreciate you bringing that to our attention. I don't have the last accurate count
But the last time I had looked not that long ago
we have over 1,800 fire hydrants in the city of ULIS and painting those as you
might expect is a continuous job. So you may notice a few years ago we went from
red to silver that has everything to do with them looking nice or longer and
not fading into a lovely shade of pink within the first two years of
painting those. So major if you'll make a note and check on that one. The
other one since we're talking about major there is the signal at industrial
and excuse me the signal out at signet and industrial. If you will visit
with major afterwards. He can give you a real detailed update. That is a intersection where
we have some upcoming plans in the next year. I don't know, to be honest with you, that those
will meet every expectation you have, particularly if you're wanting to add lanes or widen that.
But there are some signal improvements coming there with TextDOT that I think will
absolutely make that a better intersection, and we do hear that occasionally. So
I think, Chief, that the comments that she made that were complimentary were towards the
Parks Department, if I recall.
That was the very beginning.
She snuck the police in the middle,
but I'm gonna let you talk about that public safety piece
just a little bit if that's something you can answer.
From your question about do we background check,
do we, the calls that we go on,
if we go on a call for service,
regardless of what that call is,
we try to learn everything we can about the person
that we're dealing with at that particular time.
Obviously, when we go to the house
for the very first time or business
or wherever we go and we contact that person
the very first time. We know nothing about them at that point. So, but we do document everything
and what they're here for if they've ever been arrested or any of that stuff. We document that
as part of that call for service. So, I hope that answers your question. We try to learn
everything we can about the people, but it's just as we come in contact with them.
All right.
That was a lot of questions. I think I'm all used up. Anyone else have a question?
A question? Right over here, the first one in the back. Then we'll go boom, boom.
There you go. Good evening everyone. My name is Charlie. I live on West Parkway
Circle and there's a couple of things I'd like to mention while we're talking
about fire hydrants and intersections. At West Parkway, and I believe it's
Tibbets, the one that goes up to the hospital, is there any way that we
We could possibly take that fire hydrant that's right there on that corner and get rid of
it, because it's leaking most of the time.
It seems to never be used, never be maintained.
But the main thing there is to get rid of that and use that space as a turn lane on
to dip tibets, because that would really, really alleviate the backup on West Parkway,
headed south.
That's the number one question.
Okay.
You want to answer that one first?
Yes, please.
Okay.
We'll have to wait and come all the way back around to you to get nothing or
no.
I'm just joking.
Go ahead, Chris.
Charlie, we'll look at that.
I can't commit to you from sitting up here whether that's something that could be done
or not.
Fire hydrant spacing is not, it is an exact science.
It's not something that we just throw a fire hydrant where we think we need one.
If we have one leaking, we do repair those and I've made it out there that we need
to take a look at that one.
But sometimes we find a fire hydrant maybe in a site visibility triangle or in a place
that's just not perfect and we do have the ability to move that, may not move
a long way but we do have the ability to move that into a better position.
the part that I couldn't answer for you tonight is can you know can you then move
that and make that into a right hand turn lane we can sure look at it and I do
understand I know exactly where you're talking about it I know what you're
talking about so I'll just commit to you to take a look at that. Excellent thank
you very much. Next question. That leads me into the police department. Thanks
so much for the comments back here. Right next door to me is a I recall an
Airbnb it's not really that it's a short-term rental which to my
this may continue to exist and exhibit some issues, but the problem I have is for
the police department, I don't have a problem, actually they've done really good
responses, but I want to call the attention to the fact that they've
responded to that property several times, I guess on the presumption of a
break-in or suspected break-in, and suddenly the police are in my yard
looking over my fence and kind of, it's kind of scary for me because they
might think that I'm a perpetrator and it's really something that I don't really like happening.
But the point is it would be happening if that was not an Airbnb with who knows who
renting there and not renting there. Right now it's vacant for a few weeks but it'll
be busy. I never know who's going to be in there from time to time. Very dismaying
for me.
We do. Thanks for bringing it up. We do have the city ordinance and we they have
to register. I know our code enforcement folks who are here in the room can answer
that question if you get with them afterwards or you can talk to planning
and development which is Lisa Payne over here and they can talk
There is a registration process. I could not tell you right now whether that home is actually registered or not, but we can certainly check into it.
And probably the calls for service are neighbors being good neighbors and neighbors watching what's going on, and they may be calling in of different people going in and out of that house,
and they have no clue. They don't belong in the neighborhood, and they may be going in and out of it, and they look at a place.
But we do have a city ordinance that deals with that and if you'll get with code enforcement
I don't know where James Patterson is right over here if you'll get with him
He's wearing that cool-looking cowboy hat like me
You get with him afterwards and he can certainly answer that question for you and tell you whether they're part of us or not
Okay, all right. The other thing is you said too. Oh
Said that was the first I didn't say I had to
Okay
I will yield if I need to, because I don't really want to take the thing, but I believe
this is an interest to people across the city.
The density of these Airbnb's seems to be proliferating, and that's something that
I as a citizen do not want to tolerate, because these are no longer rent out of room type
things, these are rent out of house type things, these are rent out of several houses
type things.
And what we're seeing now is businesses are buying all these houses up and then turning them into Airbnb's and our city council
Has taken a very proactive up approach to this to try to combat that and try to keep that out of our neighborhoods
Or at least limit the amount that can go in there and there's a lot of strict
Guide up guidelines that they have to abide by and like I said again
If you'll just talk to him afterwards he can give you everything there is on that one
Chief, real quick, I want to add one thing to that, Charlie, and just for everybody in
the room.
Gary's correct.
We've got a short-term rental ordinance that the council passed.
I would tell you that that ordinance is, in my words, as aggressive as it can be by state
law.
So the council's trying to do everything that they possibly can.
For some of you, you may not think that it goes far enough, but again, I would like
to give you the comfort that it goes as far as state law would allow us.
What I would tell you is there is part of that ordinance as a proliferation ordinance
and only so many are allowed within a certain area to address your specific concern.
One of the difficulties the city has is discovering those.
We rely on folks to tell us honestly that they're running a short-term rental and they
do not all do that.
If you've ever booked a short-term rental and I have, so I'm not saying they're
bad, they won't disclose the address to you specifically until you make the full
rental.
So if you go online and look, they're not going to be real easy to figure that
out.
We have on the city's website on the planning developments page under short-term rentals the full ordinance that you can read and you can see the application
But there is a list on there Charlie of all the short-term rental properties that have a have a
Permit that we know about so so if you've got a neighbor or got a couple houses down and you don't see them on that list
We would love to know about it because that means they do not have a do not have a permit
Well, there's 23 houses on that list.
I wonder if that's really a complete list because that's kind of short to me.
That list is probably 10 or 15% of the total short-term rentals in US.
It's that hard to discover, but there is a way for a residence to proactively help us.
If you know that that's going on and you don't see that on the list, please give us
a call and that'll help us to be able to check into that.
That would be real good.
The other thing is there is a requirement for these people to have a 24-hour response
months for emergencies. A week or two ago, I went out to my backyard and it was covered
with water. It turned out that the Airbnb's pool was overflowing due to the fact that
their automatic cutoff valve wasn't working. And I could not get ahold of the owner, so
I had no recourse but to try to make sure that water got cut off. And the people
that were in the house at the time, they just seemed to, I mean, they're renters.
They don't care.
Part of the registration helps us out with that. I think this, do you have a question
right here sir? My name is Michael and I love walking on the trails in Ulysses and at the entrance
are some places along the trails that says no motorized vehicles so I'm wondering I mean I'm
a little tired of being buzzed by these e-bikes all the time so I'm wondering is that I'm glad
you brought that up and and Chris if you don't mind I kind of talked about that.
The law does not say that the e-bike is equivalent to a bicycle.
The legislation hasn't caught up with society and what's out there.
So there's nothing to regulate them with headlights and tail lights and things like
that.
They can ride on sidewalks, they're allowed by law to ride on sidewalks, they're allowed
by law to ride on streets that are 35 miles an hour or under.
and so residential streets don't have a posted speed limit.
The unposted streets are 30 miles an hour so they can ride on residential streets.
I will tell you that this is something that continuously comes up
and I know council brings it up on a regular basis on the trails and things like that
and it is dangerous.
I will tell you parents in the audience if you have kids that have these and utilize them,
our goal is all the same.
Let's keep them safe the best that we can teach them the right ways to use those maybe put some headlights on it
Tail lights because at night they are very hard to see and they move very quickly
So what we will do is a police department is we're going to try to prepare something and we will bring that to the council and
With their approval then we can we can start regulating them as a city and the state will catch up at some point time
I have no clue whenever they're going to get to that piece in the law.
It's just not there.
You wish it would say, okay, they're equivalent to bicycles,
and bicycles are bound by certain things,
but it's like they're just left out there in no man's land.
So I appreciate you bringing it up.
And 100%, we are going to try to put something together
and bring to the council whether that's an ordinance or something like that,
and if they'll prove it then we can go out and enforce that. Thank you. Yes sir.
Right here. I think we got a question right here. Here I'll just let you use mine.
This is a special mic. Oh, I'm excited. But you've got to give it back.
I live in Morristale. We love our trees. Ulysses is a tree city. This time of
year the trees are an issue of all the leaves and I'm wondering is it
feasible to have occasional street sweepers that maybe could lighten the
load on our trashman this time of year. Good point. I think I'm gonna let Mr.
Barker tackle that one. He likes leaves.
I've gotten very familiar with leaves
here in the last few weeks as most of you all have to. The weather changed a
little late this year and they seem to all come at one time and a lot of
folks were off for Christmas or New Year's or both at that time and so we
experienced a lot of leaves. I have been around the city long enough to remember a
time that we did street sweeping and we had our own street sweeper many many
many years ago and I will tell you and I would be happy to kind of look into that
again but I will tell you a couple things at the time that we did that
street sweepers were highly inefficient and nobody including the city staff or
the residents were happy with the job that a street sweeper did when it got
done sweeping sweeping your street. The other issue that we used to have
is we would announce that we would be sweeping a street the following week and
at the time and the day that we would do that so that folks could move their
cars off the street and we could get a better cleaner sweep. That resulted in
everybody coming out the weekend before blowing all their leaves into the
gutter for the street sweeper to pick up and the street sweeper could not
make much progress in a in a given day. So one of the things that we're
going to talk about tonight and this is just a good point a good time to
bring that up and I think it's going to get into everything that we talk
about tonight and it gets into what you're seeing throughout the state and
honestly throughout the country but particularly here in our state. Well one of
the things that you're talking about really boils down to local control and
local control to me is if street sweeping and leaf pickup is important
enough to our citizens and to a number of our citizens then that is a service
that could be added and provided for. Realize that that service would have
an expense and that expense would have to be paid for and that's
typically paid for your taxes and that's how we did. We might not all agree in
this room if we want to implement street sweeping, but there might be enough of
us that want to. That's the beauty of local control. The city of Bedford would
not have to decide the same that the city of U.S. did and the city of
Hearst would not have to make the same decision. We could all have our local
control. Folks up here when they heard from the citizens would direct me to
figure out what we needed to do to implement a program like that and we
would go about doing that. We would put that as part of our budget and we would
bring that forward and do that. And so I'm using your question a little bit if
you don't mind to talk about the things that we're going to set the stage for.
But it's a great example. We ought to be able to do in our community within
the reason of the state law what's important to us. The state law is not
going to regulate whether we pick up leaves or not. And if that's something
that we find important and important enough that we're willing to provide
for that service and candidly pay for that service, then that's something
we could look at. We do have a history of doing that. I will tell you, and I'm just going to use
this opportunity as well to talk a little bit about Republic Waste Services, who's our
solid waste provider, and the issues that we had over the Christmas and the holiday break.
Big picture, I'm going to tell you, Republic Waste Services does a great job for our city and
have for a number of years. They service each of you twice a week, every week of the year.
If you look at what you pay for monthly trash service and you divide it by the eight times a month that they come to your house
It costs a dollar and forty seven cents every time that trash truck pulls up at your house and removes your trash
And I would tell you that's an excellent value
You would have a hard time getting rid of all of your trash legally you can go to Gary's house and throw it in the yard
But don't put it out for my house. I got enough for a dollar and forty seven cents
In fact, a lot of us may have more than a dollar 47 cents in the bags that we have sitting
out for the trash folks to haul off.
But they did have a struggle during the holidays.
I'll tell you a couple things about that.
Number one, the holiday season always brings a proliferation or an increase in just sheer
volume.
We're home a lot more, we get gifts and all those kind of things, and that increases
the volume.
Now these folks have been picking up trash for a long time, so they know that
and they try to plan for that, but the volume does increase.
Number two, I mentioned earlier that the weather was late in changing this year
and it seemed like the leaves fell later and they fell kind of at one time and I
personally believe they fell at a time that a lot of folks were off and had
time to rake them up and clean their yards and do those kind of things. There
were, I can't even tell you how many bags of leaves out. I drove through town and
looked and did some inventory and worked to do that but particularly in
some of our neighborhoods like Moorstale, Trailwood estates, it would not be
uncommon for us to go by a house and there may be sixty, sixty-five, seventy bags of leaves.
We had a cul-de-sac in the north in the town that had four houses. There was a hundred
and twenty-five bags of leaves set on the curb. That cul-de-sac alone would fill up
a garbage truck and they would have to leave the city and go dump. And all they
did was pick up leaves at four houses. So I'm not saying that as an excuse for
Republic services, but I do want you to know just some of the volumes that
they were facing. In addition to that, over the holidays, they have their own labor shortages.
That's not our problem. It's the public's problem. They've got to fix that, but it is
a true operational problem, and I do understand that. And then they had some mechanical issues
as well. When I talk about that, they don't provide that service obviously just for
our city. They provide that for many of the cities around here. I spoke with the
other city managers in the cities that I know when they were seeing similar issues.
What can we do about that? That's what everybody wants to know. What can we
do about that. We monitor that. In our office, we work hard. Jessica, are you
around here? Jessica's right over here on the corner. She's raising her hand. How
many? I don't even ask you how many calls you took for Ms. Trash or Ms.
Services. We coordinate that with with Republic. Jessica handles that. On her
lunch hour, she would come back and have told me that she drove through the
city and drove to the neighborhood and notated which houses by address
hadn't been picked up and we would call Republic and do that. I will
tell you that this is the worst year that has been for us. We had some residents that
got missed either Monday or Tuesday before Christmas, the week of Christmas, but before
Christmas itself. If you remember then, the end of that week shifted, right? So if you
were Thursday, you shifted to Friday, if you're Friday, you shifted to Saturday.
We had some of those residents get missed then as well. So now you're two times. Come
around to the following Monday or Tuesday and that's the next week. We had some residents
get missed at that time as well. So that is atypical. We sometimes have folks
get missed, we get them out there and picked up that day or the next day.
That's just kind of how the business works. But that was an atypical shift. It
reached a point the Tuesday after the week of Christmas that it was bad
enough when we were getting enough calls. Republic was in our mind doing
everything they could. I did something that I don't think we've
ever done here before and I reached out to some of our city departments and
we sent city employees out. We don't own trash trucks. We don't have trash trucks.
We took pickup trucks and trailers and we sent some city employees out to the
worst areas of town and we helped. Republic was able to provide us some
roll-off dumpsters and on that Tuesday the week after Christmas, employees of
this city filled over six 20-yard roll-off dumpsters with trash. I tell
you that, number one, because that's the caliber of employees that you have
working at the city for you. We don't say that's not my job. The other side of
that is I realize there was still even with that some people that didn't get
picked up until the next day or the next day but I want you to know that the
city takes those kind of things serious and that we jump in there and do
everything that we possibly can. Beyond that I visited with council after that
event and we have sent to Republic Services a certified letter that
exercises a clause in our contract that is a penalty performance because
they missed so many services. We'll see how they respond to that and those kind of things, but
when somebody says, Chris, I didn't get my trash, and what are you going to do about it? I just
want you to know what we are doing about it and what we're trying to do about it. And that was
the longest answer you've ever seen to, can you sweep my streets and pick up the leaves? But
I appreciate the question. I know it was long. I almost fell asleep over here. No, and to
to City Manager's statement that he made about the quality of...
All right, let's get to another question. This side of the room hasn't asked anything.
I will come back to you in just a second, but we've got one right up here at the top. Scott?
Thank you very much. Thank you everybody for everything you do for us and to the
gentlemen and ladies around the room too who supports the city. Question for you
Chris, any update from TechStot on some of the highway signs that are you know
covered over with graffiti and making them hard to read on 36 year 183? Thank
you. So again Major raised his hand over there and he can give you a much
more specific answer to a certain area what I will tell you is they
They replaced the signs, give me the right direction major, they replaced the ones northbound
or southbound.
Northbound.
They replaced half of them and not the other half.
If you drive around the Metroplex, I have started to notice that throughout the Metroplex
on Text Dot roadways.
I drove up by 35 in Fort Worth through the downtown area the other day and if you
didn't know where you were supposed to exit, you wouldn't know where to exit
because you cannot read the sign at all.
And so we we stay on them about that it obviously they've got a tremendous volume of work to do
You may know that there's a text out office in a shop in in the city of Eulis
That helps us out a little bit, but I'll refer you to major on any other specific parts to that
But it's it's from our standpoint
It's often the squeaky wheel that gets the grease and so we just kind of try to stay on that major anything you want to add to that
Yeah, just briefly there was a project that was
let and awarded for that and then some additional work came up for TextDot and
so they rolled the rest of that project in with another project that's 121 all
the way down to 30 along through 60 and so it's just been on hold so we really
haven't been able to get an update on when that might be released. If you
want to have a little fun go home and look up the word retro reflectivity
which is with text dot calls when you can't read a sign like that and see if
you can't I don't know what's that worth on Scrabble mayor you know a lot look
that one up and you'll be able to use it next time all right over here come back
up to you in just a second okay you're gonna love me okay another trash
question I've lived in three states Texas is the only place that we get
two days a week pick up why is it just one today so I will tell you that's
It's not a Texas thing.
That's a Uless, Texas thing.
Many cities around us only receive trash service one day a week.
We have had two-day-a-week service since I've been here.
We have tried very hard to keep that.
That obviously comes at a price, and we try to also keep a good, efficient price for
those things.
I would challenge you to look around the Metroplex, and you're not going to find
any other city.
There are other cities that get two-day-a-week pickup, but you're not going to find
somebody that still has that for the price that we get. Now that being said
we are all going to be forced to going to a cart trash pickup that the trash
company is able to use a hydraulic lift to dump that cart. In many cities have
already done that the last contract that we signed with Republic which is a
five-year franchise agreement we acknowledged in that contract that
that was coming and that the city would work in good faith to do that.
My hope is that we're able to continue to negotiate for that to be
twice a week but many cities are once a week for that one container and in that
the lid has to be shut so we really do have a great service of a take all
service twice a week and we're going to try to keep it as long as we possibly
can.
Another question right here. Good evening everyone my name is Edgar
Ramirez I just want to thank the city for everything that you guys do. I have
a question and some comments pertaining to noise issues that my
neighborhood has been facing. So my question is, what is the city doing to
help mitigate any noise issues, particularly around cars and vehicles
without loud mufflers? And also my comments being, I live at 805 Hensley
drive and I've been dealing with where the neighborhood in general has been
dealing with some noise issues particularly pertaining to the church
that's right next to me that the parking lot is being used as a hangout
spot every Thursday Tuesday and Thursday and so a lot of times you know we're
all of a sudden you get awakened to people hanging out, yelling, cracking jokes, and just being verbally loud.
Now, that's been happening for a very long time, and the last, I want to say the last six months, it's changed into loud vehicles.
So there's been a few members of the church that have just different vehicles
and these vehicles have modified multiple systems that, you know, they're pretty loud.
They'll leave the parking lot and then, you know, just wake up the neighborhood at night.
So, you know, we're sleeping at 11.30. We get awakened all of a sudden.
And so that's my question is, what is the city doing to help mitigate these issues that
our neighborhood has been facing for a very long time?
As you and I have discussed on the telephone one time, and I think we shared emails back
and forth, we are doing everything we can.
We're asking you and the neighbors to call us every single time it happens.
Unfortunately, a lot of that is they're in the car, the noise is there.
they're gone by the time the officer gets there. I will tell you our officers, I've told all of them,
there's several of our night shifts officers, I see you standing in the in the four year out there
that are paying attention to that and trying to catch that. I know the church has worked with
us, I know Officer Gilliam is in here, she's right back here, she has gone to the church and
actually talked to the administrative staff there and tried to get them to come on board,
I think some of them are actually trying to pay attention to that end of the parking lot. It is a it's it's something that we're continuing to work on
It takes you continuing to call us as you are
And I know in December it was a little worse than it was in the months before
But can you agree? We just had a conversation a minute ago
But can you agree that this is getting a little bit better?
And we will continue to work forward so that we can continue to curtail that and we will work with the church
That's the big deal, is get with the church, continue to work with the church, even told
you at one point in time, we're going to ask the church if they can put someone outside
to go ahead and hurry those people along to get them out of the parking lot because nothing
against the younger generation, but I think it's those individuals that have the loud
exhaust and they're the ones hanging out letting their car idle.
Probably while they're doing a TikTok or something inside the car or talking about
what they did the day before we're going to do the next day. So we'll continue to combat it.
We do have a noise ordinance. You continue to cause. We catch them there and they're violating
that noise ordinance. We will cite them and then they'll have to go to court in order to get that
ticket disposed of. And just real quick to add to that. A lot of times in this meeting
we end up getting nice things said about various city departments and those kind of things. Let
me let me flip that around. Edgar if you don't mind you and I have corresponded by email
chiefs indicated that to you. We've not been able to just completely solve your
problem yet, right? You would agree, right? It's still a problem. What I would
tell you is that I appreciate not only Edgar bringing it to our attention but
the manner in which he's done it. He's always been very respectful. He sends
pictures. He documents these things. It makes it easier for me to be able to
say to the police chief, here's what's happening. And so we'll continue. My
commitment is just to continue to work on that with you. I told
Edgar, some things, painting a fire hydrant, we go out there and paint the fire hydrant,
right? It's none. Let's check. We can do that. Some issues are a little harder. I just
appreciate the way that you've worked with us on that, even though I know we haven't
solved your problem yet. So thank you.
Next question, right here. Here, I'll hand you the mic.
I promise. I just had a real small question. I've actually recently moved here from
Arlington, and whenever they would do their mosquito spraying, they'd always put
these signs everywhere and that's how I always kept track of it. I was just wondering if there was
how they kept track of it here since I was an asthmatic pet.
Chris? So real quick when we test
mosquitoes during mosquito season with Tarrant County Public Health they perform the actual
test force but we cooperate that we have traps all over town. We've got the city divided up
into different zones and if we get a positive mosquito that's going to be positive for West
West Nile virus or where's Brett? Brett's back here. What else is the other one, Brett?
West Nile or Zika? Then we're going to put that information on the city's website. We
do some social media posts with that. But we also have a place on our website that you
can sign up. If it interests you that much, you can sign up for an email directly for
any and all city activities or if all you care about is a mosquito spraying, you
can sign up just for mosquito spraying and we will send that out.
We're going
hardest to always do that at least 24 hours before the spraying to give folks
time to do that and of course we do that spraying overnight. We spray in
accordance with Tarrant County and we use the product that they are
specifying and I say Tarrant County, Tarrant County Health even though it's
our folks physically it's our Public Works Department physically performing
that spray. We do not spray the entire city when we have a positive. We've
got that city divided up into zones again so that we can spray within
the area that we found those positives. We don't want to just be
throwing things out there right and left that we don't need to. So that's kind of our
piece about that, a lot of information on our website about that, but in your case I
would encourage you to sign up and get that very specific message coming straight to
you about when we're spraying.
Another question. No one has any questions. You've used up your tokens.
But I liked
what you said earlier, so that's it.
Okay, so what is the new Palm Police Department and Animal Service is going to be opened?
I can answer one he can answer the other or we can go to us. I thought nobody would ever ask to see slides
And so I think that's an ask to see slides Gary. That's an ask right there
Mr.. Joyce we're gonna flip this around want you can you give me slide? Let's see here slide 58
Let's start at slide 58 not 158
But just slide 58 and I've got a couple other things in here
But the two project you specifically asked about will be will be addressed in here as well
So how many of you have been to the new fire station number two that was opened earlier this year very very nice
Beautiful station very very proud of that station
If you want a good story sometime ask the police chief or the fire chief how you get
fire station door motors out of
Customs
that's a picture of the station there on the corner of west parkway and west pipeline road
Fort Bay Station. It also has, I think I've got a picture here in the rear, that
is a training tower over to your right, so that allows our folks to train on a
variety of operations within the city and not have to leave the city to do
that. This is just down the street, if you will, down West Park from the old
fire station number two, which in just a minute will relate back to the
animal shelter question you had, and we did move that. We moved that on to a
piece of property that if you've been here a long time you know as the
Voss property. Johnny and Helen Voss were longtime residents of this community,
very involved in the city and actually very involved in the fire department.
So it's kind of neat that we were able to do that on the property that they
owned. If you go ever to Visit Station 2 and walk in the front entry,
there's a nice plaque there that talks a little bit about Johnny and Helen
and their history in the city that I'd encourage you to read.
But really nice station there. I've got the fire chiefs here.
You can ask him why the ceilings blew. It's a ridiculous answer,
but he can tell you the answer better than I can, but that's just an inside of the four bay
station there. And everybody loves a firehouse. In fact, if you go down there on occasion,
you just find the city council just hanging out down there on a fire truck. So I don't know,
mayor. They wouldn't give you a towel. You're the only one there that doesn't have a towel.
I'm not sure what happened. Plenty of. Okay. You've been to more than one fire station
opening. That's right. So no, that's that's a beautiful facility. If you haven't seen it,
I'd encourage you to take a look at that whenever you can.
Police and court building.
You'll hear the staff always say court, not courts.
That's because Claudia over here,
Claudia raise your hand.
Claudia has rung into us that there is only one
municipal court of record in the city of Elis.
But courts sure slips off my tongue really easy
every time I say it.
So that is the police and court building.
You'll recall, that's an artist rendition.
We showed you this exhibit last year
at this very meeting. That is the police and court building as it existed.
Overlay just real quick, the yellow area is the existing building that we are in the process of renovating.
The kind of pink color or whatever that is is the area that we're expanding the building,
both on the front of the building and you can see to the rear.
And then that little green triangle represents an area that's just outside that does some outside PT
for the officers that have a locker room and training right there.
So if you think about that, we're still reusing the original building. We're just updating it
But we're adding on to that building to accommodate all the various needs of the city as the city has grown over the last
Gosh Gary 22 years since that building opened or something in 2001. We moved into that
so
Cities grown and you wouldn't believe the things that have just changed or maybe you would believe the things that have changed over
That time one easy example is
We relocated code enforcement years ago over to the police department. It's been a great
move for us, but there was never any room planned for code enforcement. So now they're going
to have some room. I'll give you a couple of shots that were taken by our, actually by
our police department. I took some of these aerial photos that you're going to see tonight.
Really nice way to be able to look at some of the projects we're doing and some projects
around town. But these are just some shots kind of rolling from left to right. You
can really see the new extension on the front and the back of the building and how
everything is going along there from an exterior standpoint. Again, this is just
standing out in front of the building looking at that really start to look and
match with that artist rendition was that tall area that you see when you walk
in is actually basically the service counter the customer service counter
that you can see starting as an interior shot of that same area and the rest of
the building looks like a lot of framed-in walls and sheetrock going up
and miles and miles and Scott Joyce do you have any idea I mean miles of data
cable are in that building it is a lot he says he's got that's an official
report from the IT director a lot if you get the police chief after this and
asking him about a home run run of cable he'll tell you a lot about I'll be
happy to tell you all the runs but chief anything else I just got this
picture to see if you wanted to add no but I'll answer the question you asked
when we are going to move in 2026. So at some point in time this year. I did a
newsletter today and I promise the people in the department that we would
have our PD annual Christmas party in that building. So if it doesn't happen I
guess I'm out of a job. I would tell y'all just want to give a little shout
out to the police department here. They've been working the last two
years in four different locations in three five locations five locations in
three cities and they've carried on without missing a beat and that's a
lot harder than it sounds. That group that group is used to being
together and being able to communicate and we've got them spread out to just
accommodate this facility and so really appreciate that and when they get back
in later this year Gary I know y'all throw big so we'll have to get to know
each other again. That's right. Also when we get back in we'll have a big
open house for the public so please plan to come to that we'll get more
information out when we know that should be next fall, or this coming fall.
While we're talking facilities, I want to talk about the animal shelter real quick.
This is the artist's rendition of the new ULIS Animal Services Center.
If you've ever been to the old Animal Services Center, it was on the right-hand side of
this picture.
It was built in 1978, and other than a few minor things, it hadn't had a lot
done to it in that amount of time, had not grown any, and was pretty undersized
for a city of our size.
to the left of the picture is the old fire station number two. From the street
they may have looked like a singular building but they were actually two
standalone buildings with a gap in between them so once the fire station
two moved and the firemen moved down to their new location we began demolition
of those buildings and combining those into a single structure that would be
the new animal services building and if you've had to use animal services
in about the last year year and a half you know that they're in a
temporary facility on State Highway 10. Again the blue in the picture represents
the two facilities that were there the pink or whatever color that is
represents salmon excuse me thanks chief. The salmon represents the part that
was added on to combine those two building and then the green areas you
see there are actually turf areas that are covered areas for the animals to
exercise and behind that not pictured is the outdoor areas and runs that
that we have that we've always had.
So this is actually a picture from the street.
So not an artist rendition.
That building is getting very, very close to opening.
I think that we will probably open
that building later this spring.
Most likely in May, Kyle, would you say?
End of April 1st of May.
Again, we'll have a big public open house
and have everybody out there.
I think you'll be very, very impressed.
Long overdue for us to do something there.
So not much had been done since 1978.
We are expanding our capacity there
depending on what exactly, for instance dog kennels is four and a half times more
dog kennels than that we had. So a lot of expansion there. A couple preview
inside, oh we got a couple more drone aerials you can kind of see, but here's
a preview inside shot. So if you look at that top right corner that was the
floor plan I described to you, the red dot shows you where you are in the
building that is out in the apparatus bay, the old fire apparatus bay, and
that's looking down where we've taken that entire apparatus bay and turned
it into dog kennel runs and you can see some of that there. This is a
shot interior again I can show you on that red dot we're in the old building
this is going to be cat and small animal areas here any
specific question I can
tell you as city manager there's two ways to get in trouble really quick don't
pick up the trash and do something to the kitty cats so that's any I give
everybody quite anybody have any particular questions about the animal
shelter in the very back
renovations to the police oh we'll take that one
So is that going to be a PSAP Center where the 911 specialists or telecommunicators are going to be dispatching fire EMS calls there or no?
It already is. It was prior to this but all we're doing is giving that area a facelift so the answer is yes.
But they're currently not housed there. Are they not dispatching?
No, they're currently in Colleyville.
Colleyville. Okay. And how many dispatch councils are you going to have?
We will have five of those. We currently use three. So we have room for expansion.
All right thanks. Well I'm rolling on facilities here real quickly. I want to
talk to you about what's going on out front. You might have seen that and
wondered what the heck's going on out front out there. How many people
remember the Euless Berm out of shrubs? Everybody remember that? It was neat.
It was great. I loved it. It was ridiculously hard to keep alive during
all the different weather and over time and when a piece of that dies
it's really hard to get a piece back in that's the same size to still spell out eulahs.
So during the winter storm a couple years ago that thing took its last breath and we had to remove
that. And so we began to look at what we could do to brand the main city hall, the main area for
city if you will. And so we looked at some different things that we could do. We ended up
with the monument sign. What I would tell you is the intention of this is to obviously brand
the city like it always has there but the things have changed since that berm was put in and as
you might know it's no longer just viewed from the service road we now were worried about a good
view from the overhead freeway if you don't know it we probably don't have time to get into it
tonight but the long-term plan for additional lanes on that freeway elevate lanes over the
eight lanes that you see today so if you think about what that's going to look like in the
future to have elevated lanes over the current lanes that you see today and then
again we have a lot of folks with the airport that fly over our city so we
wanted to be able to brand that maybe from straight aerial piece too so this
is an artist rendition that uses a monument sign out in front of the three
existing flag poles and then you kind of see the star there that's the switch
star that is kind of the ULIS logo that we did everywhere this is what
that sign would look like at night it would be backlit and this is again
artist rendition of what that would look like from the sky so you can
as you get a little higher you get to see that. What you see out there today is actually pretty
close to the artist's rendition. It's in progress it's not done but that's the star that's the sign
and starting next week they should be delivering the stone to start putting around that monument
piece once the stone's in then the the lettering will come in the backlit lettering electricity
has already been run and then the parks department has got a nice lovely landscape
design that they're going to be doing inside of the star so if you think outside the star
grass open area like it's always been but inside the stars some seasonal
landscaping to really give a pop of color there I think it's something that
everybody will be able to be proud of and it will be easier believe it or not
to maintain than the shrubs so I'm gonna go back I don't want to go there
yet yeah any other questions here I just have a couple questions so going in
the theme of new buildings and remodeling. Any thought about the post office? Or is
that something from the city or is that the post office that is in charge of the building?
It would be the United States Postal Service, the government. You're a federal government
that would redo that. I'm sorry, what was that? The federal government would redo
that. I was going to tell you, I've got a lot of thoughts about the post office,
but unfortunately I don't have any swing there. So there's not anything that the
city can, it's just, you know, I've lived here 35 years and I don't think anything has changed.
Even just a good, you know, cleaning, I mean those windows were filthy whenever I went in there,
just the landscaping even if that could be, you know, just to go in alignment with some of these
other wonderful places. To honestly answer your question, there's nothing the city can compel them
to do. Can we go in and ask and try to make contact and we can do that through some of
the elected officials, but I just want you to know that they would absolutely be us asking
or requesting them to do so.
We've done it in the past.
We can continue to do that, but cannot compel them to do anything.
Okay.
So the other question may be also not something within our realm, but I've also noticed now
it's gotten maybe a little bit better, but going down 183 from Main Street just seems
like there's been a lot of times it's just trashy and just not very well
maintained a lot of weeds is there in is that again within our control or is
that somebody else and I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses but 183 is
a state highway and I will tell you it is gets a little more confusing than that
even for us we obviously are in Tarrant County City of Uleses holy
within Tarrant County right when the NTE project was done and the freeway
was expanded. The state chose to draw the division line at FM 157. The Dallas
District of Textot manages the freeway from 157 eastward, even though it doesn't
fall along the traditional county lines. Candidly, we don't have the
relationship in the Dallas District that we do in the Fort Worth District. So
that's a Textot freeway. Again, it's something that we can ask and beg and
for them to do. It is not something that I can compel the state of Texas to do. We have
actually looked at trying to do some stuff with our own city crews. It is extraordinarily
dangerous and in many cases we just don't own the equipment that would allow us to do
that safely, but don't mind making another run at Tech Stop. I do understand exactly
what you're talking about.
I appreciate it. I mean just going to other, you know, areas, Plano, you know, which
I realize they are newer, but just so nice and clean. You know, it would just be
nice to have kind of that same feeling.
Scott, will you jump to slide number seven real quick because I'm going to jump in here
and do some development updates because I know there's a bunch of folks here that like to
know what's going on around town and we'll still let you ask some questions and again
as Gary said we've got folks here and we've got in essence we've created a fair out
here where you can come talk to somebody at each department and get some questions
answered but let me run through a little bit of a development update but before I
do that I would I'd like to go back and just do something we talked about a
little bit when we start talking about local control and and the leaf pick up
and be in peace but before I get into this let me take a minute just to kind
of set the stage for some things we're going to talk about but all these folks
up here in front of you the elected officials myself I'm not elected I'm
an employee the employees that are in the staff in the audience here
tonight all around the room and there's 417 employees in the city of
ULIS they're not all here tonight some of them are at home because they've
already gotten off work some of them are out there working right now to protect you
and I while we're here doing a variety of different tasks but all of us that I
just named really have one single specific goal here and that's to serve
you all as the citizens of ULIS and to provide high quality services that you
want even if it's leave pickup and that's that's why we're here that's
why the city council is here and the way this works is as the citizens
y'all work and speak through the city council and the city council directs
me and I direct staff and we try to make this community the very best place that it can be
and provide the services that you want to demand and that you really want to have.
Those services, it doesn't matter whether it's top tier public safety services through
police and fire department or library or major in his group providing quality drinking
water and sanitary sewer and drainage and good streets to drive on.
All those things come down to what I would call our local community and the quality of
life that we enjoy.
And at the end of the day, they all come down to the taxes that each of you pay in
our city.
And we take that tax money and we try to plug it in to provide those different services
and to do that in the most possible efficient way so that you're getting a good value
for your tax dollar.
I'm just going to tell you in today's world there's a whole lot of talk about taxes
and specifically property taxes.
Tax reduction, cost cutting, efficiency, all those things are very, very popular.
Those are all good.
I'm not here to tell you that any of those are bad.
I pay property taxes.
I don't like to pay property taxes.
I wish I didn't pay property taxes.
I'd rather keep that money.
But I do like the services I get for those taxes.
And I do count on the services I get for those taxes.
And I will tell you that many of us are so used to those services,
we don't even think about that, how that works.
So Scott actually go to slide two for me. I'm gonna preach just a little bit. My
dad was a preacher, my granddad was a preacher, so I apologize for that. But I
want to give you a little bit of sense of what you're getting for your taxpayer
dollars. One of the things I love about working at this city is I think that we
provide great services and I think you get a great value for those taxpayer
dollars. I think when we get none talking here tonight that I can
and convince you if you don't already feel this way
that you do get a good value for those services.
And if I don't convince you, please come see me afterward
and we'll talk about it further
because that's the goal of everybody
that you see down here before you tonight.
I wanna talk to you a little bit about
where your taxes go, what they support,
but also just how proud I am of your city, our city,
that is the most efficient
and high quality services that we deliver
and how I think it's a really good return
on your what I would call your tax dollar investment because that's what it is
you're investing in your community. We're gonna talk about a lot of things
tonight. We're gonna talk about H.E.B. grocery store that everybody's excited
about. H.E.B. is privately held. We didn't spend tax dollars to get H.E.B. to come
here. They chose to come here. Why did they choose to come here? There's a lot
of reasons but one of those is it's a quality community. It's a well run
community. It's got good water sewer drainage and streets. It's got a good
police service.
They're not going to invest their private monies in a community that they don't feel like
will give them a good return. So those are the kind of things that I think, even though I
think we all probably think our tax dollars go to support the police or the fire or those
kind of obvious services, but they go to support a whole lot more than that. And so I'm a numbers
guy. Bear with me if you all want to give you a couple numbers and we can play a little
bit of guessing game here if you want to. But let me run over a couple of numbers
for you real real quick. Anybody know what this number represents? 320,251.
Number of
leaves, right here, I heard that, it's pretty close. Very very good. Angela, raise
your hand. Angela in the library, if you've been to the Mary-Lib solid U.S.
public library in 2025, that's the total number of physical and digital
checkouts that the library processed. So your public library, your tax
dollars, 320,000 checkouts, if you will, both digital and physical. Major race his
hand while ago, 240,000 dollars, 240,000. These are not dollars. 240,000 is the
square foot of asphalt streets that Public Works Group milled and
overlaid in the city of Uless last year. That may or may not be a street that's
in front of your house, but it'll eventually be a street that's in front
of your house and that's something that's done every every year that the
council is approves in the budget to allow us to keep those streets up and
running in good shape. I'm going back here to the library a little bit. There
were 208,578 visits to the library last year.
I'm not telling you this
to brag. I love to read, but I read audiobooks. I don't know, Angela, that I
went to the library more than 34 times last year. So don't let even that
fool you. That's people going into the library. That's not people like
myself checking them out digitally. That's people actually visiting the library and that
may be for a variety of reasons because Angela and her group provide a lot of services over
at that library. 51,776, that's the total number of visits to the Aquatic Center, both
the indoor and outdoor pool. That's the number of people that are swimming over there
at the Midway Rec Center. That's pretty impressive because that facility is not
even open all year long when we're talking about the outdoor facility.
How many of
you been to the Eulah Senior Center. Zarian you haven't because you're not old
enough looking in there anybody else. Well you and 37,444 of your friends
paid a visit to the Eulah Senior Center. That is an amazing number to me and a
lot of people that get a lot of good use out of that center and to be honest
with you there's a lot of friendships and a lot of people rely on that
center a tremendous amount. So Dwayne and his group in the Parks Department
that run that center provide that. This is how many 24,935. That's how many 9-1-1
calls that we took this year. Somebody in the back asked about how many
dispatchers we have and how many terminals and where they're at and all
that good stuff. Almost 25,000 calls came through 9-1-1 last year. 18,539
citizens request for police service. That's how many calls your police
service is running. That's not self-initiated calls or things.
Those
calls like Mr. Edgar that he calls and says we need you to come check out something like that.
16,382, in case you don't know, I'm counting down here. I'll hurry up. We don't have a number
for everything, but that's Miss Claudia over there. That's how many municipal court cases
they processed last year. That's a lot of municipal court cases. Every one of those has
got a story. 13,909 back to the leaves. That's how many accounts are in the city.
they get serviced twice a week on trash. Now that's residential and commercial, but that's
how many accounts get serviced in the city. So when I get on a typical week, you know,
a couple calls of missed service and I realized that they had, you know, 26,000, 27,000 opportunities
for a missed service than missed a couple. That's why I tell you that Republic traditionally
does us a good job, not to excuse again what happened here over here recently, but
But that's a lot of trash to be picked up.
The fire department ran 6103 emergency calls last year.
So do the math on that.
That's a lot of calls running out of those three stations for our fire department.
Our building department, Lisa raised your hand over there, planning and economic development.
They did 5,614 building inspections of various types throughout the year.
3,846, that's the number of inspections performed by the fire department.
These are typically going to be on new buildings and buildings throughout the town and businesses
that are operating throughout the town.
This is a crazy number to me.
That is the number of times the ambulance ran last year.
And I say ambulance.
We have three.
I guess, Chief, we got five.
But there's three in service at any one time, two in backup.
But those three ambulances are running and look at that, 365 days a year.
So, Mr. Stineford, you're always the mental math guy.
Over 10, over 10 a day of ambulance runs that are happening.
Again, not something you care about until until you care about it, and then you really care about it, right?
We had 800 kids participate in summer camp last year
That's kids that are doing something constructive with their summer and not doing something
Destructive cheap in there, right? So that's a that's a good number and that's a summer camp that with that the city runs
314 does anybody know what a truck mounted attenuator is
What if I said scorpion?
What if I said it's the truck out there on the freeway that lowers that thing and blocks
stuff from getting hit when they're working on the road?
The city of Eulahs has one of those.
We had to buy it because there were so many accidents happening on the freeway.
We couldn't protect our officers for both police and fire and at one time, I guess
about two years ago we lost six vehicles in just a few months to them pulling over
to help somebody and luckily none of our officers were hurt but while they were
of the vehicle helping somebody in front of them somebody would slam into their
back end on that freeway so 314 times so not quite once a day but 314 times that
a 10-year waiter went out and provided protection for not only a citizen or
resident but also for the police and fire personnel that were out there
working those accident on our freeways. Lisa and her group issued 109 COs for
new businesses. A lot of times we talk about HEB and other big folks we
We don't always talk about all the little folks that are out there in the mom-and-pop
operations that are keeping operations going in our city.
That's 109 new businesses in our city last year received a CO.
Now we're getting down to the last end.
38.
Janina, where are you at?
Raise your hand.
Janina is the finance director.
Janina and her group won the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial
reporting for the 38th year.
That's what 38 stands for, 38 straight years of excellence in financial reporting.
She's keeping the books and reporting on your tax money, so if it's my tax money,
I want the person winning the award from the Government Finance Officer's
Association for Excellence in Reporting. Last number I got for you is one. It goes
back to where we started this. I would tell you there's one mission of
everybody that's here working for you whether they're sitting up here or
out in that audience and this is the city's mission statement. Provide our
citizens the most efficient services possible to protect and enhance the
quality of life through planning and visionary leadership. That's what we're
all pushing for really really quickly. This is a dollar phase, a dollar
divided up. It's intended to show you where your dollar goes. I always try to
talk about this. Josh is here with the school district, Josh I didn't put this
in here to talk about about the school district I promise, but when you pay
your property taxes, and that's what we're talking about, property taxes,
realize that whether you're in Great Vine Collieville ISD or HEB ISD at
It varies a little bit, but either 24 or 26% of your property taxes are actually going
to the city of Ulysses.
You can see the respective percentages for the school districts and then for Tarrant
County.
When you think about the average home value in Ulysses, which in case anybody is wondering,
the average home value in Ulysses is $339,533.
Your particular home may be valued at more than that or it may be valued at
less than that, but that's the average home value.
The person with the average home value in ULIS that has a homestead exemption
filed with Tarrant County on that, which most of us do, their annual tax bill is
$1,294. That's $107 a month or $3.55 a day for all that stuff I was trying to
show you with all those numbers. Obviously I couldn't talk to you about
everything that you get for your taxpayers money. We don't have
enough time to do that. I probably took more time than I should. I can feel
mayor looking at me right now while I'm trying to finish this. Too late, she said, but I would just
tell you, and by the way if you're a senior and you've got a senior tax reason, a senior exemption
on their average home value, you're paying $91 a month or $2.99 a day. As we go through the
night and even beyond that, when you think about the city, what I tell you is think about
the services in your own budget that you pay $100 a month for. Cell phone, internet, TV,
streaming services, coffee, those kind of things when you add them up. I'm not saying
you shouldn't do that. I'm not saying they're bad values. I'm saying I think your taxes
provide you an excellent value in what you get for your basically $3.55 a day on average.
As we go through the town hall meeting again as you leave, if you'll just kind of think
about that, I think it'll help put all that in perspective.
Why would I take the time to say all that?
Here's my conclusion.
This is my third point here on my sermon.
As we go forward, cities in your community, your city, are feeling the pressures from
all kinds of places.
There are being limitations put on the money that they can actually raise through taxes.
Not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm not saying that. There's also pressure coming from the other way, just like there
is at your house, things cost more. Everything that we buy, just like at your house, costs
more. Those two things are going to meet in the middle. My simple, I guess, plea to you
all is,
all cities should not be treated the same. We should have the ability to
have local control. That's the message I'd like for the citizens to help us with.
Because when I say help us, it's not us. It's help you with. This is your community.
you ought to be able to decide what's important.
You ought to be able to decide whether we want street sweeping
or not have street sweeping.
You ought to be able to decide do we want four dispatchers
instead of five dispatchers.
And I know that that's not necessarily a decision
that a citizen makes,
but they make the decision for what quality of services
that they want.
And my argument is that that decision ought to be left here
not somewhere else.
So that's my preaching.
I apologize real quick just so you know.
This is where we get our money in the general fund,
general funds a single largest fund we get our money look at that 73% property
taxes and sales taxes largest single piece is property taxes and that's why
I spent time talking about that you can see the other places that we get
things a lot of it is again 73% of that sales in property tax or do we
spend our money no surprise here look at that police department 28% fire
department 21% so 50% of that money comes in goes to police and fire the
The city does not make widgets.
We provide services.
Those monies come back out to you as far as those services.
That's those ambulance calls and those calls for service.
Those things are free that you're paying for them.
Those are your tax dollars paying for them.
We want to provide the best quality service at the most efficient level that we can.
But I do want you to just kind of look at where that goes.
One of the issues that I have with some of the pressures being put on cities as
a whole on these areas is it's very easy for people to want to support
police and fire because of what they do for us and I do understand that.
Recognize for a minute that as much as I like the police department, as much as I
like the fire department, if the water doesn't come out that hydrant,
whether it's painted or not, if the water doesn't come out of that hydrant,
they can't put a fire out. If the road's not in the condition that the
fire truck can get there, there's no, not a whole lot they can do about it.
I say that to say police and fire are dependent on public works.
There's not a fireman in our city that's going to come to work if we
could pay in them. So police and fire are dependent on Janina and her finance
group to process payroll and do those. We put pie charts up and it looks nice
and easy and we can quantify where things go. Realize this is like parts of a
body. All those pieces are tied together and for it to be fully functional
and official all those pieces have to have to work together. So wanted to
show you those two things. I'll quit preaching and give you a quick
development update. I do you got about 10 minutes. I'm being mindful of time
I'm gonna go quick real quick. H.E.B. is coming. You can see it out there. It'll open this year on a Wednesday
I don't know what month they always open on a Wednesday in 2026. They're gonna open
I'm gonna show you a little something. There's the mayor out there last year. We showed this picture at Town Hall
We had just done the groundbreaking mayor. I was there
They didn't let me up there with a shovel, but they let you up there with a shovel
So that was a good thing, but what's happened in a year. I'm gonna show you this little shot right here
This is an aerial view at the bottom of the screen is Rio Grande at the left of the screen is cheeks Barger
And I'm going to let this roll this again shot by our police department with their drone footage
This is a really recent shot
You can see there as we come up on what's going to be the fuel island and car wash
We proceed into the parking lot area that you can see is
near completion
That is a 126,000 square foot grocery store all under one roof
They are working on that thing.
If you go by there, that thing literally changes daily.
It's going to have the Texas Best Barbecue with a separate drive-through.
It's going to have a pharmacy with a separate drive-through.
And it's going to be a really nice asset to our city.
I just wanted to be able to show you that video and to show you that.
That's trendy union apartments that are turning in.
That's right next to that.
And then to the north of that is the remainder of Lake Park.
So again that will open this year and let me see if I did this right now we don't get
we don't often get petty mayor around here but every once in a while we do. You may have heard
that this is in Eulah's you may have heard it's in Bedford the truth is it's in both
cities and it's that land's been that way for a long long time.
H.E.B. bought this property in 2015 and when we wanted to make
Make it somewhere that they wanted to come. So we got together with Bedford and we wrote
an interlocal agreement between the two cities to cooperate and make it as easy as possible
for HEB to come here. And what we mean by that is we combined our planning departments
and the permitting process and we didn't want these folks to have to go through two different
pieces and part of the buildings in Eulis and parts in Bedford and you're running
and you're trying to get permits in both cities. So we proactively came to the
other and tried to make that part easy. We also agreed to share revenue on that
part easy. But that right there, if you ever get asked, that's the part that's in
Bedford. That's the part that's in Ulysses.
Just so you know. Glade parks just to
the north. We got a flex building going on up there closer towards the target.
That's going to have a Korean barbecue and a couple other places have signed
letters of intent. I think you'll see that finished in the next couple months
and you'll start to see some additional shops going to that spot.
Zap is down where in the Lifestyle Center where Dickies barbecue used to be. If you
haven't been to Zap it's absolutely delicious. If you need talk to the city
manager's office once a week you'll find Stephen and Lawrence and I there at
lunch having a having lunch that we all like that place. This is if you know
Sal and Saviano's up off Main Street. This is their pizza place that went in
the old Medici area there. Again in the Lifestyle Center you should try
that wood fire pizza if you haven't going across the street over to shops at
Vineyard Village the old party city this is Cavenders boot city that is a
massive store if you've not ever been in that I've been in a lot of boot stores
but that that one may take the case how big that is you got to go try that out
also shops at vineyards this year shoe Palace opened in the old famous
footwear spot and then many so and I'm going to be honest with you I've
not been in many so but as I understand it's some novelty got
gifts that's also in shops at Vineyard Village and batteries plus
us out there next to brass tap in the out parcels.
Looky there, picture of HTO that opened this year.
There's no truth to the foot cast
you're where you did not drop a gallon of tea on your foot.
Is that OK?
Just make sure this is up on Main Street.
If you haven't been to HTO, you should go.
I go all the time.
They got to drive through it, makes it real easy.
And I even have an app about for HTO.
So appreciate that.
This is a picture we showed at this meeting last year.
this is Hearst Electric up on say Highway 183 if you've been around a
long time. This is in the old Owls formal wear shop. This is the picture from
last year Town Hall. This is the picture from this year at Town Hall. That
building should be occupied and operational within the next month or
so. So we're happy to have Hearst Electric even though they're in
Ulysses now. I guess they're going to keep the name Hearst Electric. This is
a picture again that we showed you last year for Holiday Inn Express at
at Harwood Road and State Highway 360.
I love doing these, what we showed you last year,
and then this is a picture from this year.
That thing ought to open sometime
late this spring, early summer.
Four stories, just over 100 rooms,
right there at the corner of 360 and Harwood Road.
This is the second of three hotels that are gone going.
This is the Cambria Hotel.
This sits out on the old Arbor Day's site,
if you ever went to the old Arbor Day's site,
just south of the tent.
Again, four stories, about 100 rooms,
and that thing actually is due to open,
but I think at least in the next 30 to 45 days or so.
So it's very, very close.
Right over the top of that,
you're gonna see some of the multifamily product
at what used to be called water color.
It's now Waters Bend,
because the water color development in Florida
did not like them using the name water color,
so they've rebranded to Waters Bend.
Right out in front,
that's Cambria to the back right of the corner,
right out in front of that is a fueling station,
gas station that's going in.
They're on the hard corner directly across
from Uncommon Church.
This is water bin. Again, form is the water color. We've shown you this for a
couple years. I want to talk real quick about the multifamily piece that's
located there along State Highway 183 and Bear Creek Parkway. Again, a picture
from last year's Town Hall meeting. That multifamily being built. A picture from
this year's Town Hall meeting. That multifamily is completed and a lot of
that is already occupied. The rest of it is almost ready to be occupied. Just
a couple of shots of that. You can see here they're still working on their
pool and amenity center. If you look right over the top of the multi-family we're talking
about you're going to see start to see some of the single family residential coming out
of the ground. If I go back to the map I'm going to put a red box over that top right
hand corner just to orient you that's State Highway 360. This next picture is going to
start there and it's going to move over that residential area towards the multi-family
that we started at. Again just a little video I think is the easiest way to show
this but you'll start to see some of those single family homes come out. Those are rear
lot line rear loaded through an alleyway. That's what you see there in the back is a rear alley.
You'll see that all of the infrastructure is in for that development. Water sewer drainage streets,
street lights, all that good stuff. Those are bench slots that will soon be built on.
You will come across now we're starting to come across the pedestrian connection that
brings the existing Bear Creek Riverwalk area down to the water feature and then you're
moving now into the Rowe hometown home section of that residential development
and we will eventually end up back over here where the multifamily piece is. So
that is moving along very very quickly and it's been a long time coming in our
city that's the last really really large spot of vacant land to be developed
that's currently under develop right now. That is the water feature that I've
talked to you about that I'll have the commercial section of this the
pad site that you see there is an at-well suites that is under
construction and again I don't know what's magical about four stories in a hundred
and seven rooms but that apparently fits everywhere and that products being
built there that will overlook that water feature and and have some
interaction I guess with that water feature in some of their facility. This
real quickly is a little multifamily called West Spring Pines very very
interesting this is where Sota Grande is down on West Pipeline Road this is
property that used to if you've been around here a long time have their
tennis center on it. They've owned the property. It's had the zoning for that.
It's just been other uses. That tennis center went away and was just kind of
dilapidated and junky for a long, long time and they came in last year and went
to the site plan process and they're building some additional units on that.
This is looking back at that same piece but you can start to see just
around that the existing West Hill Hills multi-family piece. If you look
out there to the top you're going to see the the junior high and keys
learning center.
I used all my talking tokens. Are you done? All right, never mind, don't start it.
All right, good. As we said, we are here as long as you have questions to ask. We
do have tables set up. Chris, is it all right now if I dismiss the staff so they can go get
set up? We're going to dismiss the staff. They're going to go get set up at the tables.
But as soon as they leave the room, if you will, please stay here. Then we're going to
here from council and the mayor.
Let's throw up slide 111 real quick.
I've got one slide I'm going to show you.
I promise this will be the last one I'll show you.
Wanted to mention real quickly that the city council
is looking at some charter amendments that
would be on the ballot in the May election time frame.
The city has a charter that is the base.
We've got a code of ordinances that
come from the charter.
But the charter is kind of some base rules for the city.
Cities will typically update these every couple of years
just to keep consistent with state law and things that have turned out.
You can see the City of Uleses Charter was adopted in 1962 and we started updating it
in 69 and 73 and 75 and then last time we did it was 30 years ago and we haven't done
anything in 30 years.
So council is taking on that task.
It's a monumental task.
Anything you haven't done in 30 years will take a little time to do.
We're going to have some meetings for the public on that as we get a little further.
So we'll have a public meeting and we'll put out information for everybody so you
can see what those proposed charter amendments are, but I just wanted to
make you aware of that coming down the pipe as we lead into the May election
time, Brian. And now we're going to hear from our council. Typically we give the
mayor the last word.
We're going to get mayor the first word.
So the mayor's
asked me to read this for her and I'm just I'm going to read here what
she's got and says good evening. I'd like to take a moment to share a
personal decision with the community that I have been honored to serve.
After 22 years as a member of the Eula City Council, including the privilege of serving
as mayor, I have decided not to seek re-election.
This was not an easy decision, my passion for public service is strong, and the rewards
of serving this community have truly been wonderful.
However, after the passing of my dear sweet Don, who was by my side for more than
40 years, I've come to realize that this is a time in my life when I need to focus
on myself and on healing.
Dawn was my constant support and my greatest encourager, and this decision comes with deep
reflection and with love.
Over the years I've made countless connections through my service, friendships and relationships
that I treasure deeply.
And while I may no longer serve on the City Council, these connections will remain with
me.
They will continue to carry me through life and will always bring me great joy.
I will miss serving the city and working alongside dedicated colleagues and staff,
but I want everyone to know that I am not leaving Uless. This community is my home,
and I will continue to support what is best for the Uless and for our community as a whole.
Thank you for the trust that you have placed in me over the years and for the kindness you have
shown me, and for allowing me the honor of serving this great city and its residents. Thank you.
Now we're going to let each council member say a couple of words. Start down here on
the end Mr. Price. Am I on? I guess I am. Well it just continues to be my great joy
and privilege to serve all the citizens of ULIS. It's especially great to serve
you guys that show up to a meeting like this. You're the ones who are engaged
and involved and we appreciate that so much. Thank you for the privilege that
I've had to be a part of this past 12 years.
Thank you Mr. Price. Mr.
Thank you. Glad to see everybody here tonight. It's just amazing when I look out there and
see everybody who's so engaged. AccessUlis. Who here uses AccessUlis? If you don't use
AccessUlis, look around the people who raise their hands and get connected. It's a great
resource for you. So you don't have to wait until a meeting like tonight to ask your
questions. That portal, that app can help you greatly. Use your access right to
staff and right to your city manager and we track that. So I encourage you to do
that. The question you had in that were great. We have challenges ahead of us.
Water is going to be a challenge for our city, all cities. So with that I just
want to tell you thank you for being here and let you know I'm up for
election this year and I filed a run for reelection and I hope I get your
support through that endeavor. I appreciate every one of you. My amazing wife
is sitting right over here 44 years and she gives me great joy, hope I give her
joy, so thank y'all for being here tonight. Thank you, Mr. Brownham. Mrs. Eads?
Is this on? All right. Thank you all for being here. Like these guys already
said it's super important that you're here and it's just also really refreshing to see so many people
wanting to be involved and active in the community. That's why we're up here to have this feedback
with you guys and have our city the best it can be. So thank you for being here and thank you
for electing me for your city council. I'm pretty much brand new next to all these guys over
here but I've been on council for about a year now and I'd be honored to continue that
for a long time. So thank you.
Thank you Mrs. Eats. Mr. Poddell.
Good evening. Happy new year. I really feel so proud to serve the community. I really
appreciate all you here tonight. Anything from outside please let us know and it's going
be Big Miss Mayor. Thank you. Thank you Mayor Pro Tempston. Thanks Gary. I've been
fortunate enough to be on the council now finishing up my 19th year and during
that time I've had the pleasure of serving under two incredible mayors
Mary Lipsala for 10 years and Mayor Martin for the last nine years.
I'm
I'm going to be filing my paperwork tomorrow to run for mayor and my goal would be if elected
to not drive it in the ditch, to keep it in the same progress we've been doing with the
mantra of we're going to do the right thing.
Every case that comes before us, that's what we decide.
What's the best thing for our city in this particular case?
We all get along.
This council is incredible.
I think we have the best staff and group of employees in the state at the very least.
Our finance department we found out is actually the best even in Canada.
We found that out last night.
So anyway, I am filing tomorrow.
I've been really privileged to work with Linda.
In fact, her husband, Don and I used to go on police patrol
and he's the one that convinced me to run for counsel.
He said, it's just a couple of meetings a month, a couple of hours, it's nothing.
And I think he's up there in heaven right now going, yeah, he'd believe me.
Anyway, thank you for all you do, because without the citizens of Eulus, none of us
could do what we do, and without your support.
So thank you very much, and again, happy new year.
I'd just like to say something very briefly. We do have a tremendous council. We've worked
together all these years, and we haven't had a disagreement one. And if we do, we go in
the back room, we roll our eyes, and we get over it, and then we come out of that room
laughing and enjoying each other's company. We truly love working together, and you're
very fortunate that these folks have chosen to run again because you've got a
ready-made experience council right here. So congratulations, Carrie the Mantle.
Hopefully so, that's up to all them. I think they recognize a good thing when
they see them. I'm not talking about you.
Let's give all of our council and mayor
a big round of applause. Thank you very much.
As we mentioned earlier, we've come
to the end of this portion of the meeting and we do have all the tables set up.
Staff is there ready to answer any questions that you might have for them.
Thank you again for coming out tonight and attending our annual town hall
meeting. You want to continue doing this. That's what we ask every single
year. We'll continue it again next year. Thank you for being here. God
And you can talk to everybody out there, answer all the questions.
HBISD even has a table set up out there.
Thank you very much. Have a good night.